Alibis

The woman in the expensive ball gown was found lying at the edge of the field.

She had been dead for several hours, undetected, until a farm worker taking a short-cut to work in the early hours spotted her. Local police attended and made their reports, followed by a call to a detective working in homicide. Although he attended the scene promptly, his investigation had been very slow and drawn out. So much so that the chief constable called him in for a debriefing.

The investigator began. “It’s a complex case sir, not just a simple murder. I’ve been working on it for several weeks now. Anyway, this is what I’ve got so far.”

He opened his notebook.

“It was a local man who found the body. His name’s Jack and being a nimble fellow quickly ran to the farm and called the police. I’ve ruled him out. The farm itself is managed by old MacDonald, but it’s actually owned by the grand old Duke of York.”

Turning pages, he went on.

“Anyway, the day before the crime was committed, up at the farm, Polly, the owner’s daughter, was putting the kettle on when she heard little Boy Blue blowing his horn. When she went to the window and looked out she saw Jack and Jill climbing the hill. When I interviewed these two they said that a rumour was going around that Mr King, a wealthy man who lives just outside the village, who apparently spends most of his time in his counting house counting out his money, had given his son permission to look for the girl he had danced with at a recent ball.”

More page turning.

“Making further enquiries, I found out that the son, nick-named ‘prince’, had a slipper, and using a significant amount of his father’s generous allowance, was going around trying to find a foot that it would fit.” He looked up from his notes and shrugged. “Meanwhile,” he went on, “we had an informer come into the station. His name was Jack Horner, the young apprentice to the village cobbler. It seems he was sitting in the corner unnoticed, when a woman came in and made arrangements for his employer to make a slipper, like the one that the so-called ‘prince’ was taking around, but one that would comfortably fit her own foot.”

At this point he let out a sigh and said, “It just so happens that Jack is good friends with a boy called Peter, often referred to as the pumpkin eater, who is this woman’s younger brother. It followed that the story about the boy’s scheming sister and her apparent attempt to falsely claim the shoe as her own, spread quickly. Well, eventually, word of all this reached the ears of Miss Muffet, the close friend of a scullery maid, named Cinderella, who also worked at the farm. As soon as she finished eating her cereal, she confided in the one person she could trust, Mary, a close school friend that had a pet lamb. As far as we can make out, these two, the Muffet girl and the scullery maid, definitely had a strong motive to stop the pumpkin eater’s older sister, Cruella, from taking the scullery maid’s place. As a result, we do know that Cruella hired the ball gown to strengthen her claim, and that it was, in fact, her body that was found in the field.”

He closed his notebook.

“The problem is that both Cinderella and Miss Muffet have strong alibis for the time of the murder.”

The chief constable asked, “Any other suspects?”

The detective flipped through his notes again.

“There was a little girl…”

“Go on.”

“Well, she had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead. I mean, she was really cute. Anyway, we found out that she’d had a crush on this ‘prince’ lad for some time.”

“So, could there be some jealousy angle here?”

“Maybe. I mean, to look at her you would say she was the picture of innocence, but…”

“But?”

“I know that listening to gossip is not the best way to run an investigation, but a number of people questioned came up with the same comments about her.”

“Which were?”

“Well, the general consensus was that when she was good, she was very, very good, but when she was bad she was horrid.”

The senior policeman slapped his knee and said, “Bring her in!”