  Mystery
This week: The Mysterious Confession Edited by: shaara
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This week, I'm delighted to be your Mystery Newsletter Editor. Where I'm going is not peaceful or pleasant, but if you write mysteries, you'll need to ponder
DEATH and how to cause it.
Because no matter, the excuse you make, the truth is that mystery stories are most often about death.
Someone dies by someone's hand.
MURDER.
But how did it happen? When? Where? How?
Today I'm going to investigate:
Confessions and what if the confessor really has nothing to confess?
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The December 8th Mystery Newsletter
The Mysterious Confession
Who, what, when, where, how, why . . . those are the questions every detective/investigator/mystery writer and reader wants to know.
That's what makes up the mystery. The clues are sprinkled here and there. Suspects are everywhere - their paintbrush mustaches wiggle with sneers and jiggled laughter.
Was it done in the living room, the dining room, the library - with a hammer, a jar of poison, a gun, a rope? -- the game of Clue always asks.
Yet what if we change that basic formula? What if we know who did it?
But we don't know anything else?
A man has come down to the police headquarters. Philip Matterton.
Philip J. Matterton. The J. he tells us stands for Jackavix.
This thinnish, partly balding, and rather sheepish man confesses. Well sort of. He tells us that he has sinned gravely. He has done something horrible, something so bad the words get trapped inside his throat. He coughs. He gags on it.
Someone brings him water. He sips it, his slender fingers, long and rather pointy, glide around the cup's rim, as if he's a blind man learning its dimensions. Then suddenly he tips it over and pours the rest of the liquid down his throat. His Adam apple bobs as his tilted head gulps it down.
The moment gives me a chance to slide my eyes over his clothes. He's dressed is a fine, good quality long-sleeved shirt - I think my wife would call the color dove gray. The top button of the shirt has fallen off. He doesn't wear a tie. No coat, either. But it's 70 degrees outside. No need for the dress pant's jacket, I suppose.
His fingers clutch the cup as if it's a lifeline. They're still traveling its rim, still measuring dimensions, still implanting shape and circumference.
Philip Matterton, I mean, Philip Jackavix Matterton opens his mouth. His tongue lashes out then retreats. He licks his lips and clears his throat. Again he attempts to explain, to elaborate about the crime he has supposedly committed.
"I did it. I'm guilty. Arrest me," he sputters, coughing again. His face darkens into red. His voice peters out. His tongue dangles. It looks like he's not breathing.
My eyes are frozen on his face. I watch as he pales and then colors into greens and blues.
"He gonna toss his cookies?" my partner, Fred, wants to know.
I shake my head, but I'm not so sure. I step back, just in case. I just polished my shoes this morning. I'm not taking chances.
The odds are that Matterton is nothing more than one of those sick souls who goes around claiming that he fastened his hands around a loved one, a neighbor, a stranger. Odds are he didn't. He dreamed it. He hallucinated. He had stray thoughts that flipped him out.
Maybe, but we'll check it out. We'll make sure.
Possibly his automobile backed over someone. Accidentally or on purpose. It happens. Too regularly, if you ask me.
"Who got hurt?" I ask quietly, my voice gentle - consoling, concerned.
Chief gives me the eye. He's not saying anything, hoping my calm manner will unravel the situation a bit more.
But Matterton doesn't answer.
"Enough of this. Why'd you do it?" a burly newcomer named Pete yells out. It's his first day with us. He doesn't know how Chief wants things done. I shoot a glance at Pete's face, then back at the Chief.
I understand where Pete's coming from. I can see in his eyes that frustration has temporarily bent aside his knowledge that we can't interrogate without the Miranda warnings.
But Chief isn't known for being understanding. He's glaring at the new man. Strangely Pete doesn't see. He's too caught up in what's happening. His gray eyes are narrowed and intent on the perp.
Matterton doesn't let the absence of the warning stop him. He's staring at the new cop, staring at him, into him, but not seeing. Matterton is looking at something else, something in his past, something that spreads horror across his face and deep into his eyes.
."I had to do it. Don't you see? I had no choice," Matterton rants on.
"Read him his rights," Chief Burster barks out, adding an angry cuss word that he's lately been using a lot.
I let the words flow out. Like a tape-recorded message they play without thought, without study or even, possibly, as in this case, without need, yet as the Chief indicated, it has to be done. There is a possibility. It is feasible that the olive-skinned, straight-nosed, and wide-lipped man with his writhing hands and spastic babble could be a perp. He could be guilty of some kind of violence, but is he?
"Where did this supposed crime occur?" my favorite cop on the beat, the lovely Susan Drogly, asks with a smile so gentle one tends to forget she can lay a man flat in seven seconds.
And so it continues. The unraveling of a crime - maybe.
Our jurisdiction averages 6.4 murders per week. Not bad when you consider that a city like Los Angeles has twice that many. Of course, you also have to figure in the unreported crimes, the ones that never get called murder, the ones deemed accidents or natural death.
A city - any city has too many rats all living together. Rats purge their numbers. They clean out the weak, the disagreeable, the ones that don't share, the ones that like to fight too much. Rats kill each other. We all know that.
But what about Philip Jackavix. Matterton? Was there a crime? Did he do it?
Every mystery is a tangled web of knots. We don't know who, what, where, how, or why. But we will. We'll follow the rope or the gun or the beaker of poison, follow it into the kitchen, the laundry room, the library -- and then we'll know.
If he did it.
If he's guilty.
If there even was a crime.
My challenge this month is for you to leave out THE DEED. Let it be the missing clue. Can you write the tale? I dare you.
Adieu, mystery writers. Adieu.
S h a a r a
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Featured Items for
the December 8th Mystery Newsletter
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#630874 by Not Available. |
Can you write a mystery with aliens? This author is very convincing. Maybe dust is the secret ingredient for spaceship power.
Helen felt dumbstruck. She clearly saw what Harry had been talking about but just didn't believe her eyes. The dust was back with a vengeance. It was practically half an inch deep. She slowly drew her chair over and sat down. "What the....?" she mumbled as she timidly reached out to touch the dirty-looking stuff.
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This is an intriguing tale of a murderer and author. Careful, it's marked 18+
I called it a thriller, they called it evidence. As it happens, it's about a lawyer, trust accounts and millions that simply vanish. In my book the lawyer is innocent, but no one believes him. In my life the lawyer was guilty, but no one believes it. They think I did it.
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#1706988 by Not Available. |
Read this piece and you'll fall right back into high school! It's great fun and a really good read.
Holly and I walked in silence. Random conversations were going on behind us, but I had my game face on. This was going to be serious. The air was thick with anticipation, or at least I hope that's what that feeling was. I had a bean burrito for breakfast, and sometimes they didn't sit right with me.
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The family is gathered in the parlor for the reading of the will. Who did Mrs. Oveltree and why?
Attorney Jackson Willmont shuffled the files he had removed from his briefcase. The five gathered in a rough semicircle in the study looked occasionally at him, and frequently out of the corner of their eyes toward the crouching side table. Never did anyone turn toward the conservatory, scene of Mimi's ugly and painful demise.
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#1581212 by Not Available. |
I liked this one because the ending was so unpredictable. It totally went in a tangent, in fact, from the average detective tale. See if you don't ride the rollercoaster upside down when you read it. LOL
I finally came to the conclusion; this whole thing was a hoax. "Cherchez la femme", look for the woman, that's what I needed to do. "Yeah, the girl was the key", that's where I could find out the truth about Angela Divine.
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| | | Invalid Item
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#1693956 by Not Available. |
Here's a bit of a mystery - about a stolen identity. Sure, I stuck an alien into it, but . . .
The police politely knocked, but even so, one of them drew a gun. The other turned to me and said, "Step back, ma'am. We'll handle this."
Except they didn't. Oh, they talked to the guy, all right, but then they ordered me to show proof of my identity.
"I live here," I stormed, but apparently that wasn't enough.
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Comments and Questions
from the Nov 11th Mystery Newsletter
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alockwood writes:
There are plenty of mysteries out there. The trick is figuring out how to solve them.
Very true.
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billwilcox comments:
Damn it, Jim! I'm not a doctor, I'm a veterinarian.
As always, I love your sense of humor, my friend.
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Markymark  says:
Hello, loved your newsletter.(He also asked that we all read and comment on his story, but then he deleted it before I could share it with you. Sorry about that Mark.)
Thank you. You are the ONLY person out of 265 readers who commented on my editorial and therefore, the only person who seemed to appreciate the newsletter.
Ergo, I have decided to go back to my novel writing, leaving the writing of newsletters to the other editors (all of them wonderful) who each month do a dynamite job of entertaining and encouraging us to write, write, write.
Adieu, adieu, adieu.
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Mystery: December 07, 2010 Issue [#4117]
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