Death in Detail

by Andrew Stanek

  Alders frowned, but before he could say anything, the door swung open. Chester marched in carrying an ornate golden necklace, a huge diamond swinging freely from the end. He slammed it down nonchalantly on the table.

  “Here’s the necklace back,” he said with a shrug.

  “Thank you,” responded Felix. “Would you be good enough to tell your sister that it’s been recovered? I’m sure she’ll be most relieved.”

  “Alright, but I’m not your errand boy,” Chester snapped. He marched out of the room once again.

  “Do you know what bothers me about these people, Felix?” Alders asked. “They act so fancy, genteel, like they’re better than the rest of us. It’s in how they talk and walk and act. They’re living in this giant house which must have been built a hundred years ago, wearing suits and dresses at every hour of the day and night, but they’re just as scummy as some of the drug dealers I met. It reminds me of an old saying I heard. If you put a rat in a suit, it’s still a rat. It’s just wearing a suit.”

  Felix seemed to weigh this, bobbing his head to one side and then the other. “Yes. But I think I hear someone approaching, so we’d better stop talking about rats.”

  There was, indeed, a flurry of frantic, light footfalls coming from the hall outside that could only have belonged to Diane. She threw open the doors to the living room a second later.

  “You found it,” she squealed, and marched up to the table, and grabbed the diamond centerpiece on the necklace.

  “Yes we did,” Felix said. “But that is evidence, and it is not yours yet.” He tugged it out of her grasp. She snatched at it, but Felix stuffed it into a pocket of his baggy black jacket. Alders gave him another severe look.

  “Give me that,” Diane snarled.

  “I’m afraid we can’t just yet,” Felix said firmly. “Perhaps you’d be kind enough to answer a few of our questions? Then, maybe, we could let you have the necklace.”

  “Well, fine then,” she said, leaning against the nearby wall. “Go ahead.”

  Felix nodded to Alders, who started down his usual track of questioning.

  “What do you do, Ms. Bellinger?”

  “Do?” she repeated uncomprehendingly. “What do you mean?”

  “What is your vocation?”

  “I don’t have a job. I have fun instead. You should try it some time. It’s wonderful.”

  “Very well. And do you normally live here, in Great Redmond?”

  “I have a penthouse here, but I wouldn’t say I’m normally here in Great Redmond. My friends and I have been on a tour around the country. All the big cities. New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, and so on. We’ve been trying to find the best social hotspots.” She rested one set of painted, manicured nails on the table. “I can tell you that the last few weeks have been hell, staying in this dusty old house waiting for that madwoman upstairs to finally go towards the light. I hate this place. The only reason I stayed here was because I wanted the necklace, and I’ll be out of here the moment I get it. I imagine everyone else is going to stay here to fight over the inheritance, but I don’t care much.”

  “I take it you’re unmarried as well?”

  “Of course. I wouldn’t want to be nailed down at this stage.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand, Ms. Bellinger. If you’re not married and you don’t have a job, how can you afford your penthouse and your trips around the country?”

  She broke into a smile. “Why Auntie, of course. She paid me an allowance. I mean, I had other money. I wasn’t entirely dependent on the old woman. Daddy left me quite a lot when he died, the same as he did with all of us. That’s how I bought the penthouse.”

  “Why did your aunt pay you? By all accounts, she didn’t seem to like you much.”

  Diane gave a laugh that sounded as much like a cackle of triumph as it did an expression of amusement.

  “Auntie was very, very old-fashioned. She didn’t approve of women working. I imagine it was an idea she picked up just after the civil war or something. I got the impression that if I were to work, she thought the neighbors would think our family was too poor for me not to work.”

  Felix, who had been examining a grandfather clock, turned to look at Diane.

  “You say your aunt didn’t approve of women working, but she hired two female maids.”

  “I’m sorry, I meant that she didn’t approve of women from good families working. She felt it was a sign of poverty.”

  “And do you think your family is a good family?” Felix prompted.

  “Well, everything’s relative,” she answered. Diane smiled to herself and flipped her neon green scarf back over her shoulder.

  “If your aunt paid you an allowance, as you put it, did she pay your cousin Stephanie an allowance as well?”

  “Stephanie? Oh no. Stephanie was always the black sheep of the family. Her mother - Agatha’s sister - ran off with someone unsuitable and was written out of grandfather’s will, so she might have been dead to us as far as Aunt Agatha was concerned. Stephanie didn’t inherit any money, so when her parents died and she didn’t have anywhere to go, she showed up on Aunt Agatha’s doorstep. I think Aunt Agatha enjoyed terrorizing her, so no, she didn’t pay her anything. Auntie left her name in the will, though, so she must have decided Stephanie deserved something in the end, despite the heinous crime of having been born to an improper father.”

  “You think your Aunt treated Stephanie the way she did because of her father?” asked Alders, surprised.

  “No. Auntie treated everyone horribly, regardless of who they were, but I’m saying I think she didn’t want Stephanie to enjoy life - like I do - because of who she was. I don’t really know anything about Stephanie’s parents. You’ll have to ask her. All I know is that Auntie Agatha, and grandpa too, had some very strange, old-fashioned ideas about who you were supposed to marry and how you were supposed to behave and so on, and that’s what I’m trying to impress on you. Auntie was very old-fashioned.”

  “She’s starting to sound medieval,” Felix said.

  “Now you’re getting it,” Diane said, smiling at him.

  “We’ve gotten off-track here,” Alders cut in. “Let’s get back to the night of your Aunt’s hundredth birthday.”

  “Ugh. Yes. The night of her hundredth birthday. I guess you want to know all about the big argument we had that night? You think that was the breaking point for somebody and they poisoned her. Well, alright, let’s see what happened. I’d just flown in from New York but I still picked up Gloria from that ridiculous Food Bank where she works. She’d asked me for a ride, you see. The traffic was terrible. We got there late and when I walked in the atmosphere was completely stone cold. I don’t know what they were talking about before I arrived, but it was just awful. Anyway, I started to ask Hank about his girlfriend.”

  “His girlfriend?” Felix asked politely.

  “Oh yes, I’m sure he’s got one. I notice things, and I saw something no one else did. There was a woman’s hair on the back of his jacket, a long, bright-colored hair. She must have been blonde, although I doubt she was a natural blonde. There are so few natural blondes anymore. People have started dying their hair left and right. I don’t begrudge anyone their ideas of beauty, but you know, if you start dying your hair, you have to keep doing it for the rest of your life. It’s too much of a waste.” Diane absent-mindedly fiddled with a strand of her own shiny black hair. “But no one else noticed the hair on Hank’s jacket and he wouldn’t tell me anything about her. He blushed a little when I mentioned it though. I’m sure I’m right.”

  “Then what happened?” Alders asked, as he jotted this down.

  “Then we started talking about other things. I don’t remember very well. I think I asked Jasper about climbing Everest. Aunt Agatha started shouting and stormed out and we all said things that I’m sure you’ll find very suspicious about how we wanted to see her dead. Well, we all hated her, and we always talked like that, and none of us has ever killed her befo
re.”

  “It only takes the once though,” Felix murmured.

  “Then Chester came in and we drank very heavily. I got pretty drunk. That’s one of the reasons I didn’t try to drive back to my penthouse. And the next morning I woke up to hear the whole house in a commotion because granny had a fall. It was pretty bad, apparently, and she said she felt weak and she couldn’t stand anymore. She was still moving along though, leaning on Stephanie like she was a living crutch. So I stuck around in case she snuffed it and I could get my hands on the necklace.”

  “Why do you want the necklace so badly?”

  “Why does anyone want anything?”

  Felix gave her a contemplative look, but said nothing more.

  “Have you seen anything else suspicious or unusual, Ms. Bellinger?” Alders cut in. “You said you notice things. Anything might be helpful.”

  “Of course. I can think of one thing. When Auntie finally kicked it - two days ago - Stephanie was bringing her her morning tray and started screaming her head off. I was in the room next door at the time, so I ran in to Auntie’s room and the place was in, well, disarray. One of the lamps was overturned and drawers were open and so forth. At first I thought someone must have robbed the house, but the necklace was still there. I checked. There wasn’t anything taken as far as I know. And we couldn’t really have been robbed, since Stephanie had taken to sleeping in a chair outside Auntie’s door. No one could have gotten past her.”

  “No one has mentioned this before,” Alders said.

  “Well, since the old dingbat had died I think we were all too busy celebrating to care.”

  “Do you have anything else you’d like to tell us?”

  “Only that I want my necklace.”

  Felix shook his head. “You have my guarantee that you’ll get it when I’ve found the murderer, provided it is yours to own.”

  Diane snorted. “Some help you are.” She rose to leave.

  “One final question,” Felix called. “Purely out of interest, did you go to college, Ms. Bellinger?”

  “Yes,” she said, turning at the door.

  “What was your major?”

  “Sociology,” she shot back. And then she was gone.

  This seemed to amuse Felix, though Alders did not ask why, as Felix had just pulled the necklace out of his pocket and started to dust it for fingerprints.

  “You have her fingerprints too then,” Alders said.

  “Yes, provided I’ve not overly smudged them.”

  Felix worked on the necklace until he nodded, apparently satisfied.

  “Let’s go take a quick second look at the late Aunt Agatha’s bedroom,” Felix said. “This idea of the burglary intrigues me.”

  They walked up the stairs and reentered the bedroom, which they found much as they had left it.

  “There’s only one door,” Alders observed. “Maybe if Stephanie had fallen asleep you could have tiptoed past her. It seems unlikely, though. Depends on how heavily she sleeps. Hold on a minute.” Something had clicked in his mind. “Didn’t Chester say that parabarbital is a sleeping drug?”

  “Good thinking, Sam,” Felix said. He drifted over to one corner of the room, casting his eyes around.

  “Something’s bothering me, Felix,” Alders continued. “Why didn’t the old woman want to go to the hospital?”

  “Old women sometimes do not want to go to the hospital,” Felix said sagely. “But above and beyond that, I think I have a good idea of the kind of person this Agatha was. I think she was clever and stubborn, and judging from her will, she was more concerned with discovering the identity of the murderer than with her own survival. She was a person who valued the idea of her family, if not the people in it, and I think she wanted to denounce the murderer in it, either in life or in death. That is why she hired me, to carry on for her if she didn’t make it in time.”

  “You think?” Alders said, dubiously.

  “I do. I also think this must be the lamp Diane said had been knocked over. It’s a bit askew.” Felix meandered over to it, then bent down and picked up something small and gleaming, on the end of a golden chain.

  “It’s a locket,” Felix announced, showing it to Alders. He fiddled with the clasp and the locket swung open to reveal a thumb-sized black and white photo of a baby, chubby and smiling.

  “Who’s that?” Alders asked.

  “There is no way to tell,” Felix said. He pocketed the locket and resumed his search.

  “Do you think that was what the thief was looking for?”

  “Doubtful. Why would the thief have left it there?”

  “Well, maybe whatever it is is still here. Maybe the thief knocked over the lamp and bolted without finding it.”

  “Hm...”

  They resumed their search around the room, opening drawers and checking in cabinets, until Alders let out an exclamation.

  “What do we have here?” he said.

  Wedged between the headboard of the bed and the wall, he drew out a small, white wooden box. He opened it. Inside was a sort of a large white ceramic bowl and a thick stick with a rounded end, made of the same hard ceramic.

  “What is this?” he muttered, taking out the bowl and examining it.

  “It’s a mortar and pestle,” Felix said. He ran his finger along the inside of the bowl and faint white powder showed on his finger. “Chester said I wasn’t a betting man, but I’m willing to bet, quite heavily, that this powder is parabarbital. The killer used this mortar and pestle to grind up pills for use in poisoning. Agatha found it before she died and hid it here, behind her headboard. The killer searched the room for the mortar and pestle, but could not find it, leaving in defeat.”

  There was a silence.

  “So the killer drugged Stephanie with parabarbital, walked into the room, and searched the room for this mortar and pestle?”

  “Maybe. But I think there is another possibility that we must consider.”

  Felix walked over to the large twin French windows and threw them open.

  “You think someone climbed the wall?” Alders asked, staring down the sheer side of the building. “What, free-climbed it? That’s crazy.”

  “There are enough handholds.”

  “It’s a long climb. I suppose you could do it with a tall ladder, but you can’t put a ladder down there because of the bushes. You’d have to be a good climber, particularly going down.”

  Felix looked at him meaningfully.

  “A good climber, Sam, or an uncommonly experienced mountaineer.”

  Chapter 8

  Jasper walked into the living room to find Alders and Felix waiting for him.

  “You wanted to see me?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Alders nodded. “Have a seat, Mr. Bellinger.”

  “Call me Jasper. Hank is Mr. Bellinger. I’m just Jasper.”

  “Alright, Jasper. I understand you recently climbed Mount Everest.”

  “Yeah, I just got back from Nepal this month.” He looked from Alders to Felix. “Hold on, this isn’t about what I said at Auntie’s birthday party, is it? Because, I mean, I know I said I was disappointed that she didn’t think much of my having climbed Mount Everest, but I think I’m entitled to that disappointment. It is the highest mountain in the world. And I didn’t kill her over it.”

  “We’re talking to everyone, Jasper. We haven’t singled you out personally, but since we’re on the subject of Mount Everest, would you say you’re a good climber?”

  “Yeah, I’m a very good climber. You’ve got to be. People died on that mountain. It’s a real test of endurance to try to even get to base camp, really, depending on how you get there.”

  “So what would you say you do?”

  “Professionally, you mean? I’m a mountain climber. I’ve climbed mountains at a lot of different places and continents, not just Everest. Kilimanjaro was an incredible experience. Auntie just wasn’t all that thrilled about my mountain climbing, though. She said something at dinner that night, after we talk
ed about Everest. It was ‘do you think that impresses me?’ or something like that. I mean, I would have hoped it impressed her, since I’ve climbed all of the Seven Summits, except for Vinson. At least she didn’t try to stop me climbing Everest. When I went to Aconcagua, she completely lost it. She forbade me to go - I went anyway. It wasn’t nearly as dangerous as Everest. It’s a mile shorter. Someone died on our Everest climb. Not on Aconcagua.”

  “Aconcagua is in Chile, isn’t it?” Felix asked.

  “Yes. Andean mountains.”

  “Hm...”

  When it became clear Felix was not going to ask anything else, Alders jumped in.

  “Could you take us back through the night of the birthday party, Jasper? What happened?”

  “Well, I arrived first and I sat at my usual place. Hank arrived not that much later, a few minutes later, maybe. I remember seeing his car pull up. Stephanie and Aunt Agatha came downstairs and Aunt Agatha was in about as good a mood as she always was. I was going to tell her about my Everest climb and she cut me off.” He frowned. “I’m sorry to keep talking about it, but climbing Everest, standing there on the top of the entire world, really was the proudest moment of my life. I just can’t understand why she didn’t seem to think much of it. We ate some soup, then Diane and Gloria came in, then we started talking about my climb again, then Agatha sort of went berserk and trotted upstairs. Chester came in later.”

  Jasper reached over and poured himself a glass of brandy, just as Chester had done.

  “The thing I can’t get over is that it was a drug that killed her, wasn’t it? Something in her medicine cabinet?”