A Short Murder Mystery

 A foggy morning in the town of Glibington. A woman in her seventies is taking her terrier for a walk. Everything is in the present continuous. Everything is going, moving, doing and so on. Except, Barnet Harris is still in his pajamas dead. He has a pair of school dividers stuck into his eyes and what looks like a pencil thrust through his heart. On top of his paunch is one of those school sets, you know the ones with a compass and dividers as well as a ruler. They don’t really go in for those these days. Actually you are more likely to buy them on Ebay. He smells something rotten, because Barnet Harris has been in that bed for two weeks. In two weeks quite a lot can happen to a body. Manuals will tell you that unrefrigerated bodies begin to putrefy after three days. Then there are the gases for example. Indeed there was pall of distinct awfulness that smelled like a mixture of a dead cat and cauliflowers going off said Mrs. Blancmange who lived down the corridor. Upon hearing of the murder, Mr. Red said, “Who would ever do that? I mean who would ever do that?” Not that anyone had anything to good to say about Mr. Harris, no they were more interested who would move in afterwards. The policemen who arrived at the crime scene were gagging. Mr. Harris had smelled better when alive they were sure. Indeed he was a fastidious man. Everything was neat. A man obsessed with order. He was as you had already guessed, a retired maths teacher. PC June Teasdale joked with the sergeant about the maths implements. “Nearly everyone I knew at school hated their maths teachers.” “I think we have to wait for forensics, there is nothing like jumping to conclusions, PC Teasdale. For example notice the bruising around the neck. In my experience this poor blighter had been strangled first. Another point, look at the finger nails. I am sure there was a struggle. It could be that the victim did not know the perp.” “You mean could be random?” “Yes, or they staged all this paraphernalia to help us draw the wrong conclusions.” “Crafty, eh.” So we must leave that case to be solved. The woman above in her seventies is binning the doo das of her terrier. She is quite methodical at it. Others have issues with picking it up. But, she is an expert. A woman used to looking after children and the elderly. A former care worker and before that a chemistry teacher. She will be back in time to listen to the radio. She likes those murder serials especially. Given a juicy murder like the Barnet Harris case Marigold Trumpeteer would solve it in a jiffy and still have time to finish her cupcakes. There are so many delivery people these days that who would notice the man or woman dressed in leather wearing a bicycle helmet carrying a small packet for Mr. Harris? Who would? It would be so easy to say that a pupil who had been humiliated by Mr. Harris years back wanted his or her pound of flesh. Mr. Red who was keen on growing hydrangeas was expecting a fresh packet of seeds. He had ordered some “pinky winkies” to go with his diadems. Every time he heard the main door open, he’d be at his peep hole. So he was a witness. “I thought it was odd that they had a helmet on, but then I thought during this pandemic everyone wears masks or scarves, so why not. If you must know I was irritated. Angry that it was not for me. No, they wore those bike clothes, all leather and those bike boots. Couldn’t really tell if it was a man or woman.” The fibres from the fingernails helped. Definitely leather. While they could not find the parcel wrapping they managed to establish that the set did not belong to Mr. Harris. Something else very significant. They had a key to the apartment. They knew that Mr. Harris was still in bed. From this they gathered that the perps had had Mr. Harris under surveillance for some reason and that someone had planted devices. All that trouble to kill a maths teacher! When it came to the bugging, Mrs. Blancmange had remembered seeing some foreign men bringing in a new cooker ordered for Mr. Harris. Again she did not think twice. There were lots of foreigners doing delivery work. They wore masks thank goodness, not unlike those visitors to number 32. The cooker had been ordered from Amazon. People were buying lots of goods online these days. They went through his recent purchases, and then they had a breakthrough of sorts. He had a radio alarm clock and through careful analysis they could be almost certain that was where a device had been planted. This seemed to point to something completely different than your common garden murder of a maths teacher. It was speculation. Mrs. Blancmange had thought that Mr. Harris kept himself to himself and was a confirmed bachelor, and he very few visitors. In their investigations the homicide unit found no next of kin and oddly the name to contact if need be on his passport was a French woman living in Switzerland. When after some difficulties they succeeded in contacting the elderly Madame Sarah Clevissy on the phone, they discovered that she had never heard of him, and could not think why her name and address was on his passport. Indeed she was quite annoyed to be associated with a homicide. Imagine! Everything was cleared up eventually. There were some phone calls emanating from Whitehall and the whole matter was handed over to the intelligence boys. It was all hush hush. That was last June. Now in February 2021 you see Mrs. Marigold Trumpeteer taking Vicky for a walk. The dog was getting older, dawdled too much for Marigold’s liking. The daughter of a Brigadier, she was not one for recalcitrance. Vicky was only half in the act of doing her doo dah when she felt a tug of the leash. There was another murder mystery on the Radio. Mr. Red was busy wanking. Yes wanking. On the toilet. There was another seed packet expected. This time he wanted some Bluebirds to replace the Europa. A Brexit supporter he had been miffed when a neighbour had needled him about the irony of a Nigel Farage supporter having EU hydrangeas! As PC June Teasdale was reminding for the umpteenth time for Mike Albatross to put on his mask. In Switzerland where there was real snow, Madame Sarah Clevissy, was in bed. Perfectly dead. Here arrangement de morte was bizarre. She had a telescope rammed down her throat. It was her cat, Baudelaire who alerted the neighbours. This time, she was found before the putrefaction began. Her death and the unusual nature of the weapon had the Swiss detectives wondering. Here it was likely that there were two or three killers. It would need one to hold the head and mouth open, and another to use great force to ram the telescope into the victim’s mouth and block off her respiratory system. The Swiss are known among the Europeans as being let us say, observant. All the witnesses said that Madame Clevissy had ordered a new washing machine and refrigerator. She was a neophiliac. Everything had to be new. There were two people doing the delivery. No there was nothing unusual about them. However, they were not the delivery men. They were found tied up in a wood. All they could say was that a police officer had flagged the van down. Madame Sarah Clevissy was a retired astrophysicist and they established that the telescope did not belong to her. They also established it was not suicide. There was thankfully nothing sexual about the killing, although someone did try to suggest it was phallic. They found nothing there, except for a postcard. Oddly it was postmarked from the same city as Barnet Harris lived. The postcard had a short message. “Reach for the Stars.” When they checked with the British police, they were treated to stonewalling. Was it Brexit? “Look we are Swiss and would like some cooperation.” “Afraid can’t do. It is in the hands of MI5 suggest you do the same, give it your intelligence agency.” “Do you know of a Barnet Harris?” “Yes, he is the subject of an enquiry. Why?” “His name appeared in the next to kin in Madame Clevissy’s passport.” “That’s a turn up of the books, she said she did not know Mr. Harris. Anything else?” “Yes, apparently a postcard written in English was delivered to Madame Clevissy’s and it came from your town. It had a simple message, “Reach for the Stars.”” “Reach for the stars, they had some sick sense of humour. Can you send a copy of it?” “Sure if you send me what you had before your spies took over the case.” “Yes of course. They have not done anything with it since last year.” “Typical. I will have to hand over what we have to our spooks too.” “Any theories?” “It seems very well executed and professional.” “We thought that over here. They had planned this to last detail. However, the signature – the dividers and compass – maths implements suggest something personal.” “Exactement, we had thought the same, in poor Madame Clevissy’s case, it was a telescope down her mouth.” “My God.” When Sergeant Weston got the scan of the postcard he realized this was a clue they had been looking for. It was a postcard of Jodrell Bank with the two telescopes dating it late sixties or early seventies. Now what was interesting about the Oxford set of Mathematical Instruments was that it was an export set. Here was a connection. The murder weapons were bought online through Ebay or Etsy. The telescope was a stroke of luck because it had a serial number, the Swiss detective leading the case emailed him details of the sale. It had been bought by someone in the UK. When Weston tried to contact MI5 they referred him to the Official Secret’s Act and defence of the realm clauses. In the minds of both Weston and Lejeune the murders were personal. It was conceivable that the two victims were agents or worked for intelligence in some capacity. However, the murders were too staged to be the work of spies. It did not make sense. The use of the school mathematical instruments and the postcard suggested a British modus operandi. Lejeune telephoned Weston and in their discussion they concluded that it was very likely that the motive was the most obvious, jealousy. “We can assume that Mr. Harris and Madame Clevissy were lovers. The murderer is a British woman.” “Not a Swiss man?” “Non, the instruments were British, the card came from your town.” “They went to a lot of trouble.” “Yes, they did, it must have been taken quite a lot of money too.” “I’ll get back to you Inspector Lejeune as soon as I have more information. The postcard might very well be the handwriting of the murderer or one of the conspirators.” “Merci.” All hell broke out in the station when Weston saw his boss. “Jack, this is not on, I don’t bloody care if you have new evidence, it’s not our case anymore. Read this notice if you want verification. We are not to continue. If I hear one more word, you’ll be suspended.” That was how it has been left. Marigold looked up at the residential building where Barnet Harris lived, she smiled as she tugged at Vicky’s lead. The sun was setting behind some trees, and it soon it would be time for their dinner.