Agatha & the Scarlet Scarab

by Karl Fish

  Aggie looked over and on both of their papers, they had already written “porridge”. Although Gem had spelt it Porrij.

  ‘Just porridge?’ Aggie asked. ‘No jam or honey?’

  ‘Jam or honey?’ Elizabeth sarcastically laughed back. ‘We live with Mrs McGregor.’

  Aggie sensed she had inadvertently offended what was possibly her only friend in the entire world right now.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m not used to being away from home.’

  ‘How about we take a look at your list instead?’ Elizabeth asked, accepting Aggie’s conciliatory effort.

  Slightly embarrassed, Aggie passed over her scrawled list. Elizabeth read it to herself and then stared jealously at her new friend.

  ‘Eggs, toasted soldiers and bacon!’ she exclaimed.

  The Priory girls may have missed it, they were too busy wallowing in their own privilege and discussing the merits of smoked kippers, but the evacuees certainly did not and enviously presented their papers towards Aggie. Half the class had misspelt the word but porridge, in its various forms, was held up on their papers in front of her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Aggie said to them all humbly.

  ‘You don’t have to apologise to us,’ Elizabeth replied. She was obviously their nominated leader.

  ‘I feel bad I gave some to the cat.’ Aggie cringed.

  ‘You might have to apologise now,’ Elizabeth replied. She grabbed the paper Aggie’s writing was on, folded it up, and stuffed it inside her cuff. ‘Why don’t you pretend you had porridge, without jam or honey, like the rest of us?’ she advised Aggie, assertively.

  ‘Why?’ Aggie questioned.

  ‘It’s easy to work out, I already know the answer, which we can all use and we don’t have to cross over to Priory’s side for bacon and egg prices,’ Elizabeth rebuffed her seriously. ‘And because it’s in your best interests to do so,’ she whispered in Aggie’s ear.

  Aggie looked up at the surrounding eyes piercing back at her. She had chosen the evacuees over the Priory and now it looked like she had made friends with neither.

  ‘Write down porridge and this answer,’ Elizabeth ordered, explaining the paltry cost of the oat staple the evacuees ate most morning.

  Aggie stared back at her, confused.

  *****

  On this unsuspecting day, the torso was found face down having been exposed, overnight, in the waters of Braggan’s Brook, a tributary that ran off the River Amble and notorious smugglers route. A quirk of natural design often threw up unexpected arrivals from the larger waterways.

  Several local men, including the town Sheriff, Wilson Bott, were trying their best to fish the victim out. Bott had been a capable policeman when a younger man. Much older now and riddled with gout, he limped around the dewy bank, careful not to slip in.

  Within the brook, chest-deep in fishing waders, there were three elderly locals steadying the body and attaching a rope around the upper torso. Good men were hard to find. Young and fit ones even more so.

  ‘That’s secure now,’ one of them announced, huffing and puffing as the buoyant cadaver slipped and bobbed in the cold waters.

  On the count of three, more men and women on the bank began to heave the sodden body onto dry land. The ropes were hitched under the arms and the dead weight drove a flattened passage through the bull-rushes as they heaved it up.

  ‘Turn it over,’ Bott ordered, and with that, the dead man’s torso was unceremoniously bundled over. On its face, a crab had begun its unpleasant dissection of the nose flesh. ‘Oh, good heavens,’ Bott shouted and kicked the crustacean far into the brook. ‘Couldn’t have travelled far as that’s an estuary brown-backed crab. Does anybody know this man?’ Bott asked aloud.

  ‘Looks like Lyle Braggan,’ came a solitary response.

  ‘Oh, that’s all we need,’ Bott huffed under his breath. ‘Are you sure?’ he questioned.

  The assertive nod confirmed the corpse’s identity.

  Word spread about the body around the village quickly, as it so often did, and the ever-inquisitive residents of Ambledown had come to see who it was.

  ‘He had a run-in with Pop in the Poacher only last night,’ Shouted out a well-meaning bystander.

  Bott held his head in his hands. ‘Braggan versus Braggan, a recipe for disaster,’ he thought.

  ‘I heard he had a run-in with the good Doctor Belchambers too,’ came another voice.

  ‘Gideon?’ Bott questioned.

  Wilson Bott ordered the men to lift the body into the horse-drawn funeral wagon that had arrived just moments before. On top, in charge of the reigns, sat a stout man in tweed with a squashed nose splayed across his face. Following the wagon but keeping their distance, were two American soldiers in their open-top jeep, slightly worse for wear from their previous evening at Le Chat Noir.

  They looked at the lifeless body of Lyle Braggan before looking at one another and making a hasty exit out of Ambledown, trying their hardest to keep the previous evening’s dinner down.

  Watching from a distance, as they liked to watch through knotholes in fences or from the shadows of the smuggler-ways that peppered Ambledown’s streets, a lone figure hid. They were cloaked in the long grasses of the marsh.

  ‘Get word out to Pop that I need to see him. That’s if he doesn’t already know,’ Wilson Bott announced. ‘And, if anyone bumps into Doctor Belchambers, ask him to come and see me too. I am headed to the funeral parlour.’

  *****

  ‘And that, of course, is the cost of my morning breakfast initiated with kippers, followed by bacon, sausage, black pudding, toast – two slices with butter, of course, and sweet tea,’ Henrietta Huntington-Smythe reeled off proudly, accentuating every last morsel of food as her foes across the room salivated enviously.

  Sister Harvey congratulated her on an admirable calculation and hoped she had enjoyed such a feast. Her opposing classmates looked on reviled. The evacuees, however, had successfully calculated the cost of a bowl of porridge, particularly as it was made with water and not milk. The latter revelation causing much amusement for their rivals, the girls of the Priory.

  ‘You have a fifteen-minute break now. Be back on time,’ Sister Harvey said as she dismissed them from the classroom and readjusted her alarm clock.

  The evacuees bolted out of the confined room as if the air oppressed them like calves off to market. Aggie followed Elizabeth and Gemima closely through the threshold.

  ‘Miss Peabody senior,’ Sister Harvey called out. ‘Please, stay behind.’

  ‘Shall I stay too?’ Aggie said to Elizabeth.

  ‘No, you shall not,’ the Sister interjected. ‘Run along, Gemima. Show Miss Chatsmore what’s what, will you?’

  Gemima smiled and took Aggie’s hand. The door closed behind them.

  ‘The playground’s this way. I like to play hopscotch if the Priory aren’t on it. They’re usually on it. Do you like hopscotch, Aggie?’ asked Gemima’s innocent voice.

  ‘I suppose so,’ Aggie replied, looking back over her shoulder at the closing classroom door.

  As Gemima guided her through several corridors, they finally alighted into a chilly autumn day and a small rear courtyard. It was full of children and not just the girls. The boys had been let out too but a consort of nuns and brothers divided the courtyard down the middle. Just as they had been divided into two distinct groups between Priory locals and evacuees, so too had the boys decided to segregate themselves. Same colours, same crested jackets, only the Priory boys wore caps and not straw boaters. As Aggie observed them on the male side of the human fence, engaging in active brutality towards one another under the guise of sport, she couldn’t help but notice Eric was alone staring into the corner of the boundary fence, quite happily talking to himself.

  ‘He’s always put there. Every break!’ Gemima told Aggie. ‘He just can’t behave himself. Mrs McGregor tells us that trouble finds him.’

  Aggie smiled and recalled the exact same express
ion her uncle had recently bestowed upon her and how it likened her to her mother.

  ‘That’s your five minutes, Peabody,’ came the booming voice of one of the Brothers.

  Eric turned around, pulled his wooden spitfire from his pocket, and ran around the playground imitating gunfire. He coursed his fighter dangerously close to the dividing line of grown-ups, peppering nun and brother with invisible ammunition. As he neared the end of the partition and just opposite the on looking Aggie and Gemima, he feigned a stumble and then flung himself flat-faced onto the ground, sending his beloved plane skimming across concrete and onto their side. Losing a wing in the process, it skidded to a halt at their feet.

  ‘PEABODY! Shouted the same brother, grabbing him up by his ear.

  ‘It was an accident, Brother, honest. Look, my plane, my poor plane. It’s crossed over into enemy lines. Permission to rescue it, sir?’ Eric asked as he stood to attention and saluted the brother.

  The bloodied-knee plea from Eric’s urchin face was enough to allow the nuns to break from their male counterparts and allow him to cross over into ‘enemy lines’. His large boyish eyes that belied his aged face were rapidly urging Aggie to join him at the broken spitfire. She strode forward, picked up the single winged plane, and marched towards him. He held his hand out as she placed it into his palm. At the last second, he retracted his fingers and screamed out loud forcing her to spill the pieces onto the floor once again.

  ‘Ow, watch them splinters!’ Eric cried out.

  ‘Sorry,’ Aggie responded.

  They almost clashed heads as they both descended on the toy.

  ‘Lyle Braggan is dead. Thought you’d like to know,’ he whispered in her ear, just before the brother whipped him away.

  ‘Right, Eric Peabody. In the corner for the remaining ten minutes of break,’ came the authoritative voice.

  Aggie rose up slowly, Goosebumps mottled her skin.

  ‘Did he just say Lyle Braggan was dead?’ came a voice in her head. ‘I need to tell Elizabeth right away,’ her thoughts continued.

  Ten minutes can seem an awfully long time when you’re anxious to talk to someone. It can seem even longer if you’re staring aimlessly into the corner of a playground fence. Eric Peabody amused himself by happily chatting away in the corner. No one was paying attention. Eric was always talking to himself over there, and they were too busy bruising each other in boyish games. Agatha paced around like a caged animal, unaware the Priory girls were sizing her up, as a predator would stalk their prey.

  *****

  At the Funeral Parlour of Closet and Cleave, the sorry sight of Lyle Braggan’s emaciated face, complete with claw pinches gouged into his nose, stared expressionless on the back of the horse-drawn wagon that Wilson Bott had summoned just over two hours before.

  ‘Closet and Cleaves’ respectful parlour for the deceased’ sat at the pinnacle of the Steep, just south of the cenotaph. It was a torturous ascent for the poor shires that often made the hill-climb but Mr Closet refused to move his premises on account of its proximity to the trinity of alehouses and from whence most of his customers came. Closet was beanpole thin. Six foot to a man and always attired in a black three-piece with top hat. A silver timepiece’s chain glinted from his waistcoat pocket and even in summer, he wore fingerless woollen gloves. Mr Cleave, on the other hand, was five-foot-tall, if that, barrel-chested and preferred a gentleman’s two-piece Harris Tweed. It was unlikely a waistcoat could match the demands of his simian chest. His nose was flattened from years of amateur pugilism and the parlour’s embalmer, the man who removed the organs and cut open the bodies. ‘Mr Cleav-er’ – as Eric Peabody had nicknamed him and relished in telling the younger evacuees.

  Closet was the businessman, although Eric also said he was the seamstress and his real name was ‘Close-it’ on account he stitched the bodies up. That’s why he wore those grizzly little gloves. They helped him find the perfect stitch as well as count the money. Nevertheless, Closet and Cleave’s was the only funeral parlour in the village.

  ‘You’re already several shillings to the good Mr Bott.’ Mr Closet told the law enforcer on account of the cost of the horse.

  ‘How do you propose we finance his burial?’ Closet enquired, examining Lyle’s gored nose under his half-moon spectacles.

  ‘I’ve sent word to his kin,’ replied Bott.

  ‘I hear he is a Braggan,’ Cleave popped up with his gravel tone.

  ‘That’s right,’ Bott replied.

  ‘Nephew to Pop Braggan, I hear,’ Cleave continued.

  ‘Right again,’ Bott confirmed.

  ‘The gold-laden giant, Mr Closet!’ Cleave informed his partner, beaming from ear to ear.

  ‘Very well, Mr Bott,’ Closet confirmed reaching for a luggage tag. ‘He is now on account with Closet and Cleave. Do you have a name?’

  ‘His name is Lyle Braggan,’ Bott advised.

  Mr Closet wrote Lyle on the front side of the tag and Braggan on the reverse.

  ‘If you would be so kind, Mr Cleave,’ Mr Closet said.

  Cleave unlocked the solid iron bolts and released the sidebars of the wagon. Lyle Braggan’s lifeless body was small and wretched, and underdeveloped for a young man, making it easy for the muscular, barrel-chested man to heave him up.

  ‘There’s not a lot of weight to this one, Mr Closet, though he is soaked through. Less timber for the casket, I would say,’ Cleave advised.

  ‘Place him on a slab, Mr Cleave, and we’ll begin,’ Closet ordered his partner.

  ‘We will have to wait for Doctor Beckworth,’ Wilson Bott interjected.

  ‘Do you suspect foul play, sir?’ Cleave wheezed as he waddled through the parlour, cradling Lyle like a child.

  The freezing morgue sat behind the moth-eaten velvet drapes of the front quarters.

  ‘I’d just prefer the good doctor to provide his opinion,’ Bott responded.

  ‘Is it OK to remove a single shoe?’ Mr Closet asked. ‘We must tag his toe.’

  Mr Bott rolled his eyes, it wasn’t as if there were innumerable numbers of dead bodies overcrowding the parlour morgue, but he agreed nevertheless. ‘Very well, Mr Closet, if you must,’ Bott confirmed.

  Lying there on a cold marble slab, Lyle Braggan’s body still retained its mysteries. Mr Closet gave the nod to Mr Cleave who approached Lyle’s feet end. His right-side shoe was riddled with holes, damp cardboard that had been used as a temporary barrier to patch the sole now allowed the remaining brook water to drip outwards. The left sole was completely intact, new in fact.

  Mr Cleave weighed up the options and a partially protected foot that had spent the night suspended underwater and one that was open to all types of intruders easily gave him his answer. He unlaced Lyle’s boot and from the left ankle wriggled the foot free. There was no sock and more than likely the brook had given the body a far better wash than the recently departed man. The toenails remained uncut and ground in with filth and grime. Using his little finger Mr Closet daubed two small smears of embalmers’ salts under his nose, to ensure he smelt nothing of the corpse, and then attached the tag to the big toe. Cleave meanwhile poured the water from the recently re-soled shoe. As he held it up at forty-five degrees, as if dispensing a carafe of wine from a great height, a soft thud presented itself on the floor. At first, all three gentlemen thought it was a rolled-up sodden cotton insole. As Cleave bent to clear it away, he looked up in shock.

  ‘Well, I never,’ he said, taking a gasp. ‘Mr Bott, I do believe Mr Braggan here will be able to more than afford the funeral himself.’ Holding aloft in front of the dim mortuary lights he removed an elastic band holding the roll of wet paper together and fanned the bills inside. ‘Dollars, if I’m not mistaken. United States Dollars,’ Mr Cleave announced. ‘At least fifty, I would say.’

  *****

  Aggie and Gemima were following the evacuees back into the schoolhouse when two Priory girls muscled their way in front, isolating them from the group.

  ‘Hey!’ Aggi
e shouted.

  ‘Hey, what?’ Henrietta asked from behind.

  Aggie and Gemima turned, twelve or so girls outflanked them. Henrietta Huntington-Smythe stepped forward into Aggie’s space and sniffed her up and down.

  ‘I’m so glad you realised you were not a Priory girl. I wholeheartedly agree with your decision.’ She smiled.

  At that moment, Aggie understood her decision had been the correct one too. At least they agreed on one thing.

  ‘I mean, who in their right mind would deface the Priory crest?’ Henrietta continued, poking Aggie’s top pocket consistently where a dark shadow of her mother’s crest once rested. ‘If that is a true Priory crest?’ Henrietta questioned in a spiteful undertone. ‘I mean, how old is that moth-ridden rag?’ she persisted, poking Aggie until her chest grew sore.

  Whether it was the physical jabbing or the insult about her Mother’s old uniform or simply the stress of the past few days something just snapped in Aggie.

  On the following pass, she grabbed Henrietta’s forefinger and bent it immediately backwards. Crack!

  ‘Ahh!’ Henrietta screamed before attacking Aggie with a claw-like hand.

  Aggie blocked the incoming arm and delivered a swift blow on to Henrietta’s nose. That too cracked and began to stream with blood. Without thought, she channelled her inner boxer from Bethnal Green. Expecting a flurry of blows she curled herself up and held up a defensive guard.

  ‘Aaaaghhhhhhhhh!’ twelve girls cried out at once. ‘Aaaghhhhhhhhhhh!’ the screech continued and was deafening. Arms flapped around in the air. No attack just the sheer horror of Aggie’s short-tempered pugilistic blows sent them into a frenzy.

  ‘ENOUGH!’ came a higher-pitched screech over them. Two whips of a cane sliced through the air. It was enough to cause everyone to pause on the spot.

  Miss Dove strode across the playground and through the sea of female bodies surrounding the commotion. Her voice and demeanour were not the same as the teacher who had acquainted herself with Aggie that morning. She looked upon Henrietta’s bloodied nose.