Black Moonlight

by Amy Patricia Meade

  “You two won’t believe this,” Jackson greeted Marjorie and Nettles. “Although there were traces of Seconal and Benzedrine in her bloodstream, Prudence Ashcroft did not suffer an overdose.”

  “That’s good news,” Marjorie declared. “Yet somewhat puzzling …”

  “There’s more,” Jackson continued. “She refuses to speak with the police because doing so is too distressing. Ridiculous! Her doctor, whom I just spoke with, backs the decision. Doesn’t he realize that I have two corpses on my hands? The fool should have his medical license taken away.”

  Nettles rolled his eyes at Jackson’s indignation while Marjorie stared off into the distance, deep in thought. “We may not need to speak with Prudence,” she announced.

  “Not speak with Prudence?” Jackson repeated. “You’re just as mad as she is!”

  Marjorie ignored him. “Do you have the pill bottles we took from Prudence earlier?”

  “Yes. The constable brought them back here after he dropped Prudence at the hospital. Why?”

  “I’d like to see the Seconal bottle, please. I’ll give it back when I’m done.”

  Jackson looked at her, skeptically, and then retrieved the Seconal bottle from his desk drawer. “Here,” he thrust it at Marjorie.

  Marjorie scrutinized the details of the handwritten label provided by Goldberger’s Drug Store on First Avenue in New York City.

  Rx: Seconal Sodium Tablets

  For: Mrs. Prudence Ashcroft

  Date: August 8, 1935

  Directions: Take 1 tablet twice a day

  Qty: 100

  Doctor: H. Morgan

  Much to Jackson’s consternation, she proceeded to unscrew the cap and dump the contents onto his desk blotter.

  “What are you doing?” the Sergeant shouted.

  “Hold on a minute,” she exhorted as she placed the pills, two by two, back into the bottle. When she had finished, she paused a moment, smiled briefly, and spilled the pills back onto the blotter. “You do it this time,” she told Nettles.

  “Do what?” the Inspector asked.

  “Count,” Marjorie replied matter-of-factly.

  Nettles threw her a questioning glance, but leaned over the desk and, without a word, started counting. When he was through, he stood upright and announced, “Sixty-seven.”

  “That’s what I got,” Marjorie concurred.

  “I’m happy the two of you are in agreement,” Jackson said with a mocking smile. “But, in heaven’s name, what am I supposed to do with that information?”

  Marjorie rolled her eyes. Certainly a former Scotland Yard detective should have been able to figure it out on his own.

  She held the bottle, label side up, for Jackson the read. “According to the label this prescription was issued thirteen days ago on August 8. It also says there were initially one hundred pills in the bottle. Now, if Prudence followed the directions, there should be seventy-four pills in the bottle. Maybe seventy-three, if she took one this morning.”

  Jackson’s eyes narrowed and his lips began to move noiselessly.

  Marjorie glanced heavenward and issued a silent prayer for patience. “Two pills a day for thirteen days is twenty-six pills,” she explained. “Twenty-six from one hundred is seventy-four.”

  Jackson’s mouth formed an ‘O’ in recognition. “But there’s not seventy-four pills. You and Nettles counted only sixty-seven.”

  “That’s right. So where are the other six or seven pills?”

  “Prudence might have taken an extra one here and there and not have noticed it,” Jackson offered.

  “She might have,” Marjorie allowed, “but that’s a lot of forgetfulness in thirteen days time. That would mean that just about every other day, she took an extra pill.”

  “Well, what do you propose?” Nettles asked.

  “I think Prudence counted her pills this morning, just like we did. I think that counting her pills in order to determine if she had missed a dose was probably a common practice for her. It’s common practice for many people, but especially for someone as emotional as Prudence. This morning, in particular, was an especially rough one. Who can blame her if she can’t remember whether or not she took her pill? So she dumps the pills out, counts them and realizes that she’s missing more than she should be. She’s not missing one or two, she’s missing a few. Quite a few.” Marjorie folded her arms across her chest. “If you recall, when I asked her how many Seconal she had taken, she couldn’t answer.”

  Nettles smiled and pointed, “That’s right. The question completely unnerved her.”

  “Because she had no idea where those pills had gone,” she added.

  “I have to hand it to you, Mrs. Ashcroft,” Jackson praised. “That’s an interesting observation you have there. But it’s all conjecture. You have absolutely no—” He stopped and did a double take at Marjorie. “Wait, what are you doing here, anyway? I thought I told Nettles here to keep you on the island.”

  “Nettles did keep me there, for a time. And he’ll bring me back there too,” Marjorie stated defiantly. “But right now, I wish to see my husband. I assume you’re keeping him here.”

  Jackson laughed. “At last, a correct assumption.”

  “I’d like to see him, please,” Marjorie reiterated, this time in a much sterner tone than the first.

  “Certainly,” Jackson replied, his nose slightly out of joint. “This way.”

  He led Marjorie to a back room lined with barred cells. To the far right, she could see Creighton seated on a low cot, his elbows resting on his knees. At the sight of his wife, he leapt to his feet. “Marjorie!” he called.

  “Creighton!” She ran to his cell door and reached through the bars for his hand.

  “Ah, ah, ah,” Jackson scolded. “No manhandling the prisoner.”

  “Manhandling the prisoner?” Marjorie exclaimed. “I’m not manhandling. He’s my husband.”

  “No matter. Keep your hands outside the bars, please.”

  Marjorie pulled a face and then returned her attention to Creighton.

  “So,” Creighton whispered, “how are you faring with the Bermudian equivalent of Jameson and Noonan?”

  Marjorie’s eyes grew wide. “That’s who they remind me of!”

  “As a famous writer once said, ‘Are you joking? You only just noticed?’”

  “Well, I’ve been slightly busy trying to clear you of murder charges,” she said snarkily. “But now that you mention it, they’re carbon copies of each other.”

  “Like the negatives produced by a camera,” Creighton agreed.

  “Their physical appearances,” she listed.

  “Their mental acuity,” he added.

  “Even their initials!” she exclaimed.

  Creighton’s face went blank. “Huh?”

  “Patrick Noonan, Philip Nettles. Roger Jackson, Robert Jameson.”

  “Oh, that is strange.”

  Marjorie nodded. “So, I’ve been working with Nettles on the investigation.”

  “Naturally. He’s Jameson in this whole thing,” Creighton remarked.

  Marjorie gave Creighton a mock snarl. “There are lots of things that don’t quite add up.”

  “It’s a murder investigation. I expect there would be.”

  “Do you get a phone call?”

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “In the movies, when a person is arrested, they get one phone call. Do you get one?”

  Creighton shrugged. “Jackson asked me if I wanted to call my solicitor, so I imagine so.”

  “Good. But we’re not calling your solicitor,” she clarified.

  “I’m not? Then who am I—pardon—‘we’ calling?”

  “We’re calling Jameson,” Marjorie said flatly.

  “Why, are you lining up a replacement in case I get sent to the gallows?” he smirked.

  “What, and go on another honeymoon? No thanks. I’m calling Jameson to ask him to do some research for me—um, us.” She flashed a brilliant smile.<
br />
  “You’d better not be bringing him here. Legend has it that if a person meets their doppelganger, they die.”

  Marjorie pulled a face. “Of course, I’m not bringing him here. I need him to make some phone calls to some people in the States.”

  “Phone calls?” Creighton repeated with distaste. “Excuse me if I seem ungrateful, but couldn’t you make those calls from a payphone and save ‘our’ phone call for a solicitor?”

  “A solicitor will defend you when you go to court in a few months. A call to Jameson could help me to exonerate you completely.” She glanced at the grimy bearded man sleeping in the cell next to Creighton’s. “Not to mention immediately.”

  Creighton followed her gaze and sighed. “All right, call Jameson. But if he wants us to name our first born after him in return, all bets are off.”

  “More Perfection Salad, Detective?” Louise Schutt offered sweetly.

  “I’ll take some, dear,” requested the timid voice of Walter Schutt from the opposite end of the table.

  “I wasn’t asking you, Walter,” Louise replied sharply. “I was asking Detective Jameson.”

  Jameson dabbed at the corners of his mouth with his napkin. “That would be terrific, Mrs. Schutt. Thank you.”

  “Never any trouble,” Louise assured as she placed a wedge of gelatinized salad daintily on his plate.

  Walter, meanwhile, held his plate out in hopes of receiving the next serving.

  “And you, Sharon?” Louise asked her daughter who, despite the presence of a fifth guest, was conspicuously seated at the same side of the table as Jameson.

  “Oh, I shouldn’t, Mama,” she refused, “I have to watch my girlish figure.”

  Jameson glanced at Sharon. He was willing to bet that, in her twenty years of life, the only thing she had watched her figure do was to expand.

  “Don’t be silly, Sharon,” Louise goaded. “Men like a woman with a bit of meat on them. Don’t they, Detective?”

  “Oh, um,” Jameson answered, completely disinterested in anything but the roast chicken on his plate. “Yeah, of course they do.”

  Sharon emitted a high-pitched titter punctuated by a loud snort of delight.

  Louise, in the meantime, portioned some Perfection Salad onto Sharon’s plate and then absently put the serving platter back onto the table.

  “Ehem,” Walter cleared his throat and pushed his plate out farther.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, dear,” Louise stated. She picked up the platter and, with a flick of her wrist, flung a piece of salad onto his plate with an unappetizing “plop.”

  Walter gave a hurt glance in his wife’s direction before conceding with a shrug. “So,” he started as he put the dish down in front of him, “I hear there’s a suspicious character on the loose.”

  “Hmm? Yes, one of my men, Officer Noonan—perhaps you remember him?—saw someone lurking around the green the other day.” Jameson put a piece of boiled potato into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed it. “I wouldn’t worry, though. Noonan’s one of my best men. He probably has it all wrapped up by now.”

  “Mrs. Wilson said Officer Noonan slept on Emily Patterson’s porch last night. That doesn’t sound ‘wrapped up’ to me,” Walter Schutt spoke out.

  “What does this person look like?” Mrs. Schutt asked.

  “Six foot tall, graying hair, green eyes, and a ruthless jaw,” Schutt described.

  “Six foot tall? Ruthless jaw?” Jameson repeated incredulously. “Where did you hear that?”

  Louise Schutt gasped. “Sounds dangerous. Maybe we should put an extra lock on the shop door.”

  “I’m sure your shop is fine,” Jameson reassured.

  The Schutt family, however, would have nothing of it.

  “I’ll take care of the shop door first thing in the morning,” Walter stated.

  “I’ll make sure all the doors are locked after Detective Jameson leaves tonight, Mama,” Sharon proposed.

  “Good idea, sweetheart,” Louise praised her daughter. “And until this fellow is caught, I don’t think it’s safe for you to go out alone. What do you think, Walter?”

  “Definitely not,” Schutt agreed as he snuck more chicken and potatoes onto his plate.

  “Your father’s right, Sharon.” Louise warned, “You never know what’s on young men’s mind these days!”

  “Young? The suspect has gray hair,” Jameson pointed out.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Detective Jameson,” Louise apologized, oblivious to anything but her own family’s fear. “I wasn’t including you in my statement. I was talking about other young men who weren’t brought up as well as you were.”

  “I didn’t think you were including me,” Jameson stated.

  “What’s that?” Louise feigned deafness. “You think you should escort Sharon on errands until this fiend is captured?”

  “No,” Jameson shook his head vehemently. “I didn’t say that.”

  “I think that’s a splendid idea!” Louise proclaimed. “What do you think, Walter? Should we let this young man take care of our Sharon?”

  Walter shrugged and stole a second piece of bread from the basket.

  “I agree,” Louise affirmed. “And what do you think, Sharon? Would you feel safe walking about with Detective Jameson?”

  Sharon looked up from her plate, a piece of potato adhered to her pig-like nose. “Oh, I’d feel safe, Mama. I’d feel very safe,” she assured and then smiled broadly at Jameson.

  As the Detective stared in horror at the piece of shredded cabbage wedged between Sharon’s two front teeth, Noonan’s words of warning came flooding back into his memory. His heart skipped a beat as he realized that he was, indeed, the “Express Train to Marriagetown.”

  Just then the telephone rang.

  Louise Schutt lifted her Hooverette-clad posterior from her chair and moved deliberately to the phone, which rested upon a small living room end table. With an overly sweet telephone voice, she lifted the receiver and said, questioningly, “Hello? Yes, he’s here … oh, my, how exciting! … yes, just a minute.”

  With a girlish spring in her step, Louise hurried back to the dining room. “Detective Jameson,” she addressed, “it’s for you. Long distance from Bermuda. The operator said it’s urgent. It must be a case. How exciting!”

  Jameson took the napkin from his lap and sprinted to the living room, happy for the opportunity to end all talk of six-foot-tall marauders, door locks, modern men’s morals, and, most of all, marriage.

  He lifted the heavy black receiver to his ear. “Hello? … Yes, this is Detective Robert Jameson. Yes, I’ll accept the call.”

  The voice that came on at the other end of the line was soft and familiar. “Hello? Robert?”

  “Marjorie?” he said in disbelief. “I thought you were on your honeymoon.”

  “I am. I was. Look, I need your help. Creighton’s in jail under suspicion of murder.”

  “Someone died on your honeymoon? Do people drop dead everywhere you go?” he asked, in jest. Still, part of him did wonder about Marjorie’s ability to act as a murder magnet.

  “I already heard that joke once today,” she quipped. “It was stale then, too.”

  “Sorry,” he apologized with a chuckle. “So Creighton’s in jail. How is he? And how are you? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. Just looking forward to the day when he and I can get back home.”

  “Mmm. How’s the investigation going?”

  “Why it’s—” She paused. “How do you know I’m involved in the investigation?”

  “Intuition,” Jameson grinned.

  The sarcasm of his comment completely eluded her. “Really? Good for you! I always said you didn’t listen enough to your gut instincts.”

  “Uh huh. So, what can I do from one thousand miles away, to help you?”

  “I need you to do some research for me,” Marjorie stated. “Do you have a pencil and paper handy?”

  Jameson opened the end table drawer to find a small notepad and a r
ed grease pencil. He sat on the sofa and, with legs crossed, balanced the pad on one knee. “Yep. I’m ready.”

  Marjorie listed the items requiring investigation, and then asked Jameson to read them back to her.

  “That’s right,” she confirmed when he had finished.

  “When do you need this information?” he asked.

  “As soon as possible,” she stated. “And as soon as you learn something—anything—call here at the station. I’ll take care of the charges when I get home.”

  “You have the number for me?” As Marjorie recited the number, Jameson marked it, in grease pencil, on the small yellow pad. “Okay. I think that does it. I’ll get on this right away.” Jameson glanced into the dining room, where the Schutts, like vultures, were eagerly awaited his return. “In fact,” he said in a voice loud enough for the Schutts to hear, “I’ll head down to the station and get on that right now.”

  “Now?” said the voice on the other end of the phone. “Who are you going to contact now? It’s nearly six o’clock there, isn’t it? We’re only an hour ahead of you. I’m quite certain we are.”

  “Yes, you’re right,” Jameson agreed loudly. “But important police work like this can’t wait.”

  “Oh, well, thank you, Robert,” she said appreciatively. “I can’t tell you how much it means to know you’re willing to help us out like this. Next time you’re in a pickle, be certain to call the Ashcrofts, because we’ll owe you one.”

  Jameson turned around and watched as Sharon picked up her plate and began slurping the Perfection Salad. “No, that’s not necessary,” he assured Marjorie as he anticipated his escape. “I think we’re square.”