Pearly Breaks a Leg ends with Octavio Octavious leaving town due to a lack of interest in setting up the Fallstown Players.
‘We have enough drama already,’ said Captain McAndrew dramatically, ‘without someone deliberately creating more.’
‘But,’ as Pearly tells the police when they arrive at Octavio’s recently-vacated flat, ‘at least it means that we can all relax, secure in the knowledge that the Fallstown Players was not going to be used as a possible front for a criminal gang of actors and actresses intent on maybe causing artistic chaos with their dramatic ways. You can never be too careful.’
Pearly pauses dramatically.
‘It also means that Windy didn’t run all that way to warn you for no reason.’ Pearly smiles her pearly smile and exits stage left. The out-of-breath policemen nod as they turn to head back down the hill again. As they pass Windy, both policemen pat his head with an equal parts mixture of affection and annoyance.
The final caption for this particularly uninspired and muddled episode of the Pearly Stockwell series cryptically declares:
A prevented crime is a better crime than a crime solved, because a crime solved means a crime was committed in the first place and therefore wasn’t prevented.
Ellis had puzzled over this cryptic bit of strangled prose ever since she first read it.
‘So to prevent a crime, I need to find a crime and prevent it before it becomes a crime,’ puzzled Ellis as she wandered backstage looking for a crime to prevent before it became a crime.
When wrestling with complexities of this kind and deep in puzzling thought, it can sometimes be hard to see where you are going, and so it was that Ellis bumped into something. The something she bumped into was very solid and very metal and it very hurt her arm.
‘Oww!’ she exclaimed, looking up to find that she had bumped into one of Doodah’s dancers caught by a zip in a cargo net.
BARNABY TAYLOR: Curiosity is Currency 