Murdoch Myserties

Chapter One - Murdoch Mystery’s


Murdoch Mystery’s was nothing more than a small office located on the east side of town. It was dirty and untidy but still however remained the number one private detective agency in the entire city. They had been known for many years now and it was common knowledge that this place was ran by an ex-cop by the name of Hanzi Murdoch. Large and powerful, he was everything you would expect from a police officer. His dark hair, and mean look made him someone you could trust with your problems, this was exactly the idea. There were three people in the office of Murdoch Mystery's on this particular day, a day that is now known by many as the start of the Holy Smoke case. The first person in the office was Hanzi himself, he sat in the only window in Murdoch Mystery’s looking over at a forest that was planted there many years before. The second was a man with sweat and fear pulsating through his body, a deep pain began to start in his chest. Hanzi could see this man about to knock on his door, but he did not move from his position in the window instead he sat still and turned back around the trees. The third person in the room Hanzi could not see and neither could Mr Macfarlane, he was hidden but Hanzi knew exactly where he was and the reason for him being there. His name was William Malone. Mr Macfarlane took a deep breath and walked into the offices of Murdoch Mystery’s.
“I need your help”, Macfarlane screamed, “It’s urgent”, Hanzi noticed the man was clutching his chest. But didn’t seemed flustered by the sweaty image of Mr Macfarlane in front of them.
“You need a doctor, I know a great one. I’ll call him now”, Hanzi went to lift the phone to call the doctor but the receiver was stolen from him and smashed back down.
“No I don’t need a doctor I need help, my wife is dead. I think he is after me”, Will was watching the scene unfold through a crack in the door. He could see the urgency on the man’s face, his wife hadn’t been dead long. Did the police know?
“Who is he? Who do you think are after you?”, Hanzi said, the man began to turn his wedding ring on his left hand
“I’m not sure, but if it is who I think it is then nobody can help”,. Mr Macfarlane began to look petrified now, his skin seemed to be bubbling.
“My wife woke up the other day with a crucifix burnt into her chest, that has to be some kind of warning doesn’t it? I think she was cheating on me, I think God has killed her”, his face was serious. There was now blood coming from the man’s shirt, he had cut his chest.
“How did she die?”, Hanzi said slowly, his eyes watching Mr Macfarlane’s. Will was also peering through the hole into the man’s face.
“She tried to breath but she couldn’t she was telling me she had some chest pains before and then suddenly she couldn’t breath at all”, Will could sense now the shortness in breath of the client who sat before them.
“You woke up this morning, your wife had died and the mark had appeared on you. You think God wants you dead?”, Hanzi said after a silence, it was out of the blue but it seemed the man had been expecting it. Death was all that was on his mind now.
“I have done bad things, maybe I deserve to die. I have stole, I’ve cheated maybe this is God’s will. Maybe this is how I was always supposed to die. Clutching for breath and in pain, in horrible pain”, Mr Macfarlane was breathing slower now, they were deeper and more intentional. He didn’t have long left. Will burst out of the wardrobe and stood in front of the two men .
“Who? Who is that?”, Mr Macfarlane said, the shock seemed to make his breathing worse. He panted and prayed for air but none came, he fell down dead.

Will and Hanzi looked at the body for a few moments before saying anything, Will spoke first.
“Did I do that?”, is what he said, he was only fourteen, he couldn’t have a man’s death weighing down on him.
“No, he would have died anyway, you heard what he said. It was God’s will”, Hanzi didn’t believe that God had done this to him, neither did Will.
“A poison? A slow acting one that takes twenty four hours to kill?”, Will pondered aloud as Hanzi listened on taking notes, the body of Mr Macfarlane still lay in front of the two. They had become so accustomed to death that they almost forgot he was there. Eventually they realised he was and called two ambulances, one to their office for Mr Macfarlane. Will quickly hid in the wardrobe again at their arrival as to not be seen by the paramedics. The second ambulance was to the Macfarlane home. To see if Mrs Macfarlane could be saved, she could not. They asked the paramedics one question,
“Did she have any markings on her? Anything on her chest?”, they showed him a picture they had taken of the body with a clear crucifix on the skin.


That night the two of them returned home, a little bit more rattled than earlier. They had both been part of strange cases and dangerous ones but never had they seen anything like this. Will thought it was the smartest piece of criminal work he had ever seen, he thought all this on the long drive from their office to their home. It was a large place located on the other side of the forest that could seen from the office window. It looked luxurious the type of place that would be filled with a huge supply of gold and priceless jewellery. It had been once but now it was filled with old case notes and useless evidence. This however didn’t stop the robbery, it looked like the perfect place to rob. The two of them stepped inside and saw that the house was in total disarray, tables had been flung, chairs broken but more importantly for Will, photos smashed.
“They have must have realised that everything in this place was worthless and decided to smash the place up instead”, Hanzi said looking around the house and beginning to call the police. Will didn’t speak, he was bent over on the floor looking at the remains of his photos. They were not pictures that could be replaced or retaken they were pictures that he held most dear to his heart. He began to cry, the pictures were of his parents before they died in the great fire. The fire had taken everything from Will, his home, his friends and his family.
“It’s okay Will, I have...”, Hanzi began but Will called out in anger interrupting him.
“Its not okay. They’re gone I can’t get them back. That’s it they’re gone”, Will began to piece back together the puzzle that was his ripped photos. The picture case they were in had cut through each of them and left them tattered and wrecked. Hanzi didn’t speak and simply walked over to a side of the living room that was a mess of papers. Hanzi moved them aside and lifted up a floor board, it came away easily as if he had done done a dozen times. Will’s attention was now drawn to the man and to the little black box that lay in his hands.
“Come here”, Hanzi said, will softly placed his picture down on the floor and walked over to Hanzi. Hanzi opened it up inside was a flurry of photos, gold and some things that Will couldn’t describe but assumed they were sentimental in some way.
“I put everything that matters to me in this box, everything. It doesn’t leave this box unless I am alone or I am with someone I trust. After the fire, the only things I owned were the things left in this box. I knew that if your pictures were destroyed that you would be heartbroken so I did something. I don’t want you to be mad”, Hanzi had never sounded more like a child in his life, he was a huge six foot man but to think he would upset Will, his friends, unthinkable.
“I won’t get upset what is it?”, Will said, in truth he had no idea if he was going to get upset or not. Hanzi pulled out pictures, ones that were identical to the ones that Will had scattered around the house and in his room. Will hugged Hanzi immediately, they had never hugged before.
“Thank you, are these the originals?”, Will said, his eyes beginning to tear up again, this time with joy.
“When you moved in I photocopied all your photos, I put the photocopies in the frames because I knew how you’d react if you lost the originals”, Will breathed in a deep sigh of relief, he knew that trusting Hanzi was a good idea.
“Do you remember our first case Hanzi, I wanted to be a detective but nobody would trust a child would they and”,
“And I had just been fired by the police, I remember”, Hanzi reached into his black box and pulled out a picture of this very moment the two of them had shared.
“My brother took this look”, Hanzi passed the picture over to Will. It was five years ago, Will was ten and was being towered over by the great size of Hanzi. Hanzi was still in his police uniform, he wore it for two weeks straight after he had been fired in the hope that somehow they would offer him the job back.
“Did you ever think back then that we would end up on a case like this, people dropping dead in our office with religious symbols burnt into their chest”, Will said to Hanzi while he was examining the picture. Hanzi smiled,
“I didn’t think we would end up in case like The Martian one”, Will joined him with a smile. The Martian case was a string of sightings of Aliens around the town,, the culprit happened to be some very realistic halloween's outfits that year.
Hanzi began to thumb through the black box, examining first a gold watch that his father had owned, then a picture of himself and his brother as children. They were about five in the photo but at a guess you would think they were full grown men. Then Hanzi picked up another picture, this one was not one of his own but in fact pone of Wills. It was a picture of four people, one was his father, a well respected navy official, his mother, a florist, Will at a much younger age with a Deerstalker and a pretend pipe and the last person. The last people Hanzi had no idea who she was at all,
“That’s my sister”, Will said, he had noticed that Hanzi had been looking at this picture with great interest. “She disappeared not long after this was taken, no leads, no clues, no nothing. She was just taken, I’m sorry I don’t want to talk this”, Will quietly walked away toward his room, Hanzi sat in his arm chair staring at the photo.


The city’s local library was located on the east side of town, it was placed right in the middle of the restaurant section of town. It had at one point been a local attraction with people coming from far away to see the mass array of reestaurants there. After the great fire though the town was left with two restaurants, both of which nobody much enjoyed. Chaplin’s, which was more of a cafe than a restaurant anyway. The other being McLaren’s. Angelica had just fount herself leaving Mclaren’s on this particular night after an awful meal, she had expected awful food however as did everyone in Mclaren’s. The pnly reason she went there was because she was in a rush and it was right next door to the library, she made her way next door to the library with a large pile of books under her arm. Angelica was noticed throughout town because of two major factors, it was a very small town and two she had a very distinctive look. The fact that her large curly hair seemed to fill up most of the space around her made her very noticeable, so it was no surprise that an array of people waved and smiled at her as she walked towards the library, what was surprising was on this particular day she didn’t smile back. She arrived at the library to see the place looking like it always did, empty. Not only were there no people, there were hardly any books either. She walked over to the nearest wooden bench that was as always completely empty, plucked the books from under her arm and began to thumb through them all. She was riding books on the history of the town by the title, “The Town That Time Forgot”, it was well known that the town she lived in was out of sync with the rest of the world. It was even left out of most maps just to hide the embarrasment of the towns that had to border them.
“Everything okay there? Anything I can help with?”, said a voice that Angelica didn’t recognise. She looked up to see a boy not much older than her, looking down on her reading.
“Ermm I’m okay, sorry do I know you?”, she said, as she eyed the boy’s face.
“Oh sorry how rude of me, I’m Jake Elwood. I work here now, just for the summer although I may make it permanent I am really enjoying it”, she recognised the name Elwood immediately. The only person she had ever seen working here before was Sylvia Elwood, a little old lady who would stand by the counter and peer at people from over her glasses. They must have been related.
“I see you’re interested in the town’s history, I have a wonderful book about why the town is named...”, Jake began but was interupted by Angelica.
“You don’t have any books here about the history of the town, I checked yesterday”, Angelica said, finally putting her book down.
“Well they’re not on our shelves, my grandma the woman who works here. She has been getting books delivered for years but she is too weak to put them on the shelves so I have been starting to put them out. I have just started putting out all the biographies in a section over there but we can go in the back if you like and pick out a book?”, Jake said a helpful smile, Angelica had always thought that old Sylvia had been hiding books from the public for years, not because she was too old to carry them though, more out of spite than anything.
“Okay”, Angelica said, scooping up her books and following Jake past the staring figure of Sylvia and into the back room.

As they both entered Angelica was met with a flood of books, all of them piled up in large rows that nearly reached the tall ceiling.
“It’s a bit of a mess, I am just rearranging them all right now. I think town history is over hear, is there any time period you are interested in? When it was discovered? The Crows that lived her for so many years and their whereabouts now?”, Angelica was not interested in any of these things, there was only one thing she was interested in.
“The Great Fire, anything you have on The Great Fire”, Angelica said, it had been on her mind for years but more so in the past few weeks than ever before. There was soon to be annual ball to remember those who had died and she was going to go, she had to.
“We have a few just here actually”, Jake said, pointing at one of the largest piles of books. Every one was on the great fire, she had been hoping to find just a single book and here she ad enough books to last her a lifetime. Carefully so the rest of them wouldn’t fall she plucked one from the centre of the pile.
“Thank you, this is really going to be helpful”, she said smiling at Jake, but Jake looked back at Angelica dejected and dreary.
“You lost someone too didn’t you, I lost my dad”, Jake said finally, his eyes looking at the floor.
“Both my parents in the fire, but I am reading this because of my brother”, she didn’t know why she was telling Jake this, she trusted him but she didn’t know why.
“My brother went missing a few weeks before the fire, nobody knows why. But I got a letter from him, two days ago. He told me that something awful is going to happen to the town again, something even worse than the fire. He told me I had to learn about the fire because it was important to saving everyone. I don’t know why”, Angelica paused, she had something else to say but stopped. Jake could see the words on tip of her tongue,
“Go on”, Jake said finally.
“He told me to find help from a boy, a boy called William Malone”.