Beatrice: An Alarming Tale of British Murder and Woe

by Tedd Hawks

  Crockett closed his eyes blocking out the light of the stars. He had never intended to harm Petrarch. The old solicitor knew how much he meant to him—if all were revealed and he exposed the mystery, would this frightful week and its events be forgotten?

  “We all make mistakes, Crockett.” Bixby’s eyes flowed through the darkness looking for any indication of the young man’s presence in the tall grasses. He had made three full trips down the bank. Whether he exposed Crockett by convincing him to come to him or by finding him hiding in the grass, he would soon be victorious. “I’ve made my share of them, and, through you, I hope to make some amends. Come with me into the house. Allow me my own confession. My family may lose their reputation, but at least give me my honor back. Allow me to speak and clear the air—I’ll tell them everything.”

  Bixby then heard a slight rustle, not the wind, but the sound of a body moving in the brush. He was not sure where it was, but he had its attention. His voice rose in pitch as he charged forward; it was difficult to suppress the joy creeping into his words. His pace wading through the tall grass quickened.

  “Honor, dear boy,” he said. “We often think others have not earned it. You must know—growing up in the streets, stealing to get by, no education. But you have won it now. You have done what you needed to do to solve the case, restore peace to my family, and make amends with your mentor, and,” he took a deep breath, “win the heart of my beautiful granddaughter.”

  Crockett’s eyes opened. He lifted up slightly and rested on his knees. He was on the verge of standing upright, moments from raising his hands in the air to submit to the old murderer. Bixby sounded genuine in his desire to be restored to his family. If Crockett began the reparations, could he earn the hand of Brontë in the process?

  “Come into the house with me and let them both admire you, Petrarch and my granddaughter.” Maniacal glee dripped from Bixby’s soft voice; Crockett was too distracted to hear the threat. “They’ll be so proud, Crockett. Euphoric.”

  Crockett rose.

  He had been lying only a few feet away, concealed in the brush and shadows. Bixby saw his multicolored eyes shine in the dark. The young man’s face was peaceful, almost angelic. Bixby's eyes flicked to the piece of paper held in Crockett’s fist. The killer was sure there was still a way to make it all work out. He could kill Crockett, finish Martha, and put them in alignment. Who would doubt that the senile old maid wasn’t behind the murder? She could be Crockett’s accomplice.

  Bixby raised the gun. The expression of calm in Crockett’s face fled. His eyes widened.

  “Never trust an actor, dear boy,” Bixby said.

  The old man pulled back the hammer.

  But, at that moment, whether sent from some divine being or a magical intervention from the Danube Mob, there was a gust of dramatic wind.

  Had Bixby been less garish, less obvious with his theatricality, the cape wouldn’t have been problematic. But in the sudden rush of air, it lifted and swept across his line of sight. Already a bad shot, the old man fired up and into the dark, his penultimate bullet lost in the night. The gun roared as he toppled to the ground.

  Crockett hesitated as he watched the old man writhe in his costume. He remembered his old days in the street gang, his avoidance of all roughhousing and fighting. Petrarch was his escape from the pugilistic lifestyle of the streets. The life of a solicitor's assistance freed him of the wild, untamed underworld of London. But as Bixby screamed and twisted in the fabric, he knew his time was short. He must be the brute or face the terror of the old thespian again.

  He leapt onto Bixby and attempted to hold the man down. Bixby was still covered in the cape, unable to see, but he thrashed wildly.

  “Get off me you contemptible, impoverished—”

  Bixby bucked and threw Crockett to the side. Lucinda’s note fluttered out of his hand. For a moment, Crockett’s heart nearly burst out of his chest in fear. The epistle hovered, just out of his reach, like a white moth flapping through the dark. Clutching maniacally, he was able to pull it back toward him. The confusion gave Bixby time to right himself. The cape swirled backwards, and the old patriarch turned the barrel of his gun on Crockett.

  Crockett threw his hands up, the note clenched tightly.

  “Give it to me,” Bixby’s voice was feral. “This idiocy ends now.”

  Crockett stuttered. “It’s…don’t do it! It’s…your legacy! Your family!”

  Bixby, mad with rage, reached out hungrily for the note. He again lost his balance; Crockett used the opening to aim a swift kick at his chest. The old man spluttered and toppled backward, the force of Crockett’s attack causing him to hurtle down the hill, through the brush, and into the muddy waters of the Tiddlymouth. With a loud splash, Bixby’s gun landed away from him, the revolver spluttering into the muck.

  Crockett breathed a sigh of relief. He still held the note, and Bixby was in eight feet of water, his gun buried in the depths. He paused for a moment, wondering if he should extend a hand and help the old man out of his predicament.

  The internal question was answered, quite outwardly, by the blast of a gun. A spray of red splashed onto the shore, coating the waving brush and weeds in a slick, violent paint.[47]

  Crockett turned. His pulse raced as he looked to his right. Beside him was the imposing shadow of the house maid, glaring at the dark of the river. Her weapon was still leveled at the water. The blood from her earlier wound glistened, black against her pale skin. The image of Martha was identical to that of the woman he’d seen in a butcher’s apron just a few days before.

  She turned to Crockett. He was upset to see that, even in the dark, at a distance, he could tell the odd eye was swiveling around, it’s sweeping orb glinting in the dark.

  With a sudden movement, she lowered the weapon. Her body shuddered with an immense sigh.

  “I have been waiting,” she wheezed through the pain of her earlier wound, “half my life to fire that bullet.”

  Crockett looked toward the water. His scalp prickled. He could add blood to the long list of stains that would need to be lifted from his clothing.

  “It was a magnificent shot,” he said finally. He was unbearably nervous, unsure if the crazed maid would turn the gun on him.

  But when he turned to face Martha, the gun was down; for the first time since he’d known her, she smiled.

  Chapter 26: Martha

  When the blood, gore, gunshots, and screams ceased, the night grew quite pleasant. The stars were shining, and the wind, now gusting less dramatically, became a constant, warming rush from the countryside. Crockett turned away from Martha to take a moment of solace and enjoy the world around him, a world that had nearly faded for him into an eternal darkness thrown from the barrel of a gun.

  When he was calmed, and certain that the danger had fully passed, he turned toward Martha and expressed his gratitude.

  “Thank you,” he said warmly.

  “It was my pleasure,” Martha said, still smiling. “I was under the thumbs of those men for years—he and Dexter both.”

  “You couldn’t escape?”

  “Where to?” Martha shook her head. “I had no family, nowhere to run. For Dexter, I was an obsession, so he kept me. They dismissed everyone but me before they killed the real Master Bixby…” She looked anxiously into the dark, “When I did try to escape, they threatened violence.”

  Crockett’s skin prickled. He could only imagine the crazed schemes the two men would have put into motion had Martha tried to get away. “I’m very sorry, Martha. I can’t imagine being a prisoner in this place.”

  “It was a jail, to be sure,” she said warmly, “but I believe that the gates are now open.”

  Crockett did his best to dust the stains off his trousers, but the mud was thick and there was no hope that he could get back to London in any clothing not covered in filth and gore. He resigned himself and caught up to Martha who had begun shambling back toward the house. Gently, he extended his arm, linking it with the
old woman’s to help her down the track.

  “I always liked you,” she said. “You’ve got a good, poor head on your shoulders. When the rest of the rich folk thought the key solved it, you kept going.”

  “I don’t know if that was a rational course of action.” Crockett blushed, remembering the thud Petrarch’s body had made collapsing onto the floor. “And Brontë was the one who convinced me that we should pursue the mystery further. Regardless, somehow it all worked out in the end.”

  “I should say so.” Martha puffed out her chest proudly. “You two gave me renewed courage to fight for myself. I knew something more diabolical was happening even before Bixby Hawsfeffer—or Von Bunson, that is—disappeared; he came back erratic from his meeting with Petrarch in London regarding the will. I spied on both him and Dexter more frequently—Corinthiana was sure we renewed our imaginary affair, but I needed to know what was going to happen.” She lifted her head up and breathed deeply as if the death of Bixby Hawsfeffer had changed even the air on the grounds. “Dexter and Bixby kept me trapped for so long, I’d begun to think there was no hope, but you two, putting your noses where they shouldn’t be, gave me a fresh sense of purpose. The day you came into the kitchen, I was still unsure. I admit, I helped them…I washed the bloody rags Dexter used to clean up the Beatrice mess with the rest of the laundry, but, after that day when I saw you looking for the truth, I changed. I tried to help. I did my best to give you hints in the bedroom…”

  “And you did, Martha. Without you I wouldn’t have put it all together. You even helped accidentally, when we awoke you after Beatrice was killed and you spoke of a ‘him’…But it was those last pieces—the painting and the back stair—that made all of the little gears in my brain click together. The back stair confirmed Dexter could have been involved in the chaos of the séance, even if his excuse was tending the back lawn.”

  “I hoped you’d catch on. At first, I didn’t trust anyone. I was sure any secret I passed on would get back to him and then…” She shook her head sadly.

  Crockett noted she was cringing. Fresh blood still flowed from her shoulder wound.

  “One moment, Martha,” he said. He removed his overshirt and gently wrapped her shoulder with it. She winced only slightly. “You’re a tough, old bird.” Crockett smiled. “I can’t believe they kept you captive for so long.”

  “Power and violence,” she said casually. “You’d be surprised what those can do. In the end I’d grown so afraid I was even starting to worry about Corinthiana—as much of an ogre as she is—that’s why I moved into the room close to her after Bixby faked his death. I was unsure of what was to come.”

  Crockett pulled the shirt tighter and patted her shoulder. “There now, all fixed, I think.”

  “It’s a shame the doctor left after tending to the homosexual. I suppose we’ll have to call him again.”

  “We really should have made him a bed this weekend.”

  Martha laughed, a sound which, after hearing it, Crockett thought he’d like not to hear too often. It was an odd mixture of a foghorn and locomotive engine, a more technological version of Corinthiana’s “AWRK!”

  Progress to the house was slow between the two of them. Martha was more wounded than she initially let on, her steps heavy and short. Her breathing came with visible effort. When they got to the tomb, Dexter was passed out. Blood still poured from his leg; his face was an ashen gray.

  “Should we help him?” Crockett asked.

  Martha shrugged. “Someone will later. I say we wait a bit. If we’re lucky, he’ll die.”

  “You’d be having a very lucky night, then,” Crockett said.

  Martha’s eye spun more quickly with joy.

  They were on the track through the garden and to the main house when Martha stopped and turned to Crockett.

  “Would you…” Martha hesitated. “Would you read me the note in your hand? I know it will be a big family hullabaloo, but I’d like to know. When you’re the help, they never let you know. I’m the one who put it in the tomb before they sealed it—right under the carved hat like she told me to. I never read it, though; I kept my word to her. I never expected it all to end the way it did. I only wish I heeded my own doubts and fled the house with Lucinda and Bixby Hawsfeffer before it was too late.”

  Crockett nodded, excited himself to see the words on the parchment for which he risked his life. There was a bit of mud on the folded paper, but it was all clearly legible, in the same hand as the note they shared with Corinthiana only a few days before.

  Dearest Pipsy,

  It is my strongest hope this somehow finds you. It is a wishful link in a gossamer chain that I hope spans from Petrarch’s desk, to the tomb, to you, who can finally know the full truth.

  Your father's cousin, Bixby Von Bunson, returned to England a few months ago with an American oddity in tow, a Mr. Dexter Fletcher. To be sure, this new guest unsettled me from the start, his blankness a source of terror. I have never met a man who is so instantly forgettable, himself like the impression of a dream you have upon waking.

  At first arrival, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Your father and Bixby Von Bunson got along well. Your father never brought up his successful scheme to kill Bixby’s father (that is another story for another time, but you know we never really cared for your great-uncle), but, since Bixby Von Bunson had been estranged from his own family, we thought perhaps the feeling was all very mutual.

  After a few months of our gathering, however, Bixby’s intentions and his presence grew more malevolent. He demanded more money, more time, more power. When he first arrived, he convinced your father to invest in an expansion of the west wing, an imitation of the American White House. Your father loved the idea, but slowly Von Bunson’s claws pushed further in. He solicited outside help and had murals done in his likeness (and the likeness of the perverse Mr. Fletcher). He expanded the plans without input from your father, putting in a secret vault, and signing an initial agreement for an eastward expansion which included a large, gothic tower.

  Over the past few weeks things have swelled in intensity. Mr. Fletcher has grown bolder, all but outright threatening me in times we pass alone in the hall. He has taken to reading all epistles entering and leaving the house, perpetuating the feeling that we are living in a jail. Bixby Von Bunson disappears for long stretches altogether. Your father, never one to ask for my counsel, asked me the best course of action to take. I think we need to go away, to run, but your father will not have it. Dear Martha is the one who confessed she heard Bixby and Mr. Fletcher discussing in earnest whispers a plot, the details of which we have no real clarity; however, Martha stated she believes our lives are in danger.

  Immediately upon hearing this, I set my plan into motion. It was my desire to protect you, our family, and our fortune to the best of my feminine ability. Petrarch should have the note which will be released upon your father’s death. I hope it guided you here. As I said, it may be a fool’s hope, but the possibility of it is enough for me to face tomorrow and its uncertainty with more alacrity than otherwise would be possible.

  At the last, I must also issue an apology for many things, but the one for which I’m most culpable is not taking a stand against your father in the light of your announced homosexual proclivities. Whilst I do disagree with your inclinations strongly in the face of God and man, you are family, our only son, and I love you dearly. I hope that, should the worst happen and our fortunes are lost, this note finds you, if only for you to be reached by my earnest apology, my deepest love, and my warmest wishes that, whatever life sets before you, you triumph knowing that I am, and will always be, proud of you.

  In deepest love,

  Mummy

  Both Crockett's and Martha's faces were wet with tears. The illumination of a mother’s final words to her son leaving them in states of differing, but total, catharsis.

  A preternatural calm followed the reading. Crockett took a deep breath and then gently pressed his hand into Martha’s.


  “You knew,” he said softly. “You tried to warn them.”

  “I was very young,” Martha said. “I admired Lucinda very much. The reason I went to that silly séance this week was to…I know it’s absurd, but I hoped there was a chance she would speak.” Martha shook her head, but then the hint of a smile appeared on her face. “I know they are only loosely related, but young Brontë reminds me of her—determined, beautiful, joyful. I had heard…” Here she paused, tears freely falling from her eyes. With her features softened so, Crockett could see into the past, to the young woman who tried to save her beloved matron, whose looks seduced Dexter Fletcher. “I heard Bixby and Dexter plotting. They were such wicked men on the inside—outside, they were pleasant, boisterous, but you knew they were up to something. One morning I cleared the breakfast table and went to the west wing to begin making the beds. That's when I heard them. I’ll never forget that morning.” Her old hands tremored. “I didn’t hear the exact words, but they said they wanted Bixby out of the way. They said in order to truly execute the plot, they needed to clear out the Hawsfeffer family completely.

  “I didn’t know if that meant murder, scandal, or threats of violence, but I knew that I must confess what I heard to Lucinda.” Martha stopped. She pulled her hand from Crockett’s and wiped her eyes. “They found me,” she said abruptly. “They knew I’d heard. Dexter took me into the vault. He…” she stuttered, “I saw then what he was capable of.” She indicated her bulging, spinning eye.