Prologue
Mark Samson wished he could join the party downstairs, but he
had work to do. 'Oh, well,' he thought, 'another
deadline, another dollar.' It was cold outside, so earlier Mark
had turned on the heater. Now it was too hot in the upstairs
den, so he opened the window to enjoy the cool, winter breeze.
Getting into his work and listening in on the party downstairs
through the widely open door, he suddenly heard a slight, breaking
sound. He thought that maybe one of the guests had accidentally
dropped a glass. He was just about to get up from his chair to
see if he could help clean it up, when he saw a masked person
standing in front of him. Mark hadn't heard anyone come into
the den. The masked person held a sharp object in one hand just
above Mark's head. Then the object was thrust into his chest
and straight into his heart. The perpetrator took off the mask,
and Mark with his last dying, breath, saw who it was. The last
person he would have thought would kill him.
Chapter I
Within minutes, the murderer made it look like Mark had had a
heart attack while opening the window and fell forward onto a
spike just outside the window, breaking his watch (after it was
set back half an hour). 'The weapon will not be found,'
thought the murderer, 'because, by the time anyone sees him, it
will have disappeared forever.' And, just like that, the
murderer (and the mask) disappeared. A few minutes later, Liz
came in to check on her husband.
"Mark?" No response. "Mark, are you all right?"
Still no response. Liz walked over to him, turned him over and
screamed.
Chapter II
"He appears to have been stabbed, but there was an unusual
amount of liquid around the wound, possibly water, diluting the
blood and cooling the body, making it harder to discern the time
of death," said the coroner.
"No hints that could lead to any sort of intended demise,"
asked the detective Liz had called. She hoped he knew what the
coroner would say.
"You mean murder? No, so far as I can tell, he had a heart attack
and fell on the window spike. Completely a natural death... sort
of."
"But, shouldn't you check for a possible murder? Couldn't
he have been stabbed?"
Disch was starting to get on the detective's nerves. "Go
away kid, okay? It's an open and shut case, so quit tryin' to
ruin my day." Svei Disch, a friend of the Samson's, and an
investigator for hire while finishing college, wasn't convinced.
He was sure that Mark had been murdered, and he was determined
to find out who did it.
Mark and Liz had been married for 15 years, and poor Liz was not
taking his death well. As she left the morgue, the reporters
swarmed about her. The death of the well-known magazine writer,
Mark Samson, was a big event, and all the periodicals wanted the
story. The police held back the crowds of reporters so Liz could
pass through on her way to her house. Though she was to stay
at the home of a close friend, she still had to gather a few basic
necessities from the home of her late husband. Svei tried to
catch up to her but the crowds paid no attention to him, closing
in after Liz, and leaving him in the rushing sea of reporters.
Chapter III
Svei Disch returned to the Samson home. As he went up to the
house, he paused to take in the situation. He knew something
wasn't right. He sighed and looked up. He saw an uneven area
where an icicle had been. Another icicle suddenly fell from the
roof where it had hung. It made a slight rut in the snow on the
lower roof where it landed. Svei noticed that it was a smooth,
clean break, not like the jagged break of the one next to it.
They both happened to be just outside the bedroom window,
right next to the den. He then proceeded to searching the whole
house, top to bottom, for anything that could tell him who had
killed Mark. He found the following evidence.
With this list, Disch went to pay a visit to anyone
at the party who might have wanted to kill Mark Samson. After
two hours of questioning the people who were at the party, Svei
Disch knew who had killed Mark. Before he took the sad responsibility
of exposing the killer, Svei sat down on a park bench to review
his facts and to check to see if there was any possibility he
was wrong. He came up with the following relevant clues:
Svei hated himself or pushing to find the truth,
but he also hated one of his dearest friends for what she made
him do.
Can you tell who did it?
Svei rang the doorbell, and when Liz answered the
door, he asked if she could call together all the present residents
of the house for the revealing of Mark's killer. In five minutes,
the group had gathered. Svei needed them only as witnesses and
insurance that he couldn't be wrong. Through the group was there,
he spoke directly to Liz. "I know who killed Mark, and so
do you. Soon everybody will know who did it. Do you want to
tell the people who murdered your husband, or shall I?"
Liz looked shocked and aghast. She said to him,
"I don't know what you're talking about." Svei was patient
and replied, "You know very well who Mark's killer is, but
for the sake of the group, I will tell you who it is. You killed
your husband, Liz."
Marcus, the head of the household where they were presently located,
and where Liz had been staying, jumped up in outrage. But, Svei
had become stone, his hand rose swiftly to silence Marcus, who
sat back down. When Svei again spoke, there was an unusual set
to his voice, a deep tone of command they had never heard before,
and it quieted the hushed whispers that had been going on since
he said that Liz had killed her husband.
"All the evidence points to you, Liz," he continued.
"You are the only one who had the chance, you had to be
the one."
Svei's face softened and Liz fell apart. Leaning on him for support,
she sobbed. He spoke calmly, soothingly, calming her down. When
her sobbing subsided, she spoke softly, confessing everything.
"Fifteen years I loved him. With all my heart. But in the last
few years, he had been getting home later and later, showing all
the signs. I knew he was having an affair, but I loved him, so
I endured. But, I finally had had enough. He came home so late
one night that I didn't see him until I got up the next day.
At the party, I pulled out a few items I needed: my old cat woman
Halloween costume and an old ski mask. I wasn't quite in control
of myself, I didn't want to kill him, but something else was inside
me, and I could feel it drive the icicle into his chest. Then I
panicked, so I covered my tracks."
Svei had lost two of his closest friends in the past week; one was killed, and the other did it. Elizabeth Myra Samson got 15 years in the federal prison and 5 more as a worker in a preschool, and stayed with her sister-in-law.
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