Mike de Bonair was a radio show director and its creator. He had worked with Dwight Dread for a long time and during one show, Dread was murdered. He was one of the five suspects to his murder.
Plot[]
Mike de Bonair had started a radio show with Dwight Dread and soon became successful due to Dread's bright character and voice. However, de Bonair profited from stealing the radio station's accounts and was eventually found out by his partner. To avoid having his public image ruined, de Bonair allowed Dread to borrow money from him on numerous occasions, albeit sometimes argued with Dread about his splurging habits. He soon became agitated with Dread and planned to kill him.
One day, de Bonair suggested to Dread that on the day of the radio show with Dolly Hollerday as a guest, Dread would pretend that he would die from drinking his tea after he had received a strange fax request about death. Dread found the idea to be excellent and de Bonair soon enlisted the help of Anice Brewer, a tea lady of the radio station who de Bonair thought was Dread's fiancée. Her part in his plan was to send the tea to the guest and the host and to send the threatening fax to Dread.
On the day of the show, Mike de Bonair went to the station first along with the sound man, Randal Mann. After they chatted for a while, Dread came with Hollerday and her manager, Melody Smith. The plan went off without a hitch, although he didn't know of a few improvisations such as Dwight Dread "dying" by eating one of Smith's macaroons and Dread planning to show his death was fake using a yellow handkerchief. After de Bonair had Mann switch the radio show to an ad about Farrods, forced Hollerday and Smith to wait in the waiting room and Mann to call for help, de Bonair congratulated Dread for pulling off the prank and gave him a cup of tea he had poisoned. After Dread died of the poison, de Bonair went to the storeroom where Anice Brewer was located and not knowing her name and her profession, gave her a poisoned cup of coffee. As expected, Brewer soon succumbed to the effects of the poison and to frame her for Dread's murder, had a perfume bottle containing the poison placed in her hand. Unbeknownst to de Bonair, Brewer had briefly survived after he left the storeroom and to let someone know she didn't commit suicide, threw the perfume bottle against the cabinets to make the bottle broken beyond recognition.
During the investigation, Dread's murder wasn't known to be originally a joke at first but due to the handkerchief, Inspector Alfendi Layton and Lucy Baker deduced that Dread did not intend to die. When all the suspects' statements were looked at, de Bonair was the only one without an alibi. To call de Bonair in for questioning, they had requested Hollerday to lie about meeting de Bonair at the Mystery Room office. Mike de Bonair's schemes were soon exposed as even though there was no solid evidence to implicate him, he accidentally told them the bottle was originally a perfume bottle when the investigation team didn't even know what the bottle was. Although he tried to explain how he knew what only the killer would have known, de Bonair ultimately conceded and admitted everything to the investigators.
Mike de Bonair was later convicted of murder of Dread and Brewer and was placed in a prison cell. He later chatted with Zach Carrière about escape methods, such as bribery.
Spoilers end here
Trivia[]
- "Mike" is short for microphone, as referencing to his career as a radio director.
- His surname contains the words "on air", a reference to the radio show, and also was derived from the word "debonair", meaning affable.
- Mike repeatedly gets Alfendi's last name wrong during their conversation (in order, "Layman", "Lameton", "Playton", and "Mayton"); as a form of revenge, Alfendi asks Lucy to take "Mr de Badair" to a holding cell after his confession.