Ozle loved being Ozle. He was the most popular guy in town, hell he owned the town and the Province around it! And he had money coming out of his ears (Not literally). He sat on is big comfy chair and gazed out the window of his castle over his Province, yes life was good indeed. But there was a nagging doubt at the far reaches of his mind, back in the area that he tried to ignore, along with the morals and the common sense section. What if people didn’t really love him as much as he thought? He had heard some very unhappy rumours that somebody was trying to set up an Organised crime syndicate in his village!! How dare they try! This sounded like something that happened in Oland, not here in Ozles as yet unnamed Province! Talking of Oland, he wondered why the letters from his identical twin had stopped coming, they were amusing, if difficult to understand. Ahh well, probably holed up in some tavern somewhere.
Ozle loved reading. Well he told people he loved reading anyway. And one of his favourite authors he claimed to love was Agatha Christie. And if there was something he had learned from the adventures of Hercule Poirot, it was that if you had a bunch of people you suspected were out to get you, the best thing to do was to invite them all to a dinner party. Generally though, as Ozle didn’t actually like reading at all he never actually got past the first chapter or two of these books, so had no idea how the dinner party would turn out for the host. But he assumed it went well.
The invites were written to all the important people in the town, and some not so important people. And he even had a request for a seat by a man from a strange far off land, he said he was interested in Ozle’s family history. This pleased Ozle (as long as he didn’t look too deeply into Crazy Uncle Ungar) and so sent this stranger an invite. Ozle reckoned that if there was a crime family being formed, they would be in this group of people somewhere.
So, everyone turned up on time, although he did get one excuse from a chap called Axxle saying he might be late, and the dinner began. It was all going splendidly. Then, somewhere between the main course and the deserts (an excellent soufflé) Ozle decided it was time for a big important speech! However, just before he could stand up to deliver this speech, the lights went out. A silence slipped across the hall quicker than that time Ozle had run away from the bailiffs. Ozle was in the midst of telling people not to panic as he heard a couple of chairs move, and explaining that he thought he was due another red letter before they cut off his lighting when a terrifying bestial howl rang around the room. This shut Ozle right up, as he didn’t keep pets and certainly wouldn't get a wolf!. He wasn’t allowed any since that incident with the mayor’s daughter and the goat. He remembered someone talking to him about this sort of thing earlier, but he wasn’t really paying attention. Was this another thing he had to worry about now! As if life as a ruler was not hard enough, all those grapes to eat and wenches to accost.
Just as he was about to get up and turn on the back up lighting, a sharp and unexpected object decided that this was the exact time it wanted to occupy the same place as Ozle’s back. And as the laws of space and time were still currently in effect, this caused the sudden problem for Ozle of killing him. Not straight away of course, he did an epic death throe where he wriggled about for ages, pointed out that this was a trifle inconvenient (which was strange, as he thought they were having soufflé), and generally milked it for ages. Which was all wasted of course because the lights were off.
When illumination was finally restored, everyone was back in their seats, looking around. The first thing they noticed was that their host was dead in his chair, slumped over onto the table. Well, that's not the first thing they did, the very first thing was to check nobody had nicked their wallet/purse. As they gazed over at their dead host, nobody was really too upset, he was a bit of a scumbag. But their eyes drifted just to the side of Ozle, and the man in seat 17 was holding a very bloody knife....