The Hanging Figure

Written by Stefanina Hill, Published on 6/26/2009

Forest View House was an isolated mansion owned by an elderly man named Mr. Howard Peters. One wild, autumn night, Mr. Peters was entertaining guests and in the small hours of the morning screams awoke the occupants of the house. Miss Lucy Smith had looked out of her bedroom window and seen the limp form of Mr. Peters hanging from one of the garden trees and started to scream.

Everyone rushed out to the hanging figure. After staring at it for several minutes however, they could see that it was not Mr. Peters himself but an old first aid dummy dressed in his clothes. The confused party made their way back to the house only to discover that a priceless painting had been stolen while they were outside.

Since the dummy and its clothing had all been taken from the house it stood to reason that the perpetrator was someone at Forest View. The matter was made more sinister by the fact that all four guests were beneficiaries in their host’s will.

Mr. Peters telephoned for the police and an Inspector, a rake thin man named Alan Jefferies, duly arrived and promptly dropped down onto the nearest chair as though the walk from his car to the door of the house had exhausted him.

The Inspector displayed his ID badge to the satisfaction of everyone except Dale whose poor vision compelled him to push forward to see properly and so tread on the Inspector’s foot in the process.

“Well,” said Jefferies, after he had ascertained that he did not have to add a hospital visit to the already eventful morning, “I think someone should explain to me why you are all gathered here.”

“It’s like this,” Mr. Peters began. “I wanted my four closest friends to gather here for the weekend as I had business to discuss with them. They are Daisy Morris, Dale Clark, Lucy Smith and Iain Potts. Daisy is my niece and she resides with me permanently; the others arrived by train yesterday evening. We all had dinner together, during which I revealed some changes to my will, and then we all retired to bed.”

“What was the gist of these changes?” Inspector Jefferies broke in.

“That there is no longer a fortune to be left to my four beneficiaries, at least not a very significant one, due to some bad investments I made. It was in the room where we had dinner that the missing painting was usually kept.” “Continue,” the Inspector said, noting that all the guests bristled visibly at the mention of their damaged fortunes.

“Why is everyone so concerned about this painting? It’s not that valuable is it?” Lucy asked.

“Very valuable, my dear,” Mr. Peters muttered.

“Well,” Lucy went on, “it doesn’t seem very fair to eliminate our inheritances when you own a pricy bit of art. Why didn’t anyone tell me about it?”

“You went to the bathroom,” Daisy explained to Lucy. “You weren’t there when Uncle told us about the painting. It was only a passing remark as it doesn’t affect the inheritance since it’s bequeathed to the local first aid school in Uncle’s will.”

“I used to do volunteer work there,” Mr. Peters explained. “That’s why I have some equipment here in the house including the dummy that was used in this awful affair.”

“I’ve been led to understand that the house was roused by Lucy’s screams,” the Inspector said.

“That’s right,” Lucy replied. “I had to get up at two in the morning to take some tablets.”

“Were the other guests aware of that?” Inspector Jefferies asked.

“Yes they were. My windows look out onto the garden and I saw what I thought was poor Howard, murdered. I rushed out and one by one everyone else must have stumbled out of their rooms and followed to see what the matter was. I had only been staring at that frightful thing for a couple of minutes when Daisy came up behind me, Dale ran up next.

It was very dark out there and all of a sudden we heard a yell and a crash. It turned out that Iain had tripped over one of the ropes used to secure what we now know was a dummy. That brought us all to our senses and we made our way back to the house.”

Inspector Jefferies looked over at a man waving shyly at him from the couch with one hand and nursing his leg with the other.

“Hurt badly?” Inspector Jefferies asked

“Very, I’m afraid,” Iain said sadly.

“Excellent,” the Inspector said, apparently unaware of the surprise in the people around him, “who discovered that it was not a real body?”

“It was Dale who first made us aware of that,” Daisy replied. “We all thought it was real. It was too dark to get a clear look at the features.”

“Mr. Peters, where were you during all this commotion?” Inspector Jefferies asked.

“As I am rather infirm, it took me a while to get myself out of bed and down the stairs. By the time I came down everyone had returned. The nearest phone is in the dining room and so I went in there to call the police.”

“We will proceed into that room Mr. Peters if you please, everyone else too,” Inspector Jefferies instructed.

As soon as the group entered the dining room a small spaniel tied up on the far side of the table began to yap frantically. He showed no sign of stopping until Daisy, who was the owner of the little creature, went over and petted him until he reluctantly quietened down.

“For goodness sake, Daisy, from the moment I woke up all I could hear was that canine racket and when I came in here to call the police I could hardly hear myself over his noise. He flies into a frenzy when he sees anyone other than you, you need to get him trained, there’s not a day goes by that-”

“Uncle, the policeman doesn’t want to know about your domestic troubles,” Daisy said. “Oh, doesn’t he? Well, as I waited for the call to be answered I looked up at the wall here and that was when I saw that the painting had been stolen.

Now, Inspector,” said Mr. Peters, “will you search the rooms?”

“No,” said the Inspector, “no, I don’t think I would like to do that, your house is exceptionally large.”

“-but”

“Besides,” the Inspector continued, “I don’t need to search the house to tell you who took the painting.”