by Tedd Hawks
“I don’t know,” Kordelia said dreamily. “He didn’t not accuse me, but I’m unsure if the lack of direct accusation was fully accusatory.”
“I zink he vas out of ze line! How dare he come into zis house and accuse me! I am ze vun so curious about ze dying of poor Beatrice!” Robert Edward was waving his arms maniacally, his cape swirling as he gesticulated.
May entered the room at that moment. Her eyes were red and puffy; she couldn’t stop wringing her thin hands.
“Is it you Aunt May?” Kordelia asked nonchalantly. “Are you the one leaving my gloves around and slicing up the pets?”
May flinched. “That’s not funny, Kordelia. You should have better manners than that. You’re a young woman for goodness’ sake.”
“Please leave the disciplining of my children to me, May.” June’s eyes narrowed as she assessed her younger sister. “We don’t want them picking up your ‘manners’ of taking what’s not yours.”
A blast of air issued from May’s nostrils as she leaned over the table. Her hands turned white gripping the edge. It looked as if hot flames would flow from her mouth, but just as she prepared to speak, her teeth bared savagely, Corinthiana entered with a great sigh.
The old woman’s pace was even more theatrical and sluggish this particular morning. Crockett counted ten seconds before she successfully took three steps.
Distress over their mother averted June and May’s impending argument. May reached out and took Corinthiana's arm.
“Mother, are you all right?” she asked.
“Oooh,” Corinthiana bawled. “Hiiighs and looows. Hiiighs and looows!” The elderly woman shuffled forward. May kept hold of her, assisting her to the head of the table. “I just waaant tooo laaay poor Beeeatrice and Bixby tooo rest. Whaaat dooo weee neeed this odd inspector for?”
“Due diligence, Grandmother,” Brontë said urgently. “The other things were peculiar, but the gunshot and the attempted murder of Petrarch tip the scales to a new kind of malice.”
“Malice. That is a wonderful word for it, darling,” June beamed.
“It is,” Kordelia said. “More points for Brontë. I would have said something like…misconfusion.”
“Pooor young maaan,” Corinthiana called out looking down the table. “Aaare yooou aaall right? Yooou seeem distressed.”
Crockett's lack of rest was writ on his features. A gnawing fear about Petrarch and a deeply personal rebuke of himself and his own actions showed up in deep shadows under his eyes and a waxen complexion. He thought he was in better control of his own reactions and emotions, but last night proved to be a regression on all the fronts in which he believed he had advanced. He’d lost control of his amorous feelings for Brontë and reacted poorly to Petrarch’s suggestions the investigation be closed. In the dawn light, this emotional turmoil manifested itself in his pale and exhausted countenance. His thin fingers rubbed his different-colored eyes.
“It was a bad night. I was lucky to get any sleep.”
Brontë smiled at him. “I think we all slept with a bit of caution.”
June gazed between her daughter and Crockett, a sudden understanding coming to her. In one warm gaze between the young people, she ascertained all which had previously been invisible to her about their growing affection. Her hand immediately went to cover her heart.
“Brontë,” she said, her voice raspy with effort, “perhaps you should come with me to see the vicar and finalize arrangements for the entombment this afternoon.”
“Are plans still moving forward?” May was so elated her mask-like face broke into a (relatively) broad smile. “I thought with the recent events we’d be postponed yet again.”
“Burying father—or his casket—and Beatrice won’t stop the investigation, May. Things will proceed as planned,” June said curtly.
All gathered breathed a collective sigh of relief, except for Brontë, who looked at her mother as if she had just voiced how much she admired the German Kaiser.
“Mother, I’m fine here,” she said. “Kordelia can go with you to the village.”
“No!” June responded so dramatically that everyone in the room looked toward the eldest Hawsfeffer daughter. To recover, she cleared her throat with several, very unladylike coughs and feigned a smile. Without thinking, she reached out and grabbed her mother’s teacup, taking a long draught.
“My deeear,” Corinthiana said, “thaaat is my teeea.”
Ignoring her, June plastered on a cloying smile; however, her eyes belied a deep fear. “Brontë, come with Mummy! It will be nice to get air, and we’ll be out of Pugmanto’s way.”
“His name is Detective Pimento, Mother,” Brontë said looking at June questioningly. “Anyone else can go—I feel like I’d be happier here rather than making the long journey into town. I’d rather not put on formal clothes.”
“Darling,” June’s voice grew frantic, “you’re coming with me. Get ready. I’d feel safer if you were by my side. I worry about you, darling!”
“Do you worry about me?” Kordelia asked nonchalantly.
June nodded disinterestedly in the direction of her other daughter.
Brontë looked at her grandmother who was busily cleaning off the rim of her teacup where June had placed her lips. Uncertainly, she left the room after a nod of acquiescence to her mother.
Martha shuffled in immediately after Brontë’s departure, her eye spinning more quickly than usual.
“You!” she said gruffly pointing to Crockett. “The detective wants to see you.”
#
June was correct. The menacing, no-nonsense detective of the previous night was gone. In his wake was a pleasant, almost jolly individual wearing a broad smile. Crockett took him in again, the same red jacket, the same unkempt sideburns and spectacles. The familiarity described by August and his wife was perhaps more in relationship to the blandness of Detective Lucian Lucretian Pimento’s presence rather than any sort of casual, welcoming air he exuded. It was odd that the previous night he had been a dramatic, vengeful force, but in the morning light, he appeared diminished, innocuous in the rays of the sun.
“Crockett!” he called as the young man entered the room. “Please, come in. Excuse the formalities of this, but it’s part of the job.”
Slowly, Crockett crossed the room and took a seat in the leather armchair that faced the detective. For a long moment neither man said anything. Detective Pimento’s eyes glittered with a knowing, incomprehensible sheen. Crockett eventually shifted in his chair, feeling he was being looked through rather than at.
“How are you, my boy?” The detective leaned back; the feather in his lapel shook.
“I’m well enough,” Crockett said. “I didn’t get much sleep.”
“No one did. It was quite the evening.” A wry smile turned up the edges of the detective’s mouth. “It sounds like it’s been the general way of things since you’ve arrived at Hawsfeffer Manor.”
Crockett sighed. “It has been…for lack of a better word, chaotic. Beatrice…Poor Petrarch…”
“Your dear master…” Detective Pimento tsked compassionately. “What a sad event.”
“Unbelievably so,” Crockett felt his eyes grow damp. “I thought I lost him…”
“He means a great deal to you?”
“I would say he’s like a father to me.” Crockett quickly wiped his eyes. Self-consciously he cleared his throat. “He took me off the street. Without him, who knows where I’d be.”
“What a wonderful story.”
“For me, I suppose.”
The two men again settled into a pregnant silence. Pimento leaned forward; Crockett noticed his breath smelled like an oven full of coffee beans.
“What else should I know about you, Mr. Cook? Do you have any secrets that would bear on the case?”
“No, sir,” Crockett's neck grew warm. “Nothing that explains the events that have transpired in this house.”
“But secrets that explain other things?”
Crockett’s ears turned
a bright red.
Pimento laughed heartily, his head falling backward. “My dear, boy! There is nothing to fear! I only need to hear the facts. If you’re not guilty then there is no cause for the flush on your cheeks.”
“I’m sorry, Detective.” Crockett wiped his brow with the back of his hand. “I’m a little unsettled. Things have been so muddled here. Since Petrarch and I arrived, we have seen many oddities.”
“Oddities?” Pimento savored the sound of the word. His tongue flicked out and flashed across his lips. “And what do you think of these oddities, Mr. Cook?”
“I don’t know.”
“Take this room, then,” the detective said. “We’ll go piece by piece through it.”
“Why this room?” Crockett’s caterpillar eyebrows knitted together.
“The room with ghosts—the haunted room.”
Crockett, without thinking, chuckled to himself. The séance seemed a dim memory, a bad joke. “It is,” he said. “That was a very interesting morning.”
“I’m sure. Do you have any thoughts on who played the little trick?” Detective Pimento stared intensely at Crockett.
“To be honest,” Crockett said, delighted the conversation had become more natural, “Brontë and I have been attempting some detective work on our own. We think it’s unrelated to the other crimes—the other situations—I guess is more correct to say.”
“Really?” Detective Pimento leaned forward. His eyes twinkled, almost merrily, in the warm, golden sunlight. “Unrelated?”
“I believe it was Kordelia,” Crockett said. “She was the one who led the séance. Her gloves were found near the phonograph. She’s very strange, I think harmless, but it seems the type of joke she would play.” Crockett tapped his fingers on the desk. “I do think, however, that there was someone assisting her. I don’t think one could execute that kind of trick on their own.”
Detective Pimento’s smile grew wider. “An admirable theory. One similar to my own. Do you have any idea of the accomplice?”
Crockett sat back in his chair. While he assumed the phonograph trick was a result of Kordelia and perhaps her father looking to expedite the will reading, he still harbored his other theory about who truly murdered Bixby Hawsfeffer. “I’m not sure, maybe Augüst—but, as I said, I think it was done in fun. I don’t know if it matters.”
“My dear boy,” Pimento rose. “Everything in this kind of case matters.”
Crockett watched the detective move to the window, the same window the bird had crashed into during the commune with the dead.
“Mr. Cook, do you mind if I ask you something? We can put aside the phonograph accomplice for now.”
The young man grew nervous. “Yes…of course, you may ask me anything.”
“Good.” Pimento put his hands behind his back and stared upon the house grounds. “You see, I’ve already eliminated you as a suspect. You don’t know the house, and you couldn’t have found the key to get to the sword that killed the herring.”
“Beatrice…”
“So, I trust you.” Pimento turned dramatically. “Would you mind if I expressed my own opinion of the events to you? Perhaps you could provide additional context or insights.”
Crockett nodded apprehensively.
Pimento did not notice the reservation in Crockett’s expression. The detective sniffed assuredly and turned back to the window. “Good, my boy. You see I need to know everything. This case, I believe, is not one that is dangerous, but one that stems from what is being unsaid, what is being kept secret. In West Hampminstershireshire we don’t get many murders …or attempted murders. To be honest, it’s your opinion that is of the most vital importance to me. You come from the outside. You can see the relationships of these people better than most, better than they, probably better than I. You have been here, in the thick of it, heard them talk, heard them plot, heard them complain. I need you to be absolutely honest, overflowing with veracity. You,” the old detective turned and began to walk toward Crockett, “you are the key to this, my dear boy. Petrarch is incapacitated and I need you to be my eyes and ears.”
Crockett looked deeply into the detective’s eyes. He felt both seen and, yet, looked over, as if he were standing in front of the star actor the audience desperately wanted to view. But, as Crockett hesitated, Detective Pimento extended his hand and gently put it on Crockett’s shoulder.
"I think we can take care of this case together," he said.
A shock went through the young man, a jolt of profound feeling. The conspiratorial nature, the warmth, the fatherly touch overwhelmed the solicitor’s young assistant. With Petrarch injured, Crockett needed a new, avuncular confidant to share his secret, and something in the assured touch of Pimento struck an emotional chord deep inside him. The mistrust he felt moments before, loosened. Pimento, whether through detectivian[37] wisdom or emotional warmth, had created a bond. Without thought or compunction, Crockett spoke.
“Bixby,” he said quickly.
Detective Pimento’s eyebrows rose. His mouth punched out like that of a fish, a haunting resemblance to the deceased Beatrice.
“Actually, Pip Hawsfeffer, otherwise known as Bixby, Jr.” Crockett went on breathlessly, “I think it’s Bixby’s son who is behind everything. He’s back and he’s interfering with matters to take what he thinks is owed him and avenge his mother’s death. I think Kordelia’s phonograph trick was merely an amusement, but Pip killed his father and then killed Beatrice to get revenge on his family and…attain something...That’s what I’m unsure about.”
Detective Pimento’s face shifted from the surprised fish expression, to one of deep confusion. Slowly, he moved around the desk to his seat.
“The homosexual?” he asked. “The one in Paris?”
“Yes. Have you heard about the note? I think it’s vital to the case, but I don’t know what it means.”
“I have not,” he said drily, his body slowly lowering into the leather chair. Crockett noted that he appeared to want to say more, but, for some reason, it was withheld.
When the detective did not speak, Crockett continued, “Corinthiana most likely didn’t mention it because it doesn’t link to anything. But what if it did?”
“What is in the note?” Pimento nervously played with his lapel. “Who wrote it? Who was it to?”
“It was from Bixby’s first wife, Lucinda.” Crockett paused, unsure whether the detective was humoring him or believed in some part of his fantastic theory. “It was addressed to Petrarch to be opened at the time of Bixby, Sr.’s death. It included the key to the tomb. That’s why Petrarch had it—he didn’t really discover it in his papers.”
“Yes?” Pimento’s eyes lost their merriment; in its place an intense thoughtfulness flooded in.
“Lucinda wrote a note shortly before she disappeared. It seems benign, but it could mean something very important. It simply asks Pip to visit his mother’s tomb, but…well, perhaps it was a code of some kind.”
Pimento was still off-kilter. His words came slowly, laboriously. “What do you know about Lucinda?”
“Nothing of importance.” Crockett leaned back in the chair. A deep sense of relief accompanied his confession. Even Brontë laughed at his theory, but Pimento seemed, at the very least, interested. “I know she was Bixby Hawsfeffer, Sr.’s first wife and that she disappeared many years ago. There is suspected foul play.”
“Do you think they’re linked then?” Pimento asked. “Do you think that her death all those years ago and the current…” he hesitated briefly, “…troubling incidents are linked across time?”
“That I don’t know,” Crockett said. “I just have a feeling that, not only is Bixby the younger involved, but someone in the house is assisting him.” Crockett hoped that this would jar the detective—make him gasp in appreciation—but he only looked more troubled. Crockett continued, “The people in this house are eccentric; they all have motive. It’s not a far reach to suspect that we all could be guilty. We should be looking at e
veryone, even Petrarch, Martha, and Dexter.”
Detective Pimento came to rapt attention. Crockett looked at him uncertainly. “Yes, Detective?”
“Sorry…Dexter…” he said slowly.
“Yes, the groundskeeper,” Crockett continued. “He ran off. I spoke with him, and I can say I think he's the least likely to be involved in any of this.”
Detective Pimento turned his gaze out the window. “It’s an interesting assortment of characters,” he said thoughtfully. “We need to get them all organized, but our time is short.”
“Short?” Crockett felt an impending sense of dread.
“My boy,” Pimento turned his head toward him ominously, “there has been an attempted murder, and the killer and the victim are still undiscovered. It’s only a matter of time before there is another strike made against the old man. My guess is that the solicitor knows who did it, and the perpetrator is moving about the house in abject fear of him awaking and confessing. We stand on the edge of a knife.” Pimento laced his fingers and placed them behind his head. “Our time is running out, like sands in an hourglass or the winding down of a grandfather clock. Tick tock,” he said emotionlessly. “Tick tock.”
Chapter 18: Portraits of Death
Crockett felt the same dread of the night before creep over him. The feelings of guilt and panic slithered over his skull and rippled across his skin in the form of goosepimples.
Pimento drummed his fingers on the large desk.
“Crockett,” the detective said heavily, “I mentioned that I needed you to be my eyes and ears, and that is the truth. If not to support me, can you please assist in the case to help your dear Petrarch?”
Crockett felt his heart clench. He nodded emphatically.
“Most excellent!” Pimento’s feather shook. “Now, you know this house and those in it better than I. Is there,” the older gentleman raised his eyebrow slightly, “someone with whom you share confidences? Is there a person who could give you information that I may not get from my general interviews?”
Brontë. Crockett saw her surly face the night before when she had felt betrayed by him. Was this also a betrayal? Did he break her trust by confiding their thoughts and secret musings to the detective?