Monday 10 December 2012

Jingle all the way

At the next station we got off and found a new train to the house of Robin's friend. I loved receiving puzzles from people outside of the news paper. Mine and Robins conversation was mainly about what would be required from her as my assistant. This line of enquiry died quickly and left us in a silent mutter. About half an hour later we arrived at Robins friends house. Her friend was a biologist working with butterflys by the name of Rachel Lalad. Her house was shared by some other biologists called Harrison Jones, Jermey Richards, Fiona Kanda and her husband Alan Kanda. We got a taxi to the house which was a manor house on the otherside of a forest to the nearest village and was mostly converted into greenhouses and laboratories. The sky had turned dark and we hurried to the shelter of the large, looming, oak door. It was pulled open and we were greeted by the face of a woman. She wasn't old but there was age in her eyes, "Rachel, I presume?"
"Yes and you must be Gabriel," prenouncing it Gab-ri-el. "Rathbone."
"Gay-bri-el," I said correcting her. "Now I've been told you have a puzzle."
"Wow you are one to jump the gun! How are you Robin?"
She was about to reply but I interrupted her, "I'm very busy so can you just tell me what it is."
"Wow, what's wrong with him," she wispered to Robin. "Right, Mr let's get to the point, here it is; something has been setting off the intruder alarms and we don't know what."
My face dropped. What a complete and utter waste of time. "You brought me here for that!"
"I don't think you understand the work we do here!"
"I don't think that you understand that I don't waste time!"

We travelled to the greenhouses where the butterflys were kept and I made a joke about how Robin would feel at home. We finally walked out to the gate where the alarm had been set off, turning the light out in the greenhouse. Within at least a second I had deduced that a badger was the culprit. With Lalad looking utterly disapointed, I turned around to see the lights of the greenhouse swicth on. "That'll be Alan doing  his round." Said Lalad
I turned back to Rachel when we heard a thud. Running back to the greenhouse where the noise had originated we saw lying on the floor, foaming at the mouth, the pale corpse of Alan Kanda.
And like the scientist the electricity decied to die. 

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