"Now you'll find to your surprise all the corpses you left behind…" Digging up dead bodies - fun.
Chapter One: Ten Little Indians, Going Out to Dine
Sylvester was the first to break the silence. "We might as well do as Owen says. Who would like to go first?" He looked from one face to the next. His gaze stopped on the little brunette. Surely her sin would be the least, he thought, since she is a girl and so young. "How about you?" he asked kindly.
A faint smile flitted over her face. "No…you don't want to hear what I've done, not yet."
Silence fell over the parlor like a blanket of fog, pervasive and somehow invasive. At last Miss Blake, the redhead, said flatly, "Turn the record over. No one is going to admit to doing anything."
Jones snorted. "I must be here by mistake. I never killed anyone."
Pickett was fidgeting, Sylvester noticed. "Pickett, the young lady is right. Why don't you turn the record over and we'll hear the alleged crimes from our host."
Pickett started. "Y-yes, sir, if you wish."
Within moments the untraceable voice was speaking again. "You couldn't do it, could you? You couldn't – or wouldn't? – confess to your crimes. Allow me to assist you in this, then; alphabetically by first name. I do so love being on a first name basis.
"Bradley Sylvester, charged with the murder of Andrew Blarkett, the neighbor who had the hots for your wife Angela. You laced his heater with chlorine tablets and then called the police when he didn't answer his phone.
"Daphne Blake, charged with the murder of Richie Townsend, the boy who got drunk on a date and pushed too far. In turn, you pushed him out the driver's side of the car door and watched as he was brutally mangled by automobiles. You then drove his car home and called the police to report him for harassment.
"Dorothy and Thomas Pickett, charged with the murder of Colonel William York, your former employer who never paid you the right amount or on time. Dorothy prepared his medicine and Thomas made sure you had the right amount to just stop his heart without it looking too purposeful.
"Fred Jones, charged with the murder of Robbie and Elaine Philips, the siblings who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Your car hit them as you were driving one hundred fifty km/hr in a one hundred zone. You were upset over the inconvenience of the bent front fender caused and drove on in total oblivion – or was it unfeeling rather than ignorance, Freddy boy?
"Jennifer Morley, charged with the murder of Evangeline Carruthers, the immoral young girl you met while serving as secretary at Lady Christine's School for Young Women. You were aghast at her actions and slipped some thallium into her toothpaste, convinced you were carrying out the will of God.
"Marianne Bower, charged with the murder of Evan Snyder, the gold-digging boyfriend who dumped you for someone richer while on a walk through the woods. Struck by inspiration, you 'tripped' near the ravine and shoved him over the side, feigning an attempt to save him. The last human sound he ever heard was your voice calling his name.
"Norville Rogers, charged with the murder of Lexie Arnolds, the businesswoman who was unlucky enough to be the only thing standing between your band of environmentalist enthusiasts and keeping that small town's forest whole. You rigged her car's engine to stall at a stoplight, where an oncoming semi crushed the opponent and her car flat.
"Scoobert Doo, charged with the murder of Timothy Brown, the self-centered ten-year-old who never wanted you to help others. His parents were gone on a day trip and you were trustworthy enough to leave with the boy. He wanted to go swimming. All you did was push him in. Never mind that it was the middle of December. Needless to say, he froze to death. The Browns never thought it more than an accident, and certainly never blamed you.
"Velma Dinkley, charged with the murder of Paul and Martha Dinkley, the parents you were never good enough for. After your older brother's death they only worsened; after all, they had never wanted a girl. When you couldn't take it anymore, you disabled the carbon monoxide detector, convincingly broke the heating pipes and left for your grandparents' for the weekend like a good girl. They were dead before you ever arrived.
"So tell me, how does it feel to have your darkest secrets laid bare before others of your kind? Horrid, I'd wager. Enjoy your weekend, criminals. That is, if your conscience doesn't kill you first."
oOo
Dorothy Pickett covered her mouth with her hand. No, not the Colonel, not after all these years! She was nearly able to think of him with no guilt or shame, but it would be a long time before she was that close again. She took a deep breath and put on a smile. Dorothy was good at that. Walking into the sitting room where uncomfortable silence reigned, she called, "Supper is ready!"
The convicted party broke into nervous laughter and chatter as they swarmed their way into the dining room. Dorothy had set the table just as she had been instructed. Eight places were set around the long oak table, each with a glass and silverware. A deep crimson tablecloth, small sprigs of leaves down the center of the table, and a quaint little centerpiece of ten ceramic Indians shielding their eyes as they stood in a circle adorned the elegant table. The group sat down, nonchalantly conversing as if they had not all been just charged with murder. Dorothy suspected that, like her, they would rather not think about it. No sense in dwelling on the past.
Thomas helped her carry out the meal: roast turkey with her special recipe for potatoes and greens. Those gathered ate appreciatively, and their muffled dinner talk could be vaguely heard through the door to the kitchen where Thomas and Dorothy sat dining. "What do you think Owen means to accomplish by assembling a houseful of murderers?" she queried her husband, taking a sip of the claret. "Is he trying to play some sort of game, do you think?"
He shook his head. "I believe Owen wants to see if the psychological admission of guilt will break any of us. I wonder, who do you think his money is on for the first to break? I doubt Jones or Sylvester. Too full of themselves."
"Rogers, perhaps? He seems a nervous fellow. Or one of the young women? Miss Bower seemed unable to speak after her accusal."
"Rogers, maybe. The Blake girl or the nurse, but not the brunette or Miss Morley for certain."
"Why ever not?" Dorothy was surprised. She had thought Miss Morley to be among the first to succumb, taking into account her age. Her stern features might disguise her true age, Dorothy supposed.
"Much too coldblooded. Miss Morley poisoned a young girl with thallium, which takes a long while to do the job. As she worked in the same place that the girl would have been going to school, she would have watched the poison slowly kill her victim."
She shivered and took another bite of turkey. "Oh, Thomas, that's dreadful! But," she sighed, "I suppose not any worse than our killing the Colonel."
"Dorothy, we had to. He was a stingy, miserable old coot," he said gently.
She shut her eyes and shook her head. "But he was kind to us, and never took what we did for granted."
"York was tight-fisted and also never gave either of us a shred of respect. Treated us like dogs, he did. Meet the needs, a pat on the head, toss a bone every so often, but never any respect, Dorothy! We did what we had to do."
She averted her eyes and sipped her claret again. Yes, they did what they had to do. Didn't they always?
oOo
Jennifer dabbed the corners of her mouth with her cloth napkin, surveying the others at the table. Who would have guessed that these seemingly respectable people were all murderers? Hmph. Of course the butler was guilty, it was always the butler, without fail. Always! But the General, the nurse, the two young women, the dog for goodness' sake…well. They were getting what they deserved by having their guilt exposed. God's will was being done by plaguing their hearts and minds.
That Evangeline girl…now, she had been committing fornication, Jennifer knew. As if that weren't bad enough in itself, she prided herself on her sins! Imagine, being proud of such a horrific thumbing of one's nose at the dear Lord! That was why Jennifer had taken her life. All people must die; some simply had to go sooner than others.
Jones leaned over to whisper something to the redheaded girl – Daphne. She blushed and pushed him away. Jennifer's disapproving gaze roamed to Marianne and General Sylvester, talking about the chance of rain for the weekend. Rogers and the dog – Scrooby, like the Plymouth congregation? No…ah, Scooby – were deep in conversation over the meal. At last Jennifer's sharp hazel eyes landed on the only other silent member of the party. Velma met her scrutiny with her own indifferent brown stare. Jennifer raised an eyebrow and said coolly, "Tell me about your parents."
This broke the stare. She dropped her eyes to the table. "They didn't want a daughter. Owen made that plain enough to the rest of you. I think they would have gotten rid of me if it wouldn't have caused such a bloody mess. Literally bloody, I mean. All they ever did was compare me to Trent. He was my hero, but after he died in the accident and couldn't protect me anymore they found ways to daily blame his death on me. Nothing I did was ever good enough for them. I come home with the highest grade in the honors class, they pick out the one mistake in the whole paper and exaggerate it beyond all reasonability. I bring home my report card with a 4.0 GPA, they tell me Trent was smarter than I'll ever be. Gran and Gramps weren't so bad. They didn't come to graduation though. I was the only one left standing on the stage when the parents walked their kids away. The principal had to come up for me." She paused to take a deep breath. "Mom and Dad both had a…tendency for alcohol. When they were drunk I had to hid the kitchen knives so they wouldn't kill each other or me." A trace of a smile lingered on her face. Jennifer found herself coming to the decision that the girl had had a moment of sensitivity to God's will in killing her parents who were so only in name. "I used to be afraid to go to sleep at night."
"I certainly would think so!" Jennifer said indignantly.
"Not for fear of them," she corrected, shaking her head. "Because I knew I would wake up…older. And that meant more knowledge of who Paul and Martha really were, not the perfect parents they pretended to be in front of the rest of the world. That's why I killed them."
Jennifer nodded. "Understandable. They had no business being parents in the first place it would appear." She stood and picked up her empty plate. "I should like to excuse myself now."
"I'm finished too." Velma carried her own plate to the kitchen door and backed it open, holding it for Jennifer. Hm. Polite as well as straightforward.
The Picketts looked up from their small table. "Oh, dear! Is everyone finished? I'm so sorry," Dorothy Pickett cried, bustling about to take the dishes, and she went into the dining room without waiting for a reply. She had looked guilty when Jennifer met her eyes; surely she was feeling remorse. My, Owen was good at getting to people.
oOo
Rogers wandered into the sitting room with the rest of the group. He sat on the couch to observe the others. Velma was reading a poem that was over the mantle, arms crossed. Miss Morley was in a grey armchair, knitting away again, and Sylvester was nodding off on the other couch. Miss Bower was poking at the fire, Jones was leaning against the wall with his claret in one hand, Miss Blake was talking with him, and Scooby was curled up on the ground. No one else seemed as bothered by the record's accusations as he. He fidgeted, watching the fire dance. Lexie Arnolds had said plainly that she would rather have a mall in Mandon than a forest no one would visit, but that part wasn't true. Rogers knew for a fact some of the high-schoolers went there after school frequently; for what reasons he wasn't sure, having never been invited, but he had been adamant about keeping the woods undisturbed. Now, that semi that had crashed into her car –
A choked gurgle from behind Miss Morley's chair drew everyone's attention. Jones was turning blue in the face; his glass of claret dropped and shattered as he swayed and toppled. Miss Blake let out a shriek. "He's dead! He's choked, he's dead, he's dead!" Rogers thought it was odd she should be so squeamish about a virtual stranger swallowing his claret down his trachea or something when she had watched her boyfriend be battered to death on a road.
Miss Bower leapt to her feet and dashed over to kneel beside the blonde man in question. Pressing two fingers to his neck, she waited a moment. "He's quite dead," she determined at last. "Presumably choked on a swallow of too much claret." Miss Blake covered her face with her hands.
"Oh, awful, awful, and I was talking to him too," she moaned.
It seemed Velma was thinking the same thing Rogers was, because she whispered thoughtfully, "She doesn't seem like much of a coldblooded murderer who escaped the law now, does she? Though, I suppose the rest of us just standing here blankly may as well convict us of our crimes."
"Like, that's along the lines of what was going through my head," he responded. She really did seem like such a nice girl, he thought. Then with a jolt he realized the idle thought was directed towards Velma rather than the distraught redhead the others were awkwardly attempting to console. This just kept getting odder.
"I wonder," the brunette beside him mused, looking lost in thought. "Choking…no, no, it isn't possible."
"What isn't possible?"
She looked up in surprise. "Oh, Shaggy, I was just thinking of the rhyme over the fireplace mantle. Childish, I know, but so morbid. Along with other nursery rhymes, it does lead one to understand why society is so twisted nowadays, and why humans are so – so dreary all the time, obsessing over what could ever go wrong and whatnot."
He did often wonder that himself. And oh, that nickname… "Yes, it's clear when you look at it that way, I guess." He turned his attention back to the others. "Did Mrs. Pickett just faint?" The grey-haired woman was lying on the ground and looking pale.
"No, I believe she's taking an impromptu nap," Velma said dryly. "Miss Bower offered to give Pickett some medicine. She's up in her room retrieving it. If you'll excuse me a moment?"
Rogers smiled and took a step back. He liked her sense of humor, he thought to himself. She squeezed her way over to the body, but – what was she doing? She knelt beside the broken glass and began sweeping it up with Mrs. Pickett's dustpan and small whiskbroom. Miss Morley sniffed. "You ought to leave that to Pickett, Miss Dinkley."
She looked up with a slight, almost knowing smile. "I think he works hard enough as it is. The least I can do is clean up when his wife isn't able to."
oOo
Marianne returned to the sitting room with the bottle of Trional for Mrs. Pickett. Poor old woman. She must be seventy-five at least, and the shock would do nothing for any heart conditions. Normally Marianne wouldn't give a sedative to a patient who had passed out, but one so old and suffering from shock required something to calm the heart. "Here," she said, unscrewing the lead and measuring out the proper amount, "this should help." She handed the bottle to Pickett after administering the medication to the unconscious woman. "Can we take her back to your room, or are you not able to move her?"
Pickett jumped and nodded vigorously. "Oh, yes, of course, of course." He tenderly lifted his wife into his arms. Marianne followed him through the dining room and the kitchen to the servants' quarters, where she showed the manservant how much to give Mrs. Pickett if she needed any more. He met her eyes. "Thank you," he said in a trembling voice, "thank you. Dorothy isn't…she never…it was my fault, the Colonel. I suggested it, not her."
Marianne didn't know how to respond to such an open confession. "I…I see," she finally settled on, plastering a smile over her face.
He seemed to regain his composure and realize whom he was talking to. "I'm sorry, Miss Bower. Is there anything I can do for you?"
She shook her head. "Nothing for me. Good afternoon, Pickett."
"To you as well." Pickett returned to his prone wife and the blonde nurse left for the sitting room.
With the rest of the group now, she slipped into a chair and pretended to be attentive to Bradley's predictable, war-centered monologue. Although, no one else seemed to be listening to the long-winded account. Miss Morley was knitting and talking to Miss Dinkley with something less of a frown. Across the room Rogers was chatting with Miss Blake. Marianne did notice, however, that he kept glancing over at where Miss Morley sat in a grey armchair and Miss Dinkley absent-mindedly rocked in the old rocking chair. At Marianne's feet Scooby lay, asleep. So it would be pointless to encourage Bradley, she concluded, stretching and dropping the pretense. "Bradley," she said, "nobody is listening to your stories. I think we're all ready to unpack."
"I, for one, second that," Miss Blake smiled, standing. All trace of tears was gone now, Marianne noted. Then again, they all had to be good at acting to get away with murder.
No, don't think about Evan. He was nothing, he was…he was everything, everything, everything to her. When he'd told her about Julia, she had been devastated. She had lunged forward, screaming – no. She forced herself back to the present and found herself on the landing between flights of stairs, alone. Shaking her head to clear it, she started to climb to the second floor and her room. Enough was enough.
Still… In her room she sat on the bed, staring at the portrait on the wall. It couldn't be! "Not here," Marianne whispered. "You haunt me enough, don't you?" She closed her eyes and let the memory consume her. Maybe this would make it stop at last.
Evan broke the kiss, eyes sparkling. "Marianne," he laughed. Then a touch of regret sprouted in his expression. "Marianne, I need to tell you something."
"Anything!" She had never been happier. The view was spectacular up on top of the wooded cliff.
"You remember Julia, right?" he began, brushing her cheek with his fingertips.
Yes, she remembered Julia Harper. "Of course, why?"
"She and I are – " Marianne's stricken look stopped him. "No, baby, it's just…I think it's time to move on."
To move on. What a horrible phrase, she thought dully. He stood and turned to face the cliff, clasping his hands behind his back. "So you're breaking up with me," she clarified flatly.
"Yes. I'm sorry, sweetheart," he said, not turning from the cliff.
Hot tears filled her eyes and devastated rage tightened her fists. He wasn't sorry; this wouldn't be happening if he was sorry. Almost before she knew what she was doing, she flew forward and pushed him. A surprised yell burst from his mouth as he tumbled through the air. Marianne dropped to her knees, his name torn from her lips. "Evan!" He disappeared, and slowly a smile spread over her face.
It felt good.
It felt good, she thought vaguely. Interesting.
Marianne opened her eyes. She didn't want to remember any more than that. The next part, when the search parties went down to find his spattered remains, was the worst of the memory, of what she had done. So she pushed away Evan's gentle green eyes, his strong arms and his sweet smile, and she began to unpack. Might as well, the pretty thirty-two-year-old told herself. No sense in lingering in the past.
There never would be, she thought, and she ripped down the portrait that looked like Evan with no remorse.