Murder
Death struck by midnight, as it should. It was like a law of the universe that never failed to deliver, like the postman with unwanted bills.
This was my first murder. My first ever attempt to solve one. I tried to hold back a smile creeping to my face as I watched the detective circle the victim and the horrified family that had found the body.
The body lay on the thick oriental carpet with an intricate pattern reserved for only the rich and the educated—something my salary could never buy. The said rug and the body lay in the attic, turned into a study. The victim was an older gentleman of high status in the little village we had arrived in just an hour ago. The older gentleman was a former scholar, who had written books of all sorts. Books that towered on his desk just beside the round window, letting in the warm orange glow of the street lamps.
I made a curious glance over the books and found a yawn wanting to sneak in. I tensed my leg muscles and focused on my superior’s harrumphing and the family’s sniffles. Next to the books, there were horrendous doodles of monsters with gigantic, spiraling eyes and fangs.
The detective was making another round around the body with a letter opener sticking out of the back. We had the how, but now we needed the why and the who. My superior frowned as if reading my thoughts. He was good at that, reading the room, reading people. I was better at reading the environment, and I could already see the murder was impossible. It was a play, a story the murderer wanted people to believe: that the scholar had been working at his desk when he had been stabbed. It couldn’t have been. First, the chair was pushed under the desk. If the victim had staggered up and only to collapse on the carpet, then the chair couldn’t have been in as it was. Second, the letter opener, however sharp it was, couldn’t have gone in without some resistance, and there was none. Not anything visible, at least.
I took a step closer to the desk and the finished teacup that sat there. I reached for it and smelled it. It smelled like nothing, but I had my suspicions. I glanced at the doodles and then at the books.
I coughed, and the detective nodded. He had already figured out the same as me, but from the slight tilt of his head, I knew he knew who the killer was. Now, there was only the why. Why would someone slowly poison the man and then fake the death with stabbing?
The man’s wife squeezed the door frame for dear life. His son leaned farther against the stairs leading to the attic, and then there was the daughter and her husband, who didn’t know how to be still, constantly shifting weight from one foot to another, close and farther apart from each other.
I sighed—the who was not my strongest skill. I’d rather there were no people around. They were like mind bugs that kept bleeding energy and thoughts out of you. Leeches. Again, my family’s face came to mind as I thought about the decision I made to become a police officer and then a detective. They had the same horrified expression as the victim’s wife had like something utterly wrong and heinous had happened. Yet I was relatively good at it. I had put robbers and other offenders behind bars, and some of them stayed there for good after more crimes came to light.
I glanced away from the family back to the doodles and the books. The truth had to be there. The same one my superior had already figured out. The murderer had to be a family member. You couldn’t slowly poison someone without being close to them. The monsters in the doodles looked familiar. I viewed the family again and stopped at the wife. All of my instincts told me it wasn’t her, but there it was in the evidence. Now, we just needed good old policing, and we would find her guilty.
—
This didn’t go quite as I wanted. I’m not sure what image I had in my head, but it wasn’t this exactly. But I went with a proper murder mystery, as the gods of writing blessed me with today. I also got comedy, tragedy, and first-person point of view. I didn’t quite deliver them as strongly as I wanted. Also, I wanted to get like-sentences in. I didn’t go far enough with them. Alan Moore is amazing with creative comparisons. I want to be better at them. I find them hard to write. Not sure why? They don’t come out in writing as well as they come out when I’m speaking with people and joking around. With people, they come without thinking, and in writing, I often draw a blank or choose something too obvious. I need to expand my mind.
Thank you for reading! Have a mindful day, and see you tomorrow ❤
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