by Tedd Hawks
In all his years working for Petrarch, he had never seen such shock on the old man’s face. His expression contorted as if he had been struck in the stomach.
“There’s less than nothing…” he said quietly.
“Less than,” Corinthiana nodded.
“But the will…it—”
“Is a fake,” Corinthiana said. Nimbly, she opened a desk drawer and retrieved a single sheet of paper. She pushed it across the table to Petrarch.
The old man scanned the sheet. “When was this made?”
“Just after he went to see you. He was too humiliated to tell you the truth. He had a local solicitor to do this work.”[13]
Petrarch read the document carefully.
“Why did Petrarch even need to come?” Crockett asked. “If the local solicitor did the work, we don’t need to be here for the reading. There can’t be legal disputes over less than nothing.” Crockett smiled, his mismatched eyes looking at Corinthiana humbly.
The old woman did not appreciate the joke. She awrk’ed and threw her head back. When she returned her gaze forward, she gave Crockett one last glare of hostility before turning her attention to Petrarch.
“He loved you, Petrarch; you are such old friends,” she said massaging her temples. “He needed to make sure it all ran smoothly. Bixby said you were indispensable.”
“More than that,” Petrarch leaned back in his chair. “I know something more. When Bixby visited me, we discussed his late wife’s letter. It was to be read when he passed away.”
Corinthiana cringed. “Lucindaaa?”
Petrarch looked at her warily. “Yes—”
“Whaaat would sheee haaave tooo dooo with aaany of it?” Corinthiana asked, nearly rabid with suppressed anger. Her vowels swelled alongside her feelings of consternation.
Petrarch reached across the table and took Corinthiana’s hand. “My dear, it’s the rather sensitive subject of Lucinda and Bixby’s son, Bixby, Jr.—Pip. It’s nothing more. No secret affair, just a letter to her son.”
“To be read when Bixby the elder died?” Crockett asked. “Why?” He tried to suppress the agitation in his voice; he was irritated Petrarch kept this and the knowledge that the family did not know of the delay of the entombment from him.
“She had hoped Bixby Hawsfeffer and Pip would reconcile, but it was made in case they didn’t. She penned it when he went to France. She assumed his homosexual proclivities would pass like a cold, but they didn’t. This letter was to be a last chance of family amicability upon the death of his father.”
Corinthiana immediately became tame. Her eyes grew wet with tears. “I’m sorry for my reaction, Petrarch. Humiliation or not, Pip is family. Lucinda was trying to be a good mother.”
Petrarch patted her pudgy hand. “Corinthiana, no apology necessary. We all know you are very protective of your Bixby.”
The old woman’s eyes flashed. “Indeed. Haaad it beeen a letter tooo Maaarthaaa, yooou maaay haaave seeen quite theee theeeatrics.” To add emphasis to the statement, the old woman swelled out her bosom, just as a cobra would show its hood when threatened.
Crockett’s agitation transformed to thoughtfulness. He steepled his fingers and leaned forward. “Petrarch, do you have a copy of the letter?”
“Of course, my boy. Just a moment.” The old man reached into his leather attaché case and dug through a number of crème-colored papers.[14] For all Petrarch’s admirable qualities, his organization skills left much to be desired. After several moments, he had to give up merely flipping through his belongings and lifted the whole case onto his lap. A jangling of keys, a rustle, and the clunk of some unknown objects followed. Corinthiana looked briefly at Crockett with a questioning look. Crockett smiled and shrugged his shoulders. He held up his index finger to indicate it would just be a moment. In the end, the letter came out, crumpled with a torn corner.
“Sorry about that,” Petrarch said jovially. “It slipped into a dark corner, but here you are.”
Crockett lifted the paper. His eyes scanned the neat handwriting.
My Dearest Child,
It would appear that my fears were realized. In this event, I hope this letter finds you and that history has not made the contents less precious.
If your father is dead, you must come home. Find me where I rest and sing, like we used to, the old rhyme of “Duck Man of the Old Hat,” and think of the games we played when you were young.
Although time is not kind, there is always a chance to make amends for past wrongs. I hope you will have the insights and the ability to do so for myself and your father.
Love always,
Mummy
“It’s rather sad,” Crockett said reading it again. He now realized the deeply personal nature of the letter. The epistle was out of the realm of their business dealings—it was no wonder Petrarch did not feel the need to share it. “But you’re right. There’s nothing odd about it at all. Lucinda was a mother who wanted her family to forgive past wrongs and celebrate their history.”
“I tried to find some hidden meaning.” Petrarch flipped over the piece of parchment, as if expecting some secret to be written on the other side. “However, nothing was out of the ordinary. She simply asks him to forgive and go see her sarcophagus in the tomb.”
“Do you remember what she said when she left it Petrarch? Was there any urgency to it?”
Petrarch gently patted his belly. “It was so long ago…She was distressed, but I assumed it was simply due to the nature of the letter. Having a homosexual family member is extremely indecorous and their activities illegal. When I was a child, we had a sheep that was oriented that way, and we had to put it down due to the stress it was causing the chickens.”
“We had a dandy sheep as well,” Corinthiana said quietly. “They did always give the best wool.”
Crockett, never having encountered sheep or chickens predisposed to attachments to their own sex, stayed silent.
“She did,” Petrarch began after a short pause, “say that I should be careful who I told about the letter.” He threw a quick apologetic glance at Crockett. “I, however, assumed it was for the same reason. She didn’t want people to know about her son’s inclinations.” After some thought, the old lawyer continued, “If we wanted to look into the tomb, could we be let in to do so, Corinthiana?”
Corinthiana looked pensive. Her red mouth twitched, as if she was going to say something, but then closed tightly.
“Could we, Mrs. Hawsfeffer?” Crockett dipped his neck forward, suddenly very interested in the old woman’s response.
Corinthiana, however, said nothing; she stared toward the corner nervously drumming her fingers on the desk. After a tense minute of quiet, she shook off her torpor and spoke slowly, “We must get in the tomb, yes,” she said with finality. “I’ve been a coward about ending all this. I didn’t want to reveal the truth about the fortune.”
“That is very understandable,” Petrarch said reassuringly.
The old woman let out an enormous sigh. “And, to answer your question, I can’t find the key. Even if we wanted to put the coffin in it, we’d have to crash it through the side.”
Petrarch stroked his beard. “There is no key…” he said softly.
“But there must be another,” Crockett said quickly. “There must be some way in.”
“Weee will find a waaay!” Corinthiana jerked up, toppling the chair as she stood. It appeared as if her opulent manner had returned with full force; the sparkle returned to her jewels. “Theee truth must beee told! Weee shaaall find theee keeey!”
Crockett looked to Petrarch for an explanation of Corinthiana’s sudden, dramatic shift in resolve, but the old man was distracted, his gaze fixed out the window. He responded to the matriarch with idle prattle. “Yes, my dear,” he said. “We’ll find the key…”
“Tooomorrow I shaaall send June and Maaay tooo theee vicaaar, and theee finaaal prepaaaraaations will beeegin,” she said resolutely.
With her head held high
, she slowly and dramatically made her way to the door of the study.
Out of curiosity, Crockett looked down at his watch to gain a measure of how long the exit took.
It was roughly two minutes.
When she had gone, Crockett turned his attention to Petrarch and sighed.
“Petrarch, this is a very curious affair, but I think you were correct about Brontë. She is imagining foul play where there is none.”
“Perhaps, yes,” Petrarch said with a faint smile. “The key business is interesting…”
“It’s an old key to an old tomb, Petrarch. I’d be surprised if it wasn’t lost.”
Petrarch’s face brightened. “My boy, when there is a surprise death, any of us can be swept up in crazed ideas!” The gusto returned fully to the old man’s voice as he continued. “Everything from ghosts and thwarted lovers to angry children and lost keys can take the blame, but in the end it’s always a mundane event. No one killed Bixby Hawsfeffer.” His voice broke briefly as he said this, his resolve dipping momentarily before returning. “My guess, from the beginning, was that the event was a cardiac issue which landed him in the river. The murderer is simply an irascible current.”
Crockett nodded. Outside the halo of Brontë’s warm smile, he was thinking more clearly, his logical-thinking facilities restored. “And you did know Bixby very well, Petrarch? I didn't realize you were so close as to share personal confidences.”
“Our relationship grew closer through the years. To be honest, after the first visit from him all those years ago, we didn’t see each other for a long period of time. When he came in to talk about land agreements, I had even forgotten what he looked like. But, after that, we met at least once a year. Often, we’d just get a pint or have a meal. He had a very large presence, I think something he aged into, probably under the theatrics of Corinthiana.”
Crockett smiled. The old woman was truly unique, unlike anyone he had met before. He suddenly thought of her anger directed at Martha. “Speaking of Corinthiana, why was she so upset about Martha? Did she imagine an affair between her and Bixby?”
“Martha has served here for nearly fifty years, Crockett. She used to be a comely young woman. She and Bixby shared an intimacy. Corinthiana was nervous about it, but it was nothing of note. Their history went back to his first wife, so it’s no wonder he wanted someone around who remembered her. But jealous eyes see a great many things which simply aren’t there.”
Chapter 6: An Indigent and a Lady
It was still dark when Crockett’s eyes fluttered open. Upon going to sleep, his mind was filled with the hilarity of Corinthiana’s theatricality and her imagined feud with Martha, but in his dreams, the terror-inducing warnings of the old maid and Kordelia seeped into his unconscious. There, they caused a number of distressing nightmares. The one that stirred him awake involved the old carriage master, who drove them to the estate, riding a large canary whilst playing an out-of-tune harpsichord.[15]
Restless, Crockett rose and dressed, deciding a stroll around the grounds of the house would at least calm his nerves. It was nearly five o’clock, so the sun would be coming up shortly; he could watch it rise and, hopefully, forget the terrors of the night.
As he dressed, his mind wandered from oversized canaries to murderous humans, piecing together the string of bizarre occurrences he and Petrarch had seen in the last twenty-four hours—Brontë’s fears about a murder, the odd dressing of both May and Robert Edward, and, of course, the note left by Bixby Hawsfeffer’s first wife decades earlier. There was no clear connection between any of these things, and he still felt as he had the previous evening that none of it could be connected to a nefarious, homicidal act. However, their combination created a feeling of mystery he couldn’t shake from his mind, especially freshly awakened from a nightmare in the early hours of the morning. Was there something going on at Hawsfeffer Manor? Was Brontë’s intuition correct? Or, perhaps, it was simply the gathering of a very queer, irritable, and curious family. Petrarch said the house was only a house and contained no nefarious presence…but what if it did?
Crockett pilfered through his bag, becoming keenly aware that his wardrobe would soon be all worn or covered in mud. This tedious detail, as well as the crisp air felt as he exited the house, calmed his wild, imaginative musings. His mind turned from a brooding state to one of relative tranquility. This was aided by the arrival of the sun, which brought with it a thin strip of rosy light, giving the air a tint of beauty and solemnity.
Crockett let his eyes close and took a deep breath. He enjoyed a moment of calm, before he heard a stirring behind him. Immediately his hyper-reactive tendencies went into effect, the mysterious noises eliciting a high-pitched, feminine shriek from the young lawyer.
Brontë, the source of the stirring, tried to suppress her laughter as she attempted to calm Crockett.
“My goodness! Crockett, it’s me! I’m not here to harm you.”
“Oh, dear,” Crockett’s heart raced. Despite the embarrassment of the scream, he counted his reaction to this surprise as a victory, seeing as he didn’t completely goat-faint as he had when he’d met August the previous day or collapse as he had twice in the presence of Kordelia. To add some additional context to his shocked reaction, Brontë was wearing a yellow, fringed housecoat, so that, from the corner of his eye, it appeared that she was a very large bird. “I thought you were a canary,” he said.
“Do you fear them?” Brontë asked.
“Only since last night…It’s very similar to a fear I had a few months ago about a small, housecat, which resembled a tiger.”
“Well, I am firmly not feline nor avian.” Brontë said reassuringly. She cautiously crept forward and stood next to Crockett.
“I’m very sorry that my alarm alarmed you.” Crockett’s heart slowed. “I’m never good under pressure, so to speak, but last night I was restless. Kordelia and Martha both said some things that stirred the darker side of my imagination.”
“Hmmm. This house has long shadows. I’m sorry it stirred your fear, but I understand. The wing you’re currently in has a rather macabre air to it.”
“I’m glad my shriek at least earned your sympathy.” Crockett’s ears turned red. “Not that I’m trying to earn anything,” he said quickly, “I just, I hope that you think not too awfully, terribly, badly of me, you know…as a client of Petrarch’s.”
Brontë looked intently at Crockett. A small lopsided smile formed at the edge of her mouth. “You are certainly very nervous, Mr. Cook.”
“I can get that way.” Crockett took a deep breath. “As I mentioned, I tend to overreact in certain situations, take the most foolish course of action.” Crockett cringed. “I don’t know why I said that. I’m sorry, I’m just…a bit…you know, I think I didn’t get enough sleep because of the canary.”
“Well, I’ll do my best to present as less birdlike, so please, feel free to regain your nerves. And don’t be afraid of sharing with me. In this house, feuds and secrets are a way of life, but I don’t agree with that ideology. There’s no good hiding and squirreling away the different parts of yourself.”
“I feel the same.” Crockett did his best to resist the tugging on his heart strings Brontë called forth. In the dawn, she resembled a brunette, hazel-eyed angel. “I feel,” he continued slowly, “we have similar ideas, Miss Hawsfeffer. We share some propensities.”
“I would agree to that sentiment.”
Crockett smiled.
Brontë ran a hand through her hair. A feeling of heat ran up the back of her neck. She turned and took a tentative step away from her companion.
“Mrs. Brettwick,” Crockett said quickly, feeling her unease and desiring the conversation to continue.
“Sorry?” Brontë’s eyes again focused on Crockett. “Who is Mrs. Brettwick?”
“Petrarch and I were drafting the will of Mrs. Brettwick’s father. There was an issue, and it got lost in Petrarch’s papers, so we missed the date it was to be completed. She arrived at
the front door, she’s a beautiful wo—” Crockett stopped abruptly; his ears again flushed.
Brontë tried to hide her mirth by covering her smile.
Crockett stuttered. “It’s—sorry—no, I mean…I just…She’s…”
“You can find women beautiful, Crockett,” Brontë said into her fist, attempting to tame the last of her grin. “I find some men handsome, if you can believe it.”
Crockett’s eyes grew wide. His lips pursed. For a brief moment, he and Brontë stared at each other, neither sure what to name the emotion passing between them.
Crockett kept his eyes fixed on Brontë as he breathlessly continued, “So, I said he was dead.”
“You what?” Brontë’s eyes bulged.
“When Mrs. Brettwick showed up at the door and the will wasn’t completed, I hated to disappoint her. And I hated to disappoint Petrarch; it was really my fault. So, I…well, I said Petrarch was dead, and that’s why it wasn’t done.”
“What did she say?”
“She was speechless, naturally. But, before she could respond, Petrarch entered the room, the picture of health, and then it got worse…”
“Worse?” Brontë’s expression shifted between joy and confusion.
Crocket was also pulled between two emotions—both the relived horror of his encounter with Mrs. Brettwick and the rising pleasure from Brontë’s reactions. Perhaps all feelings could be redeemed if he could simply filter them through Miss Winterbourne’s smile. “So,” Crockett continued, “then I said, ‘I said he’s deb! As in deblightful.’”
“Deblightful?”
“I lied and said I had a speech impediment. So, to this day when Mrs. Brettwick comes in, I randomly insert b’s into words.” Crockett thrust his hands into his pockets. “She’s a rather good sport about it. She often asks how me how I enjoy the ‘weaber.’”
Brontë said nothing for a moment. The sound of the birds waking in the first light of day filled the silence. Then, softly, she said,