Sketch: Helen's Downfall

Here I'm trying out a voice for Mr. Kitten, the narrator of my Mr. Kitten Murder Mystery. I think this voice would be a bit much for an entire book, but here's a little story anyway.

Helen's Downfall


Helen's a well-rounded person, but means not to be, which is why she avoids chocolate at all times she is not actively consuming it. Of course, she can do as she wishes nowadays, what with the terms of Grandpa Calvin's will being so, dare I use the word, heavily in her favor. She spends at least one month a year at an exclusive fat farm in South Carolina, saving up, as it were, for the rest of the year and relieving the local carpenters the burden of having to widen the doors. Thus she stands in pleasingly broad contrast to her cousin Madeleine who haunts the halls in a continual state of self-imposed starvation, disappears when she turns sideways and possesses a body so weakened with deprivation rumor has it she was once injured by a falling leaf.



At one time Helen was a bit of a heavyweight in her chosen field of law; then a certain tumble led her to the ignominy of document review before the great Calvin's generosity saved her from the rigors of work forever. She credits her downfall with her discovery and subsequent revelation that the federal judge for whom she was clerking never read a single brief and let his law school interns make as well as draft all his decisions. Talk about discovery leading to discovery. Of course it was an open secret in the world of law until Helen's literal and figurative big mouth made it an open non-secret.




Personally, I think her change in career direction had less to do with her scrupulous honesty and more to do with her a certain incident that happened in front of the television cameras in federal court one day when it was forever established that although the world of law can abide a judge of loose moral fabric stretching the bounds of ethics, the failure of the fabric of a certain lawyer's skirt to stretch when she stooped (only literally, not morally) to pick up a box of legal briefs could not be forgiven. With a great rending sound, the skirt was rendered rent; bifurcated, in legal parlance. All in the pursuit of a box of legal briefs. The damage might have been mitigated had she only been wearing briefs of her own.
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