Who Dunnit Part 2

 

Two nights ago, strange events happened in Crawick and four local children were being blamed for them. Determined to prove their innocence, they turned into detectives to unravel the mystery…

 Who Dunnit Part 2

Next morning, four children slipped out of two houses, unbeknown to their parents who had grounded them for their potential involvement in the pranks and vandalism that had mysteriously occurred around Crawick two nights ago. Lily, Matthew, Katie and Amilia met in secret, half-way up Millers Brae to discuss a plan for proving their innocence to their parents and the villagers.

“Ok,” whispered Lily, “Me and Amilia will interview the suspects and victims, and you two,” she pointed at Matthew and Katie, “can check out where the trip wire was hidden.” Everyone nodded silently and Lily added, “Meet back here in half an hour.”

 Matthew and Katie continued up the icy hill while Amilia and Lily slipped down – taking care not to land on their bottoms. When Katie and Matthew finally reached the top of the hill, Katie knelt in the snow, pointing to a thin line where the soft snow had been parted. “This is where your mum’s washing line was stretched across the road.” Matthew gasped and said, “Incriminating evidence! Look at those weird footprints! It looks like someone’s been wearing tub lids on their feet!” Katie clapped her hands excitedly. “Well done Matthew!” And she quickly snapped a shot on her phone of the strange, curved rectangular shapes that were scattered around the offending area.

The next half hour passed fairly quickly and the children were feeling rather proud of themselves as they met again. “Well, we have found out a good amount.” said Lily, puffing out her chest. “We know that Bob, Wilma’s next door neighbour, went for a walk at 6:30pm to the Dumping Stone and back and his snowy footprints corroborate this.  There didn’t appear to be any other shoe marks on the road which would suggest that he was the last walker until 9:30am, next day, when Wilma tripped and fell - considering that it stopped snowing at 6:00pm last night. So, either Bob nicked our washing line and used it as a trip wire or someone sneaked along when it was dark and everyone was in bed. It was placed between 6:30pm at night and 9:30am in the morning. Still no leads on the upturned flowerpots or the swings dangling from the lampposts.”

Katie sniffed disapprovingly and began accusing everyone and anyone that she could think of who may have stolen her swings, before crossing her arms so tightly that it looked unlikely that she would ever unravel them again. They still hadn’t retrieved their swings and the kindest thing to say was that Katie was cracking up. To sail the conversation out of these dangerous waters, Lily piped up that she and Amilia had also interviewed Zach who was able to shine some light on the case. Apparently, when he went to bed, 10:30pm, his big dog Ollie was white and when he woke up, 7:30am, Ollie had been spray painted pink (Zach whole heartedly blamed Amilia for this, as pink was her favourite colour and she does love to paint!) “So that narrows it down even further.” said Lily. “If we’re assuming it’s the same pranksters behind everything, then the events must have happened between 10:30pm and 7:30am next morning. But we can only see Bob’s footprints from last night, so who else could have been around?” “Well,” chipped in Matthew, “we saw really funny shapes in the snow beside the trip wire, and it looked like it could have been someone wearing tubs on their feet – perhaps to throw anyone off the scent.” “So, does this mean that we can rule out Bob then?” asked Lily. “Yeah, Bob’s not a suspect.” agreed Katie. “We can also discount Wilma, of course.” “Free again tomorrow?” asked Lily. “Yup.” replied Katie.

Lily and Matthew scurried up the hill while Katie and Amilia slipped down towards their house. Thankfully, neither parents noticed their children’s absence and they were able to sneak back inside undetected as dusk wrapped its thick blanket over the confused hamlet of Crawick.  Lying in bed that night, Lily was sure that she heard someone laughing at her as though mocking her. But the net was closing in.