The Case of the Disappearing Dinner Guests
I found myself at the scene of what John informs me, detective novelist refer to as a locked room mystery. The crime occurred at a one-bedroom flat in Westminster. Though detective inspector Lestrade had briefly detailed the crime to me via text message on the cab ride over to the scene, there is a great difference between having the crime described and seeing it laid before you. Iâm honestly disappointed the readers will only be getting a retelling of the crime as words wonât do the incident justice. It is the first truly remarkable case Iâve had in months and itâs been long overdue.Â
The layout of the flat goes as follows: there was an open floor plan for the main room, kitchen, and dining area. Two large windows covered the west-facing wall while a sofa, full-length mirror, and squared kitchen were tucked together on the other side of the room. From the windows, the offices of the adjacent building could clearly be seen. There were no curtains or blinds on these windows. For all intents and purposes, the office workers in the other building should be able to see right into the flat.Â
The body had been found in the main room by the owner of the building in a mangled mess of blood and viscera. Descriptions from the owner of the building suggest the victim was the occupant of the flat. However, the victimâs name didnât appear anywhere on police record. It was likely a fake name. Forensic evidence suggested the victim had been dead for three days. In these three days, none of the office workers in the adjacent building recalled seeing anything a miss. Quite the contrary, someone reported seeing a woman in the flat the morning after the crime.Â
A member of the sales department recalled getting distracted during work hours by a âbeautiful, young womanâ who he assumed lived in the flat. He confessed to watching her sit at her breakfast bar of a morning, sipping her tea and circling things in the paper. On multiple occasions, he recalled catching the womanâs eye. To his recounting, the woman would offer him a smile or a brief wave. The salesman declared it to be an act of flirtation but it could have just as easily been an attempt to be polite. People are fallible and often see what they want to see in a situation, not what has actually occurred. He reported seeing the woman the morning after the crime.Â
I asked John what he thought of the whole thing. He confirmed that most women would deem the manâs behaviour as âcreepyâ and would have invested in some blinds, but he supposed he couldnât speak for everyone. Perhaps she had been flirting, maybe she had been flattered. Who was to say? It was odd, that she hadnât invested in curtains or blinds. Then again, who was she? There was only one bedroom so it was unlikely she was the manâs flatmate. It was always possible she was the flat owners girlfriend but how had she missed the dead body which should have been in the centre of the room? Then there was the contradictory recount from the man working as night security at the office building.Â
The man from security recounted the night the victim was killed in startling clarity. Clarity can neither prove nor disprove innocence. More often than not, lies hold more details than the truth. When locking up the office space the man glance to the window of the would-be-victim. As he recounts it, the window had been obscured by a thick curtain. However, the face of a man aged between thirty-five and forty glanced out. The security guard described the man as âgauntâ. The two had caught eyes for a moment before the curtain was drawn again. This was around 1 a.m. Upon finishing his shift, while exiting the building the security guard recalled looking up to the same window, finding his view now unobscured and two figures silhouetted.Â
In the condition I found the crime scene, the dining room table had been set. Three plates of half-eaten food sat stinking on the table accompanied by flies in every stage of their life cycle including a startling amount of the dead and dying. The body at the scene of the crime matched neither the description of the attractive young woman or the thin older man. The victim was around fifty. He was large in stature and had the broad body of a man who had spent his life doing physically demanding work. Perhaps he worked in construction. I found traces of dried cement on the underside of his boots. He had multiple stab wounds to both the chest and abdomen. The wounds suggested the victimâs assailant was shorter than he was, as the knife wounds had been in an upward motion. It was possible the gaunt man and young woman were the killers but something about the crime scene appeared off.Â
The toxicology reports suggested the man had ingested a fatal dose of arsenic less than half an hour before his death. Further investigation revealed the food left on the table also had traces of arsenic. If the man hadnât bled to death, he would likely have died due to the poisoning. Then why, one had to ask, had he been stabbed? Who goes to the trouble of hiding poison in food only to stab someone moments after? Also, why did each plate of food contain arsenic? Were there two more bodies to be found and if not, had the scene been set after the death of the body to confuse police? It truly was a beautiful crime scene.Â
The bloodstains on the carpet were three days old, suggesting the victim had died in the room, slowly bleeding out on the carpet but how did no one hear him? While I had been pacing the room, taking in the conflicting data and trying to piece together what had happened John was in the far corner of the room scuffing his feet against the carpet. He turned to look at me and pointed down.Â
âMaybe thereâs something under here. It looks like someoneâs tried to rip it up.â Of course. Readers, this is why I bring John with me on cases. He is absolutely brilliant at cutting through the clutter of a crime scene and finding the one thread which will pull all my theories together.Â
His theory was completely wrong, as they often are but it did point me in the right direction. Let us suppose, dear reader that all the contradictory evidence is in fact true. The flat belonged to the murdered man and yet most mornings it was briefly occupied by a young woman and on the night of the flat ownerâs murder, there had been a gaunt man in the apartment. That night there had been a dinner party where at least one of the patrons had been poisoned but before the poison had time to take effect the man had been stabbed several times, before being left to bleed to death. Come the next morning, the body, the curtains and so it would seem, the carpet disappeared and left in their place was an unbothered young woman sipping tea at a breakfast bar and waving at the man from the sales department. The only supposition which needs to be disregarded is that there were three people in the apartment that night. Disregard that and the whole thing slides into place.Â
I felt a rush pulse through my body at this idea and began to pace around the edges of the room. For the idiotic members of Scotland Yard, it appeared as though I had finally entered the frenzied state of psychosis and mania they all believed lied behind the surface of my otherwise composed veneer. John knew there was more to the matter and gave me a sidelong glance as he walked beside me.Â
âTell me what youâre thinking,â He insisted.
I donât like my stream of thought to be muddled by conversation but as John is my partner, in all sense of the word, I supposed I should tell him something.Â
âThe floor plans of the flat say itâs twenty-two feet.â John hummed as though trying to follow along.Â
Out of frustration, I took his hand and pulled him close to my side making him match my own steps. This action had caught Inspector Lestradeâs eye and he gave John a puzzled and concerned look. Lestrade silently asked John a question John didnât understand. I understood Lestradeâs look clearly but ignored him. He was asking if I was using again. Typical.Â
John just shot the inspector a look I couldnât see, which seemed to momentarily placate his worries. John squeezed my hand tighter. Upon reflection, I suppose I should have asked before holding Johnâs hand so publicly but I needed to show him what I was thinking. I pulled John along beside me, counting the steps out loud until we reached the opposite wall.Â
âEighteen feet,â John breathed finally seeming to understand.Â
âWhere are the other four feet?âÂ
We both began tapping on different areas of the far wall, moving aside furniture as we saw fit. I looked to the full-length mirror beside the sofa and could have cursed for how stupid I had been. John and I quickly pulled the mirror down from the wall and there it was, another small room.
This room was soundproof and a bloodstained curtain was piled in the corner. The corpse had never disappeared from the flat. The scene held a startling resemblance to stage magic. The room was a mirror-box and the body was the object which appeared to disappear and re-appear at the will of the killers but it wasnât a trick of disappearance. Instead, it was a transfiguration. Older bloodstains in the room didnât match the blood of the victim and it was too old to belong to the young woman or the gaunt man. It was the blood of the fourth dinner guest. People have the habit of stopping after three.Â
With all the pieces in place and a painful call to my brother to confirm my suspicions, the crime became overly simple. The flat owner was an American and wanted criminal, charged with war crimes in Iraq along with kidnapping and murder across the continent of Europe. Two agents had been discharged to track the criminal, the first had disappeared three months prior to the manâs murder while the second had been the young woman. Another agent had been placed on the case after the first man went missing. A simple covert operation was made complex by the emotionality of one agent.Â
After months of reconnaissance, the agents realised their missing colleague was trapped somewhere in the flat. They planned to kill the criminal covertly, leave a note with their superiors, rescue their colleague, and call it a day. However, something had gone wrong and the third agent had escaped the room during the dinner party. Out of anger and desperation, the man attacked the owner of the flat, stabbing him multiple times, killing him.Â
This is not part of government protocol. The agents cleaned up the scene as best they could, wrapping the manâs body in the curtain, cutting up the carpet, and removing the food from the table, hiding the evidence in the small room behind the mirror. Two of the agents fled the country that night, leaving false trails and trying to avoid suspicion while the young woman stayed behind for long enough to let their trail run cold. When the time was right, she set the scene again and disappeared herself, hoping to confuse the police with the contradicting stories, also placing poison in the other plates of food and removing the manâs teeth, making it more difficult for him to be identified by dental records. Â
After the case was closed, John and I took a cab back to 221B. It was our first case since the new developments in our relationship. Part of me feared things would be different but everything unfolded as usual, even the excess touching wasnât strictly unusual.Â
Upon arriving home I removed my coat and scarf, noting a small fleck of blood on my shoe. John and I still smelled of death. It isnât uncommon for the two of us to come home smelling like decay. One of us tends to loiter on the landing while the other takes the first shower but today, reflecting on the new possibilities opened by the two of us being a couple I asked John if he wanted to join me.Â
At first, John looked startled and I worried Iâd done something wrong but after a beat, he agreed to join. Weâre both still unsure of how to navigate our newfound relationship. We didnât have sex. That is a topic neither of us is yet to broach. Iâm not âshyâ about sex as a topic, but sex with John is different. John is also hesitant to broach the subject as I suspect his limited interest in men has only ever been theoretical.Â
So, we showered together. John washed his hair while I huddled in a steam-filled corner of the shower and catalogued all the data the moment had to offer. John uses more conditioner than necessary, likes to shower with his back to the water, and has a small birthmark on his hip. All in all, it was an informative night.Â
S.H. Â









