Murder Mystery By Jack Verschoyle

Suspects

4am on Tuesday last and we’re sitting in the caff.

The wind was sweeping up the street and the customers did laff.

The coffee served was hot and cold, like ill sweats in the night

And your face was hot and cold in the early morning light.

Out back, behind the fire escape, a dodgy figure stood

And she eyed the blue recycling bins filled with pallet wood.

She eyed the blue recycling bins and unwrapped a deck of cards.

She eyed the blue recycling bins and hoped to win our hearts.

Motive

You told me you were so alone:

I say, I want to go home.

I say, I want to go to Paris,

France. I want death’s kiss.

I say, it will be summer soon

And we’ll swim in moonshine.

I say, I’ll earn at Goldman Sachs

next quarter and earn our sanity back.

I say, would you join us. Please.

I say, won’t you follow us to these

better days –

I looked into your eye:

I saw an unstitched quilt adorn

the dust atop your bedroom floor;

Your father washed his hands down by

the seaside under dover cliffs;

The toy stores lonely aisles of joy

Lined your mother’s unaccomplished bliss;

You watched them fold pork mince

Into chalky dumplings;  

Devils and saviours came at once;

They traded gifts and songs;

And none of this made sense

To you; and then you joined their songs.

Evidence

5am on Tuesday last and we’re sitting in the caff.

The wind was sweeping up the street and the customers were gone.

The coffee now was cold and warmed the hands of policemen

Who stood out in the square that night with bobby little laffs.

With mothy ironed uniforms and badges made of gold,

They rested on batons: they were as quiet as the old.

The scene ‘round which they turned that night lives folded in my sheets:

The recycling bin-eyed woman was lying blue out in the street. Jack Verschoyle studies Logic and Philosophy of Science at LMU in Munich. He is from Oxford in the UK. He speaks English, some French and more German than he did a few months ago.