Suite 402: Mysterious Tale

John Littleton checked into Suite 402 at precisely 10:02 p.m. By 10:30, his mistress, Veronica, had arrived. The night manager remembered them only as a bickering couple who did not appear to like anyone—least of all each other. A loud thud was heard from their room when the clock struck midnight.

Hours passed before housekeeping ventured into the suite. The hotel staff discovered a chilling scene: John slumped lifeless on the plush carpet, a single bullet wound marking his demise. The bed was still unmade, the lamp still on, but Veronica was nowhere to be found.

Detective Isabel Denver was the first investigator on the scene. She noticed no signs of forced entry on the door. The gun, a small revolver, lay next to John’s lifeless hand, seeming to suggest a suicide—yet his stiff, contorted fingers made it unlikely he’d fired the weapon himself. The security camera footage only showed Veronica stepping into the hallway around 12:15 a.m., clutching something close to her chest before slipping out of view.

A search of the suite revealed two glasses of half-finished whiskey. “A toast to what?” Detective Denver wondered aloud. A quick test of the drinks suggested nothing was tainted. Yet there was an odd letter on the nightstand, addressed to John’s wife but never sealed or sent. In it, he apologized for his adultery, confessed to gambling debts, and promised that the trip was his last indiscretion.

Quiet rumors about Veronica began to surface: she had a reputation for targeting wealthy men at their most vulnerable. The detective also spoke to a concierge who claimed John was tense all evening, glancing at his phone every few minutes, perhaps awaiting a threatening message or phone call. It seemed trouble was closing in on him from all directions.

When Veronica was finally apprehended for questioning two days later, she gave a tearful statement. She insisted John had convinced her to help fake his death so he could escape his creditors, but when the night came, he had changed his mind. She claimed that during an argument, an unknown assailant rushed in, grabbed the revolver John kept in his coat, and pulled the trigger. A tight-lipped Veronica insisted she only fled out of fear, leaving the heavier details to the imagination.

Was there an intruder? Or did Veronica engineer the whole scheme for John’s life insurance payout? Detective Denver found it peculiar that no one else had been seen by the cameras, except for the mysterious silhouette of a person wearing a wide-brimmed hat crossing the lobby at midnight. The figure’s face remained hidden by the brim.

Without concrete evidence, the case became a puzzle of conflicting testimonies and circumstantial clues. To some, it was an elaborate suicide disguised as murder. To others, it was a murder staged to look like suicide. Still others accused Veronica of orchestrating John’s downfall for a final, profitable betrayal.

In the end, the murder of John Littleton remained an unsettling mystery. Keys didn’t match doors, cameras captured half-images, and the only person with a motive strong enough to pull the trigger vehemently denied it. Somewhere between a love affair and a desperate plot, the truth became tangled in secrets and lies, leaving Detector Denver to wonder if sometimes, the best mysteries hinge on the ghosts of temptation—and the toll they exact on those who dare to chase them.

The End

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