Privet Eie

A Guilty Murder: part 1

Our story begins in London, on a dreary, grey, afternoon. Privet Eie, an impressive detective second only to his arch-enemy, Sherlock Holmes himself, has been out of work for a bit, as Holmes has grown in popularity. So on this day, he sat in his armchair smoking a pipe when the telephone rang. He picks it up, hoping for a new case to solve. A scared and low voice floats through the receiver as if the caller were whispering.

"I needed a detective, and Holmes was busy, so I came to you" The caller whispers quickly.

Privet, although annoyed that he was a second choice, leapt on the chance for a new client.

"What can I help you with?" he asks eagerly, matching the caller's hushed tone.

"I came home from work and I found my safe open and my wife stabbed."

"Is she alive?"

"No. There's blood all over the floor, and it's not fresh."

"I'm very sorry Mr...what's your name sir?"

"Mr. Guilty."

"Well, I'm very sorry Mr. Guilty. So I'm assuming you want me to find who did it?"

"Yes."

"I will come over at once to inspect the scene if you don't mind"

"Ok."

"What is your address, sir?"

"*Address*"

"Thank you. See you then, goodbye." Privet hangs up the phone, giddy to have a new client after Holmes stole so many others.

He goes and grabs his magnifying glass, cap, cloak, tools, and pen and paper, then steps out of his house and heads to the address he was given. When he gets to the address, he sees a house that isn't too impressive, but Privet shamefully admits to himself he would rob it, too. When he gets to the door, he is met with a distraught man, still wearing his coat and hat from coming home.

"I'm glad you got here as fast as you did. The blood was making me nauseous so I had to step outside."

"Yes sir, you can go do whatever as I check things out, how long ago did you say you got home?"

"About a quarter of an hour. I called you as soon as I saw my wife dead."

Looking around, Privet sees that some of the furniture was knocked over, there was glass on the floor from something breaking, and some silverware smashed on the ground.

"First I have news, then I have a question. First, you should be happy to know your wife didn't go down without a fightt, and gave him a good one too by the looks of things. Second, Was anything stolen? Anything specific? Besides the money in your safe?"

"We kept some of my wife's special family jewelry in the safe as well, and some expensive dishes were gone from the cupboard.."

"Well those make sense, but on the phone, you said your safe was open, not broken, does anyone you know have the knowledge or motive to open the safe? Or was this just a smart robber?"

"I mean, my parents do, but they don't like to drive anymore. I have a few cousins I'm close to that know it."

"I'll write them in as suspects" Privet makes a note on his pad for future reference.

"Do you think they could have told anyone?" Privet asks, glancing up.

"I don't know. I told them because I trusted them."

"Well that's great and all, but we can't rule them out just yet, let me see the safe"

"Ok." As Guilty shows Privet to the safe, Privet makes note that along their route nothing shows signs of a scuffle outside of the kitchen, when they get to the room with the safe, everything is spotless, and a small-ish safe is sitting open on the floor of a closet.

Privet bends down to get a closer look. Inside the safe is nothing, except for a small piece of paper on the inside with an R on it.

"Could this be from my cousin Ricky?" Guilty asks.

"You have a cousin named Ricky? Anyways, did you see this paper when you first found the safe like this?" Privet is very confused but can't show that to Guilty, he quickly scribbles the R onto his pad and turns to face his client.

"I am going to have to return to my residence to sift through the information I have learned. Would you please quickly tell me the name and address of your parents and the rest of those "few" cousins?"

"My parents are Ashley and Ryan Guilty and their address is *address.* My cousins are Ricky, Nicky, Dicky, and Dawn. and their addresses are *four addresses*"

Privet makes note of these and leaves for home. Completely forgetting Mr. Guilty's plight of having a dead person in his house. Guilty, who couldn't get the detective's attention in time before he drove away, spent the night in a hotel, while a crew came and cleaned his house. Meanwhile, Privet got to his house to find it torn to shreds, all the furniture destroyed, and wallpaper ripped off the walls, it looked like a tornado had come through and eaten his house.

"Who could have done this?!?!!?!?" He shouts at his newly ruined walls. As he turns and closes the door he notices a paper with an R that looks exactly like the one from Mr. Guilty's safe.

"How could the killer have known I was in this case?"

The detective wonders if the killer was somehow listening in the entire time. He decided to go back to the house later to check for listening devices. For now, though, he set about getting a crew to come to clean his house, while he checked into the same one-floor hotel as Guilty. Unbeknownst to the both of them, tomorrow would bring more questions than answers.