Robert Thorogood - Death Knocks Twice

‘I see,’ Richard said. ‘So, apart from a scar on his left hand, a few British coins, and a cryptic till receipt with “11am” written on it, we don’t know who the victim is?’

‘That’s about it, sir,’ Dwayne agreed.

‘So what’s the problem?’ Camille asked, reminding Richard of what he’d said only a few minutes earlier.

‘It’s this window,’ Richard said as he led Dwayne and Camille over to the little metal-framed window on the far wall of the room. ‘Or to be more precise, this window, the vent in the ceiling, and that door,’ he said, pointing at the ceiling and broken-in door in turn as he spoke.

‘Why’s that?’ Dwayne asked.

‘Tell me what you see,’ Richard said as he indicated the window.

‘Well, Chief,’ Dwayne said, buying himself time, ‘unless this is a trick question, it’s a window.’

‘You’re right, Dwayne. It’s a window. Camille?’

Camille’s instincts were already telling her where Richard was going with this. So she got out a pair of evidence gloves, snapped them on, and started checking out the window frame. She could see that it was fixed solidly to the stone casement, and the glass was held in place with old putty that had crumbled in places but had clearly not been tampered with in any way. But she knew the real test would be the latch that kept the window locked shut, and she gently touched it with her fingers. It didn’t move. In fact, she could see that the window’s latch was jammed tightly into the window frame.

What was more, Camille could see that the metal lever that allowed the window to open and close had an old butterfly screw on it that was tightly screwed down as well. Giving the butterfly screw a hard twist to the left, she unscrewed it enough that she could finally open the window. She then stuck her head outside. There was an undisturbed flower bed directly underneath the window with only a few weeds in, and the rest of the area behind the shower room was concreted over.

She then closed the window again, reset the catch in the window frame and re-locked the butterfly screw on the lever.

‘Okay,’ she pronounced, ‘so the window was locked. And it can only be locked from the inside.’

‘Precisely,’ Richard said, pleased that Camille had also worked it out.

Camille crossed to the centre of the room and looked up at the ceiling high above them.

‘And there’s no way in or out of this room through the roof. Not even with that vent built into the top.’

‘Agreed,’ Richard said. ‘It’s far too small.’

Camille led over to the main door.

‘And this door is seriously old, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘You couldn’t even begin to tamper with the hinges, or get around it or under it in any way.’

‘Quite so,’ Richard said.

Camille inspected the thick iron bolt that ran across the back of the door. It was about three feet long, and was fixed very firmly inside a solid housing made of iron. And it was obvious that neither the bolt nor housing had been tampered with any more than the hinges of the door had been.

So Camille turned her attention to the door frame. It was just as solid as the door, and the lock worked by sliding the iron bolt across so it slotted into a deep hole that had been drilled directly into the door frame. She could see that the iron bolt had ripped through the wooden frame when Richard had smashed the door open with his sledgehammer.

‘As for the iron bolt,’ Camille said, ‘it was very clearly slid across when you bashed the door open. You can see where the bolt has torn through the wood of the door frame. And that’s why we’ve got a problem, isn’t it?’

‘Got it in one, Camille,’ Richard said returning to the centre room. ‘Because this room is entirely made of stone, and there are only three ways a human could have got out of it after the murder – those being through the window on the far side, out through the roof, or through this door. The ceiling is impossible, and both the door and the window were locked from the inside.’

‘Oh, I see,’ Dwayne said, understanding finally dawning on him. ‘ That’s the problem!’

‘It is, Dwayne,’ Richard agreed.

The three Police officers looked at each other.

‘That’s quite a problem,’ Dwayne said on all of their behalves.

‘It is, isn’t it?’ Richard agreed. ‘Because, seeing as we found no-one else in here when we broke in, just how did our killer commit murder and then escape from a locked room?’

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