The Great Speculoos Mystery

Case File #113
I should have seen this coming… In hindsight it was the logical conclusion to all the stories I shared about my Speculoos addiction… but I didn’t see it coming.

It all started on a normal day like any other. There was no reason to suspect it was going to be any different. I woke up, got ready for work, took the train and walked into the office. Nothing was out of the ordinary so far.

But then, as I approached my desk, I did discover something out of the ordinary. I discovered this…

A single jar of Crunchy Speculoos Sandwich Spread. No note. No name. Nothing to indicate where or whom it had came from. It was a mystery, a mystery jar of Crunchy Speculoos Sandwich Spread.

The mere presence of this jar raised so many questions. Where did it come from? Who is my mysterious Speculoos benefactor? Is it a gift of friendship from someone who wishes to remain anonymous (a shy admire maybe) or is it a warning from a hidden foe? Someone who has had enough of me saying Speculoos instead of Speculaas? Is there a greater game a foot here? Could this single jar of Speculoos only be the beginning of a complex game of cat and mouse? It will take all my deductive reasoning to solve this mystery…

There would be easier ways but apparently interrogating co-workers is “against company policy” so deductive reasoning it is.

First let us look at the clues we have available to us. We know that this mystery person is aware of my Speculoos addiction given the very specific nature of the gift they chose to leave on my desk. From this we can deduce the mystery man or woman reads this very blog. We can also deduce that they are someone who has access to my office. Perhaps they are someone I work alongside every day, perhaps they bribed a security guard to gain entrance, or perhaps they used the stealth of nightfall to break in undetected. Unfortunately this still leaves a wide variety of suspects.

Luckily our mystery supplier has slipped up. The biggest clue can be obtained from the jar itself if you look very carefully at the photo. Do you see it? It’s right there, staring us in the face… Studying this jar we know without a shadow of a doubt the fiendishly clever mastermind behind this while mystery… shops at The Jumbo!

Unfortunately as a civilian I am apparently not allowed to demand security camera footage from all the Jumbo grocery stores in the Amsterdam area. This sadly means that this clue is another dead end unless I start stalking co-workers to find out where they shop (which is also against company policy and I have been requested to stop doing).

But perhaps the jar has more clues to reveal to us. Upon dusting the jar for finger prints I was able to discover several distinguishing marks!

And a very clear finger print…

But again, unfortunately I do not have access to a finger print database to identify them and sending an email to all@office requesting that they submit their finger prints to me is also against company policy (what are they trying to hide?).

With no more leads to follow I must sadly close this investigation for now. However, it has not been a total loss. With my considerable detective skills I have been able to deduce that the suspect is a person who reads the internet, might be someone I work with, shops and The Jumbo and has fingers!

For now the identity of my mysterious Speculoos benefactor remains unknown but the net is slowly closing. One day I will find them… or maybe they will make themselves known. It is only a matter of time.