Secret Satan - Episode 14

Murder mysteries: a PowerPoint presentation

Secret Satan is a seasonal murder mystery in 24 episodes. When one of his work colleagues is murdered with a Secret Santa present the office Christmas party, Linus Sweet decides to try and find out whodunnit. At first it seems like the answer lies in their office's version of Secret Santra, which they call Secret Satan. But as Linus investigates, he begins to unwrap more mysteries. All may not be as it seems. In fact, this might not even be just a murder mystery, either.

Hello, and thank you all for coming.

Yes, Lem, I do have this room booked for two hours but I don’t think my presentation will take that long. I do think the Q&A might, though, because I think you’re all going to have quite a number of Qs. And some of you might have to provide the As, too.

I am getting on with it, thank you.

If I can just ask you to actually save any questions you have as we go along until the end, that would be great. Because you are going to have them as we go along, because what I want to talk to you all about is…

…murder.

Ok, the slide was supposed to change then. Who’s got the clicker? Edie, thank you, next slide please.

Murder.

The traditional murder mystery takes place in a stately home like the one on screen. A group of people - some friends, some family, some strangers - are isolated together there, someone dies, some investigating is done and finally the detective gathers everyone together in the drawing room and reveals whodunnit.

We’re not in a stately home, we’re - next slide please - here, the London head offices of Mary Meade Marple.

But it’s like one of those big houses - or even, in size, more like a village or small town from a Christie novel - our department is more like the big house, where we - at once all friends, family and strangers - work colleagues, are all gathered.

Of course we don’t have a drawing room, just these meeting rooms, where a detective might make their big revelation through the means of a PowerPoint presentation. Like this one.

Because there has been - next slide please - a murder.

Of this man, Tony Flint.

Yes, a murder, a murder, by, of all things, Turkish Delight.

Tony was a big man, with a big appetite and a big problem with heart disease. We all knew this. He used it regularly as an excuse to get out of anything he didn’t want to do. And that was anything other than sitting in the pub.

He wasn’t entirely wrong, though - as it was that heart disease that killed him. A heart attack on the night of our staff Christmas party, brought on by taking a large amount of cocaine, which as this page from the NHS website - next slide please - is a well known risk.

I know all this because I found him lying there on the floor of the gents in the pub, his face covered in white powder. What is interesting, though, is what I didn’t find.

Next slide please. It’s alarmingly easy to find stock photography of wraps of cocaine. A lot easier than finding them in that gents. Because there wasn’t one. If he had just taken a huge amount of coke and immediately dropped dead of a heart attack, where was the wrap? Where was the rolled up tenner, and the credit card to rack out the lines? There should have been there, where he dropped them when he dropped, but they weren’t.

The first thing I thought when I found Tony was that the white powder round his mouth was the icing sugar from the Turkish Delight he had been eating. Next slide please. A lot harder to find stock photography of Turkish Delight than cocaine, weirdly. A box of Turkish Delight that had been given to him as a Secret Satan present.

But I had tried a bit of that Turkish Delight when he opened it and I had noticed it had a curiously bitter taste, a taste that I didn’t figure out later reminded me of… next slide please… you guessed it: cocaine again.

Someone had replaced most of the icing sugar in a box of Turkish Delight with cocaine in the hopes that it would give Tony Flint a fatal heart attack. The question being… next slide please: who?

The whole point of Secret Satan is that we don’t know who gives which present. If I was going to figure out who gave Tony the Turkish Delight, I was going to have to figure out who gave which of the eight presents in the Secret Santa. Next slide, please.

One, the pen that was given to Ned Fine. Well, that’s easy. A pen is exactly what Ned would have wanted, especially a pen that almost certainly exceeds the Secret Satan spending limits, so that obviously came from Edie, because they’re, well, apparently everyone else knows this already, so, sorry Ned and Edie, they’re having an affair. Ok, everyone didn’t know, but now you do too, Soo.

Actually, nice segue, that leads to… next slide, please.

Two, the mug that was given to Allie, which has a quote from C. S. Lewis on it, which rather obviously came from you Soo, given your Narnia obsession. And while we’re doing the easy ones… next slide, please.

Three, the fancy tea from Selfridges that was given to Lem, who absolutely have never drunk fancy tea in the whole time I’ve known him and probably wouldn’t even if you paid him, so I would say the sheer disdain of that present suggests Ned - come on, man, you two are always bickering - and anyway it’s from Selfridges, the only place you actually shop. I thought so. Actually, on the subject of disdain, next slide please.

Four, a fashion guide given to Soo - that has to be from Lem, who has very firm opinions on how everyone else should behave that absolutely do not apply to him. See? Interrupting, Lem. Bad behaviour.

But now things get trickier. Next slide please.

Five, a book of, sorry about this, fairly crappy and obvious infographics about movies, given to me by… well, the field has narrowed a bit - apart from me, the recipient, we have: Tony, Radu and Allie. Now, it’s fairly common knowledge that I like infographics, which rules Tony out because he’d never do anything so thoughtful, but that also rules out Allie who I’m pretty sure would have taste and sense enough not to pick something so shonky, so that leaves… Radu. All of which I can say because he’s not here obviously. He’s not family, as evidenced by his terrible gift giving.

Next slide please.

Six, a pomodoro timer given to Edie by - well, here I can cheat because I know this wasn’t me, so it must be Allie or Tony and it definitely can’t have been Tony because, see above - it’s actually thoughtful and helpful, so yeah, definitely Allie.

Which leaves us with two presents remaining, the Turkish Delight and a guy who hasn’t made an appearance yet: next slide please.

Seven: Secret Satan. Well, actually that one’s easy, actually, because the person who gave that was me. I gave it.

But here’s where things get properly tricky, because I didn’t give Secret Satan to Radu, Allie, because of course I didn’t. I gave it to Tony.

Tony Flint who must, then, have bought the one remaining present. The Turkish Delight, to give to Radu, but which ended up being given to him. Tony Flint gave himself his own murder weapon.