I moved into a share house in Clapham in September last year. The three flatmates who already lived there interviewed me in the traditional Shallow Grave manner. They asked me quickfire questions about my job, my hobbies and my interests, and I answered with some appropriate lies that I could sort out later.
"So Emily Marple, do you drink or smoke?" one of the boys asked me.
"Oh definitely not," I stated boldly and we all laughed. "And it's Maple not Marple, you know, like the tree," I corrected.
"Do you solve mysteries?" the other boy asked me.
"Only if there are mysteries to be solved," I replied too confidently. Did I seem over eager?
"I like mysteries," the woman behind the thick glasses added, with no apparent sense of humour. "Marple," she started but put her hand up to stop me before I could correct her. "I like how Miss Marple solves mysteries." She smiled waiting for my reaction.
"I saw her on TV," I blagged. "She drinks a lot of tea." I wonder how that went down with the Christie fan, but the boys sniggered, so I suppose that was a win.
For some reason during the interview I decided that I actually wanted to live in this house. I don't know why but I really wanted that room. I wouldn't say that I would have done anything for it. But I met their approval, they gave me the nod, told me the house rules, and I got the other bedroom on the second floor, sharing that floor with Lynda, the Marple fan who turned out to be a librarian. I could imagine her shushing me over the breakfast table. I had graduated University of Bristol in August and had a job in a second tier London law firm lined up to start as soon as I was settled. I had never previously lived in London and had plans to discover the real London but was curious how things would go with the three strangers I would bunk with.
What did they think of me? The two boys who had the bedrooms on the floor below Lynda and me seemed all right. They were not going to feature in my fantasies, but they weren't too bad looking. I wondered if I looked attractive to them and if I could play on that? Time would tell. I moved my few belongings into the furnished room which was now mine and wondered how I should start to really get to know the big city.
The two boys who shared the first floor of the house, Thomas and Richard, both had a year's experience in the law, and they offered to help me out professionally if they could, which was nice.
But a girl has to look after herself. Being too aware of the gender dynamics of the house I locked my bedroom door from the first night, locked the door to the bathroom on our floor when I was inside, and I generally did not hang out with the others once I had finished eating the evening meal that we had agreed to take turns cooking. My trusty laptop proved a godsend, a source of amusement for me in the privacy of my bedroom. I hoped that my past in Bristol would not follow me to the capital. Of course there was no reason why my new housemates should find out.
We each cooked twice a week and one night takeaway, at least three of us did the cooking. Thomas swore he was useless in the kitchen, so he took on most of the washing up. That worked out, we didn't have to worry about him accidentally poisoning us or otherwise serving up something inedible. Settling in, I practised that handy Englishness of keeping my distance from the others, avoiding any awkward conversation topics. I kept my feelings to myself. Lynda the librarian did not seem interested in sharing any of her feelings and that suited me. I tried to work out what sort of figure she had under her inevitable bulky jumpers and chose to believe that she probably had some hidden charms. Of course I compared her looks with mine. I had cheekbones that she didn't. And to be frank, I knew how to dress to show off my assets. And a chic, well-fitted office oufit was expected by my profession. Not that I detected anything other than sisterly camaraderie from my housemate. I had not heard anything untoward through the wall that separated our bedrooms. But then I did sleep soundly.
At least that was how I thought it was going to go until one night, about two weeks after I moved in, I stopped in the hall when I got home after work to take off my coat. I must have managed to get through the front door and down the hall quieter than I realised, given that you had to slam the door closed and the floorboards in the hallway creaked. But I overheard Thomas and Lynda talking together in our lounge, which was off the hall, its doorway between me and the stairs. I guess they had not heard my entrance. Perhaps they were too engrossed not to notice any other house noises, of which there were many. Curious, I stepped closer to the doorway to the lounge room to hear how they interacted when they thought that they were alone.
"Lynda," Thomas asked her, "did you come into my room last night?"
She apparently thought that was ridiculous and laughed. "Why would you think that?"
He laughed nervously. "Well, I woke up in the dead of night and I was, well, somewhat hard and inside of someone."
"And you couldn't see who it was?" Lynda asked.
"Well, that's the thing," Thomas replied. "I was blindfolded and she was on top holding my hands down."
"Don't you lock your door?" Lynda asked him. I was not surprised that her response implied that she too locked her door. It just seemed a good idea.
"Of course I lock my door," Thomas insisted.
"It wasn't me," Lynda continued, "probably that Emily. She's more the type. Have you asked her?" She was pretty adamant that it was not her, and seemed to confidently dump me in it. Well I knew it wasn't me. But would the others agree? I noticed that Thomas readily accepted the assurance of this suddenly assertive woman.
"Well yes, but that's another thing," Thomas added. "When I woke up in the morning -- alone -- I checked and the door was still locked so there was no way for anyone to get in. Whoever it was would have needed my key to lock the door from outside when they left. But the key was on my dresser where I always leave it."
"Did you check the window?" Lynda asked, firing her forensic questions at Thomas without any concern for how he felt. It was like a police interview. Or maybe she was classifying things in a librarian's way. As she continued, I continued to eavesdrop.
"The window was locked too. There was no indication that anyone had been in the room. And I know what you're going to ask next, could I have dreamed it? Well, I know it was real for one reason, the smoking gun if you like. I know what it is like 'down there' after I've been in a woman. And 'down there' was very much like I had been in a woman, if you follow."
I could only wonder what Lynda's reaction to that could be. This seemed too intimate since she struck me as pretty uptight. With me she had shown a reticence to say anything about herself. Maybe that was why Thomas seemed to easily give her such details. "Sticky," he added, like it was a detail that Lynda may have overlooked.
Ignoring that she continued quizzing him, like a regular Marple. "Do you think it could have been Emily? We don't really know anything about her, and we don't know her capabilities in the break and enter sense."
Thomas laughed. "You never know what they teach in the Law Department at Bristol Uni..."
I decided that was my cue. I stepped into the living room and found them both sitting, facing each on their couches, across the coffee table, he in his suit, she in her thick jumper. Unfortunately they weren't holding china cups. "They don't teach us break and enter at Bristol Uni," I told them trying on a coarse regional accent, "but they do teach us eavesdropping."
The surprise on both their faces turned to smirks of embarrassment when they could see that I had heard everything and did not appear to be fussed about it.
"So Marple, we're sprung," Richard tried while Lynda appeared to look the other way.
"It's Maple," I corrected, hands on hips. "First thing," I told them reverting to Received, "it wasn't me. Second thing, this is a rather serious violation of you, Thomas. We need to work out how to get to the bottom of this mystery then decide what we are going to do about it. Thomas, I suppose that you would prefer to choose who your partners are and when you would like to have consensual arrangements with them?"
