My cousins introduced me to a wonderful writing exercise. All you have to do is have a rousing game of Scrabble with your friends. Afterwards, use all the words from the Scrabble game to form a short story. It’s definitely harder than it looks, but it’s a great way to get the creative juices flowing.
Below is the short story I wrote from the words of our New Year’s Eve Scrabble game. It’s the first mystery I’ve ever written, and I’ll admit I’m rather pleased with the end result!
Here were the words I had to use:
[Dreary, buds, brink, dug, Mister, we, man, meer, bee, money, scar, apace, foe, gents, teal, or, xi, sass, hood, hi, rug, tow, jet, red, quiz, bail, coal, flog, nude, pi, zone, qi]
New Year's Eve's Scrabble Game
The scene: a dreary April day, just before the darling buds had burst with colour, and the sky hung like a wet blanket above the countryside skirting London.
Our reluctant detective, Ambrose Grey, a rather surly aristocratic man on the brink of middle-age, had just dug his spade into wet soil when his bumbling butler came rushing from the cottage.
“Mister Grey,” he sputtered at his employer’s bent back. “We are needed in London. There’s been a letter; a man from Meer in the Netherlands has, among other things, had his prized bee collection stolen and he’s offering you an extravagant amount of money to have it recovered.”
“Tell him I’ve retired, Simms” Grey muttered, wiping his mud-caked hands on his knees. “Our last case gave me this, and I don’t intend to take on any more cases whilst enjoying my retirement in the country.”
He lifted up his damp pant leg to reveal an ugly scar crisscrossing the flesh of his left ankle.
Although Simms was well acquainted with the procurement of the scar and could recall the events of the case as though it had happened yesterday—running apace with highwaymen on horseback, the nobleman’s beautiful wife held captive, the brilliant scuffle with the foe in which both wit and physical bravado were adequately demonstrated, the infinitesimal turn of the head at the lady’s cry, the wicked glint of the brandished pocketknife—he knew his employer would never turn down a good case, especially if there was a handsome reward for its successful resolution.
“As you wish, sir.”
Simms bowed and left Grey jabbing vicious holes into the soil, all the while knowing the words that would come out of the gentleman’s mouth before they were spoken:
“Get the gents to bring the carriage round the front, Simms. We’ll leave for London in the morning.”
–
Next morning, as Grey’s carriage jostled from bucolic pastures to the dank fog that snaked through London’s narrow streets, the dapper curmudgeon pressed his butler for the details of the case whilst fussily refolding his teal kerchief.
“Johannes Van der Splaat, who is distantly related to William the Orange, has especially requested your services upon hearing of your deftness in handling Lord Winterfield’s case. He’s an eccentric collector of unusual things; his taxidermic bees being just one of the many oddities. It seems as though the bees are the straw that broke the camel’s back, as it were, amongst Van der Splaat’s stolen goods.”
A pause, in which Simms took a moment to adjust his wire-rimmed glasses.
“Do go on,” Grey urged gruffly. “Or shall I provide my own context with which to solve this case?”
Unperturbed, Simms continued.
“It would benefit my good sir to know that it was not in fact Van der Splaat himself who wrote us the letter, but rather; a lady, or so I shall deduce from the feminine hand …”
From the inside of his suit jacket Simms pulled a letter bearing a rather peculiar seal—that of a Ξ.
“It’s Xi, the fourteenth letter of the Greek alphabet,” Simms explained lamely as Grey glowered at him.
“I wasn’t born yesterday.”
With no small degree of sass, Grey took the letter and noticed the fine hand in which it was painstakingly written, the swooping penmanship that flourished and twirled on the paper.
In language that favoured an early-Romantic style bordering on melodramatic, the letter’s author outlined the crimes recently committed against Van der Splaat: stolen family jewels, injured henchmen, butlers suddenly fallen ill, missing bee collections and other small items around his household misplaced.
The letter concluded abruptly without a signature. Even stranger, Grey’s sensitive nose prickled with familiarity at a scent that emanated from the paper. His memory reeled back to a time long ago, to a fledgling lawyer, a bookish girl, a promising romance.
The scent of secrets spun over decades.
“Tell me, does Van der Splaat have a wife?” Grey asked, brow furrowed.
Simms twisted his moustachioed lips into a smile.
“As of six months ago. They’ve just returned from their European honeymoon tour. He’s quite advanced in years, Van der Splaat, and from my research, a rather thick-headed and tight-fisted old bachelor with an extensive and prestigious educational background and an exorbitant fortune.”
“Is his new bride a society woman?”
“Her past appears to be grand, yet somewhat tragic. Her parents were aristocrats from an old Russian family with close ties to the czar. They passed away in a train accident when she was a girl and she’s been living in London with a great-aunt ever since.”
Turning up his hood and looking out the window, Grey’s finger absentmindedly traced the seal on the mysterious letter, his mind turning over all things frugal Dutch bachelor and Russian aristocracy.
–
“Hi. Mister Van der Splaat is not in. Perhaps you should call Thursday.”
Her heavily accented voice was low and her eyes remained fixed on the ornate rug beneath her slippered feet as the detective and his sidekick were escorted into the lavish drawing room.
Mrs. Darya Trotsky Van der Splaat, the Dutchman’s young bride, was clearly not acquainted with the social conventions befitting polite English society, a point Grey noted with an eyebrow raised to Simms.
The tow-headed lady was dressed in delicate silks of the deepest red that enhanced bright the flush that had spread on her fair skin.
“I beg your pardon, ma’am,” Grey bowed once he had recovered from Mrs. Van der Splaat’s brusque manner. “Mister Ambrose Grey and Mister Elliot Simms at your service.”
Her head lifted just slightly in acknowledgment.
“We received a letter written on behalf of Mister Van der Splaat regarding some recent … events.”
He held out the letter for the lady to examine and noticed the brief look of recognition that passed over her face with inner triumph. The case was as good as solved and he would be back to puttering aimlessly in his country garden as soon as one could say secret society.
“Mister Van der Splaat is not in,” she repeated. “Perhaps you should call …”
“Thursday, yes, you mentioned that,” Grey interrupted impatiently. “But perhaps you would like to answer some preliminary questions I have that need not be answered by the victim himself but rather, someone on the inside … someone who would know the whereabouts of personal items belonging to the victim and the daily goings-on of a household.”
Simms could barely hide his surprise at his employer’s forthright manner. He could discern the suggestive tone that had crept into Grey’s voice, a tone that usually preluded a solved case. Yet the gentleman hadn’t even met the victim nor interviewed any suspects. This was highly unusual indeed.
“If you are going to quiz me, I’ll simply ask my staff to remove you from my household.”
The lady’s mouth quivered, belying her cold composure.
As if he hadn’t heard her, Grey busied himself by stuffing tobacco into his pipe and taking a stroll around the drawing room.
“You see, I have some questions for you, Darya Trotsky—” The lady bristled at the omission of her married name, “—questions ranging from the obvious, such as: why should a pretty young Russian woman care to marry an eccentric Dutch bachelor for any other reason but his reputed fortune and resources … and the imperceptible, such as: why should said Dutch bachelor’s new wife semi-anonymously post a letter to a famous detective to solve the mystery of a series of seemingly random crimes and then act most unwelcoming at his timely arrival?”
Her mouth opened and closed, then opened and closed again. She gazed imploringly at the stolid figure of Simms, as if by intuiting her confusion he would somehow bail her out, but he remained impassive.
Grey was up to something and did not appear to be bothered in the least when a young maid, clearly schooled in cheap seat theatrics, burst into the drawing room, announcing in an exaggerated Russian accent that all the coal from the household had somehow disappeared over the course of a day.
“Really, Darya Trotsky, you ought to flog your help for such a dreadful performance,” Grey sighed, lifting his pipe to his lips and sucking noisily.
“Ow!” the maid cried as she attempted to escape what would become the scene of unveiling and tripped over a decorative ottoman instead.
“Just as I suspected!”
Grey rushed over to the prone maid and pointed his pipe at her nude ankle, where a jet-black irregular marking could be seen. As Simms joined him, he saw what it was, a π.
Pi,” he whispered, and Grey nodded enthusiastically.
“Your cover is blown!” he proclaimed and approached the indignant lady of the house, whose chin was now lifted as she stared him directly in the eyes.
“To repeat what I said to Simms just this morning … I wasn’t born yesterday, and if you wanted to fabricate an amusing little detective story, you should have contacted my much less competent and completely less attractive contemporary, Sherlock Holmes.”
“He wasn’t available,” the maid offered, and the lady shot her a reproachful look.
“Of course not!” Grey resumed his leisurely pipe smoking and began to pace the length of the room. “Poor chap has probably fallen captive to the opiates once again.”
He paused, shifting his eyes from Simms, the lady, and the maid, aware that he had everyone’s rapt attention.
“But I must commend you for the lengths you’ve gone to infiltrate the Western Europe zone, marrying that crusty old Dutch bachelor like that.”
Now Simms was utterly bewildered and could bear to be kept in the dark no longer.
“Please, sir!” he pleaded, and Grey stopped him with a dismissive wave of the hand and commenced his soliloquy.
“Allow me to illuminate you, dear Simms. You see, a number of years ago, when I was a young and dashing fellow with a promising career in law, there was someone whose company I enjoyed more than yours: a young lady by the name of ‘Alice Grave.’ A serious, bluestocking kind of girl who I dreamed of one day marrying … that is, until my sheer sense of intuition caused me to believe that everything was not as it would seem.
She claimed to be an earl’s daughter from Yorkshire but I was not so easily convinced. If I had been a cheery, trusting fellow I would have married her and living in Yorkshire right now instead of biding my time in London, but alas, I had to follow my suspicious nature and it directed me to a highly peculiar secret society …”
Simms mouth dropped open and he began sputtering, as he was wont to do when Grey so deftly unveiled a mystery. A glance at the two silent ladies confirmed that his employer was speaking the truth.
“A secret society, dear Simms, comprised of remarkable young ladies who’d put the boys at Oxford to shame should they ever be allowed admission. I stalked Alice for months without her knowledge and soon found out what went on when she met other ladies for tea or bridge. An intricate web of London’s finest minds: mathematics enthusiasts, fluent speakers of Greek and Latin, young women who could breezily discuss the Chinese philosophy of Qi with their tea.
From the day I discovered this society to the present, I’ve been tracking their progress, and they’ve gone from merely meeting to taking action: spreading themselves throughout Britain and Europe, making ties with foreign men and committing all sorts of petty crimes on themselves to create diversions, diversions that would enable them to raid their husbands’ libraries, study their subject of choice, and receive the sort of education they were never allowed to obtain, because of their sex.”
At this conclusion the lady “Darya Trotsky” appeared as lifeless as a rag doll.
“Consider it a novice mistake that one of your help mailed me with your secret society’s stationary, I who have known of your ilk for awhile, in an attempt to create more diversions and make inroads in the Netherlands’ educational system.”
With uncharacteristic good humour he bade the ladies adieu, summoning Simms and singing, “One for me and none for Holmes! One for me and none for Holmes”
When the gentleman had gone, the lady turned to her fellow conspirator and wordlessly they went to the bookshelf. Pushing it open, they stepped into a hidden room.
The eyes of twenty young women were on them.
“They know,” the lady said. “Now the real work can begin.”
It’s delightful!!
Thank you Christy!