November Lake: Teenage Detective (The November Lake Mysteries) Book 1 (2 page)

“
He definitely came in and went out of the window,” Kale said,
seeming agitated. “You wait here for Sergeant Black while I go
after him.”

“
The killer didn’t enter the room or escape from it via the
window.” I said, stepping away from the bed, and taking hold of his
arm.

“
Nonsense,” Kale said, yanking his arm free. “The bedroom door
was locked. How else did he escape? He must have gone out of the
window, November.”

“
Look, I’m just as upset as you are, but we shouldn’t go
rushing off without fully understanding what has happened here,” I
tried to explain.

“
Somebody smashed a coppers skull in, that’s what has happened
here. And whoever did it has escaped through that window,” Kale
snapped.

“
That’s what the killer wants us to believe,” I said, heading
across the room to the broken window. The wind was blowing hard
outside now and making a shrill whiny sound as it blasted about the
eaves. My long hair blew back from off my shoulders.

“
Look here and here,” I said, pointing at the window ledge.
“There isn’t any glass. Shouldn’t there be glass on the windowsill
and on the carpet if he smashed the window to break in?”

“
But I heard the sound of breaking glass,” Kale reminded me, as
I reached down and picked up the discarded torch.

“
You also said, you heard a scream first, right?” I said,
switching on the torch.

“
Right,” Kale said, watching me.

Careful
not to cut myself on the jagged windowpane, I shone the torch out
of the window and into the darkness. At once, the wet grassy ground
below began to twinkle as if showered with glitter. “There are the
broken shards of glass,” I said. “Don’t you think that is
suggestive?”

“
Suggestive of what?” Kale said, peering over my
shoulder.

“
That the window was broken from inside,” I said, stepping back
and switching off the torch.

“
Which only proves that the killer fled by smashing the window
and climbing out,” Kale said, puffing out his chest.

“
There are no footprints in the ground beneath the window,” I
said, placing the torch down on the desk. “If the killer had jumped
from such a height, surely he would have left some impression
behind in the ground. And besides, there isn’t any
blood.”

“
I can see plenty of blood,” Kale said with a grim look,
hooking his thumb in the direction of the bed.

“
There isn’t any blood on the broken shards of glass around the
window frame,” I explained. “I barely leant out of the window to
shine the torch, without coming close to cutting myself or at least
snagging my pyjamas. Inspect the glass for yourself, Kale. There
are no drops of blood or any kind of cloth for that matter. You
said yourself, that you heard a scream,
then
the sound of breaking
glass.”

“
So?” Kale asked, his eyes searching mine.

“
So why did Anne scream?” I asked him. “Did she turn and see
the killer at the window? Did the sight of the killer’s face
disturb her so much that she let out a cry? If so, why then would
he smash the window? And if so, did he then climb in, kill her,
then flee again, in the time it took you to rush from your room and
start smashing in the door? On being discovered, wouldn’t the
killer have just fled? And how did he get up to the window, there
is no drain pipe?”

“
Okay, okay,” Kale said, raising his hands as if admitting
defeat. “The killer didn’t come in the room via the window. But
that means Anne knew her killer, as she must have willingly let him
into her room or I would’ve heard the struggle at the
door.”

“
You’re right,” I said. “Anne did know her killer, but she
never let him in. He let himself in.”

“
So he left by the door then, before I came out of my room?” he
said.

I went
to the door and rattled the lock. “But it was locked from the
inside,” I reminded him.

“
Perhaps the killer struck Anne, then fled the room? Being only
semi-conscious and fearing that the killer might return and finish
the job, Anne staggered across the room, slipped the lock then
collapsed onto the bed,” Kale said rubbing his stubble coated chin.
It sounded like he was clawing sandpaper.

“
No,” I said. “Anne was struck just the once on the bed and
that was enough to kill her outright. She never got up from that
blow. If she did, wouldn’t there be a trail of blood on the carpet?
The only blood is the spray against the wall by the bed where she
was struck.”

“
So who killed her then and how did he get in and out of the
room undetected?” Kale sighed with a shrug of his
shoulders.

I looked
across the room at Kale. I fixed him with my bright hazel eyes and
whispered, “Constable Griffin murdered, Anne.”

With his
eyes bulging in their sockets, Kale looked at me and said, “Have
you lost your freaking mind, November? You can’t go around accusing
a cop of killing a cop. That will be the quickest way of getting
yourself busted right out of here.”

“
He killed her,” I insisted.

“
How? Why?” Kale breathed his eyes still wide and face now
pale.

“
I knew he liked Anne,” I started to explain. “Over the last
few weeks he has been flirting with her. You would’ve had to be
blind not to see the way he was drooling all over her.”

“
Just because Griffin thought Anne was hot, doesn’t mean he
murdered her,” Kale said, his voice low, almost a
whisper.

“
She tried to tell him that she wasn’t interested,” I said. “I
heard Anne tell him that she was engaged.” I looked over my
shoulder at the photograph on her desk amongst her revision notes,
then back at Kale.

“
I still don’t see how you’ve made such a giant leap between
Griffin chancing his arm with Anne and murdering her,” Kale said,
running one hand through his brown messy hair. “What is it that
you’ve seen in here that I haven’t?”

Without
breaking Kale’s stare, I raised one hand and pointed up at the
ceiling. Kale looked up and swallowed hard on seeing the covered
loft hatch.

“
All of these rooms are connected via the loft,” I said,
looking at his upturned face.

“
How do you know that?” he asked.

“
On my second night here, I was woken by what sounded like
scratching and clawing in the roof, but it soon faded away so I
went back to sleep. But the following morning, I couldn’t help but
remember how my sleep had been disturbed, and fearing that there
might be an infestation of mice in the loft above my head, I
decided to investigate. I lifted the hatch and peered into the
loft. It was then I discovered that each of these four rooms on
this floor has a hatch leading up into the loft space. I checked
for any signs of mice but couldn’t see any, so I closed the hatch
and dropped back into my room.”

“
So you now think what you heard that night wasn’t in fact mice
but Griffin,” Kale whispered as if pieces of a jigsaw were slowly
coming together in his mind.

“
Yes,” I whispered back, slowly nodding my head.

“
But what was he doing up there?” Kale asked me.

“
He was spying on Anne,” I said. “And that’s what he was doing
tonight. He was watching her from the loft hatch as she was getting
ready for bed.”

“
You can’t know that for sure,” Kale said, pulling me close so
we couldn’t be overheard.

“
I can’t be sure, but what I’ve seen suggests that’s what
happened,” I told him.

“
What have you seen?” he asked with a frown.

“
We know that the killer didn’t enter or leave the room by
either the door or the window. So there was only one other way
possible and that is the loft. Agreed?” I said.

“
Agreed,” Kale nodded.

“
So this is what happened,” I began to explain as I slowly
stalked about the room. “Constable Griffin liked Anne more than
perhaps he should. He had become infatuated with her. I had seen
him on a number of occasions harassing Anne. But each time, she
told Griffin to take a hike. I could see that he was angry at her
constant rejections of him. I bet he would lay awake at night
unable to get her from his mind. Perhaps it was on one of these
nights that Griffin noticed the hatch in the ceiling of his room.
Just like I had, he pushed it open and discovered he could climb
from his room via the hatch undetected and crawl through the loft
space. On the first night he must have lost his bearings as he
scrambled about in the dark, and that’s what I heard. But the next
time, he took a torch, and once he had worked out the lay of the
loft space, he soon discovered the hatch that was cut into the
ceiling of Anne’s room – after all there was only four to choose
from and one was his. Then in the middle of the night when he
suspected we were all asleep, Griffin would slide back the hatch
and spy on Anne as she slept. But tonight, just like you, Anne
stayed up late to revise for the upcoming exam. Her notes are
spread all over the table where she left them. Believing that Anne
was asleep and he was safe to pull back the hatch, Griffin peered
down into her room. Anne was undressing for bed when she looked up
to see Constable Griffin’s pale face leering out of the darkness at
her.”

“
How do you know that she was getting undressed?” Kale cut in.
“You make it sound like you too were watching her.”

“
While you were examining the window, I peeled back Anne’s
duvet cover – just an inch. There was a lot of blood, but I could
see her naked shoulder,” I explained.

“
But she might not have been like you and worn pyjamas to bed,”
Kale said.

Feeling
my cheeks turn warm as I blushed, I crossed my arms over my chest
and looked at Kale.

“
No, she was undressing when she was startled by a sound above
her. She looked up and saw Griffin watching her. Not wanting to be
seen by him, she turned away. That’s when you heard her scream,” I
said staring at Kale.

“
She could’ve already been in bed when she was struck from
behind,” Kale suggested, glancing over at the body.

“
When I peeled back the duvet, I saw a large bloodstain on the
underside where it had soaked up the blood, which suggests that her
body was covered after she had been attacked,” I
explained.

“
Why did Griffin break the window? That only drew more
attention to the fact that there was an altercation taking place in
this room,” Kale asked me.

I
shivered in the draught that blew in through the smashed window,
and looked at my own cracked reflection that stared back at me.
“Hearing Anne’s scream and knowing that he had been discovered,
Griffin dropped through the hatch and into the room. In fear, Anne
turned away from him. To prevent her from screaming again, Griffin
hit Anne once over the back of the head and I’m guessing he used
his torch. He would have had this in his hand. There is no other
weapon in the room that I can see and he wouldn’t have brought one
with him as I don’t believe his intention was to murder her when he
crept from his room tonight. Constable Griffin had other things on
his mind – he just wanted to watch.

“
Realising that he had killed Anne and wanting to make it look
like some intruder had broken into her room and murdered her,
Griffin smashed the window. Then, hearing you, Kale, bolt from your
room and start banging and thumping on the door, he tried to escape
back through the hatch, but he couldn’t reach it. When I was
inspecting the room earlier, I noticed that the armchair had been
moved and positioned under the hatch,” I explained.

“
How did you know it had been moved?” Kale asked me.

“
Look here,” I said, crouching low again, and pointing at the
floor. “There are indentations in the carpet, where the feet of the
chair had once rested. This suggested that the chair had recently
been repositioned so somebody could use it to stand on so as to
reach the hatch in the ceiling. My theory was proved right, when I
discovered a boot print on the back of the white police shirt Anne
had hung over the back of the chair. After putting everything I had
seen together, I knew that it was Griffin who murdered Constable
Short tonight.”

Kale
looked at me, a numb expression drawn over his now tired looking
face. “That was freaking awesome November Lake. How come I didn’t
see all that?”

“
You did, Kale, but you just didn’t see how it all fitted
together,” I said. I hadn’t wanted to show off – that had never
been my intention. I had always
seen
things – the smallest of details
– and it was just a case of fitting each piece together until I
could see the whole picture. Looking at Kale, I said, “So what
now?”

Before
Kale had had a chance to respond, there was a shuffling noise above
us. At once we both looked up at the hatch. My heart raced in my
chest and my throat felt dry. Griffin had been listening to us the
whole time as he hid in the loft space.

“
Come down from there, Griffin,” Kale barked.

The
shuffling came again, but this time louder. We twisted our heads on
our necks as we followed the sound of Griffin crawling away above
us. Kale raced from the room and out onto the landing as he tracked
the sound. I snatched up the handcuffs from Anne’s discarded
utility belt and followed Kale out onto the landing. The noise came
again and it sounded like someone or something was being dragged
across the ceiling.