Loreen dropped the basket. “What’d they say.”
“Well, I didn’t hear it all, but it had something to do with the bruises they found.”
“They ought to just leave well enough alone.”
“I think they said something about digging him up.”
Loreen was teetering with rage. Pearl said the stench of alcohol was so thick she almost felt drunk herself.
“Get out of my house...” Loreen screamed.
By this time I was halfway through the transom window, and the important part of our plan was about to come into play. I slammed the transom window closed, just the way Teg used to do when he was angry.
Pearl said Loreen froze like a coon in a flashlight.
“Somebody’s in here.”
“I didn’t hear anything,” Pearl said.
“Goddamn it, somebody’s in the basement.” Loreen went to the door that led down into Teg’s bedroom. “Who’s there?”
I had crawled into Teg’s bed, pulled the covers over my head. “Me, Momma. Why’d you let Lehigh kill me?” I whispered loud enough for her to hear.
“Lehigh didn’t kill you! I didn’t mean to hit you so hard...” Loreen screamed. And then she realized that Pearl was standing behind her, that she was, to all intents and purposes, talking to a ghost.
Loreen collapsed.
I swear on Pearl’s grave that she reached out for Loreen, tried to catch her, tried to break the fall down the stairs, but she wasn’t quick enough. Loreen flipped head-over-heels until she landed on the hard cement floor with a bone-cracking thud.
The fall didn’t kill Loreen Bowman. But she was paralyzed from the neck down. Pearl lied to Dad, and to everybody, about how it happened. She never told a soul that I was in that house and we caused Loreen to fall. We never told anybody about what she said, either, that she admitted to killing Teg. Maybe it was an accident. Maybe it wasn’t. Nobody’ll ever know, because Loreen wasn’t able to talk, either. She lived four more years, all of it in that house, in the bedroom above the basement where Teg Saidlow dreamed of slaying dragons instead of windmills.
I’ve lived with the guilt all my life, knowing we hurt Loreen Bowman like we did. But I hope there’s some redemption in our finding out the truth, and finally telling it.
Teg Saidlow was my best friend.
I hope I get to see him when I fall asleep for the last time.
© 2008 by Larry D. Sweazy
Death of the Party
by Cornelia Snider Yarrington
Another faculty party. The usual suspects were there:
disgruntled profs from assistant to full and the clown hired as their Chair.
He’d arrived from a distant department lit by his references’ glow,
science talents touted in phrases so grand, you’d wonder why he was let go.
Unmentioned, his talent for staying lit from his very own lab beaker glass,
or the figure he cut as he staggered the halls and stumbled into his class.
Left out was his knack for mixing up files, or settling salaries on whim,
or assigning space on a hangover scale measurable only by him.
Omitted from any reference were the female assistants he lost
through a fetish for buttocks in lab coats — or the lawsuits’ ultimate cost.
Sometime in the faculty party, radioactive Polonium 210
spiked the ubiquitous beaker of booze with an ultimate Mickey Finn.
Slip or slight malice of forethought? The DA scratched his head,
wondering why the party went on with the guest of honor dead.
Copyright © 2008 Cornelia Snider Yarrington
Papercuts
by Lisa Atkinson
Copyright © 2008 Lisa Atkinson
Murder of a Distressed Gentleman
by Amy Myers
Amy Myers’s best-known sleuth, Auguste Didier, is back this issue on a case that pairs him with the lugubrious Inspector Rose. Ms. Myers’s two most recent novels — Murder and the Golden Goblet (Severn House, July 2007) and Tom Wasp and the Murdered Stunner (Five Star, October 2007) are both entries in other series (the former Marsh and Daughter, the latter Tom Wasp). We hope to see another Didier novel soon.
“My dear sir, I am to be murdered myself. I am sure of it.”
The distressed gentleman raised piteous eyes to his increasingly reluctant host. Auguste Didier, torn between this unlikely pronouncement and fear that the glories of the sole au Chablis he had just set before the gentleman might be ignored, decided to humour him.
“Could it not be,” he replied gently, “that the exigencies of your profession have led you to be unduly nervous?”
The role of distressed gentleman was hardly a profession, in Auguste’s view, merely a form of begging, but he had an affection for this old rogue. The distressed gentleman, clad in shabby top hat and frock coat, periodically took up his pitch in London’s Strand outside Romanos, the restaurant known for its popularity with famous diners from the stage and high society. This evening, however, he had inexplicably moved across the road to stand outside the Galaxy Theatre, where Auguste was chef to its restaurant.
This winter of 1894, however, was a cold one, and pity for some-one down on his luck had prompted Auguste to ask him inside to eat after the last of the late-night revellers had left. He felt he knew the distressed gentleman in a way. After all, Auguste had seen him at varying times and locations as a distressed soldier, veteran of Rorke’s Drift; as a distressed clergyman, veteran of various vicissitudes; and as the distressed heir to a dukedom, veteran of vile villainies. In each case a small sum rapidly restored his fortunes.
As distressed gentleman in the Strand, however, he offered his public something in return: a continuous patter of anecdotes about this ancient London thoroughfare, chiefly centering on the innumerable murders that appeared to have taken place here over the centuries. Stranglings, swordfights, shootings — it seemed one would be fortunate to escape the countless would-be assassins who lurked unsuspected under its bright lights.
Auguste decided to say no more about the distressed gentleman’s no doubt overdramatic forecast of his own fate. Probably the wine — which Auguste could not help noticing was disappearing at a faster rate than the sole — had confused him.
The distressed gentleman, however, momentarily set down his glass and raised his mournful eyes to Auguste, as he replied with dignity, “My days on the Albion stage as an actor—” the last syllable boomed out over the empty restaurant “—have brought me into contact with many vile murders.”
That, Auguste could believe. The Albion theatre was not far from the Galaxy, and had been well known for its strong dramatic taste for many years.
“But none so vile,” the distressed gentleman continued briskly, “as the murders that have taken place here upon this, our noble highway. The Strand is stained with their blood. You have heard me speak of them, no doubt, Mr. Didier, in my professional capacity?”