Author's note: so okay, I know I've begun many stories already, and still I'm starting from a new one but can't help it. I really liked this idea so I wanted it to pen it down before it gets faded away like many of my stories. Okay so I have already thought and written this story and will update it on a regular basis (let's Hope I succeed in it). It's a genuine attempt of writing an investigative story, so If anything goes wrong hope you don't end up murdering me.

Also the whole story resulted because I read "Study in Scarlet", "A sign of Four", "ABC Murders" "Murder in Library" and many more detective novels back to back so this was bound to happen J

So If you all felt like murdering me you can surely go ahead :D

Disclaimer: I don't own CID and none of its characters.

Also in this story the characters from CID wouldn't be essaying their roles which they do in the serial. In this story they would be in complete new avtar with different profession and in slight change of behaviour (in some people a drastic change of behaviour)

So if you are ready then only go ahead with this story otherwise I would advise you to restrict yourselves from reading it!

AN: You have being warned!

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Characters

*Tarika: Age : 32 : Started her career as Forensic expert's assistant but soon she realized that it's not her thing so switched back to the law field, did her best in it, raised to fame as prosecution lawyer. She is quite determined, intelligent and calm in demeanor in her professional life.

*Abhijeet: Age:33 : Ex- CID Officer. He retired at the age of 30 due to a massive accident while apprehending the culprit, it resulted that his right leg got severed injured which cost him to limp while walking due to which he has to quit his job due to proven medically unfit, he is now retired and kind off work as trainer for the new officers. Short-tempered and Angry man but at the same time a very efficient officer.

*Ananya: Tarika's Childhood friend who is fashion designer, got married to a quiet rich business tycoon and Now is a joint partner in their chain of companies.

*Mayank: Ananya's husband, a business tycoon.

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"Unveiled Murderer"

Part I

Sunlight was bathing the opposite roof, just outside the window. It played on the tiles, reflecting each and every corner of the room, leaving no room for darkness. She, who was seated just across the window appreciated the light, for casting itself over her writing table, thus sparing her the need of switching the lamp on in the morning . It was one of the last mornings of a summer that had been hot and shiny, and it was still enthusiastically luminous until it would eventually have to resolve in the greyer shades of upcoming monsoon and then winter.

For the moment, leaving this entire aside Tarika had other business to care about. As a lawyer (and at thirty-two she was one of the best hopes of her generation), the reading of the morning papers, happily supplied with tons of extra coffee, was a ritual. After this she has to glance on the crucial cases and upcoming trials which were scheduled in her upcoming months on which she was working on also she had to survey her colleagues' trials.

When the papers were read through, they were folded and set aside on a tablet, after that the morning was passed while checking the letters or any drafts from the clients. Occasionally there used to be a thanks letter from time to time by her clients who she has helped in the past; she peered over them while finishing her coffee.

The chair's back was soft and deep behind her back, and the sunlight warm onto her cheek, bathing her sitting position in an agreeable glow and she was slowly nodding off in a drowsy manner when she was suddenly roused from that sleepiness by the sight of a familiar writing on one of the envelopes. She blinked, and for a second or so contemplated the letter disbelievingly she had not received anything written from Ananya since that postcard of her friend's honeymoon five years before. Why bother writing when it was so much simpler to pick up one's phone or an email that was Ananya's point, and she was rich enough not to care about telephone and internet bills.

Astonishment reached its peak when, Tarika found multiple sheets inside clumsily folded, clipped by Ananya's scrawl-like writing.

'Dear Tarika,' it said,

'We are having a problem here.' (Tarika frowned at this and read more attentively; when Ananya didn't chat for half an hour before coming to the point and was actually serious from the start, it was necessarily important.)

'I thought that as a lawyer, you'd have enough experience on such matters to offer us help, while keeping the essential discretion. You've probably seen in the papers (I know how carefully you read them) that we have welcomed in one of our secondary residences a group of scientists and lawyers who needed a quiet location for a common study – don't expect me to tell you what it's about, it's not my business to ask. Mayank and I knew some of them, and they demanded that house particularly, our ancestral villa in shimla – though I think what they want is discretion rather than isolation.

"Ancestral home in Shimla" Tarika thought about it, the choice was a good one. In the past she has visited that place and it was good old home, backed into the woods, miles away from any inhabited place, since the only neighboring house had been abandoned by its owners more than ten years in the past, the only access to it was a fragile bridge of string and crossing a ravine. Tarika set her thoughts aside and started reading the letter again.

'The first problem showed up two or three days before that, by the morning post, in the shape of an anonymous letter warning us not to accept our guests there – under the pretext that crimes had been committed in the house before – I'm sure you remember about that – and it was now under a curse.'

'Of course, we didn't pay any attention to it, and the guests arrived and the study began as formerly planned. The night immediately after that, however, more anonymous letters were slid under people's doors: ours, and one of our guests', both on the third floor. They were not found until morning, and the messages they contained were mostly threatening us for having overstepped the first notice and calling the house's curse upon us or something of the kind.

'It's didn't stop there. Every morning following there were similar letters to be found on the bedrooms' threshold – nobody has been accepted and some of us have received two, or several more. The real trouble is, the author, or Poison Pen, or whatever, is necessarily someone of the house. All the notes have been found inside the building, during night-time, when the gate and doors are closed, which means nobody can get in. So it must have been one of them.

'There hasn't been any real incident, but I don't feel good about this. Mayank and I are leaving for USA at the end of the week, and we don't like to leave the whole of them in the house with only one or two menservants, with perhaps a lunatic in the lot. And the letters are getting worse. They were merely menacing at first, but now they've become really frightening – I'm afraid the person who wrote them is mentally unbalanced and might turn out dangerous.

'I know you're a busy person, but I would really appreciate it if you visited us before the end of the week. Your being a lawyer provides you with a good cover since there are two others among us, and your experience could be of some help – if not to act, at least to give us some advice. Be sure to call as soon as you receive this–"

Tarika reached the end of the letter with mixed feelings. In a postscript, Ananya explained that she had rather not call or mailed her, for fear the culprit should overhear or hacked thus by guessing her intentions, whereas a letter posted at the nearest village was not likely to rouse suspicion; Tarika was really impressed by Ananya's such thought After all Ananya had an overdeveloped sense of drama. 'As a lawyer', and as a "Ex-Forensic Assistant" Tarika had witnessed worse than anonymous letters and cases.

When she read the letter through a second time, she felt the matter deserved to be looked into further. That a Poison Pen should be counted among guests assembled over a secret study in a lonesome mansion was an interesting circumstance, and she could not very well decide of the gravity of the situation 'till she had read the letters and agreed, there was no harm in visiting one's old childhood friends, anyhow.

When she dialled the number Ananya had scribbled on the first sheet's right-hand corner, however, the composed voice of a manservant at the other end of the line responded to her inquiries that Ananya Sahani was not a home presently, and could he take a message.

Tarika paused for a second and then decided to tackle the matter professionally, she replied, "Yes – this is Tarika. Please tell Ananya that I have received her letter, and will visit her tomorrow in the morning." That was innocent enough; even if the message was repeated publicly, it could not mean anything serious. "If she wishes to speak anything about it, she can call me back, she knows my number."

"Certainly, mam. Thank you for calling. Have a good day."

"Thank you.."

The click of hanging up on the other end, and Tarika's hand on the receiver hesitated a second before putting it down. She was not altogether certain that this had been the wisest solution she could take.

...

After postponing her meetings, the very next day, Tarika took an early flight to shimla. Ananya's driver was already waiting for her at the airport, after a drive of an hour or two she reached the villa. Tarika's 's first surprise, in reaching the villa, was to discover that the ravine, which previously forbid any car from passing on, had in the interim been partly filled in, and an actual bridge of stone had been built over it to replace the fragile former one, thus allowing her drive up directly to the mansion. The second surprise was to find the building grown with two wings, one on each side; it now resembled one of these old Elizabethan houses overseas in England, smaller in proportion, but similar in shape.

That, she thought as she pulled up below the steps was a relief: with those differences and the ten years' time that had elapsed in between, the mansion differed enough from the one she used to know .

The front door was opened, almost before she had time to knock, by a butler in a livrée, with a Jeeves-like poker face and the composed voice that had answered her on the phone. He gave a stiff little bow and said, drenched in cold politeness, "Miss Tarika? Please come in, Ananya Mam'has been waiting for you."

Tarika was then ushered inside, the doors banging shut behind her, in a quick succession of rooms passing by, until they were at last met halfway through by one very enthusiastic Ananya. Arms were flung around Tarika's neck, a high-pitched voice's greetings, and for a second they were eighteen all over again, back to being best friends in school.

However, when they sat together in her bureau – a large, well-furnished room with sunlight floundering in through the tall window, Ananya recovered all the seriousness and noble mien proper to the heir of the Sahani family. She got out a file from a drawer and handed it over, without a word; forced back into her position of a lawyer, Tarika received it and inspected the letters.

Somebody Mayank, probably; Ananya was too absent-minded to think about it – had been sensible enough to classify and date them. In shape they were all the same – black, neatly-printed letters on white, rectangular cards – and in message they varied but little: from the very first 'Do not accept that study into your house' to the last theme of 'Thou hast been warned', the evolution was only what Ananya had described to her in her letter – if merely menacing at first, the writer seemed to have become exasperated by the lack of reaction, and the threats had turned grim and dark in proportion.

No misspelling or grammar mistakes that she could see, and the cards were such that they could have been printed out of anyone's computer. The only peculiarity resided perhaps in that few letters were impersonal or generally applicable; the message aimed almost each time at a particular somebody, which tended to confirm the hypothesis of their author's being one of the guests.

"Is there anything more on these cards here, anything you can see," Ananya asked greedily, "that might turn out as a clue? Anything that could help us discover the author of them?"

"Only that they've been printed out of a computer, which is rather clever," Tarika observed. "In a book, if one was to write an anonymous letter, one would cut letters out of some daily and paste them on a sheet of paper so as to form a message without having to write anything, but in reality that's far too easily traceable. Even if one burnt the newspapers there would always remain suspicious pieces of articles that had unbeknownst flown through the window or a significant amount of ashes in the hearth. But a file in a computer – deleted with one click, and no trace to be found. It adds to the dangerous side, if anything. Is that all there is?"

"All that I know of," Ananya answered. "Tell me, Tarika – what do you think? What are we to do? Is it worth calling for the police–" (anxiously) "–because that's precisely what I want to avoid. Or some paid detective or ex-officer ? Anything?"

At the mention of ex-officer, Tarika's face had darkened, and for a second they had the same person in mind. Then, slowly, "If you really want no scandal, I think it's better not to call for the police yet. Our man or woman doesn't seem dangerous to speak of, but he or she may become so."

"Then what?"' Because we can't stay like that. Mayank and I are leaving for USA on Sunday, It's an important business deal and–"

"–and you can't leave with an unmatched maniac ready to slaughter half your guests, I suppose." Tarika was silent for a second, pause after which she added more thoughtfully, "When exactly did you receive that first letter?"

"By morning post the day just before the study started – that's Monday of the past week."

"And then every night after that?"

"Just so." Ananya shifted restlessly in her chair; she looked anxious and nervous about the whole business. "Most of them were slid under bedroom doors to be found in the morning, but sometimes they were found in a drawer, or under one's plate–"

"Ananya, why don't we install CCTv.." but before Tarika could complete her sentence Ananya interrupted.

"Tarika, we did do that but it..it was a big failure. The Day we decided that we should fit the Cameras, the next moment we received a letter threatening us that If we put such things up, then the "pen poison" would murder someone and also he would provide some facts to media which can soil our reputation.." Ananya replied hesitantly. she made a vague, rather dejected wave of the hand, hastily checked; then a more decisive look settled on her face, and she bent slightly forward across her desk. Hands brought together on her leather tablet, fingertip joined to fingertip, she for once looked thoroughly like the businesswoman she was meant to be.

"Do understand, Tarika – this cannot go on. The Sahani's are a rich and respectable family, and we can't – I can't – allow a common criminal to bring scandal to tarnish out reputation."

That was an aspect of Ananya Tarika was not able to understand. To her mind, better risk the publicity of a police inspection than murder done – but perhaps that was only the argument of a lawyer, to whom scandals brought clients.

"Look – I'll tell you what," she said finally. "I'll stay over 'till the end of the week; and if there has been no alteration by Sunday we'll decide of what to do – whether this requires dealing any professional help or not."

Ananya beamed at so brilliantly Tarika was immediately convinced that this solution was what she had tended to all the while, but she felt all the more patient and amused that she had missed the frivolity of her former conversations with her best friend. As annoying and boy-hunter as Ananya had been at seventeen, she had been her most precious best friend and the one person she could confide in – yet, what with her own life-taking job and Ananya's constant travelling, they hardly saw each other twice a year now.

It was agreed between them that Tarika would go back home that day, to fetch clothes and stuff, and then would come back the next day as a perfectly genuine guest. After discussing with Ananya, Tarika flew back to Mumbai the same day, she packed her stuffs also informed her secretary about her schedule and asked her to postponed all her meetings and court sessions to another week due to this upcoming job. After finalizing and taking care of her this business, Tarika decided to leave the next day once again to shimla.

...

However, After she reached the villa, she was informed by the butler from yesterday, that Ananya had been taken away on an urgent job and would be back by evening.

He had seized her luggage and was preparing to show her to her room, when a white-dressed figure with a spot of white hair and a smiling composure called out in a familiar voice, "Tarika..I didn't knew you were supposed to be here, or do you intend to solve our local mystery?"

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AN

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Thank You!

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P.S: About the other updates, I'm working on it, I would post them tomorrow :)