Beatrice: An Alarming Tale of British Murder and Woe

by Tedd Hawks

  Crockett’s heart cracked with grief. “But you told Lucinda anyway…” he said.

  Martha raised her head, a resigned smile on her lips. “I told her anyway.”

  As they approached the mansion, the noises in the house grew louder. Martha took a deep breath and again wiped her eyes. The night enveloped them, protecting them for a fleeting moment from the violence of the past.

  “I should think, then, that you’re the real hero of this story,” Crockett said putting his arm around her. “If it weren’t for you, there wouldn’t have been anything for me to discover.”

  Martha said nothing but pulled free of Crockett and began to pace toward the mansion. After a few steps, she turned and simply said, “It usually is the ones like us who save them—the forgotten ones, the simple ones. We see it all.” At this her eye twisted quickly, a physiological flourish to her platitude.

  Crockett came after Martha following her unsteady steps toward the front door of the house. From inside the sounds of August’s bellowing, Corinthiana’s vowel-filled caterwauling, and the occasionally staccato reprimand of May, burst from the open windows like a storm. Despite the cacophony, the windows glowed with golden warmth. If anything, the house stood, at that moment, as a formal symbol of family—welcome, warm, and rebounding with noises we’d all eschew under different circumstances.

  Just as they approached the front door, it opened quickly. Brontë stumbled out, her hair disheveled; August, steps behind her, called out in reprobation.

  But when Brontë saw Crockett and Martha, alive and standing in the dark, she smiled, her whole face filling with light.

  Crockett’s heart fluttered. For once, a welcoming door illumined his path, making him feel full of love. For the first time in his life, he felt as if he were coming home.

  Chapter 27: The End of the Affair

  Brontë’s joy faded as August pulled her back from the entryway. The querulous man shoved her inside then reopened the front door to wave Crockett and Martha into the house. Once Brontë’s precious presence was removed, Crockett’s heart constricted. He ran forward in the earnest hope of meeting Petrarch and setting their relationship right.

  It didn’t take long to find him. The front entry contained the mansion’s whole cast of characters in various states of dress and emotion. Corinthiana held a huge tankard of sherry, her eyes crossed with drunkenness. She was ignoring the protestations of May, who kept screaming intermittently at her mother and sister. June, wearing a robe, appeared ready to pounce on her younger sibling.

  Petrarch and Kordelia were engaged in some version of a conversation. Kordelia nodded enthusiastically while Petrarch gazed upward, a look of complete confusion writ on his features. When Petrarch turned his attention toward the door, to Crockett’s relief, a large smile appeared on his face. The young man ran toward him, speaking quickly and stiltedly.

  “Petrarch—it—I’m sorry, it was chaotic and idiotic…I don’t…You must forgive me…”

  Petrarch’s eyes twinkled. He patted his belly joyfully. “My boy, I have to say the means were very questionable, but it looks like the ends may justify them.”

  Crockett, seized by emotion, reached out and pulled the old man into a warm embrace. His voice shook as he spoke. “I thought I lost you, old man.”

  Petrarch, his eyes shining with nascent tears, squeezed his assistant enthusiastically. “Same, my boy.” He cleared his throat, in an attempt to quell his emotion. “When I heard you were outside, I assumed the worst.”

  The two could say little else. August interrupted their emotional moment and ushered them into the sitting room. The rest of the house followed them, the intense emotions transforming from anger to curiosity as their attention turned to the young lawyer and the old maid.

  All had heard the gunshots, but the chaos and arguments of the inside outweighed anyone’s fortitude to run out and go help whoever was being (possibly) murdered in the night. Brontë would have fled to aid Crockett, however she had been held back by both August and May who accused her of heightened female hysteria. They spent the better part of an hour pouring chilled water on her. May suggested they begin powdering Brontë’s breasts with flour (an old trick in the convent to quell female emotion) which was when June grew enraged and stated she would not “have my daughter turned into a pastry!”

  Corinthiana was the most contented. She shuffled in her slow, theatrical gait to the sofa and took a seat. As she sipped on her sherry and stroked a large feather boa she’d thrown about her neck sometime before Crockett and Martha returned to the house.

  Pip Hawsfeffer showed no signs of emotion at all. His injuries now cared for, he sat on a chair, leg elevated, humming a French tune to himself. He had evidently fallen back asleep due to his medications after Crockett fled the house and did not share his knowledge of the killer as the family argued about what to do.

  The rest of the house hung in suspense, not knowing quite how to behave. May wrung her hands, June nervously bit her lip, and Brontë was forced to sit next to her father, a look of distress on her beautiful face. Kordelia sat dreamily in the seat opposite Pip (whom she had developed an instant, consuming admiration for now that she knew he had written The Viscount’s Ram).

  Petrarch stood by the fireplace, a moony, half smile on his face. Crockett hadn’t realized how dazed his mentor remained from the medication and head injuries of the previous night. He sincerely hoped his forgiving heart wasn’t due to valium rather than true reconciliatory feeling.

  It was after much hmming and harrring that Martha and Crockett were finally seated on the sofa. The family gathered around anxiously staring at them. It was August who spoke first, his mustache jauntily leaping, as though it was also uncertain of what emotion it needed to portray.

  “Well…” he said softly. “What’s the news, then?”

  Crockett deferred to Martha, however the older woman returned to her grizzled house personality. She sat with her arms crossed, eye rotating slowly, and said nothing as she stared disdainfully in the direction of the drunken Corinthiana.

  Crockett then proceeded to tell the house the story of what transpired at the Hawsfeffer tomb. There was much initial confusion about the sequence of murders and faked deaths (at a certain point Pip took a page from his precious notebook to help illustrate what had occurred). May had the hardest time understanding that her father was not really a Hawsfeffer, but rather a Von Bunson who murdered a Hawsfeffer to take back his family fortune and sired her under the stolen Hawsfeffer name. Pip’s picture of a stick figure drowning in a river helped finally hammer the point home.

  After initial confusion, however, the family proved to be such a rapt audience that Crockett became fully invested, leaping about atop the sofa, making loud gunshot noises with his mouth and basking in the collected gasps of the family when he revealed Dexter Fletcher had not fled the grounds due to the succession of maiming, ghosts, and murders, but stayed as an auxiliary to the crimes as Detective Pimento.

  His only regret was he wished he could have outlined the structure of the story better before telling it to the gathered crowd. He put the revelations about Lucinda near the middle when, really, they would have been more effectively placed at the end.

  When he finished, he handed the handwritten note to Pip to read. The family clamored behind the invalid to glance at the text over his shoulder. A tortured silence settled when it was all out. Pip, reading the final lines, allowed some emotion, a large dramatic tear squeezing from his eye and plopping on the parchment.

  "This place is so dusty," he said quickly. "It gets in the eyes."

  Corinthiana, although drunk, was the most concerned, her entire well-being having been wiped out with one ancient letter.

  “Sooo…" she said, a hiccup escaping. “Whaaat then?”

  August cleared his throat dramatically but then said nothing. Petrarch sighed, shuffling to the center of the room.

  “Well,” he said, looking nervously at Corinthiana, “as the handwriting i
n this letter matches the other epistle from my records, it would appear that the inheritance of all of the estate would pass to Pip Hawsfeffer. But,” he looked at Corinthiana, “if…you want to tell everyone…”

  Corinthiana hiccupped again. Huge, sherry-tainted tears ran down the side of her face. “There is nothing aaanywaaay,” she said between sobs, her vowels, in her anxiety and inebriated state, becoming like the ululations of a feline preparing to mate. “Bixby, my husbaaand, whomever thaaat is now, tooo beee honest I no longer know, lost everything.”

  “I believe you married Bixby Von Bunson,” Petrarch said conciliatorily, “which means that Pip,” he said pointing to the seated homosexual, “is the sole heir of the estate and all its debts, him being the true heir of Bixby Hawsfeffer, who legally took the estate from the Baron.”

  At this moment, Petrarch staggered, still exhausted, but Crockett was able to grab him and gently drag him to the couch where he was given a seat. June set a pillow behind his back and lovingly patted his bald head.

  During Petrarch’s spell, the rest of the house slowly turned their eyes on Pip, who looked absurdly nonplussed, as if the events of the house, his own defenestration at the hands of his cousin, and the revelatory letter of his mother hadn't phased him at all.

  “Pip,” Kordelia said softly, “we all very much want to know if you will make us abandon the house in exile and shame.”

  “Ha!” Pip said quickly. “You all can keep this disgusting pile of rocks and boards.” He shook his head slowly. “I am cheered to know my attempted murder was a result of greed and pride rather than simply an assault on mon amoureux masculins. I do think that’s rather progressive, if it must be known.”

  All nodded. In the chaos of the night, Pip's inclination for male company had largely been forgotten, and, in truth, amorous pursuits of one’s own sex now seemed largely innocuous amidst the fish eviscerations, murders, gunshots, and plots that had apparently been staples of the family for generations.

  “Well,” Petrarch smiled, “in that case, we can draw up paperwork so that Pip can sign over the estate to Corinthiana. At which time,” Petrarch sobered, “everything will most likely need to be sold to pay off the debts.”

  “Perhaps we could stay with Pip in Paris.” Kordelia smiled warmly at her cousin.

  “I would rather die,” Pip said dusting off his trousers. “You, mon petit incendiaire, would be welcomed, but the rest of your clan is not Parisienne, if we’re being honest.”

  No one was hurt at this revelation as the Hawsfeffers (now Von Bunsons?) and Winterbournes were proud of their irascible Britishness and would also rather suffer a fate like Beatrice’s than spend more than a long weekend in Paris.

  By night’s end, the house was in a general state of good spirits. Even Corinthiana had sobered up, ceasing her brooding and joining a game of whist with Petrarch, August, and Kordelia.

  Brontë took a seat next to Crockett. Gently, she squeezed his hand before drawing it away. The deed crossed some boundaries, but she was uncertain of the course their budding romance would take and desired that he know he was valued.

  “We owe you a great deal,” she said. “You and Martha ended the vicious cycle that began all those years ago.”

  Crockett rubbed his hand where Brontë’s fingers touched him. “I’m glad we came to the crux of it. I couldn’t—" He smiled. “I couldn’t have done any of it without you. You were the one who wouldn’t give up when the key was found and everyone else celebrated success.”

  “Well,” her cheeks flushed, “the whole thing was very odd. It was brilliant of you to make the connections. I don’t know if I would have gotten that far.”

  “It was a wonderful twist of fate that I saw Dexter’s scribblings in the detective notebook and remembered his illiteracy just as the painting came into my view; then I had the revelation that he could have come up the back staircase to play the record during the séance. Fate has an interesting way of guiding things.”

  “It’s put a great deal in motion this week, I should say.”

  Both stayed silent for a moment. An irrepressible smile had rested on Crockett’s lips since he saw Brontë on the threshold of the house. He turned now and looked at her. To his surprise, she looked distressed. She was turned, facing August, who was watching the exchange from across the room. When her eyes averted from her father and rested on the floor, she let out a quiet sigh. Crockett had never seen her so drained of confidence, so listless.

  “Brontë,” his said, his voice thick with emotion, “are you all right?”

  She again looked to her father, who continued to watch them with a look of reproach. Rather than fix her gaze on Crockett, she kept it on the floor and asked, “You’ll leave tomorrow?”

  “I suppose so.” Crockett’s scalp was hot. He felt as if something was quickly slipping away from him. “The details of the will came out tonight, so we won’t be needed any longer.”

  “What time do you think you will leave?”

  “That depends on Petrarch. If he’s fit to travel, I think we should be on the road after breakfast. We’ve been out of the office far longer than we initially planned.”

  “You’ll have a lot of work, then,” Brontë said.

  Crockett felt anxious about the impersonal tone their conversation had taken. From the corner of the room, he could feel August’s intense gaze still on them. “Yes,” he said finally. “It will take us a while to catch up. Petrarch was supposed to be in East Fletchfordtownhampsonvilleshire earlier this week, but we have much to do in London as well.”

  Brontë’s expression shifted. She looked at Crockett, her eyes luminous. “It’s ludicrous, I suppose, to think…”

  But before she could finish, August appeared before them, his mustache shivering as if attached to an airplane motor.

  “Well done, Crockett,” he barked. “We have a great deal to thank you for, not the least being that all of us are still alive and we can keep our pride in dying naturally, naturally.”

  “I’m glad I could help. I suppose it’s not a truly happy ending if everything must be sold, but…”

  “Oh! It’s plenty happy enough. I can return home to my family’s estate. My father has an extra house or two we can settle into. We won’t have a lot, but Brontë can come and begin to focus on finding a proper match. Albeit one wealthier than we were originally looking for. We’ll have to make up for this loss in some way. Kordelia will, of course, need to finish boarding school.”

  Crockett’s heart tightened in his chest. He’d forgotten one-half of Brontë’s family was not full of murderers, still had money, and died naturally, naturally. The rosy-hued dream of him taking her away to London seemed a child’s fantasy.

  “It will be exciting for you to return to a new home.” Crockett tried to sound happy, but his voice came out in an uneven, erratic string of syllables. Tears dribbled down the side of his face.

  “It’s…” Brontë searched for something to say.

  “I’m very happy for all of you.” Crockett rose, trying his best to swallow emotion. “I’ll see you at breakfast for, uh, well, for good-bye, I suppose.”

  He took off quickly in the direction of his bedroom. The string of gunshots and near-death experiences paled in comparison to his current heartbreak. He needed to go to bed and forget it all, let sleep overtake and drown the sorrow of the real.

  When he’d returned to his room, however, he did not immediately go to bed on his little couch. He paced anxiously, muttering to himself. The thoughts were incoherent, a patchwork of personal affirmations mixed with harsh denunciations of his belief that he ever dreamed he and Brontë could be together.

  “A hero…old Crockett,” he blathered as he moved across the room’s wooden planks. “Who’d have thought—and a right idiot to believe…”

  Petrarch interrupted his muttering.

  “Hullo, old boy.” He walked into the room in an erratic fashion, still under the influence of his medications. He attempted to shake Crocket
t’s hand but toppled sideways and rolled onto the lumpy bed.

  Crockett helped set him upright. He placed his hand on the old man’s and smiled warmly. “So good to see you up and about, Petrarch. I’m glad you harbor no ill feelings for my stupidity.”

  “Ha!” Petrarch snorted. “I know you tend to overreact, especially when a beautiful young woman is involved.”

  Crockett’s ears turned red. “I know you warned me away from Brontë…”

  “I still do, although, with the chaos of this house and the state of the family’s fortune, it perhaps doesn’t matter much.” Petrarch gripped Crockett’s shoulder. Crockett’s thoughts strayed back to Brontë and the explosive joy he’d felt when he’d pressed his lips to hers.

  “Are you all right, my boy?” Petrarch asked. “You seem a bit melancholy.”

  “Just tired, I suppose. It’s been a very long night.”

  “I should say! I’m very proud of you. You managed to put it all together and save the day.”

  “I had a lot of help.”

  “Indeed, but, my boy, how did you do it?”

  “Fate,” Crockett said sadly. He thought of looking into Brontë’s eyes and saying the same words only moments before. “Fate intervened on my behalf.”

  “She’s a powerful ally.”

  There was an emotional moment of silence. Crockett shook his head, his feelings a mix of relief and grief. “I just can’t believe what a mess it’s all been,” he said. “Petrarch, I can’t apologize enough for my rash actions with the gun.”

  “Oh!” Petrarch laughed. “As I said, it all worked out. It was quite good fun in the end. It was more the dropping me that did the damage, but I think my head has been restored to some sort of equilibrium. I’ve stopped seeing peacocks talking to me.”

  “Well, that’s wonderful,” Crockett said, allowing himself to smile.

  “But how did you know it was Bixby?”

  Crockett grew very tired, the events of the day catching up with him. He yawned as he summarized the more precise details of the mystery—the paintings, disguises, the back stairwell, and Martha's insights. He did his best to add more color to the story, providing the context of Bixby and Dexter’s misadventures in America.