by Tedd Hawks
June had encouraged Brontë to go to bed, but she insisted on waiting up for the doctor and making sure Pip was attended to.
The doctor arrived; to Brontë’s surprise, it was a different doctor from the one that appeared the previous evening to aid Petrarch.
“Hullo,” he said curtly. This gentleman was rotund and confident. His bald head shone in the glow of his lamp. “Where is the wounded fop?”
“I’m sorry,” Brontë said, “but, where is the other doctor?”
“Other doctor?” The little man shook his head. “I am the only doctor in this part of Hampminstershireshire, my young lady.”
“But the other gentleman from last night…”
“Well, I can guarantee it certainly wasn’t a doctor if it wasn’t me.” He sniffed at this and pushed past Brontë into the main foyer. “Now, where is the wounded gentleman?”
Brontë showed the new doctor to Pip and made sure he had all he needed before silently stalking off toward the east wing.
To her relief, a light was on under Petrarch’s door. She knocked softly and waited for his response.
“Yes?” the old man grunted. “Please, no disturbances just now.”
“Petrarch?” Brontë said as sweetly as she could muster. “Could I please come in?”
“Ah! Brontë! Yes, please, my dear. I was assuming it was your father or Robert Edward with news of another murder, and I can’t really process another death at the present.”
Petrarch opened the door quickly, then resumed, what Brontë guessed to be, part of his vigorous exercise routine. In this particular motion he sat on the bed, laid back, then lifted halfway up, a grunt escaping as he did so.
“Petrarch, I don’t think it’s Crockett,” she said, shooting straight to the heart of the matter.
Between grunts, Petrarch responded, “Of course it’s not, my dear. I’m now trying to figure out exactly who it could be. He very well could have shot me—he’s linguistically killed me for clients before. For a woman not nearly as beautiful as you.” Brontë flinched slightly with embarrassment as this was said, but Petrarch gave her a friendly wink. “Either way, he’s not behind the Beatrice nonsense. He makes mistakes but never with a nefarious purpose.” He paused here in his exercises, worn out, and laid back on the bed. “You know that before I was shot, I was ready to put it all to bed with the Augüst theory, but now we simply cannot. We have to clear Crockett’s good name. But the path to the correct person is riddled with so much confusing information; I’m beginning to think it could be everyone—you know, in some way, perhaps everyone did contribute to the deaths.”
“Well, I didn’t…”
“Perhaps your father and mother, then? They have motive. Your Aunt May does. Robert Edward doesn’t, but he’s shifty and from the continent, so it wouldn’t surprise me, of course…”
Brontë bit her lip. “Petrarch, the doctor is different.”
“I’m sorry?”
“The doctor from last night isn’t the doctor that arrived tonight.”
Petrarch lifted himself up again but remained seated. “Well, that is odd in such a small hamlet. There wouldn’t be two doctors.”
“So, the one who came with Detective Pimento wasn’t a doctor.” A small, triumphant feeling leapt up in Brontë’s breast. She moved to the splintered window, a breeze blowing through the bullet hole. “Why would Pimento bring another doctor…?”
“Perhaps it was a favor to someone he knew. The doctor may have been preoccupied…”
“What if it is Pimento?” Brontë asked quickly. “He’s behind it. He brought those people—they weren’t real people but a fake doctor and a fake policeman.”
Petrarch’s eyes softened. “Brontë, that makes less sense than the explanation that it was our dear Crockett. I think, perhaps, your imagination is running away with you.”
“But Petrarch, couldn’t Pimento…couldn’t he be connected somehow?”
“In what way?”
“Well, it seems like it has to be two people. There was never anyone conspicuously gone when the odd events occurred. Perhaps Pimento isn’t Pimento at all!”
“Pimento not Pimento…” Petrarch stroked his beard.
“We can’t trust him.” Brontë walked rapidly toward the door. “We have to get Crockett out of the vault. He can help me put all the pieces into place.”
“Darling,” Petrarch rose and moved to Brontë. Gently he took her hand. “I think we should go to Pimento and ask about the doctor. There will be an explanation. Don’t let the chaos of this week make your judgment chaotic. We saw what it did to poor Crockett.”
Brontë looked at Petrarch as if he wasn’t there at all. “I see,” she said softly. “Perhaps…”
Before the old man could say another word, she grabbed her light from his nightstand and left the room. Her pace quickened as she moved down the hallway toward the foyer.
Her mind raced with images of Crockett—his stares, his stuttering words, his tall, gaunt frame, the warmth of his smile, the adorable way he screamed when he thought she was a large canary.
“It can’t be him,” she said to herself. “It can’t be, but it could be the detective…”
She suddenly remembered Crockett held down on the floor, his eyes panicked. The screams that came from behind the gag were visceral; even the memory pained her.
Pausing on the stairs, she debated her next course of action. Should she go to Pimento? But certainly a villain puppeteering the chaos of their house wouldn’t tell the truth. There were so many convenient facts he manufactured in the accusation of Crockett, could she really trust what he said? But where else could she go? Even if she freed Crockett, would there be anything they could do together?
Her train of thought was derailed by a noise from above her. It sounded as if someone was moving in the hall atop the stairs. Her heart pounded in her chest. She lifted her eyes and scanned the darkness. Raising her lamp, skeletal shadows leapt up, dim light threading through the spindles of the banister.
She turned to the main sitting room, but the doctor was visible there. He was accounted for, still attending to Bixby.
“Hello…” her voice failed her, calling upward. The word came out as a rasp, a nervous, shaking utterance.
Closing her eyes, she thought again. What is there to do?
Then the image came to her. It was the same scene of Crockett shaking on the floor, bound and gagged. In this instance, however, the words he screamed came back to her.
“I know who it is, it’s—”
“Crockett knows…,” she said in a whisper. “He knows.”
Her feet pounded up the stairs. The terror of the earlier sound left her mind; her resolve was bent solely on getting to Crockett. Rapidly, she moved down the hall, stopping outside her father and mother’s door. Without a knock, she pushed open the chamber.
All was dark except for the slice of light falling from her lamp. In the corner a clock ticked sadly. She raced toward her father’s bedside. He was fast asleep, snoring loudly.
“Father,” she said, her voice harsh. “Father, wake up.” She set down her lamp on the bedside table and shook him.
August moved slightly but did not awake. June mumbled something incomprehensible about her corset but did not stir.
“Father,” she called more loudly. “Father, wake up!”
August smacked his gums; his eyes slowly opened.
Brontë nearly fell off the bed when she heard the shrill, screeching noise that came from her father. It was an instinctive thought which made her reach out and place her hands over his mouth, muting the girlish shriek.
“Father…” she said quietly. “Is…that really your scream?”
Her mother, remarkably, simply rolled over and began to snore. In the hallway, she thought she heard the sound of quick, panicked steps.
August didn’t answer. His screams had ceased, but his breath came in short, erratic bursts. After several even breaths, Brontë gently lifted her hand.
/> “Father,” she said. “I need you to regain your composure.”
He began to calm down, however his eyes retained their wild, pained expression.
Brontë gently stroked his arm, keeping calming eye contact. Her father finally opened his mouth, uncertainly. He threw a cursory glance at his sleeping wife.
“That wasn’t me,” he said quickly. “I think your mother sleep-screamed. My own panic sounds are very guttural, masculine, like a kettledrum.”
Brontë pinched her nose in exasperation.
“But…but…why are you here, anyway? Is something wrong?” he asked.
“Father, I need the key to the vault. I need to talk to Crockett.”
August blanched. “Darling, no. He’s a pet killer!”
“I don’t think he is.” Brontë gripped her father’s arm and looked deeply into his eyes. “I think our detective isn’t who he claims to be and has made false accusations.”
“I can’t.” August shook his head. “I can’t let you go down there! On the chance that he did what Pimento said he did to Beatrice…I couldn’t let myself, with a clear conscience…”
“I need to speak with him.” Brontë’s voice grew louder, harsher. “I need the key. Come with me if you don’t want me to go alone.”
“Darling, I…I can’t let you…”
Brontë rose and looked around the room. In the corner was her mother’s secretary, a bundle of unopened letters spilling across its wooden surface. She looked between it and her father. Again, her imagination went to Crockett, the poor boy laying on the ground, gagged, kicked.
It was perhaps the fact that it was the witching hour that Brontë took the course she did, or maybe the influence of Crockett’s erratic, poor decision-making. Regardless, with night at its deepest and the moon shining dolefully on the house, the darkest idea, the most insane conclusion, was what came to her mind first. Crockett would, perhaps, die in the vault, his screams unheard. Having killed Beatrice and set into motion the nightmare of the previous week, who is to say what the killer may already be doing to him, alone in a dark, shadowy corner?
Her steps took her across the room. Grabbing her mother’s letter opener, a long, sharp, steel blade, she turned and crossed the room to her father. With no intent to harm, she raised it high into the air, it’s shining tip aimed at his heart.
“Father,” she said sullenly, “the key, please. This must end tonight.”
Chapter 23: Crockett’s Confession
Her father again screamed, this time waking her mother. The chaos of the scene, from an outside perspective, may have been humorous—the young woman in trousers raising a letter opener over her father who was shrieking like a woman, her mother, still overfilled with sleep, yelling “My god, don’t tighten it further, I may crumble!” (speaking of the corset of her previous dream). To Brontë, however, it was not humorous but another obnoxious hindrance in her getting the key and saving Crockett. The conclusion of this task, in her imagination, would lead to the two of them, arm-in-arm, solving the mystery and restoring peace and order to the house.
But before this happy ending could be writ, she had to, again, cover her father’s mouth, this time whilst pointing the letter opener’s blade at her mother.
“Mother, no time to explain, but I need you to help me get the key from father for the vault.”
June’s mouth opened slightly.
“I know. But I don’t think Crockett is the killer. I think it’s the detective and I need to save Crockett in order to save our family.”
To Brontë’s surprise, June merely shook her head condescendingly. “Brontë, my sweet, that is a ridiculous conclusion to come to. Were this a mystery novel I would shame the writer who’d pen such a ludicrous ending. It has to be Crockett! He’s an excellent suspect and impoverished. That makes much more sense for a killer.”
Brontë in exasperation lifted her hand from her father’s mouth and, at the same time, took a long slash to his arm with the letter opener.
“Ow!” August quailed in his high-pitched caterwaul. “Brontë, that hurt!”
“Give me the key!”
August looked to June, who, rolling her eyes and shrugging, said without compunction, “Give it to her, Augüst. Let her play the fool.”
With the key in hand, Brontë ran from the room with her lamp. The doctor attempted to hinder her flight in the main living room, but she did not pause for an update on the condition of Pip.
Storming toward the west wing, she was breathless by the time she reached the mural which concealed the vault. Quickly, she clicked the button to reveal the trap door. Fumbling with the key, she opened it and descended into the darkness.
Her heart pounded as she drew nearer to Crockett. Each step was one closer to his earnest gaze, his quiet laugh, his disarming smile.
When she came into the open vault, she found him, frantically pulling at a rope that bound him to a rather dusty suit of armor. He had been feverishly jerking at it, trying to make his way to the stairs.
Brontë melted when he looked up and caught her gaze, a broad, beautiful smile growing on his pale face.
“Brontë!” he said, the word like a flower blooming.
“Crockett…”
The two met, unsure how to properly greet each other. There had been previous tension of an amorous inclination, but there had also been the rumor of Crockett’s betrayal. Now Brontë stood, remembering the moment of his confession to shooting Petrarch, but also staring into his eyes, the eyes that were the only respite and refuge from the maelstrom of fear and death that surrounded them for the past several days.
Crockett reached out, his hands bound. When Brontë hesitated, refusing to take his hands, he awkwardly raised them and saluted.
“I believe you, but I also…” Brontë said. “Can you explain it all?”
“I did shoot at Petrarch,” Crockett said quickly.
“Petrarch and I thought that was the case. Can I ask what course your logic took to that conclusion?”
Crockett shook his head with shame. “It was stupid, an almost fatal mistake. I get so muddled in high stakes situations; I—it was, you…” The young man looked boyish, his thick eyebrows raised. He clasped his hands together in a penitent pose. “I did it for you.”
Brontë felt her cheeks flush. She couldn’t help but feel flattered. “Why?” she asked softly.
“You weren’t ready to give up, even when everyone else was. You knew something else nefarious was going on in the house. When you came to me last night, you…” He stopped here. His cheeks became so luminous as to almost glow in the darkness of the vault. “I’ve never really felt the way…” He paused again. His mouth opened, then closed. With a staccato cough, he cleared his throat. “I knew I had to help you. I knew, in that moment, that what you believed, I would believe, and that to set you free from the pain and panic of this house was a sworn duty, a quest.”
Brontë’s heart fluttered. All need for a proper explanation faded, but Crockett forged on.
“So, I took the gun, shot at Petrarch, and pretended to raid his room to precipitate the end, you see. I thought that if I could get everyone in the room and suggest that someone stole the key, then the guilty party would incriminate himself. But…” Crockett shook his head. “But I didn’t think that Petrarch would become so stunned! You should have seen him on the way here—his exercises—I didn’t think a noise would shake him so profoundly.” The young man’s head dropped onto his chest. Tears formed at the corners of his eyes. “I thought he was dead, Brontë…The man who has treated me like a father, who took me off the streets! It all went sideways…”
“I would say sideways is the direction of this whole tale of Beatrice’s murder. Nothing has made sense from the moment everyone arrived in the house.”
“So sideways to be almost inverted!” Crockett sighed. “I didn’t pay any attention to everyone when they arrived in the room. I didn’t…do anything, so it was all for nothing—the fake shot, the chaos and panic�
��then we almost killed Petrarch again.”
“Twice,” Brontë added.
“Twice, yes, but nothing was clear. None of it made any more sense until the next day when I…”
Crockett lifted his eyes to the exit of the vault. His face contorted into one of terror.
“Where is he?” he asked.
“Who?” Brontë took a step back.
“It’s the note—the portraits!—that was your clue. It’s very much Dexter but not Dexter, it’s who he…Oh, dear, no one is who they say they are.” Crockett shut his eyes and slowed his breathing. When he opened his eyes, he was calmer, more collected. “It’s too complicated. Cut my bonds, Brontë. I have to run after him. He could already have it.”
“Have what?” Brontë’s eyes sparkled; pride filled her voice. “You know! It’s Dexter but not Dexter. Is that who it is? You know!” She suddenly remembered the soft footsteps as she pondered her course of action on the stairs. "It's someone in the house!"
“It is. And I do know, but we’ve already wasted too much time. I have to get to the tomb before it’s destroyed.”
Brontë hesitated only for a moment. Crockett’s eyes were so earnest, so intense, that she couldn’t deny him. She trusted him fully.
In the corner of the room, she found one of the rapiers from the collection of blades that was used against Beatrice and approached Crockett. With one swift slash, his bonds fell, and the young man was freed. He flexed his wrists and turned to the stairs of the vault.
The puzzle box in his mind was opened. Adrenaline flooded his veins, surged through his heart. The conclusion of his future action remained shrouded in mystery—when he confronted the killer there could be any number of outcomes. His life was on the edge of a knife. In his present pursuit he could emerge as the conquering hero or vanish into darkness, another victim of this Hawsfeffer ghost.
It was with this fear of death in mind, his pulse racing, that Crockett turned to Brontë and stepped toward her. Rather than in fear or chaos, his frantic emotions aligned, in this moment, in a surge of courageous, amorous passion. Brontë shook with joy as he pressed in closer; she could almost feel the heat of his affection, the adrenaline and uncertainty that raged through his body. They paused, a short distance from each other. Then Crockett pressed his lips to hers. It was the first kiss for either of them, a heated, uncertain mashing of lips.