As promised, some more carnage today.
In marked contrast to our last short- termish cast- member, Mr. Obermaier gets a name, but no face shot, while Prof. Broughtup- Snobishly gets some more opportunity to display his composure.
The murderer’s name, scrawled onto the wall in the victim’s own blood, is another completely unplausible plot device that yet never will die. To really happen, it would require the victim to have remarkable presence of mind (left over), and a seriously skewered set of priorities at the same time. (“I could do something to stop that profuse bleeding, but naw, that’s boring. Why don’t I doodle a bit on the wall, instead…”)
Let’s see if we could find a plausible scenario:
Watson: ” Look, the victim has scrawled something on the wall – do you think that could be the name of the murderer, Holmes?”
Holmes: “Tsk, tsk, dear Watson, always jumping to the wrong conclusions. From the amount of papers on the victim’s desk follows that he was very busy in life. So he probably never got to start writing his big novel, thus when he realized he was dying, he finally gave it a go. Didn’t get very far, though. ‘Moriarity killed me..’ good name for a novel, that.”
But I deviate, as usual. Queen Tera and her seven- fingered hand are courtesy of Bram Stoker (to whom we also owe Dracula, of course), and taken from his novel ‘The Jewel of Seven Stars’ (which is available as free e-book at www.gutenberg.org).
It’s one of the earliest appearances of mummies in horror literature, and has inspired a number of films, all of which firmly belong to the B-category.
He likely got the idea for the extra fingers from an Ancient coffin lid like this one in the British Museum:
www.cambridge2000.com/ gallery/images/P5026443.jpg
In fact, however, the extra fingers on this lid are more probably attributed to carelessness on part of the artist than on mutation on part of the depicted.
Stoker described the hand as being slender and feminine in spite of the seven fingers, but writing is cheap, he didn’t have to draw it, after all.
In other news, the Caption Contest is over ! Check out the results page:
And finally: No more carnage on Thursday, instead some fond childhood memories of Mopey’s. Oh, and vote for me.