by Howe, A. E.
“We need to get some men down to the depot.”
“Men?” Deputy Willard Paige asked. He was one of only three deputies in the county, and not especially quick.
“Deputize some men to help!” Logan shouted at him. “Search the railyard too. Got to be some hobo. Who the devil are you?” This last was directed at Blasko.
“Baron Dragomir Blasko,” he answered with a slight bow.
“What the hell are you doing here?” the sheriff asked with narrowed eyes.
“He’s staying with me,” Josephine responded, coming up the walk as quickly as she could. She’d followed Blasko across the street, knowing that he couldn’t be trusted to stay out of trouble.
Logan’s eyes shifted back and forth between Blasko and Josephine. The sheriff looked like what he was—a tough, grizzled old lawman. He’d served in the military before the Great War and had gotten a sizable piece of shrapnel in his left thigh that caused him to walk with a slight hitch to his step.
“I don’t have time for socializing. We have a murder on our hands.” He wouldn’t have bothered adding the last part, but the sheriff was an elected official and even someone as unconcerned with social niceties as Logan recognized the need to explain things to an important citizen such as Josephine Nicolson.
“The murder is the very reason I’m here,” Blasko said, causing the sheriff to once again narrow his eyes and stare at him.
“What do you know about it?”
“Nothing yet. But I plan to find out who the murderer is.”
“What—” Logan started to say exactly what he was thinking, but then remembered Josephine and that she’d just said this was a guest of hers. He stared back at her.
“He’s from Romania,” Josephine responded lamely, trying to think of a way to explain Blasko.
“I was a magistrate for my province in Romania. I’m offering you my services in this matter,” Blasko said, waving his hand in the general direction of the Erickson house.
“Don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Logan said. “We need to get going. The murderer is probably catching a train as we speak.”
He started to push past Blasko, who stood his ground. Logan’s face turned red and Josephine stepped in quickly.
“Perhaps we could go in and comfort Lucy and the girls,” Josephine suggested reasonably. She moved up behind Blasko, unobtrusively taking his arm.
“Sure. Good idea. Doc McGuire is comin’ to check over the body,” Logan said, moving around Blasko. Deputy Paige, who had stood back and watched the confrontation between Blasko and his boss, tipped his hat to Josephine as they hurried down the walk toward their waiting car.
“You people stay back. Don’t go near the house!” the sheriff shouted to the crowd out by the road. It was growing larger as rumor of the murder spread through the small town.
“Come on,” Josephine said to Blasko.
They were led into the house by Myra, Grace’s friend and the Ericksons’ housekeeper. The woman was much larger than Grace and a few years older. She looked overwhelmed by the turn of events.
The house was a standard four and four, with a parlor, study, dining room and bedroom that had been converted into a kitchen downstairs, while the upstairs held four more bedrooms.
Myra escorted them into the parlor where three women and a man were gathered.
“Lucy, how terrible,” Josephine said, rushing over to the older woman, who seemed surprised to see her. Josephine understood the look. They were acquaintances because they both were members of the same social circle, but neither would have called the other a friend. Lucy was Samuel Erickson’s second wife. His first had died while giving birth to their son, Clarence. I wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for Blasko, Josephine thought, grinding her teeth.
Clarence stood up from his spot on the sofa where he had been embracing a petite, blonde woman and approached Blasko. Josephine remembered her manners and said quickly, “I’m sorry. This is my distant cousin from Romania, Baron Dragomir Blasko.”
“I’m Clarence Erickson and this is my wife, Amanda. My sister, Carrie,” he said, indicating a tall and wiry woman sitting in a chair in the corner. “I’m sorry, but we’re all still in shock.”
“I spoke with your sheriff. I was a magistrate back in my country and I’ve offered my services to help find the one who did this horrible crime,” Blasko said. His tone was sad, and he shook his head as he spoke. Josephine was impressed with how he managed to imply so many things that weren’t true without actually lying.
“The sheriff said it must have been a stranger,” Clarence said.
“Obviously, no one we know would do something… so horrible,” Lucy said. “We told him that.”
“I would like to see the body,” Blasko said bluntly. Everyone stared at him for a moment. Lucy covered her eyes and stifled a cry.
“The sheriff said we should keep everyone out. But I guess if you’ve spoken with him…” Clarence sounded unsure, but finally said, “I’ll show you up.” He started to go and his wife reached for his hand. He stopped and turned to her. “I’ll be right back.” She nodded, but still paused before finally letting go of his hand.
“Thank you,” Blasko said and followed Clarence out of the room, leaving Josephine with the three women.
Blasko had smelled the blood as soon as they entered the house. Now, as he followed Clarence up the stairs, the coppery odor became stronger.
Samuel Erickson’s room faced the front of the house. Clarence hesitated at the door. “I’d rather not go in.”
“I understand,” Blasko said, reaching for the doorknob.
Inside the room, the light was on. The body was lying on the bed, arms at its sides. The bludgeoned face was unrecognizable beneath the corpse’s blood-soaked grey hair.
Blasko had to struggle against an inner urge as the blood called to him. He fought it down as he looked around the room for clues to the killer. Drops of blood were scattered all around the bed. Looking closely, Blasko could almost see the outline of the killer’s shoes, but the image was elusive. As he leaned over, he spied a button lying on the floor just under the bed. He reached down and picked it up. It was bone, drilled with four holes, and with just a few strands of white thread still attached. Blasko carefully placed it in his pocket, then stood back and looked at the body.
The man had been dressed in pants, socks and a dress shirt. His shoes were at the foot of the bed and his coat and waistcoat were folded on a nearby chair. Blasko had seen thousands of men and women killed over the centuries, with every imaginable weapon. Erickson appeared to have been bludgeoned with a rounded object, possibly a metal rod of some sort. But it hadn’t been very thick, judging by the indentations in his forehead. There’d been more than a dozen savage strikes to his head and face. He’d been killed early in the attack, but not before his right hand could grasp the sheets in a death grip.
Much of the death Blasko had seen had occurred in battle. A soldier tried to end another’s life with as few blows as possible, striking simply to eliminate the foe. This is not the work of a man eliminating a threat. The killing here was out of hatred, Blasko thought to himself.
There were streaks of blood on the quilt where it appeared the murderer had wiped off the weapon. Blasko looked around the room for the weapon, not really believing the killer had been careless enough to leave it there. A fire poker would have been the right size, but the one leaning next to the fireplace near a coal shovel had obviously not been moved in a while. Though it was early October, it still wasn’t cold enough to need a fire.
Deciding that he’d seen everything he could in the bedroom, Blasko stood where the killer must have stood by the bed. How did the killer escape? he thought. Trying to imagine himself as the murderer, he turned toward the door. Walking in that direction, he sniffed the air, still smelling blood. He walked out the door and past Clarence, who was leaning against the balustrade and smoking a cigarette.
“Not very pretty, is it?” he said t
o Blasko, who barely acknowledged him.
Blasko walked down the hall, subtly sniffing the air for the scent of more blood. He got a stronger whiff and looked down to see a spot on the carpet runner that ran the length of the hall. Ten feet farther along, he found another small spot.
Clarence followed him as he moved slowly down the hall. Blasko had expected the trail to turn and go down the stairs, but instead it led to the bathroom door. Opening it revealed a room with a claw-foot tub, a pedestal sink and a toilet with an overhead tank. The floor was covered in tile that extended four feet up the walls. Blasko moved to the sink and examined it. The were still droplets of water around the handles and the drain.
“Has anyone used this since the murder?” Blasko asked, turning to Clarence.
“I don’t know,” Clarence said with a shrug. “You don’t think the killer took the time to wash up, do you?”
Blasko looked at Clarence. “Did your father always lie down in the afternoon?”
“He always did on Wednesdays.”
Most businesses in town closed on Wednesday afternoon, partly to make up for Saturday when they worked half a day to accommodate the farmers who came into town to do business, and partly to give folks time to get ready for Wednesday evening church services.
“I have some questions for everyone,” Blasko said, heading down the stairs.
Josephine had not been dealing well with the uncomfortable situation in the parlor. All of the women were deep in their own thoughts when Blasko and Clarence came back into the room.
“Please, a few questions if you don’t mind,” Blasko said, like a flamboyant magician getting ready to perform a trick.
Everyone stared at him.
“What time did Mr. Erickson go upstairs?”
“Same as every Wednesday, I suppose, around two o’clock,” Lucy said without any inflection.
“And where was everyone from two o’clock until the body was discovered?”
“Why?” Carrie asked sharply.
Blasko knew better than to cast aspersions on the family, so he tread lightly. “I want to determine when and how the killer slipped into the house. If I know where each of you were, that will give me some idea of the opportunities the man had,” he said reasonably.
“Shouldn’t this wait for the sheriff?”
“He is off searching for the madman,” Blasko said without answering Lucy’s question.
“Well, I was out at a friend’s,” Lucy responded, turning to Josephine. “I went over to Barbara’s house. She’s been down with the flu, so I took over a pie that Myra had baked.”
“When was this?” Blasko asked.
“I left here about noon and got back at four o’clock.”
“And the body was discovered…?”
“At six when Samuel didn’t come downstairs. I asked Myra to go up and check on him. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d overslept. We all heard her scream.” Lucy shivered at the memory.
“I see.” How do you know for sure that he went upstairs at two if you weren’t here? Blasko wanted to ask, but he decided now was not the time to start a confrontation.
“Clarence, where were you this afternoon?”
“I was at work. I came home just a little before six.”
“Where do you work?”
“I own the Sumter Garage,” he said, sounding a bit offended that Blasko didn’t know.
“And you?” Blasko turned to the young woman who was clutching her husband tightly.
“I was tending my roses,” Amanda said timidly.
Blasko turned to Carrie, who didn’t wait for him to form a question.
“I was going over the household accounts in the study. Father turned them over to me a couple of years ago,” she said, exchanging a look with her stepmother that Blasko caught out of the corner of his eye.
“No one saw or heard anyone enter the house?”
“We told Sheriff Logan that. Trouble is, anyone could have come in here and gone upstairs without being noticed,” Carrie said.
“What about the servants?”
“Myra was running some errands and the cook was busy in the kitchen. Unless she looked out the window, she wouldn’t have seen anything. We keep the door to the kitchen closed when the weather is warm to keep the heat from coming into the rest of the house,” Lucy said.
“Where is the cook now?”
“She left at five. Alice goes to church on Wednesday evenings at Primitive Baptist. She prepares dinner before she goes and Myra serves it.”
There was a knock on the door and Myra came in, looking frightened.
“Mrs. Erickson, Dr. McGuire is here.”
Everyone stood up and followed Myra out into the hall, where McGuire was standing, wearing a grim expression. He was holding his black bag and a log book that he used to record deaths in the county.
“Sorry to hear about the trouble,” he said to the group, letting his eyes move from one person to the other. “The sooner I can see him, the more accurate my report will be.”
“I’ll show you up,” Clarence said. But before Dr. McGuire could follow him, the front door opened and Deputy Paige walked in.
“Dr. McGuire, I’ll show you to the body,” he said, pushing past everyone. He gave Clarence a look that seemed to say: Step back, the law’s here.
As Paige and McGuire went upstairs, Josephine came in close to Blasko and said sternly, “We can go now.”
Blasko looked at her as though he was thinking about arguing. “Very well,” he finally said. “I’m deeply sorry for your loss,” he told the family and then headed for the door.
The crowd outside was two deep at the sidewalk. Harry Elton, the milk delivery man, was wearing a badge on his flannel shirt and was busy shooing people away from the house. Josephine and Blasko pushed their way through the crowd. A few people greeted Josephine with waves and nods.
“This killer was not a stranger,” Blasko said, once they were out of earshot of the gawkers.
“How can you be sure?” Josephine asked skeptically.
Blasko told her what he’d seen upstairs. “The man was killed by someone who hated him. After the assault, the murderer went into the bathroom and cleaned up. Whoever it was knew that household’s routine.”
Chapter Nine
Once back inside Josephine’s house, Blasko paced the parlor. “What do you know about the family?”
“Not too much. Erickson was a skinflint, but a good businessman. He and my father were two of the only men in town not hit too hard by the stock market crash and everything that came after.”
“What about Clarence?”
Josephine sat down on the sofa. “That’s an interesting story. Well, at least the rumors are interesting. Erickson wanted his son to learn about automobiles. With his usual eye for business, he figured they were going to take over from horses, so Erickson wanted to have a son who understood them. It worked too well. Clarence got a job at the garage in town. Story is, he became obsessed with cars, much to his father’s irritation.
“Then Clarence and Amanda met at a dance at the veterans’ hall. Mr. Erickson disapproved, of course, since she was the daughter of the garage owner. The rumor is that Amanda either got pregnant or pretended to be pregnant so that Clarence’s father would let them get married. Whatever the real story, the baby never came. Regardless, Erickson bought the garage from Amanda’s father and presented it to the couple as a wedding present.
“That was six years ago. They’re living in Erickson’s house while they wait on their own house to be built. Another gift from dad. Considering how cheap Erickson was, he couldn’t have been very happy about the whole thing, but he kept paying for things anyway.”
“And the daughter?”
“You’re really trying to figure this out?” Josephine asked. The murder was the first thing that Blasko had seemed really interested in since coming to America. He’d given a certain restless attention to the renovation work in the basement, but no more than he would have gi
ven to unpacking in a hotel room.
“I always find death interesting,” he said with raised eyebrows. Josephine couldn’t tell if he was making a joke or not. “Tell me about Carrie.”
“Carrie is older than Clarence. A confirmed spinster. I don’t know if she’s ever been courted by anyone. Carrie’s got a sharp tongue and a quick temper. I think everyone in town has had a run-in with her at one time or another. When I was in school, she called me a harlot for holding hands with a boy as we walked past their house. You don’t really think she could have murdered him?”
“Ha, I remember a town we conquered in Turkey back… Well, a long time ago. We had captured the town and chased all the men out. Only the women were left. I’d ordered my warriors to be respectful. Not the normal practice at the time, but we were far from our lines and I didn’t need the locals fighting us tooth and nail. My men bedded down for the night. In the morning, I found that half of my regiment had been slaughtered in their beds by the women of the town. A woman can be as savage and as brutal as any man, if driven to it.”
“Carrie, maybe, but I don’t think you can say that about Amanda Erickson. She’s very timid. Kind. I think she has just a small group of friends. Grace might know more. She spends a lot of time with Myra.”
“What about the stepmother?”
“Lucy isn’t a wicked stepmother. She may be a little too flirtatious for some, but I’ve never heard any rumors about her. Again, Grace might have heard something from Myra.”
Josephine called to Grace. She walked into the room, giving Blasko the evil eye the entire time.
“They ain’t locked him up yet?” she said to Josephine, without taking her eyes off of Blasko.
“Don’t be silly. I didn’t kill that man,” Blasko said harshly.
“Ever since Miss Josephine told me about all your… odd habits, I’ve been warning her. Keep a rattlesnake in your house, you’re going to get bit.”
Josephine had needed to tell Grace early on about Blasko’s feeding habits and issues with sunlight, but she’d only hinted at his age. Even with the extra pay, it had been clear from day one that spending time in the house with Blasko and keeping his secrets was going to be a challenge for Grace.