Excerpt from the book called The Frisby Waterless Murders
“I get all the good jobs, don’t I?”
“Are you offering to do the phoning for her, Sergeant?”
“I wouldn’t go that far, no – OK I will ask her. Should I do that now?”
“Sounds like a plan, Barnesy.”
“That’s my line, sir, you have stolen my words out of my mouth.”
“And you will prosecute me for what crime?”
“Slander is the nearest one.”
“I will bear that in mind, anyway I should be going to see our friends in Forensics
and see what they have to tell me.” Knowles smiled at the prospect of having his suspicions confirmed.
“OK, well I will go and ask Linda to phone the doctor’s practices regarding curare, assuming she’s finished phoning all the passengers about shaking hands with The Major.”
“See if the military records request has come back for the passengers as well, Barnesy, there may be some interesting information.”
Barnes headed back to his desk and Knowles walked down the stairs, two at a time, to the Forensics lab. He was expecting some news about the modified fishing hook, the empty biro, and the coffee cups. Knowles saw Dr Crabtree looking at a computer screen and walked over to him:
“Dr Crabtree, have you any updates for me – I had a message to ring you, but I thought I would make a personal visit and get some exercise at the same time.”
“Great idea, Colin, after all we haven’t seen you for the best part of a day, have we?” Crabtree had a rather acerbic sense of humour on occasions. He smiled and pointed at the screen.
“We were unlucky with the coffee cups – none of them contained poison. The poison must have been in the muffin.”
“No need to check with the stewards about how they served the coffee then,” said Knowles, “I presume the Major’s paw prints are on the cup?”
“They are, Colin, so we are safe there. Attempted murder by person unknown at this stage via the muffin. Right, that is good news; the not good news is that the biro is completely clean – it is devoid of curare and saliva and hasn’t even been cleaned to remove the evidence. This is a biro that has only ever been used a biro.”
“And yet someone threw it out of the window when the train was stopped?”
Julian Worker Fiction Writing 