“So you went to London. Hmmm ...,” detective Henry Cornwall asks Alfred Bates, the famous detective.

“Oh yes, it was an adventurous experience … considering I thwarted an assassination attempt during my trip!” Alfred Bates replies.

“I never heard anything about an assassination attempt in London!”

“That’s because the details were never given to the media,” the detective clarifies.

“I want to hear about it,” detective Cornwall says as he grows restless. “Who was the target? How did you make the attempt unsuccessful?”

“I was invited for dinner at the duke’s palace,” Bates begins his story. “I will not name the person for I took a vow of secrecy, okay?”

“Sure. Go ahead!”

Bates sits down before giving out the details, “The duke had a party where he had the who’s who of London — from the Queen’s cousin to her secretary, everyone who should have been there — were there.”

“What about the assassination attempt?”

“Relax my friend, relax,” Bates tells his friend. “My suspicion of not-all-is-well were confirmed when one of the stewards approached the duke and told him that they had an imposter in the kitchen. The duke failed to realise the severity of the matter but thankfully, the chief of police was consulted and he asked me to intervene.”

“Who was the imposter?”

“In due time Henry. I went out with the steward to find out that the imposter had struck another steward — a very tall guy — from behind and robbed him of his clothes so as to mingle with other stewards,” Bates continues.

“On which side did the steward fell?” Henry inquires. “Did that help in solving the case?”

“No,” Bates says, negating his friend’s theory. “It was the direction of the blow that actually helped – the steward as hit on the left side!”

“So?”

“So the imposter was left-handed …”

“Being a left-hander is very common nowadays Bates.”

“But in a room full of VIPs and with a handful of stewards, it wasn’t,” the detective replies.

“What did you do next?”

“I asked all the stewards to convene into an adjoining room and then proceeded to the duke, asking him not to drink anything.”

“Why?”

“The imposter went to great measures to disguise himself as a steward; stewards serve drinks in such parties. Had he wanted to poison the duke with food, he might have struck the chef, right?” Bates asks his friend after completing his explanation.

“Good point,” a somewhat satisfied Detective Cornwall tells his friend. “So where did you find the imposter?”

“He was smart as I had expected and as I had presumed, he ditched his steward uniform to mingle with the crowd.”

“Then you lost him?”

“Nopes … his height gave him away.”

“How?”

“The steward he struck was quite tall; since he was struck high on the head, I assumed that the person who hit him was either of the same height or taller. All I had to do was to look for the tallest guy in the room and there he was — looking straight at me with fear in his eyes,’ Bates says as he explains his theory.

“That’s smart, very smart!” Henry remarks.

“The other stewards ran after the guy who didn’t know what hit him. When we interrogated him, he claimed to have hatched the assassination plot while in mental hospital. He had escaped the hospital a couple of days back and wanted to poison the duke and then go back to the hospital to have a solid alibi.”

“Why the duke?”

“Because two years back, he tried to steal some documents from the Duke’s study and was sent to prison on his complain. In prison, he faked being a mental patient and two years later, he found his chance to execute a near perfect murder,” Bates points out as he concludes his side of the story.

“He didn’t bank on one thing though …”

“What?”

“… on my friend Alfred Bates being there to catch him!” Henry Cornwall remarks as the two men laugh heartedly.

Published in Dawn, Young World, June 18th, 2016