by Tedd Hawks
The feeling of victory in the room immediately dissipated. All eyes flew to the matriarch.
“But vy?” Robert asked petulantly.
Everyone nodded in agreement with their cousin, perhaps the first time since his arrival that the majority feeling toward him was not one of contempt.
A tense expression crossed Corinthiana’s features. It looked as if she was being torn in two, some great philosophical battle raging behind her eyes. The moment passed like a bolt of lightning, however, and a smile returned to her face.
“No, no reeeason,” she said brightly. “I just waaanted everyone tooo beee emotionaaally ready.” She stood and turned toward the kitchen, her large bosom jiggling as she yelled, “Maaarthaaa! Bring out theee maaain course! Weee haaave reeeason tooo celebraaate!”
#
The plans for the entombment developed rapidly. June wasted no time in calling the vicar even before eating; although he had commitments the next morning, he agreed to meet June the following afternoon to plan the final arrangements. A lightness filled the house for the first time since Crockett and Petrarch arrived. Kordelia, May, Petrarch, and June all played whist together, while August and Robert Edward chatted near the patio discussing politics. Corinthiana sat on the main sofa; mostly she seemed happy, although a few isolated times Crockett looked over at her and noticed the same expression of pain and conflict from dinner had reappeared on her face. The expression, however, always passed quickly. Crockett assumed that it appeared whenever the old woman looked across the room and saw Beatrice’s grand bed, its emptiness a reminder of the family’s loss.
Immediately after the jovial affair that was dinner, Crockett pulled Petrarch aside to find out his thoughts. The old solicitor was confident in his conclusions.
“My dear boy, as I looked around the room, as I added up the facts, there was only simple addition to be done.”
“But earlier we said it may have been two together.”
“You did. You and Brontë were getting quite carried away, but you heard me reason it through in the room. Robert Edward is the most suspicious, and he has a very secure alibi. May is spiteful, but who would work with her? She has no allies here. And, as I mentioned before, Augüst is a bit too dense to plan something on his own.”
“You can’t give up!”
Petrarch gently reached out and gripped Crockett’s shoulder. The young man’s head had fallen in frustration, but his old master lifted his chin with his finger and looked into his multi-colored eyes.
“I love your tenacity, Crockett, but we’ve both let our imaginations get the better of us. Brontë seduced us both into a game of chasing a phantom murderer. To be sure, she was aided by a number of artifacts—Lucinda’s note, the tomb key, the disappearance of Bixby Hawsfeffer, and, of course, the death of little Beatrice.” Petrarch sighed. He turned away and looked out the front windows of the house into the twilight. “I apologize for fueling your fire, my boy, with our clandestine conference and my own musings on some secret history. When you assess the facts, there is only a mundane puzzle which hinges on the family fortune. Someone wants money and is playing on Corinthiana’s love of the spiritual world to scare her into ending this affair.”
“But…Beatrice…” Crockett felt betrayed. He knew in his heart that Petrarch was most likely correct, but…Brontë had lit his soul with a wonderful fantasy, part of which was solving this mystery and taking her as his wife. It was asinine, impossible, but in the moments before dinner, it seemed to Crockett the only way the mad journey at Hawsfeffer Manor could end.
The young man shook his head sadly—he made one last attempt to convince his master that they should continue forward. “Don’t you want a resolution, Petrarch? Can you rest not knowing what happened?”
Petrarch’s eyebrows knitted together. A note of melancholy came into his voice. “Crockett, I have seen a great deal in my years as a solicitor, and I can say that sometimes it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie.”
“You think…”
“I think that someone wanted to expedite the end of this, and most of those reasons are actually quite logical. Many have bills to pay—May is in love. There is no reason to think of this as a murder of Master Hawsfeffer; it seems to me that it was simply a fortunate event for members of a family who are all in financial troubles. Even if there is no money, they all fanatically believe in it.”
Crockett was crestfallen. “But…”
“And Lucinda’s note and key were simply a mother’s last attempt to reconcile with her son. I’m sorry to disappoint you, my boy.” Petrarch turned from the window and gently patted Crockett’s shoulder. “I did do some of my own investigating. I asked Corinthiana what woke her up the night of Beatrice’s murder, and she said she wasn’t sure. She thought she may have heard something and that pulled her out of bed—she believed it to be a fish-mother's intuition.”
“Oh, Petrarch…” Crockett felt a sad resolve creep over him, a resignation that the truth could never be known. The fantasy of his and Brontë’s triumph over the Ghost of Hawsfeffer Manor faded into a dense fog. “Perhaps some mysteries simply aren’t meant to be solved. It doesn't help that neither you nor I are detectives. I can't even conduct an interview without bleating an accusation.” Crockett winced remembering his conversation with Dexter.
“I agree, Crockett.” Petrarch gently gripped his apprentice’s arm, “I think it’s best for us to leave this place. The atmosphere…and,” he looked knowingly through the doorway at Brontë who sat in his eyeline in the sitting room, “the company are quite going to your head.”
Crockett felt his face grow hot. “I didn’t…I’m sorry.”
“There is no need for an apology, my dear boy. Warm affection can make us all follow pursuits to ill ends. You learned that lesson the day you told Mrs. Brettwick I was dead to avoid disappointing her about her will.”
Crockett feigned a smile, but as he watched Petrarch enter the sitting room, he felt his chest ache. He could not argue with the logic, but it did not make the moment any less painful. Why did the location, the place, the amount of money held at the state of one’s birth dictate where a heart could find connection?
These thoughts distracted the young man as the evening progressed. He tried to maintain an interest in the conversations of those around him, but he had descended into a state of melancholy. Only Brontë shared his mirthless attitude. She sat quietly at the side of the room immersed in a book. Crockett tried to speak to her, but he was met with iciness.
“How do you feel? I think for now the matter is all buttoned up,” he said sadly.
“Is it?” She answered, her eyes never leaving the page in her book.
“Well, there is a resolution.”
“For some.”
He spent the rest of the evening watching the card game and occasionally bending an ear to the ongoing discussion about the German navy between August and Robert Edward. When Petrarch grew tired of the card game, he let Crockett sit in for several hands as he reclined on the sofa and started to gently snore.
Near eleven, the entire party had grown sleepy, the events of the past several days leaving them all exhausted. After everyone retired, Crockett turned his attention to his sleeping master.
“I supposed I should help you to bed, Petrarch.”
But just as he moved forward, his hand in position to shake Petrarch awake, he felt a pair of eyes on him. Nervously, he looked up and saw Brontë staring at him from the threshold of the sitting room.
She crept forward softly, keeping her voice low.
“I can’t believe you’d keep the key a secret,” she said violently, her soft tones a flurry of hisses.
Crockett’s voice shook. “I’m so sorry—Petrarch and I didn’t know that it mattered; I didn’t want to draw your attention to it for no reason. And, for what it’s worth, I was going to tell you in the room, but Martha interrupted us.”
Brontë’s gaze softened. “You were?”
“I was.” Crockett’
s heart thudded in his chest.
“Crockett,” she said sadly, “it’s not the fact that you kept the key secret from me; it’s that I felt betrayed when you turned with them. You seemed always in the same frame of mind with me, secure in the belief that something macabre happened in this house.” She breathed in deeply. “I…do you remember the morning when we met on the lawn, and I told you that no one is truly honest in this house?”
Crockett nodded. He longed to reach out, pull Brontë into a warm embrace.
“I felt that…I’m sorry if it’s maudlin…” Brontë looked the most uncertain Crockett had seen her. She was shaking, agitated. “I just thought you did tell the truth. I trusted you in a way…but then, tonight…” She exhaled dramatically. “It was as if I lost it all. You turned to the easy solution with everyone else.”
“Brontë…” Crockett felt overwhelmed. Although he had been won over by Petrarch’s logic earlier, he now felt as if his only recourse, the only act fate drove him toward, was to follow Brontë to the very ends of the earth, regardless of logic, evidence, or propriety. He wanted to speak more, but words would not come easily, his tongue was leaden with emotion.
Brontë shook her head, tears in her eyes. “Everyone is so happy now, returned to a pre-death bliss that never existed. Even Kordelia…” She took a deep breath. “You don’t know this house, the oppression of it. People talk about the ghosts outside on the river, but they don’t talk of those inside.” Brontë stopped. Her lips ceased moving, formed a thin, harsh line. She took a deep breath, the emotion slowly draining from her face. “It’s been lonely,” she said finally, resolutely. “But less so with you here.”
Crockett’s face flushed. He hoped that the earlier luminosity of his expression had dimmed and this show of emotion wasn’t visible. He failed to speak; he was overwhelmed by the many things transpiring in this quiet moment—Brontë’s soft tones, her moment of vulnerability, her recollection of their first moment alone together on the lawn. More than anything, however, was that the connection he felt was true: the feeling of being understood. All his years on the streets, then in Petrarch’s carriage house, he had never felt something so vulnerable, like a thread, a pulsing wire attached between himself and another person. With Petrarch there was a paternal bond which had formed into an emotional fondness, but with Brontë…It was a current of passion which his guarded heart had never had the urge to emit. Looking into her eyes in that moment, he felt a rush of emotion which he’d only ever read about in poetry, a vulnerability and brokenness he now consciously understood as love.
“I,” he said slowly, his tongue thick, “I feel the same.”
A silence unfolded, tender and full. They looked into each other’s eyes, unspoken emotions, an effusive tenderness, passing between them.
In the heat of the emotion Crockett’s tongue loosened itself. His full, insane theory poured out. “I don’t want to admit that it’s over, either,” he said hurriedly, “that there is a simple explanation for it. Truthfully,” his face flushed yet again, “I…I actually had thought the murderer may be Bixby Hawsfeffer.”
There was a brief moment of silence, Brontë’s eyes sparkling with tears, but then her face broke into a wide smile. She laughed into her hand. As she giggled, Crockett heard, what sounded like footsteps behind him.
“I’m so sorry,” Brontë said trying to recover her composure. “It’s just—it’s a bit, you know…You think the murderer was the murdered?” she asked.
“No, no!” Crockett grew anxious. “I thought it was his son, Bixby Hawsfeffer, Jr.—Pip—returned. Somehow…from Paris…”
Brontë smiled, her whole face shining. “So, you haven’t given up on the truth, however ludicrous it may be.”
“I haven’t,” he said resolutely. “Petrarch wants to, but I don’t. I don’t want to lose it.”
Brontë cocked her head slightly. “Lose what?”
The young solicitor, heart pounding, was no longer using his reason. His tendency to make confused, rash decisions had been enhanced by a multiple of thousands in the presence of Brontë. With her so close, their affections spoken out loud, he was losing his senses.
“It, I, well, you know, the truth,” he said stiltedly. He tried his best to calm himself, to try to subdue the tenderness he felt. “I don’t…want to lose the truth of us. Of us between us. The truth of which us is a part in which the mystery is us.”
Brontë nodded. She looked as if she would speak but halted. Neither of them had an idea how to carry forward; in truth, they both wanted to luxuriate in the moment, live in it for a long while, trying to understand the importance of it. No words could bear the weight of what their emotions felt. It seemed meaningless to speak.
Crockett finally spoke. His words were tentative, almost a whisper; it was as if he believed his raised voice would shatter the moment like glass. “I just don’t want it to be over,” he said.
Brontë took a deep breath. A full spectrum of feeling crossed her facial features in the next moment. It started with a flush of embarrassment, turned to a slight frown, but then burst into an enthusiastic grin. “Yes!” she said quickly. In a rush of emotion, she gripped Crockett’s hands. “We don’t give up. Tomorrow we take our last chance to find out what is really going on. We interrogate everyone, and we move toward a real resolution. Emotions will be high; everyone likes to pretend that they’re glad Grandfather is gone, but there will be sadness, and people will start to talk. It may be luck that Petrarch produced the key and put us into the final stages. We have little time before the funeral, but we have to use it. We'll get into some deblightful troububble.”[34]
“Yes,” Crockett said breathlessly.
Brontë held Crockett’s gaze. They both nodded enthusiastically, dramatically for some time. It was the clock chiming which tore them from their reverie, both parties jerking away as if from a dream. Brontë realized she had been holding Crockett’s hands and dropped them quickly. She felt embarrassed and stepped away from him.
She bowed, slightly curtseying. “Yes,” she said nervously. “Yes, then until tomorrow.” A pink hue rose in her cheeks as she again stepped away from Crockett and crossed into the foyer.
Watching her leave, rather than ebb, his emotions rose higher. His whole being set alight, overcome by the new feeling of love.
Brontë experienced the same current of affection as she moved away from the young solicitor, one that she had not felt before. She grew giddy crossing the cavernous entry, but as she took her first step onto the foyer stairs, she paused; a shiver rushed down her spine.
She felt a pair of eyes watching her, some malicious presence awaiting her in the dark.
Her giddiness faded. She turned, frightened, to assess the shadows behind her. But, when her eyes turned to the mysterious presence, she saw only Crockett’s gleaming smile. His eyes also sparkled like diamonds in the dim light. She waved upon catching his gaze; she couldn’t stop herself from giggling as she hurried up the stair.
When she was gone, Crockett sighed. The road ahead was obscured in shadow, but his heart was light. He and Brontë created a way forward together. His body felt weightless as he helped Petrarch back to his room. The old man mumbled quietly as they passed into the east wing of the house.
#
Crockett had long put Petrarch to bed when the shot rang out. It was a single, loud blast, then the sound of shattered glass followed by a heavy thud. There was a brief silence before the rush of thundering footsteps echoed from all corners of the house; the roused family sprinted to find the source of the explosion.
They found Crockett in the room holding his master. The old man’s face was a stark white; his mouth hung open, exposing the deep black of his gaping maw. Everything in the room was in disarray—the drawers of the secretary pulled out, a table flipped over, and the old solicitor’s bag ripped of its contents. The weapon, the gun which had hung over the fireplace, was left at the room’s threshold upon the shooter's exit.
No one spoke a
s they assessed the scene of violence. Tears fell down Crockett’s face. He held Petrarch and stroked his white beard.
Kordelia found her own glove next to the gun. As she held it up in the dim light, it felt as if it was imbued with some dark force, a ghoulish relic from beyond the grave.
Chapter 16: Detective Lucian Lucretian Pimento
Even with the history of murders, eviscerations, entrapments, and drownings, the fear of Petrarch's demise filled the house with a different kind of tense, raw emotion. The scene resembled that of a pietà, only in lieu of a beatific Mary and a sinewy Christ, at the center of this tableau was a gaunt, variegated-eyed Crockett holding the rotund Petrarch. The supporting cast flanked him in various stages of grief, shock, or (for Kordelia, holding her glove) a kind of alarmed sleepiness.
It was Robert Edward who broke the ominous silence. He noted, in all the chaos, that one of the telltale signs of death was absent.
“Zere’s no blood,” he said, the beginning of a smile creeping over his face.
“Perhaps he was too old to have any,” said Kordelia quietly.
“It’s not the blood,” Crockett said. “His…heart…I think the shock…”
But as if on cue, Petrarch pulled in a deep breath of air. The sudden movement caused Crockett to jump, throwing the old man, his head colliding with the side of his bed.
Everyone gathered gasped. The sound of his head hitting the wooden bed legs cracked nearly as loud as the gun.
Crockett flailed wildly, leaning over the old man and shaking him.
“Petrarch! Oh, no…Oh, Petrarch!”
“My necessitous friend!” August shuffled forward. “Let me try. My great-grandfather was a physician. Or knew a physician. Either way, I should be able to help.”
Crockett stepped aside so August could lean over the body. He gently caressed his face and called Petrarch’s name softly.
“Petrarch? Petrarch, old boy, are you all right?” He gave the passed-out man a moment to respond, before urgently raising his arm and slapping him so fiercely across the cheek that Corinthiana screamed.