by Tedd Hawks
Detective Pimento eyed him warily. “My dear boy, time is of the essence. I need your confidences and your assistance to move toward a resolution as quickly as possible. Is there someone who can give you more information on Lucinda Hawsfeffer?”
“Yes.” Crockett nervously wrung his hands. “I can ask someone. The last time I attempted an interrogation it was unsuccessful…but as it says in The Fantastic Death of Captain Discord, ‘experience is the key to sleuthing mastery.’”
“Indeed.” Pimento said. “I never consider any solution to a case too odd and your Bixby Jr./Pip theory is so ingeniously off-beat that it could be correct.” The detective's short figure rose from the desk. He began to pace slowly around the room. “I want you to find out as much as you can about Pip and Lucinda. Try to find a tie between the past and present that binds the disappearances then with the happenings now. I shall do my standard review of the remaining leads—go the basement and assess the rapiers, scour the river where Bixby, Sr. disappeared, and examine the rest of the rooms of the house. We will convene near teatime and see if there is anything new in terms of evidence.” Pimento ceased pacing and stood erect. The businesslike detective of the previous evening and the merry, elder man of the morning merged into one. “You know, Mr. Cook,” he said, amusement in his voice, “you may make a good detective someday.”
Crockett smiled, imagining himself as Captain Discord, triumphantly rooting out the Hawsfeffer's rutabaga farmer.
#
By the time Crockett left the study, Brontë and her mother had gone to see the vicar. Kordelia confirmed that they would return “soon or not so very not soon in the mash,”[38] which left Crockett feeling morose as he walked idly back to his room in the late morning.
Petrarch was still snoring contentedly in his chamber, asleep from the concoction of medicines and concussions the previous night had blessed him with. Crockett felt relief sitting next to the old man, seeing a small smile stretched across his old face. His steady workout regimen had left him strong enough to survive the shock. For that, Crockett was extremely grateful.
As Crockett sat by the old man’s bedside, his thoughts strayed to the week’s chaos. He needed to follow his instinct. He ruled out whether the séance was related—it was simply a red herring[39]—the violence against Beatrice, however, bore some grave importance. He was sure of it. Additionally, the aggression against Petrarch yielded no clearer vision of the answer either. Crockett had been sure in that chaos someone would have been more apprehensive, more apparently nefarious, in the heat of that disastrous event, but everyone had been helpful, shocked, and disgusted. But he had also been shocked—perhaps he had not observed things correctly.
Sighing, he reached out and grabbed Petrarch’s hand. “I’m sorry, old man,” he whispered. “I still am so inexperienced, so wildly unpredictable in moments of crisis. This whole thing has gotten out of hand. I thought…you know, when Brontë told me she didn’t think it was over, I believed her. I couldn’t have foreseen this, though.”
Crockett gently pressed Petrarch’s hand to his forehead.
He needed to think.
The murderer, in his mind, was the youngest Bixby, Pip. That was the strongest link to Lucinda’s note—he, perhaps, saw it, or got wind of the truth of what happened to his mother, and was seeking vengeance. But in order to execute a plan of this complexity, he would need help from inside the manor. Crockett knew if he could simply find the accomplice, he’d find Bixby. Someone had to have retrieved Corinthiana’s key to the family vault and taken the rapier used to kill Beatrice. The killer knew how to carve a fish, so they must have some kind of background in food preparation or fishing for sport, which could lead to Martha or any of the men in the house. Corinthiana discovered her pet, seemingly without guidance, so that added no clarity to the events. If he narrowed the list of suspects down, the most likely to be assisting in the malevolence would be Martha, August, May, or, even, Kordelia—they all had motive and ability to execute a strategy of this scale. Robert had a clear alibi and reason for being there, Dexter loved Bixby Hawsfeffer and was now gone, June had shown no proclivity in any direction (however, her vein bulging at breakfast raised some questions), Corinthiana was too bumbling and emotional to do much more than her hair in the morning, Petrarch was the opposite of murderous…and Brontë…it simply couldn’t be her.
In fact, he needed her to come back—they could review their notes of the events together.
Brontë…Crockett sighed.
Did she trust him? Could there be something there? Or was it all a part of his overactive imagination? The intensity of their affection reached a fever pitch the previous night, but that may have simply been the nature of the exchange and their trust which had fused quickly under the influence of the week’s trauma. Was his idea of Pip coming back from the past just as fantastical as a romance with the eldest Winterbourne daughter?
A quiet knock disturbed his reverie.
Crockett turned and saw Kordelia staring at him from the shadow of the hallway.
“Hullo,” she said sweetly.
“Hullo. You may come in, Kordelia.”
The young woman glided to the bed. Her wide eyes looked at Petrarch with a deep empathy. “I came to be sure he’s all right.”
“It sounds like he will be fine. He’s been sleeping a long while.”
“Not from the concussion,” she said. “There are bats in this room. They sometimes defecate on the bed. I didn’t want him to be used as a toilet.”
Crockett sighed.
Kordelia gently ran her finger over the bed cover. She breathed in sharply.
“Are you all right?” Crocket asked.
Nervously, the young woman looked at Crockett. “I heard you,” she said softly. “With the detective. I used the same vent that was used to pipe in the music from the phonograph.”
Crockett frowned. “Oh?”
“It’s a wonderful theory. It gets around all the characters in the house. It’s someone outside it. Bixby from the past.” Kordelia drew closer to Crockett, her voice lowering. “It’s very like Mère, Bélier, Mort, Chapeau. In the play the viscount’s ram is the one poisoning the well by defecating in it. It’s revealed in the fourth meat pie scene.”
“I feel this conversation has discussed defecation with alarming frequency,” Crockett said.
“It’s the one you don’t suspect. It’s like the play or a book.” Kordelia leaned in conspiratorially, her voice becoming a whisper. “There are only a few people who can link the past to the present. You should talk to them.” She hesitated and then, in a barely audible tone, she quoted the same passage from the day they met on the river. “The past doesn’t die, just like ghosts don’t.”
Crockett turned toward her, but the girl had moved away. She was skipping from the room.
“Martha,” she called back in a sing-song voice, “is cleaning up the detective’s room.”
He would at least be able to ask the old maid some questions that focused his theory and could eliminate or aggrandize Pip’s status as a suspect. The first time he’d encountered her cleaving meat, it hadn’t yielded results, but time was running out, and perhaps after that first exchange, she would trust him and recognize a rapport between them. As Kordelia’s footsteps died away, Crockett took a deep breath and squeezed Petrarch’s hand. “There are worse ideas,” he said quickly and rushed after the youngest Winterbourne daughter.
#
Kordelia disappeared, so that when Crockett found himself in the west wing, he was alone in his quest to face Martha. Tentatively, he knocked on the open door to the detective’s room, which she was still cleaning. He waited patiently for the old woman to call him in. She ignored the sound, however, and continued sweeping, her shuffling gate the only sound in the room. Crockett was unsure if it was his imagination, or if the maid’s roving eye was fixed on him, but it made him feel unsettled.
He attempted two more knocks, to no avail, before stepping into the room.
&
nbsp; “Pardon,” he said, his throat congested due to nerves. “Excuse—pardon? Ma’am?”
Martha stopped for an instant before resuming sweeping.
It was clear she saw no rapport between them.
Crockett cleared his throat and debated his next course of action. At the very least, he knew he had to refrain from directly accusing Martha of the murder. As he pondered the most useful questions to ask, he looked up and discovered the macabre mural painted on the ceiling. It was a dramatic scene of the French and Indian War in America. The picture was painted with intricate detail, the blood a dark, rich red. In the center of the portrait was a proud American warrior on a large, white horse, his eyes breaking the mystique of the painting, looking straight out of the artwork and at the viewer. Crockett had never seen anything like it before; he shivered slightly in spite of the warmth of the day. Something about the face appeared familiar, but the young man couldn’t quite place the visage in his memory.
“Master Bixby Von Bunson,” Martha croaked, never interrupting her sweeping.
Crockett looked to her, trying to catch her eye. He pasted a smile on his face in an attempt to disarm the old woman. “I’m sorry,” he said moving closer to her. “Bixby Von Bunson?”
“Yes,” she said shortly. “He had all these painted before he disappeared. He painted himself into the pictures.”
“And Bixby Hawsfeffer allowed that? He supported his cousin painting himself into the images in his house?”
“They were very friendly before they weren’t,” she said coldly. “When Von Bunson went to America he made them both a large sum of money. Dexter is painted in them, too. They came over from America together. He and Bixby Von Bunson were very close friends…then things fell apart.”
Crockett stared at the old woman. It was as if she was saying something important and, yet, as if she wasn’t saying anything at all. Most of this was information Brontë shared with him during their adventure in the family vault. The number of Bixbys and betrayals in the family was certainly a point of interest, if nothing else.
“If you go into the study upstairs, the painting over the fireplace is the same, just them in different dress. More English.” She paused here, and for the first time looked directly at Crockett.
A tense moment unfolded between the two individuals. The single eye rolled slowly in its socket.
Crockett cleared his throat. “Why did Von Bunson leave?”
“Money,” the old woman said. “He wanted the house back, but it was legally Hawsfeffer’s, you see. The two men couldn’t agree on what to do, so he went back to America.”
“And he’s never been back?”
“Never. There’s been no word of him for decades.” She again looked as if she wanted to add something more. Hesitantly she spoke, “Miss Corinthiana had me deliver a secret letter after the master died.”
Crockett took a step closer. His heart thudded in his chest. “Do you know what was in the note?”
“I promised the lady I wouldn’t look. Martha keeps her promises.”
“But you think that it was addressed to Bixby Von Bunson?”
Martha looked around anxiously. “I have no firm idea, but it was my guess. Even if it was, with his habits of traveling with the Wild West show, it would never get to him. She was wasting her time.”
“Is that…” Crockett’s memory flashed to the night of Beatrice’s death. “Is that who you referred to when we woke you? When you said, ‘Is it him?’”
Martha appeared surprised. “I said that?”
“Yes, when we woke you.”
The expression of surprise flickered then faded. “I suppose it could be anyone. There’s lots of hims in the house.” She cleared her throat, a large amount of phlegm gurgling in her windpipe. With a loud “pfft!” she spit it into her apron.
Crockett did his best to hide his revulsion. “Ummm…But do you know why she would have written to Bixby Von Bunson when she heard about Bixby Hawsfeffer’s death?”
“No,” she said abruptly, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “Me and the lady don’t particularly get along. We’ve grown closer out of necessity since the death of Master Hawsfeffer, but it’s not warmth that brought me into her confidences.”
“I see.”
Martha shuffled toward the door, dragging the broom as she went. “I’m glad you’re still looking” she said. “I hope you find something. You and Brontë are sniffing around…you’re brave for doing so. They say Hawsfeffer Manor swallows its secrets. It swallowed Old Baron Von Bunson. It ate Lucinda, and now,” abruptly she stopped her steady shuffle, “it has taken Beatrice and has its eyes on Petrarch.”
She resumed her movement again, trailing past Crockett. He could smell the odor of soap and dust on her clothing. Although not a warm woman, Crockett felt some sort of genuine kindness in her words, in her wish for Brontë and him to find something. Unlike after their meat cleaving exchange, he now at least felt he could trust her. There was also something disarming about seeing her alone in that large room. The frightening image of her greeting him at the front door upon his arrival was less ominous now that he saw her attending to her regular duties.
“Martha,” Crockett spoke softly, “I was speaking to the detective this morning and he asked if I could find out more about Lucinda Hawsfeffer.”
“Lucinda?” The old woman appeared genuinely startled.
“Yes, you see we both have an idea that perhaps the events of this week are tied to the past in some way. Lucinda’s name came up in our conversation, but we don’t know anything about her.”
Martha turned fully toward Crockett. A smile appeared on her wrinkled face. “The past?” Her eyes clouded with a maternal glow. “Well, Lucinda was a beautiful woman, inside and out. If you believe what they say happened to her, then you know that it was the worst tragedy to happen in this house. The day I watched her put into the big tomb…It was a dark one.”
“Was it true?” Crockett took a step closer. “What happened to her…?”
Martha’s smile faded. She shook her head. “As I said, the house swallows its secrets. I do know that the day she died was one of the saddest I’ve seen while serving this household.” Her eyes moistened, but she had turned away from Crockett before he could see if there were proper tears. “If you’re nosing about the past,” she said softly as she moved out of the room, “I’d say you should look at the paintings. You can take the back stair through the ballroom if you want to go up and look at the one hanging in the study; it is a servant stair normally, only used by me and Dexter, but it's useful for a number of things.”
Crockett barely heard her, he was too focused on his final question, the one that burned inside him. His voice cracked. He finally asked, “In terms of the past, can you say whether Bixby Hawsfeffer, Jr., Mr. Pip, has ever been back? Could he have caused this chaos to seek revenge and take back his fortune?” He held his breath in anticipation of the response.
Martha’s shuffling slowed, minutely. “That is a boy I haven’t seen in quite a long time,” she said turning out of the room, “a very, very long time. In this house he is as dead as Lucinda and Beatrice put together.”
Crockett shook his head as the old woman turned the corner. The sound of her hobbling gait faded as she passed down the corridor.
He quickly analyzed the interview—a second note, Lucinda’s death, and the complete disregard of his inquiry into Pip.
Deep in thought, his eyes lifted to the ceiling. He assessed the painting. The figure of the rider on the white horse looked triumphantly down at him. Even six feet above him, his blue eyes sparkled. The visage was striking—it made him think of the painting in the basement; it was tragic the face of the young Bixby Hawsfeffer was rubbed out, ruining it.
Crockett sighed. He looked into an American soldier's eyes, then turned his attention to the carnage of the corpses littered throughout the rest of the mural.
“So much senseless violence,” he said to no one.
A dust mote floated through his line of sight and drifted across the room. Resignedly, he put his hands into his trouser pockets and walked into the hall. It was his dearest hope that Detective Pimento had come to some other conclusion, less fantastic, more practical. In his heart, however, was the nagging feeling that Martha may have been right. The house would simply swallow this secret as it had all the others. His fear was that, in the chaos, it may swallow them all.
Chapter 19: Toward the Climax
Pimento and Crockett gathered back in the study after their separate investigations. Crockett felt melancholy, his conversation with Martha leading to nothing substantial (although he felt pride in getting any answers at all). He divulged the full details of their exchange in a plodding, defeated manner as Pimento smiled at intermittent points in his narrative.
“I hope your investigation yielded something more useful.” Crockett felt a pang of hope looking into Pimento’s eyes. They were bright and smiling, his glasses giving off glints of sparkling light.
“Well, my dear boy, I think you will be very happy with what I found.” The detective leaned toward Crockett conspiratorially. “You see Corinthiana told me the truth about that secret letter Martha spoke of. The contents will lift your spirits.”
“The letter from Corinthiana to Bixby Von Bunson?”
“Oh, ho!” Pimento steepled his fingers together. “But was it to Master Von Bunson?”
“I don’t know!”
“Well, I have been in conversation with Corinthiana.”
“Yes!” Crockett leaned forward.
“And she told me what was in the letter.”
“Yes!”
“She said it was sent under the cover of night because…it, perhaps, could be viewed as scandalous.”
“Yes!”
“So, she confided it to Martha in the dead of night.”
“Y—es.” Crockett was quickly losing his enthusiasm.
“Well, my boy, the letter, the letter of which Martha has spoken to you, of which I have spoken to Corinthiana, which was directed at a heretofore unknown party which I will reveal in this next moment…” Pimento paused here looking intently at Crockett.