Death by What?

What You Know

Beverly Markum had lived in the small apartment for more than three years. Not long after her husband passed, she sold their home and most of their furniture to move into a quaint complex for people over fifty. She didn’t want to worry about cutting grass or cleaning gutters any longer. At 57 years young, she thought she still had a lot of life to live and she had intended for it to be as care free as possible. Now she is dead in that care free apartment and you need to figure out what, or who, killed her.

Ms. Markum was not a social person. In her younger years, her friends had been the wives of her husband’s friends so when he passed, she lost touch with most of them. These days she was content to watch episodes of British television that she borrowed on DVD from the local library and play card games online with people she would never meet in real life. She left the house only when she needed to do so, which was usually once each week. Within a block from her apartment was a plaza with a pharmacy, grocery store, dollar store and a library annex. She never needed anything she couldn’t get right there. Always a healthy person, she scheduled a doctor’s appointment once each year during her birthday week and she rarely had any reason to go otherwise. She took no prescription medication, but a handful of over-the-counter pills were a daily routine.

Entering the Apartment

As you walk through the front door, there is a smell. It is not a smell of decay, but of illness and urine. Walking through the front hallway, nothing appears out of place. A woman’s purse is on the hall table. There is a paper receipt from the local grocery store lying under a pair of car keys next to the purse. It is dated exactly one week prior to today. Under the table a pair of tennis shoes and a pair of sandals are neatly placed. Neither pair has any water on them, even though it has rained each day for the last three days.

On your left is the kitchen. The most noticeable thing you see is a chocolate cake on the stove. It is uncovered and half eaten. It doesn’t appear that the cake was even sliced. Instead, a fork was on the cake plate with a bite left on the tongs. Lines from the fork can be seen in the uneaten portion of the cake as if someone was using the fork to eat directly from the cake. In the sink is a partial bowl of soup broth and noodles and a spoon, along with assorted measuring cups and spoons. Additionally, there is a sauce pan coated with a brown substance that has hardened around twenty-seven bullet shaped tablets. The kitchen is decorated in sunflowers; dark green and bright yellow.

A trash bin with a plastic liner is in the middle of the floor and the cabinet door under the sink is standing open showing a space where the trash bin was normally kept. The bin contains eight empty water bottles, several wads of paper towels, a chicken noodle soup can and the shells of three eggs. It also contains the packaging from a bottle of chocolate covered iron tablets with an expiration date seven years prior to this year.

Across from the kitchen is the entrance to the small and simple bathroom. The shower curtain is open and inside is a collection of daily hygiene products: shampoo and conditioner for color-treated hair, Noxema face cream, gardenia-scented body wash, a women’s razor and a blue face cloth. The bathtub and all of the products are dry, as are the two blue and white bath towels hanging on the bar.

There is no medicine cabinet, only a mirror hanging over the single vanity. On the counter of the vanity is a soap dish and toothbrush holder, both displaying their intended products. Also on the counter is an opened box of pink bismuth tablets, seven of which are missing from the bubble pack laying outside the box.

Above the toilet is a shelf containing paper products and clean towels on the middle shelf, a scented candle (not burning) on the top shelf and on the bottom shelf are pill bottles and a pill container with a compartment marked for each day of the week. Three compartments are empty and four remain filled. Within the display of medication, you find multi-vitamins for senior women, aspirin, ferrous sulphate tablets, omeprazole tablets and black cohosh, along with other items such as pain relievers, band-aids, anti-itch cream and an assortment of typical first-aid items. Upon inspection of an occupied compartment of the pill container, it includes one pill of each of the first five mentioned.

The seat of the toilet is up and the bowl is appropriately full of blue-tinted water. Next to the toilet is a small waste can. Inside the can is an empty blister pack appearing to come from the same box of pink bismuth tablets found on the vanity. Also in the can are two used toilet tissue tubes. There are no rugs on the tile bathroom floor.

A small closet in the bathroom contains an apartment-sized washer and dryer. Inside the dryer is a quilt and three blue bath towels. They are clean and dry. Inside the washing machine is a set of yellow sheets and two bathroom rugs. They are damp and beginning to smell of mildew. A small table in front of the washer contains an opened pack of laundry detergent pods, a half used bottle of bleach, liquid fabric softener and a nearly full box of dryer sheets.

The bedroom is small, but neat. The bed has been stripped of its blanket and sheets and only a bare mattress remains. On the floor beside the bed is a pile of clothing that appears to have been worn and not laundered: two days’ worth of pajama pants, t-shirts, panties and socks.

The Body

As you continue to the living area of the small apartment, the deceased Beverly Markum is lying on the floor, the lower half of her body in front of the sofa and the upper half of her body in front of the small end table at the end of the sofa on the side closest to the kitchen and bathroom. The end table has been tilted back towards the wall and the lamp that was on the table is lying in the floor, but the light is still burning. Also on the floor next to the table is a partial bottle of drinking water and a television remote control.

Beverly has no visible wounds consistent with a murder; no gunshot, no stabbing, no strangulation, no blood. She is wearing a pair of pajama bottoms, a t-shirt and socks. She has a dark-colored crust that has leaked down the side of her face from her mouth. The skin on her arms has a bronze tint, although her color in life had been much paler. Her pajama pants are stained where she has soiled herself.

Did You Figure Out How Beverly Died?

Between her weekly grocery trips, Beverly wanted to make a chocolate cake. She had all the ingredients, except for the icing. No worries, she had an old box of chocolate coated iron tablets she could melt down and use for the chocolate. Unfortunately for Beverly, the pills were so old that the iron from the tablets had seeped into the chocolate. Since Beverly was already taking iron on a daily basis, which she probably didn’t need since she was most certainly menopausal and no longer anemic, eating half of the chocolate cake put a lethal dose of iron straight into Beverly’s system. At six hours after ingestion, she would have started to have a seriously upset stomach. Then two or three days after ingestion, Beverly’s liver would have failed, causing her to have a seizure and die.

Moral of the story? Hit pause on the DVD and go to the grocery store. It’s okay to go more than once a week.

I hope you enjoyed this story and I hope you were able to solve the mystery, or at least had fun trying. If so, please give me a “heart” and pass along the fun to your friends. You can read more of my work here on Vocal or check out my first murder mystery novel, Five of Pentacles, on Amazon. Thanks for reading! Much love - Anna