A Meditation On Murder

‘But why would any of them want to kill Aslan?’

‘Precisely,’ Richard said just as he saw a flash of light across the room where the wooden floor met the paper wall.

‘Camille?’

‘What?’

‘You know what, I think that’s another one.’

Richard went over to the paper wall and dropped to his knees to inspect the floor.

‘Another what?’

Richard got out his silver retractable pencil and used it to flick the tiny metal disc away from the wall.

‘I don’t believe it.’

It was another drawing pin. But whereas the first pin they’d found had been pristine, this one’s spike had been bent to the side before it ended up over by the paper wall.

Even Camille had to concede that the presence of a second drawing pin at the scene of the crime was beginning to look less coincidental.

‘Okay, Camille, on our hands and knees please, I want every inch of the Meditation Space searched for drawing pins.’

It was a few minutes later that Camille found the third drawing pin. It was pressed into one of the vertical wooden pillars only a few inches up from the floor.

‘Why’s it been pushed into the pillar so near the floor?’ Camille asked.

It was only when Richard looked over at the door to the room that he began to realise what it might have been doing there.

‘You know what? I think this was how the knife was hidden in here beforehand,’ Richard said.

Camille looked at her partner. ‘I find a drawing pin in a wooden beam and you say that’s how the knife was hidden?’

‘But think about it!’ Richard said. ‘Do you think anyone would have been able to smuggle a carving knife in here without any of the others noticing?’

‘Seeing as they were only wearing swim things—and cotton robes that were handed out by Paul Sellars …? I don’t think so.’

‘And nor do I. So—logically—the murder weapon must have been in here before the room was locked down.’

‘Okay. Agreed.’

‘Even though there’s nowhere to hide the knife, is there? Or so it would appear at first.’

Richard explained how there were twelve vertical wooden pillars along the longer sides of the room, and the drawing pin they’d just found was stuck into the eleventh pillar along. And on the side of the pillar that wouldn’t have been visible as the hotel’s guests came in through the door.

‘In fact,’ Richard said with increasing excitement, ‘how wide would you say the murder weapon was at its very widest?’

‘Three inches. Maybe four.’

Richard got down on his knees, pulled out a little metal ruler he always kept in his inside jacket pocket for just such occasions, and measured how far the pillar stuck into the room. ‘And this pillar is a good five inches wide. But you’d have to make sure that any knife hidden here was tight up against the wood, and perfectly vertical, which wouldn’t be easy. So if you wanted to hide a knife in the shadows here, how could you stop it from falling over or being seen?’

Camille looked at Richard. ‘You’d maybe get a few drawing pins and pin the knife blade to the wood so it didn’t fall over.’

‘Exactly! And I think that’s exactly what happened. All it would take is a couple of pins under the handle—or around the blade—to make sure it stayed flush against the beam. And, having pinned your knife behind this pillar—just off the floor a bit—it would have been all-but impossible for witnesses to see as they came into the room.’

‘Unless they came to this end of the room.’

‘But we know they didn’t do that.’ Richard indicated the door in the opposite wall. ‘They all came in through that door and went straight to the centre of the room where they then sat down in a circle and started drinking tea.’ Richard strode to the centre of the room as he continued to explain. ‘All the killer had to do at some point before then—either the night before, or very early that morning—was come in here and pin the knife to the further side of that pillar. And then he or she was at liberty to enter the Meditation Space later on wearing whatever skimpy clothes they wanted. And they didn’t even have to worry about the room being locked down while they were all inside because the murder weapon was already planted in the room.’

‘And while everyone else was meditating—’

‘Wearing eye masks so they couldn’t see—and listening to whale music on headphones so they couldn’t hear—the killer gets up, comes over here, liberates the murder weapon, and, in the process, two of the drawing pins ping off. And the third drawing pin stays pinned into the pillar. But with the knife now freed from its hiding place, the killer approaches Aslan as he sits cross-legged on the floor.’

‘And knifes him in the neck and back.’

‘Knifes him five times.’

Richard sighed.

‘Which is both good and bad news.’

‘It is?’ Camille said.

‘Because what we’re increasingly seeing is a premeditated murder, Camille. A rational murder.’

‘So?’

‘Well, isn’t it obvious?’

‘No, or I wouldn’t have said “so”. So?’

Richard looked at his subordinate a moment. ‘So, why on earth would an otherwise rational killer plan to kill someone inside a locked room which also contained a load of other potential witnesses? And, if Julia is indeed our killer, why would she commit this carefully premeditated murder only to start screaming the moment she’d done it so that the witnesses who had previously had their eyes closed now took their masks off and saw her standing over the body with the murder weapon in her hands? It doesn’t make sense.’

Richard let this settle for a moment.

‘But that’s the bad news.’

‘Okay,’ Camille said. ‘Then what’s the good news?’

‘I was right about that first drawing pin we found, wasn’t I? It was important.’

Camille considered Richard a moment and realised that, yes, he was indeed the most infuriating person she’d ever met in her life.

‘But who’s our killer?’ Richard continued. ‘Saskia Filbee, our meek secretary from Walthamstow? Paul Sellars, our self-regarding pharmacist? His flamboyant wife, Ann? Our property developer Ben who we both think has maybe had a brush with the law in the past?’

‘Or is it,’ Camille finished, stealing Richard’s climax, ‘Julia Higgins, the woman who’s actually confessed to the murder?’

Richard was about to reply to Camille’s interruption when he saw a shadow fall onto the wall of the Meditation Space. He held up his finger for Camille to be silent and together they watched the shadow of a person move furtively along the side of the paper. Clearly, whoever was out there had no idea that they could be seen by Richard and Camille from the inside.