Gordon
Peacock and Thomas Peacock were not related. Since they were already
adults in the 1930s, facts about most of their early lives are either
unknown or apocryphal.
Their
tale begins with them living in the town of Lethbridge in the
Province of Alberta in Canada. There are no official records of where
or when they were born.
They
were married to women, Margaret and Judith, who were unaware that
their husbands were in a homosexual relationship, from their
kindergarden sandbox years.
In
those times Lethbridge consisted of a few wood buildings that served
persons engaged in travel to and from places across the border into
the U.S.A. State of Montana.
In
the Winter months, from November to March, Lethbridge was covered in
knee-high snow. Most of the town was not lived in. Most citizens
moved to other towns for the Winter.
In
those months, both Tom and Gord lived with their wives in the Alberta
town of Calgary, about a hundred miles north of Lethbridge.
All
four of them were schoolteachers. None had formal training and, or,
education to qualify them as schoolteachers.
In
those days in Alberta, Canada, anyone who could read and write and
count to one hundred without pausing to calculate, was qualified
adequately to be a school teacher. In those days in Alberta, Canada,
there was only one school; it was in the town of Calgary.
In
those days, in all of Canada, neither education nor training was
provided officially for anyone to qualify as a schoolteacher. Persons
who could read and write, engaged in teaching in order to earn a few
extra coins.
In
Calgary, schoolteachers were paid by their students, most of whom
were working adults. Most classtimes were conducted in the homes of
the adult students, at their convenience.
Tom
and Gord fully exploited the five months of weather-caused dire
inconveniences to carry on illegal transactions out of snow-bound
Lethbridge, and to enjoy their secret homosexual bonding.
They
were exceedingly grateful for the undercover of snow, because in
those times, homosexuality was punishable with public lynching.
Sometimes, too often, tickets were sold to the public for seats at
the hanging, as righteous entertainment.
The
illegal transactions of Tom and Gord out of snow-bound Lethbridge was
mainly in assisting persons wanting to enter either country,
illegally. The destination from Lethbridge, Alberta, was the equally
snow-bound town of Shelby in Montana. The transactions were highly
profitable, especially since all the income was hidden from
Government income tax.
One
transaction was of particular note. A husband and wife of a foreign
country had paid the exorbitant fee to be escorted into Montana from
Alberta. They expressed their thanks and gratitude by gifting a lucky
penny to each of Gordon and Thomas. They assured the Canadian
entrepreneurs that the pennies assured that each would never be lost
to the other.
Although
Gordon and Thomas were outwardly gracious and sincerely thankful for
the gifts, inwardly they dismissed the assurances against loss as
harmless and meaningless superstition. Then, too, there was a
language issue. The couple were foreigners whose Canadian was far,
far from grammatically adequate. There was a distinct probability
that their use of the word "assured" carried a meaning
quite different from "assurance."
That
did not bother Gordon or Thomas. Their sole interest was in being
paid their criminally unreasonable fees. Beyond that, they could not
care less about the incorrect use of nouns, pronouns, verbs, and
other parts of speech. They stashed the pennies away, and promptly
forgot about them.
In
both towns of Lethbridge and Shelby, the small population of
permanent citizens showed no concern about the comings and goings of
illegal persons. Indeed, it was more likely that the benefits to the
local economy from all the illegal secret shenanigans were welcome.
After
years and years of ever-increasing success, disaster struck.
Gordon
and Thomas operated their illegal business at night. Usually, they
crossed the international border into Montana from Alberta late in a
dark, snowing evening, to return to Canada in the snowy predawn dark
hours of the next day.
In
the town of Shelby in Montana, they parted, professionally and
friendly, from their clients, in a bus terminal on Main Street, and
immediately set out on their return to Lethbridge.
On
one early morning night, as they were preparing to leave the
terminal, they were approached by four Montanans who wanted to
discuss a business deal.
The
illegal foreigner Canadian Peacocks were immediately suspicious, but
had no choice but to agree to listen.
The
leader of the four introduced himself as John Underwood Lewis. In
order to allay the suspicions of the Canadians, he assured them he
was the only Montana-born citizen among the four. The other three
were former Canadians, now naturalized citizens of the U.S.A. Lewis
invited the three to introduce themselves to their native countrymen.
They were Daniel Patrick Kelly and his wife, Diana Mady Kelly, and
Lionel Walsh.
In
further assurance to Gord and Tom, Lewis observed that all three of
his Canadian-Montanan partners were homosexuals, like Tom and Gord.
He was right; that fact did help assure the two from Lethbridge.
Negotiations were discussed in the next three nights; always in
Shelby.
Gordon
observed to Thomas that, he, Gordon, began to not trust the three
Montanan Canadians, beginning with their continual preference for
vulgar language in their suggestions of degenerate pleasures. Gordon
observed to Thomas that those three Montanans were being needlessly
over aggressive in their proposed business terms. Gordon took to
carrying a hidden illegal loaded hand gun; Thomas was alarmed, and
tried to dissuade Gordon. Something went wrong on the fourth night.
A
fight broke out in the terminal. A gunfight erupted. Thomas fled; he
forever claimed he did not know what caused the fight; not even if
strangers were involved.
He
lost all contact with Gordon. Over the following weeks and months and
years, he found out that among the dead on that night, was John
Underwood Lewis, and the three Montanan Canadians. Thomas was forever
puzzled at why Gordon did not flee to Lethbridge with him, but,
instead, chose to escape deeper into the United States.
The
Montana authorities were furious about the death of John Underwood
Lewis. He was of the family of the State's hero, Meriwether Lewis,
after whom a section of the Montana Rocky Mountains is named. The
Governor of Montana declared the search for the killer or killers of
John Underwood Lewis, would never cease.
For
the next forty-years-or-so, Gordon Peacock lost himself so cunningly
in the U.S.A. that nobody in Canada, not even his wife or his
homosexual buddy, knew where he was.
When
Gordon's wife in Lethbridge, Margaret Faulkes, became suicidal in the
absence of her husband. Thomas gave her a lot of money to return to
her native England to wait for Gordon's return. She accepted the
money, and left. She was never heard from again.
Gordon,
under a false identity, became a phenomenally successful academic at
two American universities; he earned many awards and medals and
certificates of merit. He had found a homosexual female who agreed to
enter into marriage with him in order for both of them to hide their
same-sex preferences from the countless low IQ bigots in academia.
Gordon's
wife's name was Georgina. He never told her of Margaret Faulkes.
Gordon and Georgina lived happily ever after, commuting between Texas
and New Mexico, basking, wealthily, in considerable local fame and
celebrity.
After
those murders in Shelby, Thomas Peacocke ceased the lucrative
business of illegal aliens.
Down
the years, Thomas dared not try to locate Gordon, out of fear of
being accused of being an accomplice. His life without Gordon was
far, far from peaceful.
His
many subsequent homosexual partnerships all failed. He had entered
into them so carelessly that it was not long before his loving wife,
Judith, came to know her husband was homosexual. It saddened her no
end, especially because she, irrationally, suspected her husband's
homosexuality to be the cause of their marriage producing no
children.
In
her last years, Judith, mercifully, became afflicted with dementia
and Alzheimer's, so that she did not know who Thomas was. She died at
the age of eighty, peacefully in her sleep in the City of Edmonton,
Alberta. Thomas lost his mind. He ranted and screamed. He died, far
away from home, thirteen months after Judith's death. He was at least
eighty-nine years old.
After
the death of Judith, Thomas suffered uncontrollable ugly fits of
mindless blitherings. In his ramblings he dwelt inordinately and
incoherently on Gordon's unavoidable murder of John Underwood Lewis
in Shelby, Montana.
The
Canadian Royal Mounted Police became interested in Peacocke's
ramblings because the unknown whereabouts of murder-suspect Gordon
Peacock for forty years was an embarrassing stain on their law
enforcement reputation.
Out
of the blue, and spitefully and vindictively, Thomas crazily referred
to his penny as a clue. The Police, at first, did not see a
connection. Nonetheless, they took the coin and examined it,
electronically. They detected magnetic properties and radiation
emissions. These properties and emissions invited global tracking.
Nobody
knows just when Thomas Peacocke died in his bed. He died with his
eyes wide open, and a look of fright in his face as if he had
witnessed an oncoming terrifying personal catastrophe. His corpse, was
not found for weeks.
Tom's
penny led the Canadian and American Police to Gordon's penny.
Although Gordon had never paid any attention to the coin, he had not
gotten rid of it. It had been long forgotten in a box of many silly
knick-knacks.
The
significant local celebrity of Gordon and Georgina made tracking down
Gordon's penny far easier than it would have been, otherwise. They
were located living in Austin, Texas.
Both
the Canadian Royal Mounted Police and the U.S.A. law enforcement
officers, in their excitement at eventually being on the brink of
solving so old a Cold Case, were criminally sloppy in their
investigation.
When
some local citizens became aware the foreigner murderer of a member
of the family of national hero Meriwether Lewis, was living in their
town, they erupted into an angrily patriotic mob.
On
a Friday 13th, October, at about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, Gordon
and Georgina, were lynched, stark naked, side-by-side, from a city
lamp post by a mob of citizens, on Lewis Lane, Austin, Texas.
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