A Detective Bingo Mystery

Detective Edward Bingo lurched back to his desk and threw his packed lunch angrily into the rubbish bin. He wasn’t about to allow his wife to send him to an early grave by slowly and deliberately clogging up his arteries. Cheese, egg, bacon and onion smothered in mayonnaise on soft white bread would give Bingo indigestion on top of the bitter taste he already had in his mouth. To tell the truth, he’d rather be playing a game of online bingo than sitting around trying to crack the case that would later be known simply as The Unsolved Bingo Mystery.

Bingo knew he had to focus on the facts and not fall into despair. He lifted his forehead off his desk and tried to think. In times like these he always asked: What would Bingo do? That would be Detective Bedford Bingo, his father, the award-winning investigator who never left a crime scene without sniffing out the prime suspect. Detective Bingo Bedford who made Hercule Poirot look like an amateur. Detective Bingo knew he would never win the approval of his father. Nothing Bingo did ever measured up to the elder Bingo’s expectations. It was all pretty pointless. Bingo wondered momentarily if he shouldn’t just start eating his packed lunches and allow his wife to get away with the perfect murder. He reached into the bin and retrieved his soggy sandwich, wondering why Mrs. Bingo hadn’t gone to the extra effort of deep-frying this oily offering.

Bingo reviewed the facts of the case: Dexter Pilchard was their prime suspect in the Woodward robbery. Bingo had video footage from a security camera of Mr. Pilchard arriving at the Woodward mansion at the time of the burglary. But when Bingo and his men had arrived at Pilchard’s home, where they expected to find the Woodward jewels stashed, the suspected criminal had just closed the door to his own safe. It was Detective Bingo who announced that the jewels must be in the safe. But even though Bingo had a search warrant for the house, he didn’t have the combination to the safe and Pilchard refused to give Bingo the code. So, they had the criminal, but without the evidence, Bingo would be forced to let him go.

All Bingo had brought back from Pilchard’s home was his personal diary, which he had hoped might contain the numbers for the safe. But to his disappointment, Bingo found that it was a ridiculous and tedious book, documenting Pilchard’s daily activities, which included an analysis of his daily food intake and a few odd and dreary poems that made Bingo both laugh and cry at the same time. One of the poems was particularly pathetic, Bingo noted. He stared at it for a long time, wondering what Bingo the Elder would make of it:

Safety Instructions
Two little ducks on a pond
Unlucky for some near the Dancing Queen
Thee and me and a flea
in heaven
We’re up to tricks
Between the sticks

Bingo laughed bitterly at the pathetic poetry and took another bite of the sandwich. If Bedford Bingo had been present he would not have been laughing. Instead, he would be deciphering the bad poetry and would have instantly realized that the words were all a code for bingo numbers. The “safety instructions” were simply instructions to opening the safe. Anyone who plays bingo, he would have mused, would be able to decipher this poem. In bingo, two little ducks is 22 and 13 is unlucky for some. The dancing queen is bingo lingo for 17 and thee and me is the bingo equivalent of 23. A flea in heaven is 37 and in bingo terminology “up to tricks” is 46 while between the sticks is a mere 86. If Edward Bingo had used his available brain cells, he would have worked out that the code to crack the safe was right at his fingertips. But it was not to be. The unsolved Bingo Mystery would remain unsolved and Dexter Pilchard would be a free man. Within six months Bingo would suffer a major heart attack and his wife, Mrs. Bingo, would have indeed committed the perfect murder.