Sentence The Threehundredandfiftyfirst

And while Tavish, Tammy and Bernie were making their way to the stables with the intention of murdering Sir Parlane MacFarlane, in another time and place, albeit separated by some 750 years, and the thinnest of paries, through which one might slip almost unnoticed should one take a false step or an inadvertent turn, Martin Elginbrod QC was making telephone calls to as many of The Golden

Ring he could contact and counting them off on his paternoster, the golden ring on which twelve golden beads could be slid around: Lord Umpherston was taking leave of his family Paschal celebrations in order that he could meet Elginbrod, and so were The Lord Provost, Samuel MacTavish; Gilbert Filbert, of BBC Television Fame; Lord Peter Armstrong, Chief of the Armstrong Clan and Chairman of The Royal Bank; The Right Reverend Willie Wastle DD, Minister of St Giles and incumbent Moderator of the Church of Scotland; and Sir Daniel Defoe, Captain of The Queen's Company of Archers; the other two were either away from the town on business, on holiday, or simply engaged upon matters entirely of their own and none could be reached immediately – Elginbrod sat with his face hidden in his hands, he knew that Duncan Doubleday, Pherson Dalwhinnie, and Councillor George Gill, Leader of COSLA, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, were all incommunicado and he was troubled by their disappearances, so soon one after the other, as though the Golden Ring's members were being winnowed away; in an attempt to distract himself, Elginbrod decided to name off and count each of his ancestors, beginning with the child of Sir Parlane MacFarlane, who had groomed and seduced the young wife of the then Martin Elginbrod, at around the time that the troublesome Thomas Learmonth of Ercildoune returned from his several years in Fairyland and sought to dispute his father's Will leaving the lands of Ercildoune to Melrose Abbey, and administered on behalf of the Abbey by Sir Parlane and Elginbrod jointly: that was the beginning of the Great Fortune which the partners and their successors were to make in the Borderlands – together with Sir Parlane's establishment of a great Ironworks and Foundry, which supplied both the Scottish and English armies with the weapons which they used on each other in the years of War and Pillage which followed; oh yes, Elginbrod smiled and raised a glass to his most prodigious ancestor

 

“Sir Parlane MacFarlane – Lang May Ye'r Lum Reek and my namesake, your Lawyer, Elginbrod, Praise Be, Ye'd nae Lead in Ye'r Pencil,” and he laughed at the thought of the poor sap Learmonth taking them on, “no way, Sucker!”