A Case of Writer's Block: From the Story's Point of View

Violet, the well-dressed villainess, stood frozen at the top of the stairs, her right leg hoisted in the air, suspended mid-step.

“Dammit!” she swore under her breath. "Can’t even get me to the bottom of the stairs without a hot shower, three cups of coffee, and a run around the block. Come on, man, focus!”

Violet was stuck like that for three days, and developed an impressively painful charley horse before her foot finally came crashing down onto the next step. She rushed wickedly to the bottom of the staircase, only to run smack into a stalwart blue swarm of policemen, who fingered their pistols and eyed her in that steely municipal "Myaah, nowhere ta go now, sheee?" sort of way. Violet stopped in her tracks and posed in a cloud of glamour.

“Well, boys,” she purred dangerously. “You’ve got me. But how did you ever guess it was me all along? What was the clue that put you hot on my trail?”

The policemen stared and blinked and blinked and stared, but none of them spoke. They scratched their heads and opened their mouths as if to say something, but no words came out.

“Well?” said Violet.

The policemen blinked some more, but no one had anything to say.

About a week and a half passed in this manner, during which Violet was obliged to bring sandwiches and coffee around to the speechless squadron in her foyer, for they were growing faint.

Violet banged her head against the wall in despair and wailed.

“Oh, wait, I know! It must have been my fingerprints all over the butcher knife--monogrammed with my initials, incidentally--which you found plunged into the back of the corpse!”

The cops blinked again.

“That was it, right?!” She glared up at the ceiling now, addressing some unknown force.

The cops jolted to life.

“Uh, yeah," they agreed with an exchange of tentative looks. "Yeah, that was it! Shheeee? We’ve got the goods on you now, sister, and you’re coming downtown.”

Violet sighed.

“Thank frickin’ God…let’s get on with it.”

She resumed her glam posture, raised a no-goodnik eyebrow, and winked an evil wink.

“But I’m afraid I’m not going anywhere with you coppers!” she said, and slyly twisted the head of a marble statuette on the bookcase to her left.

“Ha HA!”

But to her dismay, the bookcase did not swing aside to reveal a secret escape passage, or anything useful like that. It didn’t budge.

Violet balled up her fists and hissed at the ceiling.

“Aw, come on, you cookie-pushing bastard! I gave you that codswollop about the fingerprints, throw me a bone, here!”

As if by magic, the bookcase sprang aside to reveal a secret passage, through which Violet, the well-dressed villainess, promptly escaped.