Who killed Eduard Middelmaart? Our October murder mystery starts today

An envelope arrived at the shop yesterday afternoon. Brown, heavy, and tied with actual string, which nobody does any more unless they want you to notice. Inside was a stack of photocopies, a floor plan of a house, and a note.

The note was from Inspector Nomvula Khumalo, who has been buying secondhand crime novels from us for as long as I can remember. She drinks bush tea, drives a very small white van, describes herself as traditionally built, and has never once returned a book late. The note said, more or less: There has been a murder at Laaste Hoofstuk. I have the facts. What I need is people who have read too many detective novels. You know where to find them.

I do. You're reading this.

So here's what we're going to do this October:
Every weekday, I'll open another page of the Inspector's file and put it up on our website, and on our social pages. On Saturdays there'll be something extra. Once a week or so I'll write to you here with a round-up, so you don't miss a thing. On Halloween we reveal who did it, and the first of you to get it right wins.

First, the house. Laaste Hoofstuk sits at the far end of the Jonkershoek valley in Stellenbosch, under the mountains, among vines older than most of the people who drink from them. It has a wide stoep, a dam with a boathouse, and a library with a gallery and a rolling ladder, the kind of room you've seen in a hundred films and never once been allowed into.

It belonged to Eduard Middelmaart, 71, collector, host, and a man with a gift for saying the exact sentence that would hurt you most. He had been writing a book called A Key to All Endings for thirty years. Nobody had ever seen a chapter. Every year on 30 September he gathered the Drood Society for dinner. The Society exists for one purpose: to solve The Mystery of Edwin Drood, the novel Charles Dickens was writing when he died, which stops halfway and never tells us who did it. They have been failing to solve it, very enjoyably, for twenty-two years.

Eduard also kept a ledger. A green leather notebook, always in the top drawer of his desk, in which he wrote down everyone's secrets. Everyone knew it existed. Nobody had read it.

At dinner last night he stood, raised his glass, and told his guests that at midnight he would read them "the final chapter". Some of them, he said, would not enjoy it.

He did not live to midnight.

The people in the house:

Has expensive taste, several accounts at boutiques in Cape Town, and a way of looking out of windows as if waiting for someone to ride up. The house still belongs, in every way that matters, to the first Mrs Middelmaart, Bekka, who died in 1996. Her initial is still embroidered on the pillowcases.

Once cut off her hair and sold it to pay a debt. Describes her uncle as "my most loyal reader and my least kind".

For thirty years he has wanted one thing: Eduard's first edition of Drood, which he's certain hides a leaf of Dickens's own notes.

Tucks lavender sachets into every linen cupboard. Walks the dog every day at half past five with the devotion the rest of us save for coffee. Reads everything in the house, eventually.

How to play
Reply to any of these emails, or write to info@thestorystation.co.za, with the subject line J'accuse. Tell me three things: who killed Eduard Middelmaart, how, and why. You get one accusation. Once it's sent, it's locked in, so choose your moment. The first fully correct answer wins R1,000 in store credit.

There's a second game, for the well-read. Fourteen people in this story (the victim, the ten in the list above, the first wife, the dog and the Inspector herself) are famous characters from literature, disguised and moved to the Cape. Their names are the key, if you know how to turn it. Send your list with the subject line Bookworm. The most correct wins the Bookworm's Prize: R500 in store credit. One entry each.

And because the best part of any mystery is the theorising, there's a third prize: R300 in store credit for the wildest theory we receive, right or wrong. Share yours in the comments on our posts, or send it with your accusation.

All three competitions close at midnight on Friday, 30 October. Every clue you need will reach you. Some will be waiting in the shop, and I'll tell you when to go looking. Everything else goes up on our website, and most of it on Instagram and Facebook too, but two clues will only ever be sent to you here, by email. You'll need them all. If a friend wants to play, forward this to them and tell them to subscribe.

PS: In 1930, the members of the Detection Club, Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers among them, swore an oath to play fair with their readers: no hidden clues, no divine revelation, no convenient coincidences. New members swore it with a hand on a skull named Eric. I can't offer you Eric. I can offer you fair play.