Mini Mysteries

“Tell it to us one more time, if you please, Miss Ivory,” said Crimson Quill, the long-suffering editor-in-chief of The Canterlot Times.

“At around eight o’clock this mornin’,” Miss Ivory began eagerly, “I walked to the kiosk in West Badham Street ter pick up the tabloids. Begging yer pardon, Mister Quill, but I reckon The Times can be very opinionated.”

“Indeed,” grumbled Quill.

“Anyhow, on the way back to my flat I passed two ponies, a mare an’ a stallion. They were talkin’ urgently. Near whisperin’, like. Didn’t pay ‘em much mind at first, you know, but as I passed ‘em, I over’eard the mare say – and these were ‘er exact words, mind – ‘I knows you were wiv ‘er that night. If you don’t pay me fifty-thousand bits ‘fore the shoot on April 31st, I’ll tell yer wife!’

“Now, that got me wond’rin’. An’ then it ‘it me! The stallion? ‘E was Colt Bolt!”

Quill raised an eyebrow. “The famous model?”

“The very same! An’ if you’ve been keepin’ up wiv the tabloids, Mister Quill, you’ll know that Colt Bolt an’ his wife ’re goin’ through a rough patch at the mo’. Y’ see, she reckons ‘e’s an adult’rer! An’ I reckon that girlie knew ‘e’d been wiv another mare! I reckon that girlie were blackmailin’ ‘im!

“So what d’you reckon? Front page o’ The Times tomorrow?”

“I think,” said Quill, “it’s time I showed you the door.” And Slipstar, who was sitting beside him, nodded his approval.

Why?

Quill knew that Miss Ivory, a renowned gossip, was trying to grab a headline. Her story was false, for she claimed that the blackmailer had demanded to be paid “before the shoot on April 31st”. Never could there have been a photo shoot on April 31st. April has only thirty days.