WHODUNITS

DEATH CONSPIRACY (by Milo Larder and Charline Boulaire)

« The green shoe belongs to D-E-A-T-H »...

Sean woke up, he was panicked. It was now the third night in a row that he had been dreaming of the clairvoyant he had seen three days earlier. A fair had been set-up for a few months in the south of the city. Lucas, his nephew had come to London to visit Sean for the Christmas holidays. The boy had insisted on seeing the fortune teller, because he thought it was « cooooool ». But the statement that had been revealed wasn't so « coool », death was in the air...

  Sean Fields, lived in the center of the city of London. He was a rich divorced private detective. He loved his job and took it very seriously. At that moment, Mr Fields was on a case, Jane Gray had disappeared one and a half weeks ago. But what made Sean suspicious, was that nobody had found any clues or any sign of Jane being alive. Furthermore, the five letters « D-E-A-T-H » that the clairvoyant had pronounced kept going through his mind and appeared to be the terrible destiny of Jane.

I was in my car, looking at my watch, time was flying by, and I was stuck in a traffic jam. I didn't want to be late for my nephew. In the end I was relieved, I arrived just on time, he was just beginning to look for me. We put his suitcase in the boot and drove home. During the journey we drove by the fair and as soon as Lucas saw it he made me promise that I would take him the following day.

The next day, Lucas hadn't forgotten what I had told him the previous day and was waiting for me to get ready. Eventually we arrived, first we had an ice-cream and then we did all sorts of amusement rides. In spite of our long and tiring day, Lucas insisted on going to see the fortune teller. Naturally I accepted, I couldn't really refuse him anything...

We were standing in front of the clairvoyant’s van. But, just as I was considering leaving, I noticed Lucas had already run in. Now, it was too late, I had a bad feeling about all this... I stepped in and immediately sat on a chair next to Lucas, the clairvoyant was in front of us. She was wearing a headscarf wrapped round her long black hair and long golden earrings. She had big round black eyes that were looking intensely at me. She was freaking me out, she put her hands on a crystal ball, smiled and opened her mouth, pronouncing this mysterious sentence: « The green shoe belongs to D-E-A-T-H. ». And then, I stood there, waiting for something else, but she didn't give me any other information leaving me in complete confusion.

This was what Sean told his boss, who asked him to return immediately to the fair and find clues. Maybe all of this had a link with the last unsolved case. When you are a good detective, you take every little detail into account.

Once there, he wandered round towards the fortune teller's van. But... Something caught his attention... Out of the corner of his eye he could distinguish a green spot: he immediately looked at it and saw a green balloon... « Oh blow it! » he said. He kept trying to find, but to no avail... Yet, he remembered what somebody had told him some time ago: a talented detective should never shrink away from the first difficulty. And indeed this sentence had always stayed in his mind. So he persisted in his search, some time later, as we all know, his work paid off. A detail had caught his attention...

A green shoe, was lying under a carousel. The amusement ride started and the green shoe followed...

« STOOOPPP! STOP the carousel! » screamed Sean.

Everybody turned to him as he was running towards the ride. The carousel stopped and Sean grabbed the shoe but... it was stuck, something was stopping it from coming out ! So he bent over to have a closer look. « Oh my god ! ». What a surprise, a body was at the other end of the shoe and it was stuck under the carousel !

The police arrived and removed the corpse. It was, of course, Jane Gray that everybody had been looking for a while ago. But the question was: Who was the murderer ? Maybe it was a fairground worker. But after much investigation, Sean couldn't find any other information about the murderer. Unfortunately, he had to look for another kind of suspect...

1 year later in the newspaper...

January, the 5^th

A CONSPIRACY AT LAST REVEALED

One year ago, the corpse of Jane Gray was found under an amusement ride. But nobody had been able to find the murderer...

At first, Sean Fields, a fantastic detective thought the murderer would have been one of the fairground people but he was wrong. After many months of investigation, he finally concluded that he had to carry on his investigation in another place than the fair. Yesterday, in the afternoon, he, at last, found the true murderer who admitted his guilt. It was an inhabitant of the rich London City. He maintained a hatred towards fairgrounds. He had an arm missing because of an amusement ride. In his childhood his arm got stuck in a ride. Nobody came and helped him and now he only has his right arm left. So he conspired to kill a young innocent girl and put her corpse under a carrousel to make the fairground people look guilty.

G.S.