FOWL DEEDS

The License to Feed

Poirot pecks apart the perfect crime

Order, method, and a feather out of place — visualized with ChatGPT.

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Quackule Poirot, a White Crested Call Duck of immense and egg-shaped dignity, adjusted his waxed bill-mustache with a fastidious wing-tip. “Précisément, Hastings,” he murmured. “Order and method — these are the secrets of the little grey feathers.”

Beside him Captain Drake Hastings — a lean, athletic Mallard — paced with military precision. When a misplaced lily pad threatened his balance, Hastings recovered with a soldier’s grace. Poirot sighed, not at clumsiness, but at the sheer, unbridled energy of his companion.

“Mon Dieu, Hastings, your constitution, it is as tireless as a migrating goose.”

They stood over Lord Widgeon, who lay face-down in a pile of dry pellets. On the nearby post, a gleaming plaque caught the morning light: “Feeding Privileges Reserved: By Order of the Manor License.” Every duck in the region knew of it — Widgeon’s prized entitlement, etched in gold and fiercely guarded.

“A clear case of tragic accident,” Hastings exclaimed. “The poor bird has succumbed to a grain-induced coma.”

“Patience, mon canard,” Poirot sighed. “The Little Grey Cells, they must work. Regard the feet of the deceased. You observe, mon canard?”

“They are orange?” Hastings quacked.

“Non. You see, but you do not observe. They are pointed away from the trough. C’est impossible! A duck who possesses hunger does not stand as if he awaits the morning ferry to Calais.

“And observe the nostrils — the nares, mon ami — those twin openings at the top of the beak. They are clogged with dry grain!

“No, no, Hastings. He did not fall; he was arranged. It is a matter of the symmetry, and symmetry — it is broken here.”

“Good heavens!” Hastings gasped. “A cereal killer!”

“Hush your beak, my friend,” Poirot commanded.

He led Hastings to the Manor’s cellar. Poirot knew the layout of the Drawing Nest above, but his eyes were fixed on the floorboards. “I know where you are,” he whispered to the shadows.

Suddenly, the hidden door in the basement’s handle creaked loudly. It swung open to reveal the heir, Bill Skyes, trying to hide behind a stack of grain sacks.

“Monsieur,” Poirot began, fixing Bill with a piercing gaze, “the logic, it is of a simplicity most infantile!

“We ducks, we are unihemispheric, oui? We sleep with one eye open to watch for the fox, n’est-ce pas? To approach Lord Widgeon without the invitation, one would require the silence of a phantom.

“But regard the floor! It is carpeted in the crunchy corn — a veritable alarm system of grain!

“Only one duck in this house is in the flightless molt. You, Bill! You have lost your heavy flight feathers, making you light — how you say — so you tiptoe across the corn without a sound. Why? To steal the license — the sole entitlement to the Manor’s gourmet feed stockpiles — engraved in gold, of course.

“You thought yourself a genius of the silence, but you forgot that to the little grey cells.

“Even the silence, it has a voice!”

“You can’t prove it!” Bill quacked, backed against the cellar’s stone wall.

“But I can,” Poirot chirped, his chest swelling with the weight of his own genius.

“You spiked his mash with fermented corn — a most cunning decoction! The ethanol, it induced a state of profound intoxication — a stupor most deceptive, like the calm eye of a storm.

“But a duck, he does not expire from a heavy nap, n’est-ce pas?

“Non. It was then — then! — with Lord Widgeon, oh so insensible, that you acted. You pressed his head into the dry pellets, just so. And there, in that fatal pose, you held him.

“A tragedy of our anatomy, Bill. A duck breathes through his nares, but unconscious, he cannot shake his head, cannot clear them. Non. Nor can he open the glottis — that little valve beneath the tongue, so vital to breath.

“And so… he suffocated. Not in fear, but in silence. You turned his own biology into a weapon, and arranged him as though he had fallen of his own hunger. C’est infâme!”

“It’s a lie!” Bill quacked.

Poirot plucked the feather delicately from the edge of the trough. “Regard, Hastings. A feather — common in form, yes — but damning in context.

“Not blue, not barred — this feather, Hastings, is black as night with the gleam of tarnished emerald. Not Mallard. And who, I ask you, wears such a coat? Oui — a Cayuga!

“But Lord Widgeon, he was in a state, unconscious. He did not struggle. He did not move. He did not shed.

“But Bill…” Poirot’s eyes narrowed. “He is mid-moult — feathers loosening with every stealthy step.

“This was not dropped days ago. It is fresh. It is recent.

“It was left in the moment of the crime.

“And only one duck here could have left it.”

Bill tried to fly, but his wing-stumps merely flailed. “I needed the corn! The interest rates on my bread-debt were soaring!”

As the Warden arrived to take Bill away, Poirot stepped out of the dark basement into the courtyard. He paused, looking down.

A defiant flower peeks through a crack in the pavement.

“Even in this garden of greed, Hastings, life persists,” Poirot mused.

“Good work, Poirot!” Hastings cheered. “You really bill-ed him for his crimes! He’s a sitting duck now!”

Poirot winced. “Come, Hastings. This case has left a bad taste in my beak.”

Say, this matter all rather beyond me until Poirot explained it. Leave it to Poirot to spot what no duck else could. My thanks to Jason Edmunds for the jolly clever prompt: Weekly Writing Prompts 2026: Edition 4

• 1: “I know where you are.”

  2: The hidden door in the basement’s handle creaked loudly.

  3: A defiant flower peeks through a crack in the pavement.*

And of course, gratitude to the editors of A Taste for Life, who, like Poirot, clearly know a good thing when they see it.

— Captain Drake Hastings

[embed]Weekly Writing Prompts 2026: Edition 4 Saturday, 24 January 2026medium.com