One of London's greatest actresses disappeared eleven years ago leaving behind no trace of her whereabouts. When a young woman who has read way too many crime novels and wants to be a detective stumbles across it, she becomes determined to uncover...
Note: The part with all the murderers is true, and I know this because I found it on the Internet.
Enjoy.
She stands in the mirror and holds out her coiling mouse-brown locks, letting them fall to her side one, by one, unaware of another presence in the room. She turns- the door is wide open. She didn't leave it that way- nobody had been there. She closes it, and makes a note in an old, tattered brown book, thick with torn papers,ancient letters and trivial, unnecessary notes.
Blood, on the floor everywhere. The door groans as it must open once more, and the person leaves the room, leaving no trace of the murder. Except the body. And the blood. The dead woman's child, being only six, comes to check on her. He shrieks, and it is such a shriek that when you hear it, haunts you forever. The murderer is gone. The child goes insane. He is now an orphan, as the father is nowhere to be found.
When I was younger, my parents would give me all the crime novels I wanted. The thrill of not knowing who was next, the suspense, wondering if the main character was next and trying to guess who it was. I loved it. It was always the most unexpected side character, or if they revealed it at the start it was a nice, friendly person that nobody would believe would kill anybody. Except the main character, of course. That's why I wanted to be a detective when I grew up. Luckily, my parents are Her Majesty's secret service, or underdog, so as soon as my parents passed away i inherited this position and have been a detective ever since. Some have doubted me since I am a woman but I had a wee look into their secrets and done! Respect earned!
Since then, life has never been easy, but it's been fun! There's been a lot of famous criminals I have uncovered:
--- Known for her "great personal beauty", Mary Manning was a maid who'd worked in grand aristocratic homes and was a very unlikely murderer. Yet she and her husband Frederick had plotted the callous killing of Patrick O'Connor, a well-off man she'd been romantically linked with. The Mannings invited O'Connor over for dinner, bashed his head in, buried him under the kitchen floor, and fled with his money. Lovely.
--- A tiff between an employer and her maid led to one of Victorian Britain's most sensational crimes in 1879. The maid in question was Kate Webster, who had been taken on by a widow named Julia Martha Thomas in Richmond, Surrey. Their rows became increasingly melodramatic, until the day an enraged Webster pushed Thomas down a flight of stairs before throttling her to death. She then chopped up her employer with a carving knife and boiled the body parts to prevent her being identified.
---Talented, original, and handy with a paintbrush, Richard Dadd looked set to be one of the great Victorian artists, right up there with the Pre-Raphaelites. He was a member of the Royal Academy, headed up his very own circle of painters known as the Clique, and was admired for visionary paintings depicting scenes from Shakespeare. But things went very badly wrong during a trip overseas, when he became convinced he was possessed by an Ancient Egyptian god. Apparently suffering a form of schizophrenia, Dadd later became convinced his own father was the Devil. He lured the older man to a park for an apparently normal walk and stabbed him to death. He went on to attack someone else with a razor blade before being committed to the notorious "Bedlam" hospital, and later Broadmoor. Incredibly, Dadd went on to create some of his most famous works while incarcerated, and they continue to be displayed in major museums today.
I have had to deal with many important cases, but never thought I'd be involved with this.
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The murder of Charlotte Evergreen.
Now, for the first time, I'm in danger. I don't know who did it, or why, or where they even came from. Or if I'm next.
