A Meditation on Murder

by Robert Thorogood

  ‘Whereas Aslan was hopeless with money. Had no interest in it. But he was the public face of The Retreat,’ Catherine said, ‘and what a face it was! You only had to look into his eyes to know the wisdom he had. He was soulful, you know?’

  As Catherine continued to explain Aslan’s various virtues, Richard found himself looking over the sparkling sea to the far distant horizon. Somewhere over there was England. Where you could go about your business without sweat clinging to every inch of your body. And where your feet didn’t throb from the heat trapped inside your shoes. Richard felt his love for England like a physical yearning.

  ‘Are you even listening to me?’

  ‘Of course, Catherine,’ Richard lied as he returned his attention back to the conversation. ‘And it’s very interesting what you’re saying, but I just want to know, do you think anyone could have killed him?’

  Catherine seemed shocked by the suggestion. ‘No. Aslan liked everyone. Everyone liked him.’

  ‘Even his wife?’ Richard asked.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, he wafts around in white robes going “om”, it would test any relationship, you’d have thought.’

  Catherine smiled tolerantly at Richard’s description. ‘But that’s where you’re wrong. Rianka worshipped Aslan and he worshipped her back even more. I remember him once telling me that he owed his life to his wife.’ Here, Catherine leant forward conspiratorially. ‘In fact, I got the sense from Aslan when he was telling me this that something very bad had happened to him in his past, and Rianka had saved him somehow.’

  This got Richard’s attention. ‘Did he say what the bad thing was?’

  ‘Oh no. This was just me reading between the lines. But I’m telling you. Those two loved each other. Whoever killed him, it wasn’t Rianka. And I don’t know who else it could be. Everyone liked Aslan.’

  Richard considered what Catherine had said before downing the last of his tea.

  ‘Well, thanks for your time, Catherine, but I really think we must get on.’

  As Richard got up from the table and left without so much as a backwards glance, he didn’t see the amused look that passed between mother and daughter. Because what Richard never knew—and would certainly have never understood—was that both Camille and Catherine were set on reforming him. They’d get him to loosen up. To relax. Admittedly, it hadn’t worked yet, but neither of them were prepared to give up. Not yet.

  With a kiss for her mother, Camille followed Richard out.

  Half an hour later, Richard and Camille arrived back at the murder scene and Richard found himself pausing before he entered the building.

  ‘Problem?’ Camille asked.

  Richard turned on the spot—taking in how the Meditation Space sat isolated on the wide lawn, the main house standing bright white against the blue sky—and a few shrubs of colourful tropical flowers in bushes dotted here and there.

  ‘Why here?’ he said.

  ‘You mean, why commit murder inside a Japanese tea house?’

  Richard nodded. It still didn’t make any sense to him. The tea house was extremely exposed, but its translucency and lack of any kind of sound-proofing also seemed to make it the least likely place you’d want to carry out something as private as a murder.

  He started walking around the structure. It was a large rectangular box-shape just sitting in the middle of a lawn with thick cream paper for walls and thick cream paper for the roof. What was more, the light that was trapped inside it made the whole thing seem to glow. It was as if a strange spaceship had landed in the middle of the lawn.

  As Richard got closer, he could see thick vertical bands of dim shadows through the paper walls. These were the wooden pillars that made up the building’s internal structure. There seemed to be about a dozen such vertical pillars along each of the long sides of the room. But how was the paper attached to each of these pillars? Richard looked closer at the walls and saw hundreds—if not thousands—of staples attaching the paper to the pillars. The staples were deeply embedded into the wooden frame, were all quite rusty, and had all clearly been there for some time.

  ‘I wonder how the walls survive hurricane season?’ Richard asked.

  Camille watched her boss press his hand against the paper wall. Clearly it was thickly waxed; extremely strong. But even so, there’d be no way it could survive the worst of the region’s weather.

  ‘The frame would be okay, but you’re right, I’m sure they need to replace the paper from time to time.’

  Richard finished his circumnavigation of the Meditation Space. There were no rips or tears in the paper anywhere, and the rusting staples made it clear that this current batch of paper walls had been in situ for many months.

  ‘So what do you think?’ Camille asked. ‘Could the killer have got through the paper walls?’

  ‘No way,’ Richard said. ‘Not without damaging the paper. And the staples all around the outside of the building make it clear that no one’s tampered with any of the walls any time in the recent past. They’re all rusty.’

  ‘Then what about the door? Could the killer have got in that way?’

  Richard considered the wood and paper door. It was like the rest of the building: a simple wooden frame with thick white paper stretched across it tight like a drum.

  Richard looked back at the hotel, a hundred yards away. A considerable distance, perhaps, but he could see that the Meditation Space was slap bang in view not just of the verandah, but of everyone who’d been up at the hotel. If Rianka said no one entered or left through the door to the Meditation Space once her husband had gone inside with his guests, then she was almost certainly right: no one had entered or left through the door.

  Richard said, ‘The door’s kind of a moot point, isn’t it? As everyone says the room was locked down by Aslan before they even sat down. But let’s see anyway.’

  Richard opened the door and inspected its latch lock. It seemed an entirely normal Yale lock such as could be found on the inside of any front door in the UK. It was screwed firmly into the wooden frame of the door—just as the housing was screwed firmly into the doorframe that it slotted into.

  ‘Camille, could you go inside the room and lock me out please?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Leaving Richard outside on the grass, Camille entered the Meditation Space and shut the door, the bolt of the Yale lock automatically slotting into the frame as it locked the door fast with a firm metallic clunk.

  Richard could see that there was no handle on the outside of the door—or any other way to get purchase on the smooth papered surface. There was no keyhole on this side of the door, either, and the door fitted tight within the doorframe. Richard tried to get his fingers into the gap—tried to imagine how the door could have been opened or jemmied from outside without damaging it—and failed.

  ‘Okay, so I think that answers that question,’ he said. ‘Once locked down from the inside, there’s no way anyone could have broken in through this door from the outside. Not without damaging the frame or ripping through the paper walls.’

  Richard heard the bolt clunk back, and Camille pulled the door open.

  ‘So no one got in through the door any more than they got in through the walls,’ Richard said as he entered the Meditation Space and once again was hit by the pounding heat and searing light. He yanked out his already-sodden hankie and dabbed at his forehead. Really, the heat was unbearable.

  ‘You can take your jacket off,’ Camille said.

  Richard looked at his partner as though she were insane. He then returned to the job in hand.

  The room was a perfect rectangle and Richard was pleased to see that he’d been right. There were twelve vertical wooden pillars running down each of the long sides, just as he’d expected. The paper attached to the outside of the pillars was translucent—of course it was, it was cream paper—the floor was highly polished hardwood planks, and there was nothing else in the room to break the perfect geometry of the space a
part from half a dozen prayer mats, the wireless headphones and the cotton eye masks.

  There was no way the killer could have been hiding in the room before the witnesses arrived. And Richard had just proven to his own satisfaction that it wasn’t possible to break into the room after the door had been closed and locked down from the inside.

  This meant that there were only five possible people who could have killed Aslan Kennedy: the five people of the Sunrise Healing who were already in the room with him when he closed and locked the door.

  Richard’s irritation spiked. He could feel in his bones that there was something about the room that was important. Something to do with it being made out of paper. After all, why was it inside this building that Aslan was killed? At the very least, it offended Richard’s sense of the natural order of things that paper could prove so impregnable. It was only paper for heaven’s sakes, but Richard knew that for all that it was possible to break in from the outside, the Meditation Space’s wall and ceiling might as well have been constructed from stone, and the door from iron.

  ‘It really is a locked room. Isn’t it?’ Camille said.

  ‘I’d agree with that. Which means that if Julia’s not our killer, then it has to be one of Saskia, Paul, Ann or Ben.’

  ‘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.

  Richard pulled out a little penknife from his pocket. It was ivory-bodied, steel-bladed, and it had been given to him by his Great Uncle Harold to mark the occasion of his first day at boarding school. Richard had been eight years old at the time and Uncle Harold’s rambling rhapsody on the wonders of boarding school had left the eight-year-old Richard with the distinct impression that, from now on, he’d have to be hunting for all of his food. Which wasn’t far from the truth, of course, and Richard had kept the knife close ever since. You never knew when you’d need a pocket knife. Like now.

  In five long steps, Richard strode across the room, stabbed the penknife high into the wall and slashed down through the paper. It wasn’t easy—the paper was thick and waxy—but the knife was whetstone sharp and Richard soon had a slit down to the floor.

  Stepping through the rip in the wall, Richard found himself on the outside of the building and face to face with a very shocked Dominic De Vere.

  ‘What the hell are you playing at!’ Dominic all but shouted, looking at the tiny but vicious knife in Richard’s hand.

  Camille appeared around the side of the building—but she also kept her distance a little. If Dominic tried to bolt, she’d have him covered.

  ‘I could ask you the same question,’ Richard said, increasingly irritated that Dominic had once again appeared in the middle of their investigation.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  Dominic thought for a moment, collecting his thoughts. ‘But it’s obvious what I’m doing here.’

  ‘Then perhaps you’d like to explain.’

  ‘It’s simple. I saw, like, shadows inside the Meditation Space and it freaked me out. Because—you know—it’s, like, a crime scene. Then I remembered! What if it was the killer and he’d come back to revisit the scene? You know, like killers are supposed to do. They return to the scene of their crime. So I thought to myself: if it was the killer inside the Meditation Space, maybe I could unmask him!’

  Richard didn’t believe a word of Dominic’s explanation and he risked a glance at Camille. It was clear that she was just as sceptical.