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Sergeant Spinge And The Locked Room Mystery

by Rob Nisbet

About the Author: Rob Nisbet has had over forty short stories published, mostly in women's magazines and anthologies, and sometimes using his wife's name. He has won several national short story competitions and last year was shortlisted for the Brighton Prize. Under his own name he has had several audio scripts produced by Big Finish for their Doctor Who range.

Excerpt

Sergeant Spinge ignored the warning on the cereal packet and shook out a second bowl of Precog Flakes. It was five o’clock in the afternoon, not generally a time for breakfast cereal, but it was already twenty-four hours since the latest crime had taken place and he felt the need of some inspiration.

Precog Flakes, he was assured by the blurb on the side of the packet, could increase gnomic intuition by up to twenty-per-cent, contained eighteen essential vitamins and no added salt. There was a recommended daily intake equivalent to one bowl, but this was the third robbery in as many days so Sergeant Spinge scooped up another heaped spoonful; he needed all the help he could get.

As Spinge crunched, he let his eyes wander over the clutter on his desk hoping that some unnoticed vital clue might suddenly surface in his mind and the three mysterious robberies would be solved in a flurry of logic. He smiled to himself, imagining the reaction from the good folk of Witchmarsh if he could solve these mysterious crimes before the trend continued and another work of art was stolen. He would be hailed Gnome of the year, he might be asked to open the summer fete, and perhaps Gladys from the Seven Witches Tavern might actually notice that he existed.

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