The Detective Seven
Several weeks ago.
The greenhouses were a strange place. Mallory had spent the vast majority of his life in the city. He only ever ventured out of it when his job called for it, and that wasn’t all too frequent. Most murderers happened where people were, by obvious necessity, and most people were in the city.
He could smell the greenhouses before he arrived. A faint but cloying scent of greenery and manure that he knew would cling to him.
There were several greenhouses, all rather squat, but long buildings with glass roofs and several windows on the sides. There were opened vents along the eaves and even from afar he couldn’t help but imagine that it was stiflingly warm in there.
He circled around the front for a moment before seeing a man that he assumed was Professor Moss. The man was bent over a hip-high planter, one filled with green-blue plants with fat leaves. He was tending to the dirt below, adding more from a bucket resting in a wheelbarrow.
Mallory walked over to the front door and knocked on the frame.
The Professor looked up, then frowned before wiping the sweat off of his brow. “Hello there?” he asked as he started to walk over. He removed a pair of dirty gloves and slipped them into his belt. “Can I help you, sir?”
“Hello, are you Professor Moss?”
“I am,” the man replied. “You have me at a disadvantage.”