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'You can't kill a chair, it's an inanimate object'

Governance | 7 Sep 2011

Governance reader John Markham has his own detective-style theory about the first instalment of the murder mystery ‘Who killed the chair?’ which is currently being serialised in Governance magazine.

(If you have not yet read the first instalment, you can find it by clicking here.)

Dear editor

The first instalment of this tale merits comment.

1.    A chair is an inanimate object – nobody could kill one.
2.    The first fact established is that the Clearway offices have no proper security arrangements (if any at all) and there appears to be no security culture amongst the staff.
3.    The alleged death is that of the chairman, but it is not reported that the paramedics declared him dead at the scene; this does not rule out a coma.
4.    No sign of foul play is mentioned, “…a pool of blood…” does not give any indication of the amount liberated, not from whence it came.
5.    There are multiple references and implications in the title, cartoon and text to the murder of the deceased.  These clearly are planted to embed this idea into the mind of the reader; however the evidence presented so far does not substantiate this conclusion, but equally it does not eliminate it.
6.    If indeed death has occurred then the outcome of a post-mortem and the estimated time of death will be of significant importance.
7.    As we are not told the evidence collected by the police, nor from whom, in their preliminary interviews the reader is at a significant disadvantage compared to them in building up a picture of events leading up to the discovery of the ‘corpse’.
8.    The story so far is a blatant example of the old adage “Rumour is half-way down the street before truth has got its clogs on”.
9.    A feasible explanation for the events so far described could be that the chairman was brought into the building already dead, placed on his chair, slumped over the table, and window-dressed with blood obtained from the local slaughterhouse ostensibly bought as an ingredient for home-made black puddings.

My solution offered in 9 above might be a better one than that which awaits us.

The bluff and counter-bluff pattern of the present story reminds me of the production on the wireless a few decades ago of “Murder by Marmalade” – a spoof of a Miss Marple story, portrayed by the late Les Dawson, the raconteur from Collyhurst.

Yours sincerely
John Markham

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