Who Did It?

• Mridulla Anantha Padmanabhan, Grade 5, Girraween Public School -
• Short Story
• 2018

Excellence Award in the 'Horizon of Dreams 2018' competition

BOOM! The thunder crashed violently, and the window shutters banged in the wind blowing outside. I walked over to my room door, opened it, and went inside. I pushed the tiny red button on the wall near my bed. Then a face detection device appeared, scanned, digitised my face as pixels and recognised my face. The mirror slid back to reveal a secret agency room. I commanded my computer to switch my room to private, and it changed the front door access to red!
Suddenly a message appeared on my computer screen. It said, “Please report to agency HQ immediately.” My whole body tingled with excitement as I took my turquoise beanbag, I pressed a yellow button, to reveal a dark tunnel. I sat on the beanbag and slid down the tunnel to the HQ.
“Ah, good afternoon Kristy Roberts, I was expecting you,” said the boss of the agency, Adriana Frost. Adriana told me the address of Mr Smith’s house. I thanked her and sped off on my bike.
I reached the tiny cottage with the big backyard. The door was locked, so I kicked it open and went inside. There was a picture of Mr and Mrs Smith in a photo. I took a picture of it with my phone and went on. I saw the backyard was neat, and there were papaya trees planted in the garden. The papayas looked like big, fat vicious snakes, even though they looked so juicy! The two spots looked like red eyes. The papaya glittered and shone like treasure in the sun and they were as yellow as a ripe banana. I picked a papaya up and it surprisingly seemed very light, compared to its size, which made me suspicious. I took it to the HQ for further investigation.
After the papaya was inspected, I was told that it had been poisoned, and that poison made things bigger, but light at the same time. We had found a big clue!
Several people were interrogated, including Mrs Smith. To our surprise, she kept looking away, which made me suspicious. It looked as though she had been lying the whole time. I intentionally cut a piece of papaya and was about to eat it in front of her, but she held my hand and said “Stop! It’s poisonous!” She had given away everything. Then she said that, Mr Smith was working for a person who gave him lot of money to innovate bigger and more papayas in less time. But that formula also had poison in it. They knew about it but started growing them for money! It was said that the venom makes it look more big and juicy, and instead of growing one papaya a day, it grew ten on one tree! Since it looked so juicy, it captured people’s attention, and more people bought it. She said that, “I did it only to save the community.” The case of the murdered man is closed!
The End!