Mystery: The Isherwood Case Files (Mystery, Suspense, Crime, Murder, Detectives, Fiction, Unsolved Mysteries, Mysteries, Thriller, Intense, Drama)

by Johnny Scotland

  “I need you, Robert, to go and talk to Martin Taylor and to find out a little bit of the history. Be discreet and try and find out what caused the end of his wife's career. This may have a bearing and before we arrest her, I want her to think we have no idea at all.”

  “I shall come with you and talk to his wife. Charley, want to sit in on this?” said Isherwood.

  “I sure as hell do.” said Charley, ready to learn from this master of crime solving. Neither he nor Robert had even thought of it being Martin Taylor's wife.”

  Chapter 5 – A Home Visit

  “Rational discussion is useful only when there is a significant base of shared assumptions.”

  Noam Chomsky

  “Okay” said Isherwood. “I assume we are all on the same page. Robert, your job is to try and find out about Yvonne Taylor's career and why it was stumped so early. I need you to bring this up gradually into the conversation, so get chatty with the guy.”

  He turned to Charley. “Our job is to talk to Yvonne Taylor and find out what she knows about her husband's work. See if there is any resentment. See if there is any financial benefit to her husband retiring. See if we can examine her thoughts on his career and glean any kind of sentiment which would lead to murder.”

  Having agreed their different aims, they made toward the house, where the car was now parked outside the front door. Upon ringing the doorbell, the maid answered and affirmed that both Mr. and Mrs. Taylor were present and would see them shortly.

  “Hello again.” said Mr. Taylor in greeting, his wife close behind him.

  “Indeed hello.” said Isherwood. “We need to talk to both you and your wife separately today because there may be things that your wife has noticed that you haven't and it's important that your close link with the deceased is eliminated. I certainly do not think you had anything to do with the murder, Mr. Taylor, so please don't concern yourself over that.”

  Mr. Taylor showed a visible sense of relief. Having established that he had nothing to fear, he led Robert into the dining room, while Yvonne Taylor walked Charley and Isherwood through to the drawing room. “This is very mysterious.” said Mrs. Taylor. “Can I offer you anything to drink?”

  Isherwood was quick to answer, in case Charley got there first. “I could really do with a nice glass of water.” he said.

  As she left the room to call the maid, he quickly glanced at the certificates on the walls of the house. It was clear that she was a fully qualified surgeon and had passed her exams over 30 years ago.”

  When she entered the room, she saw him looking. “That's a long time ago.” she said.

  “I never knew I was being entertained by someone so talented.” said Isherwood.

  “So, detectives, how can I help you?”

  “ I need to ask you your whereabouts on the day of the murder.” said Isherwood.

  “Of course inspector. I was here. Martin went to town early in the afternoon and I didn't see him again that day.” she said. “He said he had business, and his business was always something he kept to himself. I remember him telling me that he was jealous of Isaac because Isaac had such good ideas. It annoyed him to extremes and I think he wanted to take the credit for this last novel himself.” she said.

  “How do you mean?” asked Isherwood, knowing full well where this was leading. Martin's wife was hanging him out to dry, though what she didn't know was that her prints proved her story to be fabricated.

  “Can you imagine the poor man. He has always been a failure all of his life.” she said, looking as if she had some sympathy for him. “This last book annoyed him to the point of distraction. It was so cleverly written. It was almost as if Isaac was taking over the reins and I know that Martin wanted to put an end to the association Isaac had with him.”

  “When you say put an end to it, what do you think your husband was capable of?” asked Isherwood.

  “This time, his anger was something I had never ever seen before. I truly believe that my husband was capable of killing the poor man. When you visited, as you might have discerned, I was not surprised at all.” she said coolly. “In fact, I half expected you.”

  “And why would your husband put his lifestyle at risk to be found guilty of murder?” he asked.

  “I think they call it vanity.” she said with a cold defiance in her voice that gave away her own sentiment more than she would have wished.

  Chapter 6 – An Admission of Guilt

  “With integrity, you have nothing to fear, since you have nothing to hide. With integrity, you will do the right thing, so you will have no guilt.”

  Zig Zigler

  When they arrested Martin and Yvonne Taylor, the arresting officers said nothing to them on the way into the station. They were instructed to take both parties to separate interview rooms in silence. Martin Taylor sat fidgeting with his hands, while Yvonne Taylor looked mildly irritated by the indignity of having to come to the station. Isherwood left them alone in their interview rooms for a short while. He liked observing people. It gave him the edge when it came to interviews.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Taylor.” he said, as he laid the file down onto the desk. So far, she had thrown blame in her husband's direction. She was obviously hoping to get him put away for the murder and live out the rest of her days in comfort. The royalties from previous books would be sufficient for that. The murder by her husband had to stick for her plan to work, though she hadn't shown a real flare for homicide. She had left a trail behind her that was irrefutable. The fingerprints, the confirmation that it was she who drove the car that day, the fact that the manuscript was still missing spoke volumes.

  “I want to come straight to the point. We are arresting you for the murder of Isaac Howard.” he said.

  Her look of shock was obvious. “Not me” she said, “him. It was he who did the crime.”

  “Then explain to me please why your fingerprints were found on the victim's computer. Explain to me please why people saw you driving the car in the vicinity of the murder on the day in question. Explain to me please why you would let your husband be arrested for something you know him not to have done.”

  “You have no idea what it's like.” she gnarled like a cat. This was the first time she had shown her true colors. “I have had to live with his mistakes all of our married life. This was my chance to get back at him, my chance to live a life instead of being stifled by him. He never wrote one of those books and had all the fame. I used to be a good surgeon. He stole that from me.”

  “I am losing your meaning, Mrs Taylor. How do you feel your husband stole your career?”

  “We had only been married a short time. He lost everything we owned on speculation. I was worried about this while operating on a young man, who subsequently died. I lost my job because of it.”

  “And you've been harboring these thoughts all these years?” he asked.

  “I wanted him to take the consequences of his actions. I wanted him put away where he belongs. I don't belong in jail. He does.”

  “Then are you denying that you placed the scalpel into Isaac Howard's neck?” he asked pointedly, placing the shocking photograph in front of her.

  She sat still. In the cold light of day, with the evidence weighed up against her, she knew that nothing could be done to save her now. Yes, she had done it in a premeditated manner but he had provoked her, grabbing attention from the work some stranger did. She wanted him to be accused of killing him out of jealousy for his talent and that hadn't worked.”

  “I cannot deny it.” she said.

  Taking the statement from her was easy after that. She watched as her husband walked past the door though there was little sign of regret on her part, except for the regret that her plan had backfired. She watched as the detective shook hands with him. She watched also as the detective placed the missing manuscript into the hands of her husband. Biting her lip with a regret that he had escaped her little trap, she held her head in her hands and knew that she had been beaten.

&n
bsp; Later that evening the detectives gathered and took down the notes from the wall. The case was no longer a cold case. Now, it was in the hands of the justice department and no longer their concern. “How did you know it was her?” asked one of the detectives.

  “You'll learn. Observation does most of the work, but in this case 'hell hath no fury like a woman scorned' is actually what gave me the idea in the first place.

  Mystery 3:

  The Isherwood Case Files

  The Case of the Dead Man with No Identity

  By Johnny Scotland

  Chapter 1- John Doe

  “Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.”

  Orson Scott Card

  The calls had been coming in thick and fast over the past week and the homicide department were inundated. There had been all kinds of different reports, though many proved to be fruitless. Today's call was a little different from the norm. A report had been filed about a death which had occurred at the Larramas Hotel, a prestigiously well known establishment that catered for the rich and famous.

  The disturbing find was made by a member of the staff, who upon emptying the laundry chute, found the body of a middle aged man and reported it straight away to the police department.

  “Don't move a thing.” they had advised her. She had never seen someone dead before, and it didn't take much warning to keep her away from the area.

  “Don't worry sir, I won't” she told the officer.

  The staff at the hotel were disturbed by the finding. This was something that was not needed at a time when the hotel was booked up to such an extent.

  “We may have to seal off certain areas.” the police warned when they arrived, although the Manager was not that welcoming.

  “I need my guests to feel at home here.” he said, “so the smallest amount of disruption would really be appreciated.”

  Sealing off the area of the laundry chute was a simple enough task and was in staff only quarters, so shouldn't disrupt the guests too much. However, when the detectives arrived on the scene, together with the forensics team, they needed to know which floor the body had been placed into the chute.

  Isherwood made his way up to the fourth floor, inspecting each laundry chute entry as he went. On the fourth floor, his fellow detective could see marks within the inside of the chute. “It must have been from this floor.” he stated.

  As Isherwood looked into the chute, he was no so convinced. Yes, the man's body had hit the side of the chute on it's way down, although from the projection of the blood spatter, it would appear that the body had been placed in the chute at a higher level and had merely hit the side of the chute at this level.

  They continued up the stairs, looking into each chute for signs which indicated that the body had been placed into the chute on a set floor, though until reaching the sixth floor, there was little record of what had happened. On the sixth floor, there were marks on the carpet which were conducive with a body having been dragged along the corridor toward the chute. It had been here that the man had met his demise.

  Walking along the corridor, it wasn't clear which room the body had been dragged from. The corridor was fairly quiet and having picked a quiet time of day, anyone could have dragged the body from one end to the other without anyone taking any notice. Isherwood hated the impersonality of hotels such as this. He shuddered at the thought of the poor man being so thoughtlessly disposed of.

  “This is a real spooky end to have.” said Charley when they returned to the ground floor. The body was in the process of being removed. As a body bag was zipped up, they could see that the man wasn't that old – perhaps 45-50 and Isherwood took note of the man's features. There had been no identity found on the man, so for the time being, he was considered as a “John Doe.”

  “I've never dealt with a John Doe before.” said Isherwood.

  “You'll get accustomed to it.” said Charley, though Isherwood hoped that this would never become true.

  “People's lives are worth more than that.” he said, “and whoever stripped this man of his identity and his life will pay for it.”

  He was sincere in his thoughts, as no man deserves to die alone and unrecognised.

  Chapter 2 – The Hotel Register

  “Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them.”

  George Eliot

  It irked Isherwood that a man could die with no identity. It irked him more than he could say and as he went home that night, there was a feeling in his mind about the guy's last days on this earth. How can someone leave a body with nothing at all to show for the lifetime that the man had lived? It scared him that anyone should end up this way. In Britain, it hardly ever happened and he made a promise to himself that not only would he find out who this man was, but he would find the reason for his death and ultimately his killer. The other guys in the office had shown apathy, as if they were used to this kind of thing happening. The very fact that the name “John Doe” existed proved to him that life in this country was considered too cheaply.

  Telephoning the hotel for the video footage, Isherwood made his way to retrieve these on the way back to his apartment. These would give him food for thought. They had questioned many of the hotel room guests and most had been eliminated from the inquiry. He was fortunate to have a good memory when it came to faces. Tonight, while Charley was watching an American football game, he would be going over the footage to find the man with no name, and to make sure that his face would be publicised sufficiently to give him the name he deserved. He would have to have filled out the register and that was the first video footage that he would observe. The hotel were not that happy that the sixth floor had been sealed off completely at least until forensics had searched the whole area for clues. They didn't like losing money.

  Over a plate of French fries and a microwaved pizza, Isherwood began watching the footage that would give his victim a name. He needed that name before he could look further afield for the guy's killer. There certainly were good looking people at this hotel, though the dead guy wasn't one of them. He actually wondered what brought the guy to a hotel like this, where plastic people seemed to congregate. When he found the footage with the victim showing, he slowed the video down to see if it was possible to get a good frontal view of the man and it was. Tomorrow they would be able to circulate the image and then it should be plain sailing. They would also be able to put a name to the man since he had logged the exact time of day that the man had signed into the hotel. Asking the public for information was always useful and they would trace his movements over the past 24 hours.

  The hotel register told him much of what he needed to know, and getting the guy on the desk to look up the specific time was easy enough. The manager had told staff to work with the detectives in order to get the case off their backs. They had a hotel to run and having the police on the premises didn't do much for their street credibility with celebrities.

  Ian Bradshaw was the name of the man and the address was equally useful. It was 76 Somerset Drive and tomorrow, he would take a ride out there to see the family. Tonight, he was at least content that there was no more a John Doe lying in the hospital mortuary. He had given the man back his identity.

  The cat purred and Isherwood instantly knew that this wasn't a message of endearment. The cat needed feeding and it was his duty now to think of the living, rather than dwelling with the dead. As the cat stooped to eat his dinner, Isherwood felt satisfied that the case would soon be something that was boxed away on a shelf of closed files. It was just a question of motive, perpetrator and the reasons behind the stealing of the man's identity. That would be fairly straightforward. In fact, in a case such as this in the United Kingdom, he had taken precisely 62 hours to put the murderer behind bars.

  The hotel register had revealed more about the man than the manager may have thought possible, since the area in which the victim lived was one of those areas where people who haven't quite made the big time l
ive. He remembered seeing it on a tour of the city, and it struck him as ambitious and a little pretentious. All he needed to do now was link the man to whoever had placed him into the chute and another story of a life would be closed. It gave him a great deal of satisfaction that he had indeed found his niche in life.

  Chapter 3 – Home Sweet Home

  “The words of the Greeks are born on their lips, but those of the Romans in their hearts.”

  Cato

  In the morning, at the address which he had discovered the previous night, Isherwood knocked at the door of a dead man. Of course, there was no reply. He didn't expect one and, as he let himself into the house, he could see clearly that the man who had lived here indeed had his heart in other places. Instead of being content with his lot in life, the pretentious nature of the décor gave away so much about this man's life. Trying to reach the heights, he had invested in furnishings which were too ostentatious and out of place in this setting. It was as if you were either born with class or imitated it badly and this man did the latter.