Short story: Consulting optician helps to crack the case

Oscar O’Neill was doing his monthly accounts when he got a call from DI Luke Stott.

‘Hello Oscar. I was wondering if you know how easy it is for spectacle lenses to crack.’

‘It’s not that common these days,’ Oscar replied. ‘Why do you ask?’

Stott explained that a family had been staying in a nearby hotel. The parents had been staying in one room, with their 14-year-old daughter and eight-year-old son in the next room. A few days after they’d got home, the parents noticed that the boy was clearly worried about something, and eventually he’d told them that a man had tried to climb into his bed when they were at the hotel. It’s an old-fashioned hotel that has room keys instead of cards. He hadn’t said anything at the time because they were supposed to have locked the door and hadn’t. The boy had pushed the man away who’d left.