I moved into a distribute house in Clapham in September last year. The three flatmates who already lived there interviewed me in the traditional Shallow Grave manner. They asked me quickfire questions about my job, my hobbies and my interests, and I answered with some appropriate lies that I could sort out later.

“So Emily Marple, do you drink or smoke?” one of the boys asked me.

“Oh definitely not,” I stated boldly and we all laughed. “And it’s Maple not Marple, you know, like the tree,” I corrected.

“Do you solve mysteries?” the other boy asked me.

“Only if there are mysteries to be solved,” I replied too confidently. Did I seem over willing?

“I like mysteries,” the woman behind the thick glasses added, with no apparent sense of humour. “Marple,” she started but put her hand up to stop me before I could correct her. “I like how Miss Marple solves mysteries.” She smiled waiting for my reaction.

“I saw her on TV,” I blagged. “She drinks a lot of tea.” I wonder how that went down with the Christie fan, but the boys sniggered, so I suppose that was a win.

For some reason during the interview I decided that I actually wanted to live in this house. I don’t know why but I really wanted that room. I wouldn’t say that I would have done anything for it. But I met their approval, they gave me the nod, told me the house rules, and I got the other bedroom on the second floor, sharing that floor with Lynda, the Marple fan who turned out to be a librarian. I could imagine her shushing me over the breakfast table. I had graduated University of Bristol in August and had a job in a second tier London law firm lined up to begin as soon as I was settled. I had never previously lived in London and had plans to find the real London but was curious how things would go with the three strangers I would bunk with.

What did they think of me? The two boys who had the bedrooms on the floor below Lynda and me seemed all right. They were not gonna feature in my fantasies, but they weren’t too bad looking. I thought if I looked attractive to them and if I could play on that? Time would tell. I moved my few belongings into the furnished room which was now mine and thought how I should begin to really get to know the big city.

The two boys who shared the first floor of the house, Thomas and Richard, both had a year’s experience in the law, and they offered to help me out professionally if they could, which was nice.

But a girl has to look after herself. Being too aware of the gender dynamics of the house I locked my bedroom door from the first night, locked the door to the bathroom on our floor when I was inside, and I generally did not hang out with the others once I had finished eating the evening meal that we had agreed to take turns cooking. My trusty laptop proved a godsend, a source of amusement for me in the privacy of my bedroom. I hoped that my past in Bristol would not follow me to the capital. Of course there was no reason why my new housemates should understand.

We each cooked twice a week and one night takeaway, at least three of us did the cooking. Thomas swore he was useless in the kitchen, so he took on most of the washing up. That worked out, we didn’t have to worry about him accidentally poisoning us or otherwise serving up something inedible. Settling in, I practised that handy Englishness of keeping my distance from the others, avoiding any awkward conversation topics. I kept my feelings to myself. Lynda the librarian did not seem interested in sharing any of her feelings and that suited me. I tried to work out what kind of figure she had under her inevitable bulky jumpers and chose to believe that she probably had some hidden charms. Of course I compared her looks with mine. I had cheekbones that she didn’t. And to be frank, I knew how to dress to show off my assets. And a chic, well-fitted office oufit was expected by my profession. Not that I detected anything other than sisterly camaraderie from my housemate. I had not heard anything untoward through the wall that separated our bedrooms. But then I did sleep soundly.

At least that was how I wondered it was gonna go until one night, about two weeks after I moved in, I stopped in the hall when I got home after work to take off my coat. I must have managed to get through the front door and down the hall quieter than I realised, given that you had to slam the door closed and the floorboards in the hallway creaked. But I overheard Thomas and Lynda talking together in our lounge, which was off the hall, its doorway between me and the stairs. I guess they had not heard my entrance. Perhaps they were too engrossed not to notice any other house noises, of which there were many. Curious, I stepped closer to the doorway to the lounge room to hear how they interacted when they wondered that they were alone.

“Lynda,” Thomas asked her, “did you come into my room last night?”

She apparently wondered that was ridiculous and laughed. “Why would you think that?”

He laughed nervously. “Well, I woke up in the dead of night and I was, well, somewhat hard and inside of someone.”

“And you couldn’t see who it was?” Lynda asked.

“Well, that’s the thing,” Thomas replied. “I was blindfolded and she was on top holding my hands down.”

“Don’t you lock your door?” Lynda asked him. I was not surprised that her response implied that she too locked her door. It just seemed a good idea.

“Of course I lock my door,” Thomas insisted.

“It wasn’t me,” Lynda continued, “probably that Emily. She’s more the type. Have you asked her?” She was pretty adamant that it was not her, and seemed to confidently dump me in it. Well I knew it wasn’t me. But would the others agree? I noticed that Thomas readily accepted the assurance of this suddenly assertive woman.

“Well yes, but that’s another thing,” Thomas added. “When I woke up in the morning — alone — I checked and the door was still locked so there was no way for anyone to get in. Whoever it was would have needed my key to lock the door from outside when they left. But the key was on my dresser where I always leave it.”

“Did you check the window?” Lynda asked, firing her forensic questions at Thomas without any concern for how he felt. It was like a police interview. Or maybe she was classifying things in a librarian’s way. As she continued, I continued to eavesdrop.

“The window was locked too. There was no indication that anyone had been in the room. And I know what you’re going to ask next, could I have dreamed it? Well, I know it was real for one reason, the smoking gun if you like. I know what it is like ‘down there’ after I’ve been in a woman. And ‘down there’ was very much like I had been in a woman, if you follow.”

I could only wonder what Lynda’s reaction to that could be. This seemed too intimate since she struck me as pretty uptight. With me she had shown a reticence to say anything about herself. Maybe that was why Thomas seemed to easily give her such details. “Sticky,” he added, like it was a detail that Lynda may have overlooked.

Ignoring that she continued quizzing him, like a regular Marple. “Do you think it could have been Emily? We don’t really know anything about her, and we don’t know her capabilities in the break and enter sense.”

Thomas laughed. “You never know what they teach in the Law Department at Bristol Uni…”

I decided that was my cue. I stepped into the living room and found them both sitting, facing each on their couches, across the coffee table, he in his suit, she in her thick jumper. Unfortunately they weren’t holding china cups. “They don’t teach us break and enter at Bristol Uni,” I told them trying on a coarse regional accent, “but they do teach us eavesdropping.”

The surprise on both their faces turned to smirks of embarrassment when they could see that I had heard everything and did not appear to be fussed about it.

“So Marple, we’re sprung,” Richard tried while Lynda appeared to look the other way.

“It’s Maple,” I corrected, hands on hips. “First thing,” I told them reverting to Received, “it wasn’t me. Second thing, this is a rather serious violation of you, Thomas. We need to work out how to get to the bottom of this mystery then decide what we are going to do about it. Thomas, I suppose that you would prefer to choose who your partners are and when you would like to have consensual arrangements with them?”

“Something like that,” he dissembled. “although if necessary I guess I could rationalise it as a weird sort of fantasy thing. So long as it does not keeping occurring.”

“Perhaps,” I considered. “But even one occasion is still a violation.”

“But you’re not that concerned about having one experience like that,” Lynda suggested to Thomas, interrupting me. But I guess I had interrupted her. “Your issue is you would rather prefer to know who it was with?” Lynda probed.

“Something like that, too,” Thomas added, unsure.

“Is this the first time that it happened?” I asked him. Thomas nodded.

“Well, I have dinner to prepare,” Lynda huffed and left the room. “Richard won’t be home for another hour, so you two have plenty of time to solve it,” she called from the hall as she headed for the kitchen.

“What was that about?” I asked Thomas now that we were alone.

He laughed, which seemed to be his default before saying anything of substance. “She’s a bit of a control freak. I’m guessing that she didn’t like you making any suggestions to solve this that she hadn’t thought of already. You wait and see, she’ll bring home a pile of books from the library tomorrow and try to logically through to a solution.”

“And how badly do you really want to solve it?”

Thomas laughed, of course. “You know how we are in the profession. We like certainty, full knowledge of the case and all that.”

I smiled. “Let’s make a plan then. I need information. Describe the sex to me.”

Thomas wondered for a moment. “Will, it was kind of enjoyable. You know, all the sensations of of having a good time of it. Except for the helplessness.” He looked like he had discovered a clue. “It felt like I was being used by someone who hadn’t had sex for a while.”

I laughed a little. “Is that why you interrogated Lynda first?” He gave me a neutral look but said nothing to that, so I gave Thomas a look of apology and hoped that I would not be offside with Lynda. “Seriously,” I recovered, “what does having sex with someone who hadn’t done it for a while feel like, why would it feel different?”

Thomas looked me in the eye. “Have you had sex recently?”

“Well, yes.”

“Exciting was it? Who was the lucky man?”

“Some well-built hunk who bought me a drink at The Distillery after work.”

“You’re rather cheap?”

“It was an expensive drink. And he was gallant enough to take me back home to his place.”

“Was it worth it?”

“The sex wasn’t too bad at first, but nothing special.” Thomas looked at me with interest heightened. He could see something behind my eyes. So I continued. “Then, at some point his girlfriend came in and joined us.”

“Ah, I see,” smiled Thomas. He leered at me. “Or rather, I wished I’d see.”

“Very nice,” I told him. “Now let’s concentrate on you. We have a crime to solve here.” I had some ideas.

***

Lynda did indeed bring home a pile of criminal forensics books and sat with us over dinner, opening them, reading a few pages or more and then leaving them on the table or the sideboard like she was leaving clues for us that would lead us to the culprit. While she did this, I pursued my operation keeping it concealed from the others, just to be careful. At the end of the week, Thomas reported that the assaults had continued, on every second night. That was what I needed to hear to put the final part of my plan together. A few evenings later after supper, I asked all my housemates to assemble in the drawing room. Well, the living room, but I felt the reveal needed that extra bit of dramatic context.

“What are we here for, Marple?” Richard grumbled. He had already warned us that Bake had a ‘don’t miss’ episode starting soon. It was Tuesday, after all.

“Maple, Richard,” I corrected him, “you may not realise it, but Thomas has had an intruder in his room.”

Richard exploded. “Well, we have to find him in that case!”

“Actually,” I corrected him, “her most likely. He has found himself every other night inside a mysterious woman’s vagina.”

“Confound it,” Richard continued ranting, “this cannot be.”

“Richard,” Lynda pleaded, “can you stop talking like that?”

“Gadzooks, why woman? I’ve seen enough Marple and Poirot to play this drawing room scene out in a proper Edwardian manner. Especially with Marple here about to crack the case.”

“It’s Maple, Richard,” I tried again. I cursed my surname for the distraction it was in the circumstances.

“It’s actually serious, Richard,” Thomas pleaded.

“Well, how about Barnaby then,” Richard tried.

Thomas ignored him and tried to explain. “Someone has been getting into my locked room in the dead of night, bringing me to, um, life and riding me before disappearing into the night leaving no clue of how they got in or out…”

“Until now,” I finished for him, quite emphatically. The assembled housemates stared wide-eyed, so I continued the reveal. “I set a plan to catch the predator, starting with the most basic first step. I set up a spycam outside Thomas’s door to see if there was an obvious way to solve this dilemma. That’s why I have my laptop here. Let’s see what the camera caught.” I checked the connection to show the video on the TV screen.

“Is that legal?” Lynda blurted.

“Let’s ask a lawyer,” I smiled. I looked to Richard.

“I dunno, maybe,” he blurted. “Anyone else?”

“Good enough for me,” Thomas stated. “run the film, Emily.”

“But really, privacy or something, some law,” Lynda started.

I smiled at Lynda as I got the TV to recognise my laptop. She seemed to be resigned to abetting three lawyers in the breaking of some law. Although she shook her head to show that she did not really approve.

“Do we have to watch through hours of footage of nothing?” Richard complained.

“No,” I smiled as I hit play, “it’s on a motion sensor. It only records when something is happening. We should be done in time for you to watch the Bake Off.”

And so I set out to reveal the identity of the locked room bonker. At first we saw Thomas in the lit passageway. Having arrived home from work in his suit, he entered the room then left in more casual house clothes, presumably to have supper. In the next clip a hooded figure slunk to the door, checked that no one else was in the passage then opened the door. The figure kept their head down so under the hood it was hard to recognise them. They went in and closed the door.

“Thomas,” Richard exclaimed, “you didn’t lock your door did you?” Thomas shook his head. Richard shook his head at Thomas and muttered “there’s your first problem.”

On the screen, the figure exited Thomas’s room in the same surreptitious manner they had entered once again giving us no chance at identification. The video cut to Thomas entering the room again, presumably to settle in for the night. Another break until the motion sensor next picked up a movement in the passage. And then on the screen, the door opened and a figure came out into the gloom, as they fastened the loose gown that they wore. The intruder lingered in the doorway carefully closing the door. Then they turned on the hall light and we all saw who the figure was.

“Lynda!” Thomas exclaimed.

Lynda fell back in her seat, her head in her hands. Richard turned to her dramatically. “Explain yourself, woman!”

There was silence for a moment, but the evidence was so damning that Linda had no option but to indeed confess her actions to us. “I hope you forgive me. I was acting out a fantasy. I thought it would be exciting and no one would get hurt. And, well, I quite fancied Thomas but didn’t know whether he was interested in me.”

Thomas looked hopefully at Lynda. “But Lynda, I fancied you too. All you had to do was ask.”

Richard shook his head in disdain. “That isn’t what I meant. How did you get back into his room? That’s what I want you to explain.” Lynda looked away, not answering and avoiding eye contact with any of us.

I made sure I had the boys’ attention. “Oh Richard,” I explained, “I’ve worked that out. Excuse me Lynda but that was the easy bit. When she went into the room the first time, Lynda made sure the window was unlocked. Then in the middle of the night, she went downstairs, climbed up to your floor, worked her way around and then in through the window she knew would be open.”

Richard looked at Lynda who was still avoiding us. “But why then didn’t you go out the way you came in?”

I smiled. “There is always a flaw in the plan. Lynda thought she would be safe taking the easy way back up to her bedroom. And so the defect in the perfect crime. I know because I learned that from playing Batman: Arkham Knight. So there we are. Mystery solved, and fortunately nothing supernatural about it. A simple case of break and enter, as we used to say in Bristol.” I gave Thomas a knowing look. Like he could think whatever he wanted of my home town. “Now what are we going to do about this?” I looked to Thomas and then to the apprehensive Lynda who seemed ready to engage with us again.

Lynda turned to Thomas and looked him in the eyes from close range. I noticed that her eyes were watery although that did not seem to have any effect on either of the boys. Maybe they had not noticed. “Thomas, I really didn’t want to hurt you,” she bleated. A few teardrops or two fell down her cheeks, visible now behind her coke-bottle glasses.

Thomas leant in to Lynda, taking her hand in his and looked into her eyes with what seemed to me to be real affection. “Lynda, I would really like to get to know you better. Let’s start again with a more open understanding. Why don’t we go out to dinner, the two of us, on the weekend?”

Lynda smiled. “Oh, I’d love that,” she gushed. “And no blindfold!”

Thomas smiled boyishly. “Oh, I don’t know about that,” he conceded. And we all laughed.

“And Richard,” I added, “you’re in time for the start of Bake Off!”

And so the house reverted to typical after that. Richard and I had to put up with Thomas and Lynda doing the things fresh lovers do. We would exclaim how delightful it was, at least when it wasn’t too icky. They gave hints that spurred on by how they had begun, they engaged in some mild bondage and some game playing when they were alone together, but nothing they did or did not do spoilt the general well-being of the house. Richard hinted to me that I should think about hooking up with him for housemate symmetry, but he was enough of a gentleman about it that I could push back his suggestion without him feeling any slight from me.

I did occasionally hanker for a relationship. And thought whether it could be Richard. It would neat, but I just didn’t feel any chemistry. I went and had dinner with a few men, but none gave me any desire to even go so far as touching, let alone a goodnight kiss. I thought about my expectations and standards but I was happy to wait. Even the City bars after work on Fridays lost their allure. All the men seemed to look pretty much the same after I had three or four nice drinks. And they all, after two shared drinks would ask me whether I wanted to go home with them as if it was assumed that was what would happen since they had shown that much interest in me. I would look all innocent at their suggestion and ask “for what?” in a way that usually got them stumbling over their words and looking for someone who better knew the rules of their game.

Richard did not talk about what he was up to in that regard, but the impression I got was that he was in pretty much the same place as me. Waiting for someone to stand out from the crowd. About three weeks after we had unmasked Lynda, Richard appeared at my Friday night bar. I watched him do the rounds, and I’m sure he watched me too. After four or five drinks from four or five other men I accepted a drink from Richard and happily accepted his invitation to take me home. I could see others wondering what he had got right what they had got wrong. What they did not know is that after we stepped through our front door, I went to my room and Richard went to his. I thought if I was in a rut.