Opa Opa and the Mouse Murderer

Vater und Kind beim Hoppe hoppe Reiter-Spiel (1863) by Charles Green

Once upon a time, Opa Opa rider was riding through the forest on trusty, old Mr. Pipe. He was on his way back to his home, which was really nothing more than a hole in a Yew Tree. Earlier that day, Mr. Pipe had stepped on a mouse while doing his morning stretches, and now, both him and Opa Opa were on their way back from the funeral, each a twopence poorer for the coins they tossed in the grave.

Without the slightest warning, Opa Opa’s world went from right side up to wrong side down. Mr. Pipe had tripped over something, sending them both head over heels. The tripping was not altogether uncommon. Mr. Pipe was half-blind, afterall. But, the head over heels bit was new. It was as if someone had laid a net on the ground, tied it to a bag of rocks overhanging a cliff, and tripped the whole thing just as soon as Opa Opa and his horse had passed. As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what happened. 

“Hey now! What in the name of England is all this about?” screamed Opa Opa.

Quite composed, Mr. Pipe replied, “Calm down, calm down. We have been trapped in a net. If I’m not quite mistaken, the trap was triggered manually, and we will meet out captor very shortly.

Opa Opa paid no attention to this remark, for as he spoke, a brown blur no bigger than an apricot darted from hiding place to hiding place until it was near than was strictly courteous. A pointy face with round, black eyes and a long, whiskered mustache piped up even before Opa Opa had the chance to ask its name or business.

“Aha! Caught like a chunk of cheese, you are! Boy, I’d like to take a chunk out of you,” he said to Opa Opa. “But it’s your horse I’m after. What’s his name anyway?”

“It’s Sir Hamilton LaPipe the Third to you, good mouse. Under what cause have you detained us?” replied Mr. Pipe.

The mouse looked as though he had seen a ghost. “You’re—you’re a talking horse?”

“Is that a question or a statement,” said Mr. Pipe.

“I’m terribly sorry, I’m sure, to rope up a talking horse. I’ve never met one of you before. But talking or not, you murdered my brother,” squeaked the mouse, his anger returning to him.

“Yes, I killed him. I won’t deny that. But, it wasn’t murder; it was manslaughter. I had no ill will toward your bother. Indeed, I didn’t know he was there until—”

“That’s no concern of mine. A mouse killed by accident is no less dead than one killed on purpose. So, why should I have mercy? Life for life.” As the mouse said this, he took from a scabbard, almost too small to see, a sword the size of a toothpick. 

“Well, for one thing,” interrupted Opa Opa, “having mercy on him would be having mercy on yourself as well. This here horse is as big as five men put together. How do you suppose killing him with that little thing? Why, you’d die of old age before you got the job done.”

At this, the mouse scrunched up his nose and trotted out of sight.

“Aha!” exclaimed Opa Opa with a victorious heir. “There you are, old boy. That’s how its done. You out to write it out so you remember. I just hope I didn’t embarrass the chap too badly. Now, do you have a knife to cut us out or what?”

Mr. Pipe was about to ask exactly where Opa Opa thought a horse might hide a knife, but before he ever had the chance, they began to pivot in mid-air. The net they were trapped in began swinging over the face of the cliff. At the bottom of the precipice, a dozen jagged spires stared back at them.

“Oh dear,” wheezed Opa Opa.

“Oh dear indeed,” snarled the mouse from above their heads. He was standing now on a knot on the rope that held them up. His sword was put to the rope itself.

“Just you hold on a minute, good mouse sir. I think I can make this all right,” said Mr. Pipe.

“Talk,” squeaked the mouse.

“For one thing, you must know how terribly sorry I was to have smashed your brother with my hoof. I wish you were at his funeral. It was quite beautiful. And for another, I observed a military curl to your brother’s whiskers, did I not?”

This took the mouse off guard, and his answer came out in little bits. “Well, I.—I suppose. But how did you?—What exactly are you getting at, Horse?”

“Only that your brother must have been a high ranking official in the your police force. For who is unaware that it is a privilege only of such officers to wear their whiskers with an upward curl?”
“I am,” thought Opa Opa, though he said nothing.

“Right you are, Horse. But I fail to see the relevance. Get to the point quickly or I’m afraid I’ll have to rest my sword on this here rope. My arm as well as my patience tires.”

By now, several more mice had gathered to observe the spectacle. They listened in with great interest, ears pointed right to the sky.

The horse shifted a little before speaking, for the ropes were digging into his hide. “Well, I wonder if you have considered why your brother was outside our Yew tree to begin with.”

Again, the mouse showed visible confusion. “Patrolling for possible threats, I suppose. And it seems he found one, alright!”

“Wrong. He was there because he was in trouble, and I was a friend. Any good brother would know that. But you’re not a good brother, now are you?”

“I say! How dare you?”

“You can save all that for the dock, Storg.”

“The dock??”

“Yes, the dock, where you will have to explain exactly why it was that your brother Padpock came to me with a flesh wound that he swore came from you. Yes, you! You snuck up on him in the dead of night and stabbed him with your sword. Only, you missed your mark, and he got away. Isn’t that right? Padpock same to me with the whole plan, including the decoy mouse for me to step on.”

At this, the mouse started stammering all over again, looking desperately from face to face in the growing crowd of mice. “I deny it all! This is a mere diversion. A distraction. A lie, I tell you! You won’t get out of murder that easy, you pony.” He raised his paw to cut the rope.

“A lie, you say?” came a voice from within Mr. Pipe’s leather saddle pocket. Then emerged Padpock himself, quite as alive as ever too.

Storg turned white as a sheet. “But… But how?” was all he managed to say.

Padlock continued, “I knew you were after me, Storg. Ever since I married Jenivir, I knew it. You couldn’t stand that she could fall for another mouse besides you. You figured that if I were out of the picture, she would scamper into your arms. Well, I have news for you: she wouldn’t marry you if you were the last mouse on earth. And that’s straight from her mouth!”

Storg was enraged. “Why, I ought to—”

But the police brigade was on him before you could say seed sack. All the crowd roared with delight as he was dragged off. Mr. Pipe and Opa Opa were swung over solid ground, lowered, and cut out by the mouse’s chief constable.

After he put his sword back in his scabbard, the constable asked “There’s just one question I have, Mr. Pipe, if you don’t mind my asking.”

“Anything,” replied Mr. Pipe, licking absently at the rope marks on his hide.

“Why did Storg trap you? I mean, why not leave well enough alone if he thought all his dirty business was gone and buried?”

“Ah, that’s the beauty of it. Mice like him, the jealous types, are never so satisfied as that. It’s never enough that they cause others to lose their joy. Naaeeee, they must take their lost joy for their own, and more too if they can get it. Old Storg wanted the fame and glory of capturing his brother’s killer. But he flew too close to the sun, and he got burnt. So it goes.”

“So it goes,” repeated the constable.

“So it goes,” echoed Opa Opa, wondering if it would be irreverent to retrieve his twopence from the fake grave.

And now for the rest of the story…