Must Read: Paradox Of Abel - Season 1 - Episode 34

Episode 7 years ago

Must Read: Paradox Of Abel - Season 1 - Episode 34

Gladys Simon was the maid of the house, and she gathered much weight than every member of the house. She was a fantastically large person; nearly as round as she was tall.
b0s0ms the size of pillows, fine hulking shoulders, a neck made to burst restraining collars, and the square but proud face of a fattened bull. A whale of a woman. There was no other word to describe her; a great, big, cheesy-looking woman, wallowing in fat.
Double, treble, quadruple layers of neck which slept on each other like puppies. Her head was a massive representation of Titanic’s hull. Her clothes featured short sleeves and her exposed arms were as big as those of a bodybuilder, although without muscle definition – immense, smooth, black. Her hands were also enormous; great, big, fat hands with great, big, fat, shapeless fingers.

When Gladys was still nothing but a flat-chested seven-year-old adolescent, she had always admired ladies of prominent jigglers. Then she had come across an article in an old magazine about enlarging your breasts through the power of positive thinking. Since then she had fallen asleep most nights picturing herself with massive hooters. The author of the article was probably full of poop, but Gladys’ positive thoughts began to manifest a year later, and she continued dozing herself to a massive C-cup. She continued growing in style and kind. Every time she checked herself in a mirror, she smiled contentedly. Soon, the positive manifestation became a horror when other parts of her body began to increase tremendously. Even till this moment, her two gigantic mountains were still erupting. She had once taken a moment to wonder what would have become the fate of humanity if she had dwelt on the power of negative thinking.

She was horrible, Daniel thought. A great, black, creased, slobbering mass of fat was her face.

And set in it were two rather desperate small eyes. Very shrewd eyes looking on the world; appraising it, appraising Daniel. Not appraising Lot, he noticed. He believed Lot was here by command, by appointment’ however he would like to put it. And Daniel felt comfortable thinking it in the former. Lot had been here out of curiosity but partly at his behest, so he surmised that the detective’s presence was manifested under his own command. He kept this to himself, for he knew that he had no one to kid but self.
It was at him that Gladys was looking, as if she were seeing him just for the first time. As if a fascinating bump had grown at the tip of his nose and Gladys could do nothing but stare. After a moment, her eyes wondered about the room without curiosity. She looked back at him, summing him up again. All these were what Daniel should be doing – appraising suspects with his eyes, but alas, the boot was on the other leg! He noticed that Lot did not bother to even take a sneak-peek at them. The older man appeared to be entirely devoted to the burnt piece of paper he was critically studying; and he was jotting something in a notepad beside him.





That moment, neither Gladys nor Daniel existed to Lot.




Not knowing from where to begin, Daniel started by asking: “How old are you, Miss–?”
“I’m thirty-five this year.”
But she looked fifty-five, Daniel thought.




The lady caught him staring this time and took offence, “Did you call me here only to stare or to ask questions? Maybe I should turn my back at you since it seems like my chest is not allowing you to concentrate.”
“Oh, I’m very sorry, madam. Please forgive me. But it wasn’t your chest I was looking at.”
“The name is Gladys. Gladys Simon, not ‘madam’.”
“Right,” He was a complete flux about interrogative procedures. He tried to recall how Lot had questioned his first suspect who had mounted the first rung of the interrogatory ladder three years prior at the Martins’ manse. All he could come up to say next was:
“For how long have you been working in this house?”
“It’s been about four years now. I came a year after the driver.”
“And where is the driver now?”
“He left for his hometown four days ago. The landlord himself discharged him with two other women; the cleaner and the cook.”
“Why were you not discharged?”
“He wanted me to wait and prepare the meals for the family. He said I could take my own break after the festive seasons.”
“Are you the cook too?”
“I oversee the activities of the other women. I do their works when they’re absent; just like now, someone has to take care of the house. Even when Esther was still in secondary school and the other two women had not been employed, I was the housekeeper; Mrs. Jamal needed my help, considering her situation.”
Daniel now realized that there was not really a definite method of interrogation, coercion aside. Ask random questions and the suspect’s reply would spur another question.


Of course, there was no method but there were usually some tricks experienced interrogators use force out words out of non-responsive suspects’ mouths. He considered himself lucky that the maid was at least cooperative in her replies. If otherwise, he’d be completely at a loss about what to do and Lot would not be patting him on the back for his result.
He asked, “Was Mrs. Malik blind before you began working here?”
She nodded, “She was.”
“Do you know if she was born blind?” he asked the question suddenly. He looked at Lot to see if the question jolted him, but the detective seemed not to be hearing his words. Lot was totally engrossed in deciphering the content of the note. The frown lines on the older man’s forehead were tautly drawn that veins projected hence.
Daniel turned his attention to the maid for a reply, but he caught Gladys looking at him as if he’d just wetted himself.
“I’m not in the best position to answer such question, Mr. Famous,” she replied, “If you are so curious about knowing that, you My ask the concerned subject yourself. I’m sure she’ll give you a befitting reply.”
“You said you’ve been here four years, you must have heard something about the cause of her blindness.”
“I told you, I don’t know. Even if I knew I wouldn’t tell you. It’s not my place to answer such question. I’m only a maid here.”
“Okay,” Daniel sighed, “Are you married?”
Gladys glared at him, “I don’t know why that is any of your business, mister.”
“Just answer the question, please. And the name is Daniel, not ‘mister’.”
“The question is inconsequential to the murder of Mr. Jamal Malik.”
“We decide what is and what is not consequential to the case of Mr. Malik’s demise. And I didn’t tell you Mr. Malik’s death was murder; what made you say it was murder?”
She rolled her eyes up into her head, as if to say that the only place she was going to find common sense was inside her own skull. “If stabbing someone to death in the back isn’t murder to you, I wonder what is.”
The lady, he agreed, was smarter than he gave her credit for. She knew her ways about answering questions without putting her own thick neck in the fence.
“Let’s come back to my initial question. Are you married, madam?”
She took her time before answering the question, “No, I’m not married. I’ve never been married.”
“Why is that?”
“Because men are so vain,” she looked at him squarely in the eyes, “A woman has to make just a single mistake and she’ll be regarded cheap. And some silly men will only see your thigh as the extension of their armchairs. But when men act promiscuously they’re always regarded heroes by their comrades. No, I’ll never get married.” She spoke determinedly.


Daniel wanted to convince her otherwise but he knew arguing with the big woman would seem awkward and unprofessional. So, he asked, “Do you have any child, Miss Simon? A son or daughter?”
“Seeing what some children can do to their parents has robbed me of the desire to breed. I’m sorry if that upsets you.”
“Why would I be upset by your decision to remain a celibate?”



The woman shook her head from left to right twice, “You’re not the sweetest spice in the stew.”



Daniel was ashamed of himself. It was Lot alone who knew about his gullibility, now this woman was a new discoverer.
“How many children did Mr. and Mrs. Jamal have?”
“They’re four, as far as I know. The eldest is Mrs. Ruth Brown, followed by Mr. David Malik, then Mr. Gabriel, finally Miss Esther Malik. Two ladies, two men.”
“Thank you,” said he, “Now, what can you tell me about your boss’s death?”
“Nothing, I don’t know anything.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“I am sure.”
“Where were you last night?”
“I was in my room, of course.”
“What were you doing in your room? Sleeping?”
“Yes, sleeping, until the brief power failure.”
“So, you lay awake there in the darkness?”
“No, I’m afraid of the dark. As soon as the lights went off I quickly jumped out of my bed to reach for a match and candle. The lights came back on not long after I lit the candle. But I didn’t blow out the candle though, I was scared the power would go off again. Power is never trusted in this part of the state.”
“Then what happened next?”
“I was lying on the bed thinking when I heard a horrible scream. Oh, it was like a soul under torture. I pray never to hear such a scream again in my life!” she shuddered in disgust.
“Continue please.”
“I was shocked. My health has never been good; I’m nursing asthma and high blood pressure. So, I stayed rooted for some few seconds or minutes, I can’t calculate.



Everything happened fast. When I recovered from the shock, I heard the sounds of footsteps approach the side of my window. I was afraid it was the screamer, or worse, the man who had caused the horrible scream of another. As the fast steps came closer, I backed away from the window and pressed my body in fright against the wall opposite. I’d have melted into the wall if it were humanly possible.”
“Go on.” Daniel urged.
“Then the figure ran past my window.”
“Who was the person?”
“I don’t know.”
“A man or woman?”
“I don’t know! The light was on in my room and the night beyond the window was quite dark. If you don’t know, I’m also near-sighted. I only saw the silhouette of the runner. I guess someone with better vision would have seen the runner more clearly.”
“You’re near-sighted yet you’re not wearing glasses.”
“I don’t need glasses to see close objects. I don’t need to wear glasses to see you and the detective because you’re both close to me, I can see you clearly. Besides, I hate wearing glasses anyway, the invention always makes me feel like Piggy.”
“Who is Piggy?”
“Haven’t you read Golding’s Lord of the Flies?”
“No, I haven’t. is Piggy a character in the novel?”
“Yes, he was a masculine and younger version of me. His pair of glasses was broken and he got killed because his sight was impaired. Near-sighted people are prone to more accidents than their far-sighted brethren.”
“Then what happened after the figure ran past your window?”
“I rushed out of the room into the corridor. I saw people running towards the main door.”
“Can you at least guess the identity of the runner?”
“The runner could be anybody, it could even be you.”
“It wasn’t me,” Daniel assured her, smiling humourlessly.
“Well, one thing I’m certain about is that the runner is either the murderer of Mr. Malik or he knows the identity of the killer. You’ve got to find out who the runner was.”
“What makes you think the runner is a ‘he’?”
“Excuse me?”
“You said ‘…or he knows the identity of the killer’. Why do you think it’s a ‘he’?”
“I’m sorry, I use ‘he’ when I don’t know the gender of whom I am talking about. Don’t you know that, Mr. Famous? By the way, why is it that you’re the one asking the questions here?”
“As you can see, the detective is quite busy. He gave me the liberty to ask the questions.”
“But you’re also a suspect, doesn’t he know that?”
“I’m sure he knows, but he trusts me implicitly.”
“Madam,” Lot suddenly intruded in the conversation, “I’ll like you to do something, that’s if you don’t mind.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“It’s simple. Just pour yourself a cup of tea.”
Gladys scoffed, “You think I poisoned it, don’t you?”
Lot nodded, “The thought crossed my mind, yes. You made the tea, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did. But I didn’t put poison in it.” She looked at Lot’s half-empty cup and added, “Why did you drink the tea if you believed that I poisoned it?”
“The tea was too good to pass.”
“Well, I didn’t poison the tea!”
“Then you won’t mind having a sip from your wonderfully-brewed beverage.”
“You’re impossible, detective. Do you know that?” she took a cup, poured herself the tea and drank. She reached to pour the second but Lot held her hand.
“That’s enough,” Lot said, smiling, “The first cup has convinced me enough.”