The One Who Dunnit

By Sydney James

A short thrill with a twist.

Since my husband of twenty-five years left me for another woman, I've slowly started to build a new life for myself in a small cottage by the sea. It's going well and as retirement approaches, I'm now looking forward to a better life than I ever dreamed of. A better ending that even I, as an accomplished author, could ever have thought up. 

And I do think up the most amazing things.

I'm a thriller writer, you see. Murder is my thing. You wouldn't know it to look at me. A little old lady. Gray hair and wrinkles. But I have thirty-seven fictional murders on my conscience, and I'm working on another. 

Nothing is going to get in the way of my happy ending. 

The One Who Dunnit - A Sydney James Short Thrill

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alba Publishing
• Release date: Jun 2, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201566159

Book preview

The One Who Dunnit

The One Who Dunnit

Sydney James

Contents

The One Who Dunnit

About the Author

Also by Sydney James

The One Who Dunnit

I’ve been sitting at my desk for hours, contemplating murder. I do that almost every day. Today, I hatched a particularly good plan, and it so swept me away that when I reach for my teacup, I find that the tea has gone ice cold. That startles me out of my reveries, and I notice that the room is just as chilly as the tea. Pulling my other hand away from the keyboard, I realize that I can barely bend my fingers.

This is alarming. It is only October, and even though the temperature has dropped significantly over the last couple of weeks, it’s going to get a lot worse when winter gets here for real. This is not good. My arthritis gets worse in the cold, and if I can’t type, I won’t be able to work.

I need to watch the temperature in the room, but when one of my killings gets me into a flow state, I lose all track of time. Murder is my métier, as they say. You wouldn’t believe it to look at me, but this little old lady is a thriller author, with 37 fictional murders on my conscience.

Pushing my desk chair back, I make my way over to the small stove that doesn’t quite manage to keep the cold and damp out of my tiny cottage. The fire has almost gone out while I was lost in my work, and I add a couple of small logs, holding my hands out in front of me to warm them. This time of year, I have a fire going from the time I get up in the morning to when I go to bed at night, and it still never seems enough. And I don’t even sleep that many hours per night. I don’t need to, not at my age. How I’m going to make it through the winter, I don’t know.

The stove is simply too small for a cottage this size. And the cottage is tiny, so that should tell you a thing or two about my stove. The real estate agent that showed me the house back in April made some joke about how I could use matches as firewood. I laughed, but mostly out of politeness.

You do that, don’t you? With people you don’t know. Laugh whenever you can tell that they’re trying to be funny, even if they’re not actually funny. Anyway. I laughed at the lame joke, and didn’t think about what it meant. How was I supposed to understand what that meant? It was April, and spring was early this year, so winter was the last thing on my mind. Besides, I’m new to the countryside. New to homeownership. I’ve always lived in inner-city apartments, where someone else has been in charge of the basic necessities such as heat and hot water. Don’t get me started on the hot water.

But if I don’t finish this book,