by Tedd Hawks
When he pulled away, they both looked stunned.
“Crockett…” Brontë whispered.
“Wake the house,” Crockett said, a smile turning up the edges of his lips despite the uncertainty of the coming hour. “I’m going to try to stop him, but I need you to be ready. Get your father, his gun, and run to the tomb as soon as you can.”
This time it was Brontë who pulled him close. She kissed him—an electric current fused them once more for the length of a heartbeat.
“Who is it?” she asked quickly as their bodies parted. “I’ll need to tell Father.”
But Crockett was already running to the stairs. He called back a name that only raised more questions than it answered.
“Bixby…” she said to herself as Crockett’s footsteps disappeared. “I suppose it could be…but which?”
Chapter 24: A Murderer’s Monologue
Crockett hurtled toward the family tomb like a bolt of lightning. He stopped only for a few moments when Pip yelled for his attention as he charged through the main sitting room.
“Are you all right?” Crockett asked.
“Yes, my murderous friend, I just needed a little attention. Le médecin has gone, and I could use fresh water, if you please. I also saw the man who pushed me from the window; without a doubt it is—”
“Oh, I know who it is,” Crockett said quickly. “Terribly sorry, but I need to go stop him from destroying a very valuable family secret.”
“Ah!” Pip nodded. “In that case, you can bring the water on your way back. Bonne chance, monsieur!”
Crockett gently patted Pip’s head unsure of what else to do. As he raced out of the house, he marked that, for having been thrown from the second story window, Pip appeared in full health. He assumed the flexibility required for the sodomite’s lifestyle rendered him limber enough to withstand the drop, much in the same way that Petrarch’s rigorous exercises allowed him to survive the shooting and subsequent head injuries.
Tearing out the front door, Crockett fled the house and entered the dark of the yard. The night was silent except for the crunch of his shoes on the sparse gravel of the walkway. A point of dull illumination filled the light of the family tomb only yards away. It was in this moment that Crockett finally felt fear—the buoyancy of Brontë’s kiss faded when his thoughts turned fully to the impending encounter with the man who orchestrated not one, or even two, but three murders (perhaps three and a half to four depending on how one counted attempted murders and faked deaths).
The one hope Crockett clung to was that the murderer did not anticipate him coming. Even with the aid of the fraudulent detective, he could not have foreseen Crockett discovering the game moments before being bound and carried away to the vault. And he wouldn’t have counted on Brontë’s freeing Crockett for a final confrontation.
With renewed courage, Crockett increased his pace up the large hill and toward the tomb. He was about to enter the dark mouth of the marble structure when the murderer emerged.
He still wore his costume, the long black cape, tonight with a luminous green lining around the inside of the collar. A snide smile was on his face, one hand holding a lamp, the other a revolver, pointed at Crockett’s chest. It suddenly occurred to the young man that the incredible ugliness of the face before him was not due to a central European genetic deficiency but rather to poorly done stage makeup. Both his nose and eyebrows were false and attached with cheap wax.
There was little time to dwell on the old man's ruinous face, as Crockett only had eyes on the small bit of parchment in his grasp. A surge of joy shot through his heart when he saw it, the thing at the center of it all—Lucinda’s last note. It rested, unopened, in the same hand in which the traitor held the gun. After so much blood and terror, it appeared to be an afterthought, a forgotten piece of rubbish.
“Hello, Crockett,” he said, his voice soft as an adder slithering. He gleefully dropped the malformed and problematic continental accent of his alter ego, Robert Edward Harrington.
“Bixby,” Crockett said harshly.
“Ah, dear boy, but which?” The old deceiver's teeth gleamed in the dark.
Crockett proudly recounted the solution to the mystery he chased the previous week, “Bixby Von Bunson, fallen heir to Baron Von Bunson, American turncoat and traitor, murderer of Bixby Hawsfeffer, Lucinda Hawsfeffer, and Beatrice.”
The villain Bixby laughed quietly, a hissing like gas leaking from a pipe. “Well done, my boy. Petrarch was correct about you. He raved when we met just a few weeks ago. Prodigy, I believe, is the word he used.” His soft laugh transformed into a witch-like cackle. “Despite his very austere upbringing…I believe that’s the euphemism he used for your lack of class and education.” Bixby lowered the revolver and stroked the barrel. “I thought you may get at the Dexter bit, but I didn’t think you’d follow the threads all the way back to me.”
Crockett’s caterpillar eyebrows furrowed. “Martha pointed me to the portraits.”
“Ah!” Bixby clicked his tongue. “Old Martha. She was very loyal for a long time. Even after we killed her dear Lucinda. We’d have killed her then if Dexter hadn’t held a consuming love for her. He never did win her heart, but he took her eye. I suppose all love turns sour when it’s not nurtured correctly.”
Crockett shivered.
“Oh, dear boy! The world is a harsh place!” Bixby was enjoying himself thoroughly; his theatrical narcissism being fed after years in the darkness, a literal lifetime of secrets. “I learned that during my time in America. It’s a hard lesson to learn, but once it is imprinted on you, it makes things easier—well, it makes it easier to take what you want, I should say.” The older man smiled, his teeth cutting an ominous crescent in the shadows.
Crockett’s body shook with fear and loathing. “That’s what made it easy to kill them…All of them…” Far from goat-fainting, he desired to leap forward, to have his hands find the old man’s throat and squeeze. The gun, however, kept him at bay. While Bixby still held it in his grip, Crockett had no chance to play a hero.
“Money actually made it easy to kill them,” Bixby said. “My dear cousin, Bixby Hawsfeffer, took my inheritance, so I took it all back. Imagine! You return home from the wilds of America, hoping to be embraced as a prodigal son, and you discover that your cousin has killed your father, soaked up all your inheritance, and picked offensive draperies to hang in your family’s sitting room. It’s more than one man can bear.”
Crockett, for the first time, was surprised by the old man’s revelations. “Bixby Hawsfeffer killed your father?” He was impressed by the Von Bunson-Hawsfeffer families’ propensity for murder.[43]
“Yes,” Bixby said, “that’s not why I killed Bixby Hawsfeffer, though. I never really liked my father, so I considered it a favor.”
Even for a murderer, Crockett was shocked by the depths of Bixby Von Bunson’s villainy. “So…you killed him and Lucinda to get the money back?”
“Well, it wasn’t enough to kill him. Killing still leaves a dead person as a remembrance; I wanted to erase him completely.”
Crockett swallowed. Very faintly he thought he heard the sound of a commotion coming from the house. His heart leapt upward at the hope that someone may be coming out to find him. It was a small thread to cling to as he stared into the eyes of the maniacal Von Bunson.
“So, I took my cousin’s place.” Bixby’s eyes narrowed, a look of pure, evil glee writ on his features. “We killed Lucinda, which was very dramatic. She nearly got away with her little plan with that adorable note Petrarch was so kind to bring with him.”
“That…” Crockett said coming to a realization, “is what started all this.”
“Correct!” Bixby spun the revolver on his finger. Crockett began to wonder if it was real or a stage prop from Dexter's collection in the vault. “Another top mark for Crockett! I went to Petrarch to update my will—I’d been a bit of a spendthrift, as you know—and it was then he told me about Lucinda’s little epistle. All tho
se years ago she knew Dexter and I were up to something."
“So, she went to Petrarch to deliver the note. Oh…” Crockett looked to the nefarious Bixby in understanding. The elder gentleman watched him put the rest of the pieces together. “She said it should not be released until Bixby Hawsfeffer’s death because she thought that would mean you had taken the fortune.”
“She didn’t think I’d make him disappear completely and assume his identity.” Bixby again cackled with glee. "With the shock of the revelation of the letter, I knew I had to put a plan into action to stop the note from being found. I forgot about updating my will, which is why I had to use the services of the second solicitor in secret so that I could still get Petrarch here with the tomb key.”
Another sound, this one much more pronounced, came from the house. Crockett turned hopefully toward the mansion. Von Bunson grew nervous. His gregarious mood ebbed.
“We're waiting for one more,” he said looking toward the house. "If he doesn't hurry, I may have to dispatch you myself."
Sweat trickled down the young man’s brow. Had the stakes been lower, he may have returned to his old reactions of cowardice, but something about his confrontation with the fake Pimento earlier, his piecing together of the mystery, and the kiss with Brontë imbued him with new courage, a heat to his blood which had never been there before.
He stood taller, his hands raised in surrender. He attempted to play to Von Bunson’s ego. “Before you end it, though, I must know how it all played out—the present bit with Dexter, the family, and Beatrice.”
Von Bunson flushed with pride. “So, you didn’t piece it all together, then?”
“Most of it.” Crockett tried to speak slowly, giving time to whatever entity was making the noises in the house to reach him. “As I said, Martha mentioned the paintings. I knew there was familiarity to Pimento, but I couldn’t place it. Then I saw both the murals in the west wing and the portrait of you and him above the fireplace. That’s when I realized that it was both of you, together. It all came tumbling into place then—I understood that’s why the portrait of the real Bixby Hawsfeffer and Lucinda had been marred in the basement.”
“Ah! Yes.” Bixby nodded. “I’d forgotten that portrait. Again, Dexter’s affection for Martha gave another clue. Martha asked that it be kept as the sole remembrance of her friend, Lucinda.”
“But that’s why you didn’t want to be painted until you were older, ‘gray haired,’ as you told Brontë.” Crockett furtively stole a glance at the house—the noises had faded. “You kept the original portraits—you disguised as a war general and hero in the west wing murals—as a trophy to your old self. Even though you got rid of Hawsfeffer, you wanted them up. You took a chance no one would recognize you in them.”
Bixby Von Bunson was silent. His glittering eyes stared at Crockett; to the young solicitor’s surprise, the look was not one of contempt or loathing but a certain fondness.
“You know, Crockett,” the old man said, “you and I aren’t terribly different. I’m better in every way, of course—richer, more handsome, cleverer—but there is a charming similarity. You are shockingly intelligent. You pieced so much of it together. I’d like to think in the same way I would have.”
“I’m nothing like you.” The hair on Crockett’s neck stood up.
“Aren’t you, though?” Bixby took a step forward, his eyes locked on the solicitor’s assistant. “We both hoped to ascend from what we were. You were on the streets, shoved into Petrarch’s closet to learn law; I was moving out of my strangling British background to reinvent myself in the wilds of America. But, neither of us could find acceptance, could we?”
“That’s why you came back from America?” Crockett felt a slight pang of empathy. Despite Bixby’s tendency toward homicide, some raw emotion was creeping into the old man's voice. Crockett let himself think of a younger Von Bunson, abandoned, alone in the vast wasteland of America. “You couldn’t find acceptance…”
“I couldn’t find it anywhere.” Bixby lowered the gun. Crockett’s shoulders, which had been full of tension, relaxed slightly. “When I was young my father didn’t like my flair for the dramatic—magic, smoke, mirrors, that kind of thing. We didn’t get on well. So,” Bixby crossed his arms and began pacing, “I went to America to find a new beginning. And the people there loved it.”
Von Bunson appeared to swell with authority. He was on stage, recounting his storied past; Crockett was now a member of an abstract audience. His gesticulations grew more dramatic, his voice louder. “The Americans loved the deception, the art of illusion. P.T. Barnum made freaks into stars. Drama, intrigue, magic…I met Dexter when I joined the little traveling show, and we tried our hand at it. We had quite a measure of success.”
The noises in the house ceased all together. A fear grew in Crockett that he would not be saved, that the heroic conclusion he envisioned when he had seen Brontë descending the stairs to his prison could fade to darkness.
But Bixby had lost his sense of urgency. The old man, awash in a wave of memory, continued his tale. “Dexter and I wanted to be the next Barnum and Bailey with a traveling Wild West show, but things didn’t turn out. When we went out on our own, we took a third partner, but he wasn’t willing to play nice.”
“Not nice at all!”
Crockett leapt high into the air. A similar shriek to the one which escaped him during his early morning chat with Brontë erupted as he lifted off the ground. It wasn’t a canary that inspired a fear in this instance; although, it did have some avian qualities. Pimento, his large feather shaking, appeared from the shadows. He held a second gun pointed at Crockett’s back.
“Shhh!” Bixby ran forward and put a hand on Crockett’s mouth.
Pimento laughed. “You were coming to my favorite part of the story, Bixby! And don’t worry about the boy’s shriek.” Pimento motioned for Bixby to let Crockett go. “I’ve convinced the house that I’m coming out to stop him from… something…something about the river, I think I said.” Pimento shrugged. “I’ll be honest, it wasn’t very clever. I am running out of lies to tell.”
Bixby relaxed. “The boy knows. Well, he knows most of it.”
“Does he know who I am?” Pimento wiggled his eyebrows.
Crockett looked at the fake detective darkly. “Dexter,” he said.
“Well done!” Dexter said. Both he and Bixby clapped.
“Would you like to tell the rest of our story, Dexter?” Bixby asked. “You can add some panache!”
“Oh,” Dexter straightened his jacket. “Let’s just say that I practiced what I did to Beatrice on our third partner. When he wouldn’t give us a fair shake, I gave him a fair taste of a blade.”
Bixby laughed so loudly Crockett jumped. “Oh, clever! ‘Shake’ and ‘taste’—slant rhyme, delightful!”
“Thank you!” Dexter smiled. “Anyway, it was murder but nothing personal.”
“We English try to keep murders dispassionate. I tried to teach that to Dexter—he took to it, even if he is a dense American.”
“Well!” Dexter wagged his finger. “You killing Bixby Hawsfeffer and assuming his identity was rather personal. I’d say you are the bad Brit.”
“We all get carried away! You took the Beatrice disembowelment a few steps too far, if I may say!”
Crockett cleared his throat to interrupt the two old men. He found their banter annoying, especially in light of his diminished hopes of help arriving.
“Where’s Brontë?” he asked. Hoping that if he was going to die by the hand of these two blowhards, she, at least, would be safe.
“Oh! Your dear little friend!” Dexter looked toward the mansion. “She’s being held in her room. It didn’t take much for me to convince the rest of them that she was hysterical. I simply reminded them all that she was, in fact, a woman, and they quite agreed with me. I convinced them you used her to escape, and I was coming to save the day." Dexter tsked and shook his head at the young solicitor. "You should have told them it wa
s Robert, Crockett, for as smart a boy as you’ve been, no one has even asked where the estranged continental cousin is tonight.”
Both Dexter and Bixby found this painfully amusing. Crockett’s scalp grew hot with embarrassment.
“Well, then let’s get to the conclusion, shall we.” Bixby pointed his gun at Crockett with renewed vigor. “We’ll give you the close of the drama then dispatch you. I feel you should know the full story before passing on. It gives the narrative arc a nice, tight ending.”
Crockett’s heart thudded against his chest. With Brontë subdued and the family holding her hostage, there was no one to save him. The only saving grace was the duo’s own delight in their cleverness; with Dexter present, Bixby was even more willing to wallow in his triumph. If he could keep convincing them to talk, perhaps he could buy time…
“The murder of our partner precipitated a return to England,” Bixby resumed. “I knew we still had opportunity back home. My parents were wealthy, and I promised Dexter he could have his fair share.”
“Plus he promised me the time,” Dexter added, “to work more on my art.”
“But when I returned home…” Bixby groaned. He raised the revolver to his forehead and struck a tortured pose as if on stage.
“It was very dramatic.” Dexter shook his head. “Bixby was very upset.”
“My cousin had taken it all! So, I had to erase him. We planned and schemed for quite some time. First, dispatching Lucinda in the river. We made it look like an accident, then—”
“Oh, that was a clever bit!” Dexter looked skyward with fond remembrance. “We played it all perfectly! Once she was gone, Bixby Hawsfeffer went into grieving.”