New Toulouse

When five residents of New Babbage, attending court here, procured passes and went to visit the New Toulouse parish police department, Constable Erdferkel, the turnkey, took them in the cell room and, according to custom, locked them in.

When they were ready to get out, the turnkey found that his big key had broken off in the lock.

For hours local locksmiths tried to release the unwilling prisoners, but their skill was unequal to the resistance of the clogged mechanism.

At night Inspector Palmer passed their suppers between the bars. In the morning the inspector was finally able to contact the city’s most expert locksmith and have him open the door; the locksmith had been out dancing and having a jollification the previous night and was unreachable during the initial crisis.

Jack Mondieu carouses with local experts and consequently sniffs out stories.

The Slammer

New Toulouse Parish Police Department
Pontalba Street, New Toulouse

Ah, the city jail. Who among us has not spent the occasional night in its warm embrace? Who among us is so staid as to have avoided any brushes with John Law?

Realizing that the answer is probably “a whole lot of you,” I headed to the parish police department to talk to some of its current guests. My camera was confiscated by an officer, so you will have to make do with this snapshot of the station’s exterior:

Meet Mr. X, inhabitant of the first cell. Estranged from his wife because of his sottish tendencies, and unable to afford a room because of his prodigious thirst for the demon rum, each night he drinks heavily and publicly misbehaves just enough so that he is collared by the law and thereby has a place to sleep. It’s a terrible solution, but one might have a grudging respect for the man’s ingenuity.

In the next cell over is a fellow accused of insulting a lady’s dignity. He loudly denies having insulted anyone’s dignity (“Whatever that means!”), and he equally denies ever having met a lady.

The other cell was unoccupied when I arrived, but I was quickly booked in for a comfortable stay. Earlier I hadn’t really been all that inebriated when hunger pangs struck as I was passing a vegetable stall at the market. For the record, potatoes aren’t meant to be eaten raw, and always pay the merchant when you take her wares. I don’t know if the potatoes were responsible, but I had the distinct feeling that my cell was haunted by a ghostly presence. I asked the officer on duty, and he said that yes, my cell was completely haunted. I ended up spending a restless night and checking out as early as possible.

All in all, the local lockup isn’t a terrible place to stay. The food is passable, the cots are firm and solid, and the rooms are pretty clean. Just try to avoid Cell #3.

Jack Mondieu is a bon vivant, a flâneur, a belletrist … but he also needs to pay the rent.