I'm writing a murder mystery, planning for publishing in the end, and I've been working on the first chapter. I need to find some way to make it sound better, flow easier, and be a bit longer - it's meant to be a chapter, yet it's not even a whole page.
So I need PADDING, SUGGESTIONS, and CRITICISM.
The estate was rather impressive; a tall hand-built wall of stone surrounded the grounds, which could only be entered through the single, black wrought-iron gate. Inside, there was a big garden with a gravel path leading up to a huge manor, almost a castle.
There were all kinds of plants in the garden; rhododendrons were dotted around the path leading around the place. There was a sundial next to a small pond with water-lilies. At one point, the path twisted around a great oak tree. It was an ancient, magnanimous tree. It had clearly been there for hundreds of years; indeed, there was a small plaque informing visitors that the tree was planting by a Queen of England a few hundred years ago.
There was a fountain nearby – a stone statue of a mermaid, elegantly carved, sitting in a pool of water that was shot out from the mermaid’s mouth.
The manor had three storeys, at least. There were so many passageways and entrances, it was easy to get lost. There was a magnificent dining room; inside, a glass chandelier hung from the ceiling, and a long wooden table stretched across the room, with many hand-carved and varnished chairs placed around it. The plates were expensive china, with an ivory inlay. The cutlery was the finest silverware money could buy.
There were three bedrooms; only one of them was actually in use. The fireplace in each was boarded up, and in the used bedroom, an electric fire was plugged in and placed in front as a replacement. A beautiful four-poster bed was pushed up against the wall, with tall windows on either side. There was a rocking chair in the corner, and an antique wardrobe opposite the bed.
The study was the smallest of all the rooms. It was a cramped, stuffy room, with dust in the air, and barely any light. There was an old-fashioned writing desk, of the kind you’d expect to see in a school. The inkwell was black with dried out ink. There was no carpet in this room, nor laminate flooring; only the floorboards, and dripping down the cracks between them – blood. For on the floor of the study, there lay the corpse of a dead old man.
He must have died several hours ago. His skin was already pale; he was cold; yet there was no dust on him, nor did he appear to have rotten at all. His eyes were wide open, staring at the ceiling; his mouth was slightly open, a bit of blood in the back of his throat. There was a large red stain on his shirt where the knife stabbed him in the chest. Something wet seemed to glisten all over him, but it wasn’t recognizable simply from sight.
And yet, the police were not on the way. There were no screams of neighbours. Nobody seemed to have yet noticed that he was dead; a deathly secret known only by him and the murderer.
