The Adventure of the Murdered Prankster

Tom Dayton had many enemies. He was addicted to playing practical jokes on anyone and everyone. His jokes were always in the worst of taste and he was in effect a schoolboy who had never grown up.

It was well known that Tom's favourite target was his old headmaster, Stanley Bosworth, who was the victim of some of the most elaborate pranks Tom ever conceived. Tom's eventual marriage to Bosworth's daughter, Mellissa, was considered by many to be Tom's ultimate joke on the respected headmaster.

Among the more prominent victims of Tom Dayton's past pranks were Judge Walter Brighton; Lord and Lady Morton of Westchester; banker Mortimer Fawcett; Doctor Fabian Peerpoint; and tobacco merchant Dawes Flescher.

All of the above were present at the dinner party held on the Bosworth yacht in honour of Stanley Bosworth's 60th birthday. Also included amongst the guests were Holmes and Watson, and Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard.

Following an uneventful dinner, most of the guests retired to their staterooms to freshen up. Suddenly a shot rang out. Then another. All aboard the yacht, including the yacht's captain, Jonas Fenton, and cook, Mildred Weekson, arrived at Tom Dayton's stateroom to find him dead -- shot in the forehead.

A smoking revolver lay near the doorway; Tom Dayton's body lay on the floor across the room, just below an open porthole. Scrawled in the dust near Dayton's body were the initials SB.

Learning that the revolver belonged to Stanley Bosworth, Lestrade promptly ordered the headmaster arrested for the murder of Tom Dayton. Lestrade, quite pleased, later remarks to Holmes that he wished the solution to every case were this simple. "That is precisely what troubles me, Inspector", replies Holmes, "It is too simple".