The Murder of Flora Something

By Helder Oliveira

If you were a hotel guest and when entering your room you found a dead body lying beside your bed, would you scream? If yes, why would you scream, for fear, surprise or just for calling the attention of others? Would you sleep in that room again?

This was what happened to a hotel guest. When returning from school to her hotel, she saw a dead girl in her room beside her bed. The dead girl was Flora Something. Who killed Flora Something? And why was she killed in Ms. Marta´s room? Or was she killed somewhere else and then taken to that particular room?

Well, follow detective Alfa Zero's investigation on this fascinating 20-page short story as he tries to uncover the truth and tracks down the murderer of Flora Something.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Helder Oliveira
• Release date: Dec 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386854494

Helder Oliveira

My name is Helder Oliveira (Helder de Jesus Ferreira de Oliveira) and I am an Angolan citizen. I write poetry, detective short stories and other short stories in Portuguese and English. I wrote my first poem (an acrostic poem in Portuguese) when I was 17 and a student. I have written several poems and detective and other short stories in Portuguese and English. In fact, one of my passions in life is to write and read poetry and detective and other stories.  I’ve been working mostly as a teacher and translator in Angola. My hobbies are the Internet, reading, writing, listening to SW radio and walking. I have no proper time of day or night to write; I write when inspiration comes. One of my favourite quotes is, “Live your day as if it were the last of your life”. The two qualities that I like most in a human being are honesty and simplicity. The two that I most detest are racism and dishonesty. My favourite day of the week is Saturday and I have two favourite months, which are June and December. I have two favourite writers: the British writer "Agatha Christie" and the American writer “Irving Wallace”. My favourite poet is the Portuguese poet, “Bocage”.  When I read such beautiful poems like, for example, the poems “IF” by Rudyard Kipling; “Maternity”, by Alice Meynell; “The Raven”, by Edgar Allan Poe; “My Heart is Heavy”, by Sarah Teasdale, or "O suspiro" and "Em Cinzas se Desfez Teu Corpo Brando" by Bocage... When I read these poems, or when I read any poem that is beautiful, a poem that touches my senses, I feel beauty engulfing my soul and at those moments I see life farther beyond the insignificant pettiness of this world, and I feel then that life is worth living. There’s no doubt that poetry is one of the most beautiful things in this world. Again, when I read such best-sellers as “The Pigeon Project” by Irving Wallace, “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd” by Agatha Christie, or “The Boy Slave” by Kola Onadipe, for example, I feel that some people came to this world just to make such beautiful things to please others… I think that reading a beautiful poem or an interesting book is one of the greatest pleasures in this world!

Book preview

Table of Contents

The Murder of Flora Something

The Murder of Flora Something

(Fiction; apart from place names (if any), all components are fictitious.)

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There are crimes of passion and crimes of logic.

The boundary between them is not clearly defined.

Albert Camus

The most difficult crime to track,

is the one which is purposeless.

SirArthur Conan Doyle

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A KEY IS MISSING.

Every weekday (Monday to Friday) for the last three months, Ms. Marta has been getting at her hotel at around 12:00 o’clock and has been asking Mr. Sulano, the front-desk reception clerk, for her room key.

Likewise, every weekday (Monday to Friday) for the last three months, at around 12.00 o’clock, Mr. Sulano has been raising his arm to the key-rack. And, automatically, almost without looking at the rack, has been moving his hand directly to number 9, taking the key out of the rack and then handing it over to Ms. Marta, while saying, Here is your key, madam.

This has been a routine procedure for the last three months and it will be for the next three months as well, as Ms. Marta plans to stay at the hotel for a period of three more months. In fact, Ms. Marta is staying in the city temporarily, doing a six-month language course. Every morning at 7.30, she closes her room, goes to the front desk, leaves her room key there, goes to the dining room to have breakfast and then goes to her language school. At 12.00, she is back at the hotel, asks for her room key, goes to her room, takes a bath and then goes to the dining room to have lunch.

Therefore, that day, as usual, Ms. Marta entered the hotel at about 12.00 and asked Mr. Sulano for her room key. Mr. Sulano raised his arm to the key-rack as usual and, almost automatically, his hand fell at the number 9 hook. Then, as Mr. Sulano did not feel the tact of the key against his hand, he raised his head to the rack, and he found that the key was not there. He turned to Ms. Marta and asked, Are you sure you left your key here this morning?

I am quite sure of that. I remember giving it to you.

Oh, do you? It's not at the rack, Mr. Sulano said as he looked again at the key-rack but this time sliding his eyes over the whole rack. Did I leave it somewhere else?  I had to go out to town this morning for about two hours but I don't remember taking any keys with me.

Maybe it’s with one of the persons that clean the rooms, Ms. Marta suggested.

Oh, yes, I’ll ask Ms. Pam. Ms. Pam was the head of the staff.

Mr. Sulano dialled a number on the phone dial and asked Ms. Pam if someone had cleaned room number 9 that morning. Ms. Pam said that no room had been cleaned that morning  because the cleaners had to be absent from