Here it is… the original ending to our murder mystery short story competition…
Back in August we printed (most of) a murder mystery story by crime writer Sophie Hannah and set readers the challenge of finishing it. You can read the winning entry (as well as the beginning of Sophie’s story) in our November issue. But here you can enjoy Sophie’s original, intended, ending. Did you guess who the murderer was?…
If you missed the original story, we’ll be printing it here in full later in the month, or buy the November issue, on sale now.
‘Tell me.’ I crouched down beside her.
She stared at the square of words. ‘Edward was right. It is a palindrome, if you lay the five words end to end — ROTASOPERATENETAREPOSATOR. Lily misunderstood. He wasn’t claiming that each word was a palindrome. What a clever magic square! And to be able to make the Paternoster cross, too! It’s really rather marvellous that they found it among the ruins of Pompei.’
‘What does this have to do with Stanley’s death?’
‘All this time, I’ve wondered, Philip: what terrible things might Julia and Lily have said that day that prompted you to threaten them? Odd, isn’t it, for us both to forget? And why would my sisters savage me? I had promised to share everything equally. Lily didn’t even want Father’s money. Why should she accuse you of having gone mad unless…unless you’d reacted to something that never happened?’
‘What do you mean?’ There was a limit to how much Alice could know. She was surely unaware (or she’d have mentioned it) that Stanley had consulted me about making a new will, to make things equal between his daughters. Julia, damn her, had persuaded him that was fairer. And then, if Alice had married me as I’d hoped she would, we’d have been unnecessarily poorer. Unless something were to happen to Stanley before the new will could be made…
‘You reacted with anger to nothing,’ said Alice. ‘I didn’t forget the dreadful things Lily and Julia said; neither did you. They said nothing offensive. You needed that conversation to end: the discussion about palindromes and words that were other words reversed. You were afraid I’d tumble to the truth: that you murdered Father. That, while dying, he managed to turn over that cup of tea — and in doing so, name his murderer. The word cup, upside down, gives us the letters p, u, c. Philip Unwin-Carruthers. As you say, Father wasn’t one for setting puzzles. Your words contained an assumption: that Father turned the cup upside down, not his murderer. How could you have known that unless you were there? Unless you killed him?’
What a fool I’d been, so secure and smug in the assumption that she’d never work it out.
Well, there was only one thing for it — though Alice hadn’t yet got that far in her deductions. She soon would. What choice did I have? I was hardly about to let her leave my room and go straight to the police.
It was a terrible pity. I sincerely loved her. We could have been so happy together.
THE END
