BACK TO HOME PAGE SITE NAVIGATION CONTACT POETRY FORUM GENERAL FORUM   Horoscope  Radio  Gallery  FAQ   Search   Memberlist   Usergroups   Register   Profile   PM's   
Log in 

Story Forum Index -> Murder Mystery

THE CASE OF THE DISAPPEARING DIAMOND

Ladies Lifestyle and Living Store
  Author    Thread Post new topic Reply to topic
ghost



Joined: 06 Nov 2005
Posts: 2828
Location: MIA
THE CASE OF THE DISAPPEARING DIAMOND

THE CASE OF THE DISAPPEARING DIAMOND

Part 1




Eve Fincham took a last look at the spotless dinner table. Everything was ready for her dinner party. She glanced at the table settings, mentally checking off the names. On the left she had placed Dr. Fred Nicholson and his wife Ramona, and next to her at the head of the table, Eve’s husband, John. On his left Nina Delaware, a budding young actress. Next to Nina would be David Johnson (a movie producer who she was hoping to talk into a new movie deal) and then herself opposite John. It would be a nice, intimate evening…

The storm was brewing as the guests arrived, first having had to check in at the estate’s gate. Because Fincham Crest was an isolated property, the Finchams had put up electric fencing all around and installed a gatekeeper who was on duty 24 hours a day. Eve kept complaining, but John insisted that her fame as an actress had spread far and wide, and they couldn’t be too careful in keeping the riff-raff away, as he put it.

The evening was going extremely well. There was much talk and laughter as Eve recalled some of the more exotic moments of her career as an actress. The storm had arrived as well, a hard rain accompanied by some thunder and lightning flashes. As dessert was about to be served, a loud crack of thunder silenced the room, and simultaneously the lights went out.

“Now don’t panic, everyone,” John said in a calm voice. “The electricity around these parts often go out, it’s just temporary. Lights will be back on in a jiffy...” There was a bit of a disturbance at the table as everyone had jumped up when the lights went out… Dessert was to have been a flaming concoction of Strawberries with Orange over Ice Cream, and Eve had just instructed the housekeeper to douse the room’s candles for effect.

All the guests took their seats again, and the butler returned from the kitchen with more candles and the matches. The candles were re-lit and the guests continued chattering as the dessert was served, followed by cheese and biscuits and a good port.

The lights had still not come on, and John instructed the butler to light the fireplace in the lounge and set more candles in the room as well. Storm lanterns were produced to light the way to the upstairs bathroom, as Eve insisted that the ladies should all go and “powder their noses” together.

“Besides, I do so want to show you what my husband bought me on our recent trip to Amsterdam…” Eve gave a little giggle, being slightly tipsy from the champagne served with dessert. The ladies excused themselves and left the room.

A loud scream from the upstairs bedroom brought the men running, John leading the way with a lamp. The scene greeting them looked as if it should rather have been a movie set. Eve had fainted in front of a large painting that had been swung away from the wall to reveal a combination-type safe hidden behind it. The safe looked quite empty. The other two ladies stood frozen, hands to their mouths.

John looked grey-faced at the empty safe.

“Where is it?” he demanded from the onlookers. “What has happened to the diamond?” he nearly shouted, frantically pointing at the safe as Fred hurried to Eve’s side and started reviving her.

“There was nothing in it when Eve opened it, John,” Ramona said in a calm voice. “Eve was telling us on the way up here how she had put the diamond in the safe this morning after fetching it from the bank. She wanted it here for tomorrow morning when the jeweller arrives to discuss the setting, and came back up to check on it just before we arrived for dinner. I suggest you phone our friend, Captain Logan Manicera of the CSI, they are very good with this sort of thing… and he owes Fred a favour, so it will be kept out of the newspapers. In the meantime, I suggest that no-one leaves Fincham Crest until this is sorted out.”

Their host rushed downstairs to the study, from where he phoned the number Ramona had given him. He explained in a rush to Manicera what had happened, describing the diamond to him, and begged Logan to come as soon as possible. On the way out he went past the window, nearly slipping on a small puddle of water. Frowning, he went in search of the butler to get him to clean up the mess one of the guests must have made earlier while drinks were being enjoyed in the study.


Part 2


Manicera and his assistant, Marina Conegal, arrived an hour later. The rain had stopped and the house was brightly lit. The lights had come back on as everyone was moving back downstairs. The CSI team accompanying them listened as Manicera quietly gave them their orders and then moved off into the house to start the investigation.

Marina took the ladies to the lounge while Logan herded the men into the study. The guests were questioned closely as to their movements before and during dinner. From their answers, it appeared that no-one had got up from the table during dinner, and they were together the whole time during the before-dinner drinks in the study. Eve hysterically insisted that she had seen the diamond just before the guests arrived, safely locked up, this was a terrible thing, what did the police intend to do…

“Well, Mrs. Fincham, we have searched the entire house,” Marina said. “The diamond is no longer on this property. Nina, Ramona and yourself have also graciously allowed us to body-search you. None of the guests left the house after it was last seen, so we will have to search the surrounding area in the morning as soon as it’s light enough. The investigation will be continued tomorrow morning. Or rather, this morning, as it is already well past midnight.”

Marina left the ladies to go and find her boss. Logan had finished questioning the men and took Marina to the kitchen for a quiet talk about her interviews with the ladies.

“The ladies all allowed us to do a body search, Logan, the diamond is not on the person of any of them,” Marina told him.

“Hmm, the same goes for the men, Marina,” Logan replied. “We will have to search outside tomorrow morning, in case someone had managed to throw the diamond through a window… although I cannot see how, it was raining and surely someone would have noticed something… and their movements are all accounted for. I still need to talk to the butler and the housekeeper; they were the only other people here tonight. They have both been with the Finchams for years though, so I do not consider them suspects at this stage. We will see… you go on home now, I will see you first thing in the morning at the office.”

Marina left and Logan remained in the kitchen. He gratefully accepted a mug of coffee from Rebecca, the housekeeper. He asked her a few questions, but as she had been in the kitchen busy with the dinner, she didn’t see much. The interview with James, the butler, did not bring anything to light either…

“Yes, Captain, they were all still in the dining room when I left to fetch the dessert from the kitchen,” the butler said. “The lights went out at that time, but as I have been with the family in this house for more than fifteen years, I know my way in the dark, I didn’t need any light. From what I could tell, they were together from when the guests arrived, within five minutes of each other… I bumped into Miss Delaware in the study, but I suppose she was looking for a refill of her gin and tonic… they were all moving through to the dining room…no, I cannot recall anything else… except someone must have spilled some ice on the floor, as I had to return to the study to mop up the floor. That was after they had all been seated of course…”

“Thank you, James. That will be all,” Logan thanked the butler. He made his way to the lounge and took his leave from the evening’s host, confirming that he would be back early in the morning for the search of the grounds.

Part 3


Marina was waiting at the office when Manicera arrived.

“Anything further, Logan?” she asked her boss.

“Not much. Let’s get going, the team are on the way to Fincham Crest already,” he replied. They left the office for the half-an-hour drive to the estate. Logan remained silent, going over the sequence of events in his head. Marina knew better than to interrupt his thoughts during such a time, and they arrived at the estate without anything further being discussed.

The search of the grounds did not deliver up the diamond. Something else very interesting was discovered though… outside the study window, a single footprint. A bare footprint, with the toes deeply imprinted into the muddy flowerbed under the window. There was something strange about the footprint, though… it was pointing away from the house, as if the person was leaving, and not entering the house through the window. But there had been no rain earlier the previous day, and the rain only started after the guests had arrived. Yet no-one had left the house, or each other’s company for that matter, during the entire evening prior to the discovery of the diamond’s disappearance.

Logan and Marina discussed it on the way back to the office.

“It’s impossible, Logan. No-one left the house. No-one else came in, the gatekeeper was on duty that entire evening. He stayed at the gatehouse after the guests arrived, in case someone wanted to leave. They had all arranged to stay for the evening, as the traffic guys are usually patrolling this area and they didn’t want to be caught for DIU,” Marina said.

“But someone did leave last night, Marina, and with the diamond in their possession,” Logan replied. “We will have to dig deeper, that’s all… We will do a perimeter search all along the fence, too. Maybe that will shed more light on the matter.”

“And there is still the long red hair the team found on the floor of the bedroom below the safe… but none of the guests have red hair, and the room was thoroughly cleaned that morning, by the team of cleaners Eve uses on a regular basis… nothing odd there,” Marina said in a soft voice.

Silence then fell over the car as they drove back to the CSI building. They reached the office and started with the paperwork.

Part 4


Later that afternoon, Logan called Marina into his office.

“What’s up, boss?” she joked. “We found the mystery person?”

“Not funny, Marina,” a grumpy-looking Logan replied. “I want you to start looking at the guests... their backgrounds, possible reasons for wanting to steal a diamond, anything, however small. I don’t like the way this is going, we are nowhere near finding out why it was done, never mind how and by who. I must confess, I am stumped by this one…”

“Well, boss, there was something we missed earlier on. I spoke to Eve again, and she recalls that the electricity went off earlier that morning too, while the cleaners were there, but it only stayed off for about 5 minutes, she thinks. The housekeeper confirmed it, as she had to reset the oven timer for the dinner roast… So I had the team go back and check the mains board… and guess what? It’s been tampered with… some sort of timer was set on it… no fingerprints, but it was timed to switch off the electricity mains at about 9 p.m. Just in time for dessert… the storm was just a lucky co-incidence… and don’t tell me there is no such thing as co-incidence!”

Logan laughed. “Think about it, Marina… there had been thunderstorms during the evening for the past couple of weeks on a regular basis… the thieves might have taken a chance on it not being discovered that the mains board had been rigged. So…” Logan thought a while, then spoke again. “Hand me that report on what the team came up with during the sweeping of the rooms, Marina. I just remembered something that struck me as odd during the time I first went through it… Aha! Just as I thought… there was a bit of mud found under the dining room table. Matches the mud outside the study window… but no, that’s impossible, no-one left their seats during the dinner… or did they?”

“I’ll get going on the guest list, boss. See you in a while, “ Marina said as she left his office.

She returned to Logan’s office a few hours later…

“Spoke to the cleaners’ office, Logan,’” Marina said upon entering the office. “Seems they had one staff member reporting in sick after having had dinner with some colleague the previous night, so they had to replace one of the regular cleaners for that morning… Mrs. Fincham is apparently very finicky about how she wants the house to be cleaned, so they tend to use the same staff if at all possible. That’s the only thing out of the ordinary as far as they are concerned… the replacement cleaner is a regular staff member though. I will check her out in any case.

“Other than that, they are all who they say they are… Fred and Ramona Nicholson are old friends of the Finchams, also stinking rich with him being a neuro-surgeon, so there’s no motive there. David Johnson made a packet off his last film, so he has no motive money-wise… his girlfriend, Nina Delaware, is a typical budding young actress, bit of a fluff-ball… I like her looks though, and her blond hair is gorgeous… what I wouldn’t give for hair like that… apart from having two sisters, one an identical twin by the way, nothing odd about her either.”

Logan looked at Marina and laughed. “Never mind the hair, Marina, we are looking for a red-head, remember?” he joked. “It couldn’t have been one of the guests, Marina, they were all in each other’s company the entire evening. No, we are looking, but not seeing… take another look at the cleaners… one of them falling ill the day they are supposed to clean the Fincham place, is just too much of a co-incidence, and…”

“And there’s no such thing,” Marina completed his sentence with a laugh. “Will do, boss,” she added and left.

Part 5


“We must be missing something, boss,” Marina grumbled as they sat in her office much later that evening. “We are no further than we were this morning!”

“Let’s go over what we have so far, Marina. Maybe the solution to this puzzle will jump out at us…” her boss replied. “There a few things I want to talk about. For one… the water puddle in the study. The butler said the puddle was there after the guests had left the room to go in to dinner. Yet John said he asked James to clean the puddle after phoning me…and that was much later! Was there a second puddle? It only started raining when the guests arrived at 7 p.m. Did someone open the window after it started raining? But who? And why?

“And we matched the mud under the dining room table to the mud outside. We couldn’t tell to whose feet it belonged though, but it wasn’t anybody’s at that table – we checked all their shoes. So it seems as if there was someone in the dining room last night, who wasn’t there! Most peculiar.”

Marina stared at her boss for a few seconds. “Someone who was there, but not there… you just gave me the solution, Logan!” she exclaimed. “Now where did I put that DNA report on the red hair we found in the study? I thought it a bit strange at the time too… and you just reminded me why… none of the guests has red hair, right?” she asked.

“That’s right, but what does that have to do with anything?” Logan complained.

“The DNA from the hair we found in the safe matched none of the guests’ DNA samples exactly, right? But there was a very close match to one of the guests…and there is our answer…she was there, but she wasn’t there.”

Can you figure out who is guilty of stealing the diamond? And how it was done?

Suspects

Eve Fincham
Nina Delaware
Ramona Nicholson
_________________
MIA

Post Mon Jul 03, 2006 4:21 am 
 View user's profile Send private message  Reply with quote  
texdyer



Joined: 01 Jul 2006
Posts: 23
Location: Sooke
who dunit

nina delawares' evil identical twin sister , who, wearing a blonde wig and in colusion with the lovely miss delaware was not only able to contrive to be in 2 places at the same time but also worked with the cleaning staff as a red head and ????seduced???/ poisoned??/ or possibly was married to the cleaner which did not report for work that fateful morning......the puddle was the result of her leaving by the window as all were collected upstairs by the scream and only one footprint as she lept............????????? how am I doing ???

Post Thu Jul 06, 2006 9:46 am 
 View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail  Reply with quote  
ghost



Joined: 06 Nov 2005
Posts: 2828
Location: MIA


you more or less got it, tex. grin.

will be posting more as they are completed.

thanks for reading and responding.

regards
ghost
_________________
MIA

Post Sun Jul 09, 2006 12:55 pm 
 View user's profile Send private message  Reply with quote  
  Display posts from previous:      
Post new topic Reply to topic

Jump to:  


Last Thread | Next Thread  >

Forum Rules:
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum

 


Search For Posters!


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group

In Association with Amazon.com
     
Terms & Conditions Privacy Statement Acknowledgements