by Nero Blanc
“That’s it?” Belle asked.
“For early morning staff, yes. Morgan has a separate apartment with a separate entrance at the building’s rear. I live in a small converted spring house on the premises. We can be easily summoned if there’s a need, but no one else had arrived. We do a brisk lunch and dinner business, but the dishwashers and waitstaff don’t start work until ten thirty or eleven. Our pastry cook generally begins around nine thirty.”
“Do any of them have keys to the inn?” Rosco asked.
“No … just Chef and Joy.… And of course the hotel guests have a key to the front door.”
“And, naturally, any former guest could have made a copy of the front door key,” Rosco pondered aloud while Belle excused herself. By prior arrangement, she and Rosco had decided that she would do some quiet snooping while Rosco queried the guests.
As she walked away she almost ran smack-dab into a short but determined older woman who sported a gray helmet of hair that looked as hard and unforgiving as steel. “Hatchet-faced” would have best described her less-than-sunny countenance. “Are you trying to roll right over me, tootsie? Watch where you’re going,” she barked at Belle while Mitchell cooed a pleasant, “Ah, Miss Cadburrie, so nice of you to join us.”
But before he could introduce this problematic person to Rosco, several other guests appeared. Within a moment, all eight were gathered in the parlor: the three couples, Miss Cadburrie, and a single gentleman by the name of Barry Heath. He was clearly the most ill at ease of the group. A tall, hulking man with close-cropped hair and a bushy mustache that was obviously an object of much veneration, his hands shook as if he had a permanent chill while his walrus-sized mustache danced with a nervous tic.
Where to start? Rosco wondered as he watched the assembled guests help themselves to cocoa, tea, or coffee. How about a lie …? It’s as good a place as any to begin.… “Let me first state,” he said as seats were taken and cups and saucers placed nearby, “that none of you is a suspect in the theft. I’m simply asking for your suggestions and observations. You’ve had almost a full day to absorb the situation, and I was hoping one or more of you might have noticed something odd—either the behavior of the staff, or perhaps of the locals decorating the inn. I gather you’ve all stayed at the inn many times in the past?”
“Well, no,” Mitchell interrupted. “Mr. and Mrs. Towbler are here for the first time, as is Mr. Heath. The Yorkes are with us for their second stay.”
“I never arise before ten A.M.,” Barry Heath interjected, “I didn’t see anything, and the crisis was over by the time I came down for breakfast. My comings and goings have been witnessed by all.”
The Towblers sat straighter in their chairs, sensing that being “first-timers” at the inn placed them outside the trusted loop. “I must say,” Mr. Towbler began with a clipped, old-school British accent, “that my wife and I are as disappointed with this tragic scenario as anyone could be. As Mr. Marz can attest, we arrived here late last night, and like Mr. Heath, we awakened to find the poem had already gone missing. Neither one of us had an opportunity to even view it.”
“And to be quite honest,” his wife added, “that was one of the reasons we’d chosen the Revere Inn.” She spoke with the same cultured accent as her husband. Like him, she also appeared to be in her mid fifties and was dressed in similarly conservative—and expensive—London tweeds.
“May I ask what you do for a living, Mr. Towbler?” Rosco said.
“Do?” was his irked reply.
“Yes … I was wondering what field you might be in.”
Towbler cleared his throat, but it was his wife who answered. “We are fortunate enough to be independently wealthy, Mr. Polycrates. What we do is travel. We reside not far from Craigie House in Cambridge, England … where I’m sure you’re aware Mr. Longfellow spent his final years. It has long been our desire to visit the spots that the poet most stirringly evoked.… We residents from ‘across the pond’ believe in lauding our noble artistes.” She graced the gathering with a smile that expressed her sympathy for the poor, uncultured colonials who didn’t support the arts.
“I see.” Rosco turned his attention to another couple who were closer to his own age. They had the wholesomeness of avid sports enthusiasts, and they looked almost disturbingly similar: two round-faced blonds with pink cheeks and eyes as pale as snow. “How about you, Mr. and Mrs. Yorke? Has anything struck you as out of the ordinary? Either today or yesterday? Plainly, a theft such as this took planning.”
The husband finished what was left of his cocoa and set the cup on the Queen Anne table beside him. Of the assembled group, he seemed the most relaxed and confident. “Our room is directly above this one.” He pointed toward the ceiling. “And yes, I did hear an odd noise last night. I’d venture to say that was when the poem was stolen, but I never put two and two together. I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t notice the time.”
“Can you ballpark it?” Rosco asked. “Would it have been closer to midnight … or early in the morning?”
“I got up at four A.M. to take a look at the Milky Way. It was incredibly well-defined.… The noise from downstairs definitely came after that point, and I was awake at seven, so I feel safe in saying it was stolen between those hours. But as far as suspicious behavior …” He shrugged and looked at his wife. “How about you, Patty?” She shook her head, but made no other comment.
Rosco glanced at Miss Cadburrie, then asked, “And you, Mr. Heath?” without looking in that guest’s direction.
“What? What about me? I didn’t take it.”
Rosco gave him a level gaze. “I didn’t say you had. I was just wondering if you noticed any of the staff behaving oddly.”
“Maybe you should be grilling them, and leaving the paying guests alone.” Barry Heath’s voice was hard but also unexpectedly brittle, as if his tense demeanor were about to break apart.
“I hope you don’t feel I’m grilling anyone.”
“It’s an insult, that’s what it is. I won’t come to a place and be accused of behaving like a common criminal.” Heath insisted.
“I agree with you, there, sport.” This was Mr. Reasey speaking, and his twangy accent revealed him as a confirmed Down-Easter. He and his wife were seated on a couch at the far corner of the parlor, lumped together like two Maine potatoes. “My wife and I are going to have to excuse ourselves before this meeting becomes any more uncomfortable. We’ve stayed at the inn numerous times, and we have nothing to add with regard to observations of suspicious behavior. It seems to me you should be questioning the hordes of local people who’ve been swarming over the place. However, if we think of anything, Mr. Marz, we’ll be certain to tell you.” Rosco’s name was conspicuously absent from this huffy speech, as if Reasey couldn’t abide using a Greek surname. Then he stood, hefting his bulk from the low, antique sofa, and looked down at his equally chunky wife. “Coming, Ruth baby?” Ruth baby immediately struggled to her own square feet and waddled out the door after her husband.
The rest of the guests took this as their cue to leave as well. Within a matter of two minutes, Rosco found himself alone in the parlor with Mitchell and Miss Cadburrie. To say she was relishing her moment in the limelight would be an understatement; her eyes positively shone with malicious joy. “I, for one, don’t find your line of questioning in the least bit intrusive, Mr. Polycrates. After all, how can one be expected to resolve this enigma if sensible people can’t ask sensible questions?” She paused, her point made and handily won. “In my opinion, Mr. Polycrates, the Towbler duo are outright phonies, with their endless chattering about ‘spots of tea’ and ‘Lord and Lady Snootypoo’.… I believe a search of their room will settle the predicament once and for all.”
“Thank you, Miss Cadburrie.” Rosco smiled benignly as he spoke. The Miss Cadburries of the world were best handled with caution lest they turn and snap at the people who’d befriended them. “I’ll certainly keep your recommendation in mind, but without authority and a pro
per search warrant, I can’t move forward as aggressively as I might want to.”
A dismissive sniff greeted this statement. “You don’t look like a person to be cowed by name-dropping and references to Debrett’s Peerage.… I certainly hope you don’t share the same laissez-faire approach to those appalling people from Maine. They’re as common as dirt. Although, at least there’s nothing sham about their pose.”
Rosco merely nodded, while Mitch uttered a conciliatory, “Thank you so much for your aid, Miss Cadburrie. You know what a pleasure it is to have you stay with us.”
The cantankerous lady softened, but the transformation only extended to Mitchell. “Well, I wanted to relay my thoughts in private, Mr. Marz, so as to not alert any—”
“Thank you for your help, ma’am,” Rosco interrupted. He shook the lady’s cool and papery hand to indicate that the conversation was concluded, then he watched her spin irritably on her heel and march away before he turned his attention to Mitchell. “I’d like to question the two employees who were on the premises when the poem disappeared, if that’s convenient.”
“You’ll find Chef in the kitchen. But Joy didn’t come in until seven this morning, so she’s in the clear.” Rosco said nothing, and Mitch added, “Because Yorke heard noises down here before seven, remember?”
“Right. Assuming he has no reason to lie.”
Eleven
“I can recite the whole thing,” E.T. boasted as he trailed behind Belle. With Mitchell ensconced with the guests in the front parlor, and Morgan temporarily out of the picture, E.T. had forsaken his outdoor duties in order to “help” Belle in her private hunt through the inn.
“What ‘thing’?” she said, although she was hardly listening to her chatty escort. For the ten or fifteen minutes E.T. had been with her, she doubted he’d stopped talking for more than a second.
She depressed the antique iron latch of a door under the second-floor stairway and found it locked—the third such discovery she’d made, not including the closed guest bedrooms. Someone, Belle thought, must possess a good many old keys. “Are these closet doors usually locked?” she asked.
“I don’t know, I never come up here. Mr. Morgan likes me to stay outside. I think he’s afraid I’ll break something.… So, do you want to hear me recite it?”
“Recite what?” Belle walked the length of the hall, then turned and walked down two steps that led to another section of corridor and another part of the building.
“The poem, of course!” E.T. exclaimed. Then he raised a hand and rapped himself on the head in a gesture of impatience. It was the sort of half-teasing, half-serious reminder an older kid would give a younger one. “You’re right! Saying ‘thing’ and ‘it.’ That’s totally dumb. Use specifics. The teachers at school are always telling us that … I guess you know specific is related to species. I looked it up in the dictionary. Spy’s another one, and so is specter.… You could say, ‘I spy a specific species of speckled specters,’ and be using words from the same family. Except for speckled, of course.”
Belle chuckled, turning to face him. “Since when do ghosts sport spots?”
“It’s hypothetical …” In the corridor’s dim light, E.T.’s already serious face grew more so. “Actually, it’s a mnemonic—”
“And you’re now going to explain that those memory aids are named after the Greek titan, Mnemosyne, who was in charge of such cerebral doings—and who became the mother of the Muses.”
“Yup.” A bright grin lit up E.T.’s face.
“I’d better be careful or you’re going to take my job away from me.”
“I can’t, ‘cause I’m only twelve,” was the sensible reply. Then E.T. repeated his previous offer. “So do you want me to recite the poem? I know the whole thing!”
The boy’s need for approval and human connection was so evident that Belle felt instant empathy. “Your parents must be awfully proud of you,” she told him.
But this accolade only brought a swift glower, followed by an evasive and defensive, “How come a bunch of lions is called a pride instead of a herd or a flock?”
“I don’t know the answer to that one,” Belle said as she scrutinized E.T.’s now uncommunicative face. “Maybe the king of the jungle would be insulted if someone insisted he was sheepish … or a silly goose.”
“If I were a lion and someone called me stupid names, I’d bite them,” E.T. insisted, then his closed and somber expression vanished as noise of a boisterous arrival raced up the stairs. “It’s the chocolate village!” he exclaimed with a sudden smile. “I didn’t think Mr. Karl and his dad would get here to install it today on account of the snow. The staff—that’s me—gets to eat the people and animals and everything at the end of the holidays. The registered guests are given a chocolate house or barn or something.” Then E.T. roared away, a twelve-year-old boy focusing solely on childhood pleasures.
THE chocolate village scene was indeed a wonderful creation. Belle watched as the buildings and their inhabitants were assembled on a swirling blanket of white chocolate: the houses, constructed as fancifully as their gingerbread counterparts, interspersed on the wintry scene; the cookie trees thoughtfully arranged; the horses and buggies; the cows in their stalls; the sheep dotting the fields; and a dusting of confectioner’s sugar sprinkled, like snow, over the entire panorama.
It was a sweet-lover’s delight. “Didn’t I tell you?” E.T. demanded. “Didn’t I? Didn’t I?” His eyes were focused on the magic scene. “And it really tastes great, too. Mr. Karl says it’s because they use only the best ingredients. He told me I can watch them making it one day, and eat whatever I want.… Chocolate comes from cacao seeds, which grow in rain forests like the ones in Latin America. Ancient Mayas and Aztecs made a spicy drink out of it and mixed the seeds with incense offerings to the gods.… I looked up all that stuff in the encyclopedia at school.… Cortez, he was a Spanish explorer; he found storerooms full of cacao seeds instead of gold. That’s how valuable the stuff was …”
Belle nodded as E.T. continued to reel off additional facts, and as the inn’s guests gathered around the table upon which Legendary’s scene was being displayed. Rosco and Mitchell were not among the group, and Belle heard a number of grumbles and downright critiques of her husband’s handling of the investigation. She kept her mouth shut, and fortunately E.T. was so intent on his own running commentary that he didn’t respond to the accusations either.
“… The Aztecs and Mayas called it chocolatl.… You can use that in one of your puzzles, Belle. It’s spelled—”
“Chocolatl,” old Mr. Liebig echoed as he crossed behind the group, the better to judge the sightlines of the delectable creation. Then he suddenly stopped and stared at Belle.
“Her husband was from the Netherlands,” he stated quite plainly.
Belle didn’t need to ask who the her was. She knew in a trice that the old man was referring to the mystery crossword cookbook constructor.
“And her name was … was … was … Swerve.”
“Swerve?” Belle asked. It was no surname—or given name—she’d ever heard of. She tried to imagine what an appropriate synonym might be. “Do you mean Dodge, perhaps, Mr. Liebig?”
“Why would a person be named after a car?” was his perplexed reply. Then his face assumed a bright but mindless smile, indicating that the entire subject was now forgotten.
Twelve
THEY spoke while sitting in total darkness. The pitch-black seemed to contribute to their sense of seclusion and privacy; however, a certain paranoia arose from the fact that she couldn’t see his face and eyes, or accurately interpret his expressions. Likewise, he couldn’t read hers. No hand gestures, deceitful squints, or raised eyebrows were shared. As a result, distrust and tension infused each of their hushed words.
“And how do you propose we get the blessed thing out of the inn?” she snapped in a tired voice. “How? That’s what I want to know. Our snow-shoveling, underage snoop has every vehicle in the lot under the watch
of his beady little eyes. You heard the brat bragging to Polycrates. We couldn’t go near a single one of those cars without there being a headline about it the Boston Globe tomorrow morning.”
“Relax, will you? I’m not going to throw in the towel. There still has to be a way to pull this off. We’re almost home.”
“Ha! You had this so well planned, didn’t you? Mr. I’ve Thought Of Everything,” was her facetious reply. “This is Massachusetts in November, you dope; you should have factored in the possibility of a snowstorm when you worked out your brilliant strategy—for as long as you’ve lived in New England? For as long as I’ve lived in New England?” She shook her head from side to side for effect, forgetting that he couldn’t see it. “Neither one of us thought of snow … which leaves us trapped with the goods sitting in our laps.”
“Okay, okay, I don’t need to be lectured about this. So it snowed. So what? We move to plan B. We’ll just have to carry the thing out when we leave. Sneak it through the kitchen or something; use the side door, maybe. One of us will stand guard, or create a distraction, that’s all.”
“You are so dense. You’re worse than a block of firewood. I should have never agreed to go in on this with you. ‘We’ll just carry it out’? In what? A suitcase? The frame’s almost twice as big as the ones we brought. It wouldn’t even fit into one of those garland crates in the storage area; or that giant wreath box.… And everyone in the place is going to be watching the comings and goings like hawks until all the guests check out. Mitch has got this place in severe lockdown mode.… The only way to get it out is in the middle of the night. And with this snow, even that option’s gone. We should have taken it straight out to the car last night like I said. But oh, no, you’ve got to ‘give it the once-over’ first. Now look where we are.”
“Keep your voice down, will you? These doors are far from soundproof.” He sucked in a big breath of air and let it out slowly. “Speaking of Mitch; do you think he knows the truth?”
