“Last night,” the woman said, “Miss Amelia Edwards went missing immediately after leaving her office.”
Victoria leaned forward, studying her two visitors: one man, one woman, both in black suits. Government service was written all over them: the office-chair postures, the cut of their clothes, the silenced pistols tucked into their coats.
“And you want me to find her.”
“No,” the woman replied. “We found her two hours ago, floating in the Thames. We want you to find her phone.”
“How critical is the information it contains?”
The man slid a cheque across the table and Victoria raised an eyebrow.
“How did she die?” Victoria asked.
“Drowning,” the man said. “No signs of force. No chemicals in her system. Whoever did it was clever.”
“That would be beyond clever,” Victoria replied. “To show no signs of force at all, not even the smallest bruise…”
“What are you implying?” the woman asked.
Victoria sighed. “The phone may be beyond my skills to recover.”
“You can’t tell us where it is?”
“I can tell you exactly where it is. The bottom of the Thames.” She shook her head. “The thing about murders that look like suicides is that sometimes, they’re suicides.”
Word Count: 199
This is for Sunday Photo Fiction. Thanks to A Mixed Bag for the prompt photo!
Neat story.
But, as it is based in London, a check is a cheque.
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Thank you!
As someone born in the UK, but who’s spent a lot of his life in the US, my vocabulary is a patchwork of spellings. I’ll have to fix the check/cheque error.
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This made me laugh too. In Canada check is also cheque, are French Canadian roots. And it does bother me when I see check used when the word meant is check. I had elementary teachers who got angry when we did that lol.
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Uggg
*our French Canadian roots
* the word meant is cheque.
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That’s good. I like it. Yep, it may have been suicide after all.
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Thank you!
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I’m not buying it was suicide, too much of a coincidence! Nice take.
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Thank you!
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I’m with Iain, great story.
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Thank you!
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Great story. I would like to believe there is more to this than just a simple suicide.
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Thank you! Perhaps there is.
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Oooh this has “mystery novel” written all over it! Was it really suicide or very clever?
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Thank you!
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I like this JA it’s fascinating but also sad. Murder is terrible but for some reason suicide seems all the worse, having ended it yourself. Poor lady, I wonder why she did it? Desperate, mental illness.something else? A great part I could be done off of this 🙂
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Thank you! Yes, there’s something terrible about both suicide and murder. I was thinking that it was probably the pressure and nature of her work combined with depression, but it’s open to the reader’s interpretation.
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Clever ending. Well done.
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Thank you!
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I really enjoyed this story, good job. 🙂
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Thank you!
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