It was seven o'clock on a Spring morning in Clapham Junction. At the roadside stood a grandly designed bright red routemaster bus with its engine running. The vehicle consisted of an upper deck, lower deck and a 'driver's cab'.
   At the foot of the staircase leading to the upper deck stood a young fresh-faced 'clippy' resplendent in her crisp, clean, perfectly creased conductors uniform. At her feet lay a discarded bus ticket flecked with blood.
   In the walkway of the lower deck stood elderly dowager Miss Nabresina Marble conversing with a tall lean man with a bulbous nose - the colour of which matched the bus's coachwork. He sported a ginger goatee beard and an upwardly curled moustache.
   For the time of year, it was brisk going on cold, yet the ginger-haired detective performed his part manfully. Graceful (if somewhat dubious) phrases fell from his lips in polished cockney. Not that he knew what he was talking about. The young lad's murder was still a mystery. There had been mumurings, of course, as there always were in such cases.
   And then there had come this strange woman from East Finchley. An elderly woman, well-spoken and smartly dressed, who smelt of mothballs and malt vinegar. When she first boarded the No39 there had been a few moments of curious tensity and harsh words. And then certain insightful things had happened and anxious faces had suddenly lost their anxiety.
   The negro boy's body still lay silently sprawled across the back seats - his ghettoblaster, thankfully, having been switched off following his untimely demise. A ball of oyster-coloured Cashmere wool was thrust into his open mouth and a blood-coated knitting needle protruded from each of his ears.
   The passengers - of which there were twenty-three - were held on the top deck pending the arrival of the police. Susequently interviewed by Detective Felix 'Ginger' Tomms, the morning-chilled commuters had offered up not a scrap of evidence. 
   It was good fortune, along with a buy-one-get-one-free promotion at a local second-hand clothing store, that had brought Miss Marble to Clapham on this fresh spring morning. Upon passing the stationary routemaster she had overheard part of a conversation between Detective Tomms and the clippy. 'Oh mai gawd! Strewth! It's murder most foul,'  had exclaimed the young conductor.
   'We're gonna leave the stiff where 'e is," replied the Detective. 'No one goes up the apples unless I says 'e can. Goddit?"
   'It's a rum deal for the poor darky,' said an ashen-faced gentleman in a bowler hat who sat at the back of the bus. He spoke to his ashen-faced wife who sat at the back of the bus with a face like the back of a bus.
   As to what it was all about, Miss Marble was still in the dark. Yet she intended to make it her duty to find out who had caused such dismay to the travellers upon this regal routemaster. To this end, she would carry out her enquiries with all the zeal and ardour befitting a younger woman.
   'Today is Monday,' said Ginger Tomms. 'Tomorrow is Tuesday It's all starting to make sense.'  It was not the first time he had made this observation and Miss Marble was beginning to tire of his inane ramblings. Conversations on a bus, following the demise of an ethnic, are apt to be somewhat repetitive in character.
  'Please do shut up,' said Nabresina Marble. 'You are a buffoon, Detective Tomms.'
  'Stone me, luv,' grumbled the detective. 'I ain't never not been near no woodwin' section.'
   'And we can only hope that it remains that way for some time,' said Miss Marble under her breath.
   A cold wind came whistling down the bus's walkway and both of them shivered. Detective Tomms managed to cast a surreptitious glance at his watch. It was five minutes past seven. He had a dental appointment at eight in Golders Green. An angry wisdom tooth.