A Feud Forgiven

Perkins Manor

Ballroom

9:45pm

Chart looked back at his notebook with ever-fatiguing interest. The names Perkins, Plum, Black, Peach, Boddy, Grey, Mustard had been crossed through with thin black lines but the remainding names, Rose, Scarlet, White, Green, Brunette and Peacock still lingered; glittering almost under the bright ballroom chandelier.

Pry edged very close to him, his nostils making beast-like noises as he breathed. "Still so many left," he said quietly, barely letting the words escape his thirsty lips. He clearly just wanted to go home. Chart didn't look as eager anymore, either. Still, they pressed on.

Madame Rose was called in next and she arrived with a certain liveliness that quite upturned Pry and Chart's negative atmopshere. She closed the door carefully so it wouldn't bang and waltzed over to her seat. She adjusted her scarf as Pry began, "Good evening, Madame Rose. We need to ask you what happened at the seance earlier this evening? Everything and anything. Any details at all that you think are relevant."

She prodded her chin with a sharp-nailed finger as she recalled. "It was useless. Nothing happened at all!"

"What do you mean exactly?"

"Well, all us ladies went to the library - except for Mustard's beau - Peach, I believe? Anyway, all us girls did just that. We attempted to contact Mrs. Peacock's husband who has been deceased for years now."

"And did you?"

"No. All the energy was wrong in the room. I couldn't concentrate. The conditions were too difficult to work with."

"We understand the lights were out?"

"Yes they were. The seance wasn't working so I blew out all the surrounding candles as a last resort."

"When did you do this?" It was the Constable this time who asked.

"Shortly after Green and the good Colonel came in."

"Could you see anyone in the room once the lights were out?"

"No. Usually when the lights are out you can't see anything but pitch black, Inspector."

"Weren't the curtains open, I mean? It was a full moon out I thought that might have provided some light?"

"No. The curtains were closed."

Inspector Pry sighed, heaved himself up and began pacing back and forth along the wooden floor and large carpet placed just underneath the grand piano.

"Aside from Miss Scarlet, did you see or hear or think you saw or heard anyone at all leave the library?"

"No," she replied, simply.

"Did you know Mr. Perkins well at all or...?" Pry advanced.

"Not really. I was merely there for my brother-in-law."

"Doctor Black, so I've heard."

"The one and only."

"How was his and Mr. Perkins relationship lately? Any fall-outs, concerns?"

"No. The two were good friends, always."

If Pry heard her answer anything else immediately with the word "No" he'd scream. He dismissed her shortly afterwards.

He sunk back into his seat with disappointment. He couldn't get his head around the fact that a man was murdered in a house full of people, all of whom have relatively tight alibis. And the ones that don't were all lumped together in a pitch-black room that anyone could probably, if quiet enough, sneak out.

"What are you thinking about, sir?" Chart was concerned.

"It had to be someone from the seance."

"What?" He hadn't heard him properly.

"All the others...they have alibis, right?"

"Well, they could be lying! They could just be giving each other alibis to save eachother's skins. People do it all the time, surely?"

"If they're in various places around town, yes. But they're all here in a mansion with a limited amount of rooms. They can't afford to be contradictory. If anything doesn't add up it'll stick out like a sore thumb. And nothing does."

"Everything's perfect," Chart smiled sarcastically.

"Yes. Except for the seance!"

"Maybe we've just been barking up the wrong tree altogether? Maybe it was an outside job? Somebody broke in?"

"Why? Nothing was stolen."

"The room was ransacked, though. The whole room was a mess. Perkins must've put up one hell of a struggle. You know, just something to think about."

Pry had stood frozen for some seconds. A lightbulb seemed to have buzzed on in his head. "Wait...what did you say?"

"What? About the struggle?"

"No before that. You said the room was ransacked."

"Yes..." Chart felt uneasy at his curiously behaving boss.

"The room was ransacked..."

"Yes...from the struggle. Perkins was a big guy, he wouldn't gone down easy."

"Maybe so but then why was the entire room messed up?"

"Hm?"

"You just said it yourself, man! The room was ransacked. Whoever killed him ransacked the room."

"Oh..."

"Yeah. He was killed because he had something."

"But what? And did they get what they were after?"

"I have no idea."

"And what would be worth killing for?"

"An incriminating document? A piece of jewelry? A manu...script?" He said this last word slowly, his mind running back to Plum and the argument.

"You still it's the Professor, don't you?" Chart asked with a boyish grin.

"I don't know, Chart. He was cocky. Very cocky. Full of himself. That kind usually do play a part in these sort of things. And there's the fact of his mysterious return. So sudden. Supposedly out-of-the-blue, eh? I'm not convinced, no siree."

"So what, should we arrest him?"

"Nah, no point. We'd have to let him go - there's no real evidence."

Constable Chart flipped back to the page with the list of suspects. "We still have to go through these one's that are left."

"Fun, fun, fun," remarked Pry. "We have the red-dressed hussy, the funky Frenchman --"

"As well as Mr. Green, Mrs. Peacock and Mrs. White."

"Let's not just yet."

Pry rested his head back against the soft sofa. The air in the room was suffocating slightly now and Chart took the opportunity to open one of the windows. A nice calm night breeze soothed their aching brains as the two sat in awkward silence for a few minutes.

The Inspector began, startling the Constable a little, "We need a good lead, Chart, that's what we need."

"We've got one, sir - Plum. And Boddy - the infuriated lover, maybe even Scarlet herself killed him due to disgust or guilt. Then again, we can't really exclude Peach or Brunette. What if Perkins had found the two in bed and the two had to kill him to keep their little affair quiet."

"Let's...let's paint a picture, shall we, Chart?" Pry massaged his burning forehead. "A potrait...a portrait of Archibald Perkins. Here we have him: this man, this publishing company manager. He has one daughter. But what about a wife? What happened to her?"

"Apparantly, she ran away, sir. Years ago with a foreigner. She's changed her name, her ID - the lot. Nobody's heard of her since."

"So what if, one of the women here tonight were his wife?"

"Nah, she's old, sir. Very old, infact."

"So are some of the women, here."

"Yeah, like fifties-sixties, this woman was easily in her late seventies."

"So how old was Perkins?"

"Sixty something, I think, sir."

"Why marry a woman that old?"

"We don't know, sir."

"And why are those two so private?"

"Which two?"

"Perkins and his daughter, of course. They're not the most open of families, are they?"

"Perhaps they just like it that way? Or maybe ever since the wife left, they haven't been as indulgent in things as they used to be."

"It's not just, though," Pry continued. Chart was getting more and more annoyed by all the problems that Pry was purposely arising for himself. "What drove him to pay Miss Scarlet for that?

"Uh...have you seen her?"

"Come on, Chart. Sure we all take a gander at beautiful women. But that's because we know we can't have them."

"Well, Perkins had to have her."

"So what, he was just dirty old man? Or does it go deeper than that?"

"Maybe -- just maybe -- he payed her all the while hoping it would be his gone wife."

"Could be. That's the psychologist in you, Chart."

"It's quite the neccessity nowadays, sir."

"Not when I was training, it wasn't. As long as you handpick the guilty one, you were hired."

"Yes, well, criminals are getting smarter, sir."

"Or maybe we're just getting stupider," Pry snarled, getting up. "I'm gonna go get her."

"Who? Scarlet?"

"Yeah. Calm yourself down now. That way you won't get too excited when she enters."

9:55pm

Miss Scarlet sauntered in, her heels click-clacking against the wooden floorboards. She swung herself onto a loveseat and threw her arm over the back of it. Pry had followed from behind, taking a good look.

"It's about time you called me," she said with a grin, "I was beginning to think you didn't like me." She chuckled, flicking back her black hair unnecessarily.

"We know about you and Perkins," Pry said bluntly.

"Oh." She shuffled in he seat, moving her legs more over. "Controversial, eh? Then again I suppose you're used to it. I've bet you've everything under the sun, haven't you?"

"Perkins paid you for sex. Why did you comply?"

"Well, you can never have enough money. Joe's original inheritance is on it's last legs and we hardly have any income coming in. He keeps painting, though. It's just enough to keep us steady. I wasn't go to refuse, was I?" She breathed. "I did originally, of course. He had the indecency to ask in our own manor when he visited once whilst Joe was out of the room! It wasn't until days later when I saw poor Joe in that studio dabbing up fruit bowls and flower vases that I realised how serious it was. In fact, I was the one that called him back afterwards, told him I'd do it." She sniffed a little.

"How many times did you do it, Miss Scarlet? Where and when?"

"Call me, Jacqueline," she stated. She placed a manicured hand against her cheek and heaved. "We always did it here. Upstairs - his bedroom. We had to awfully sneaky, especially with Penelope around. She doesn't work, you see, she only attends a amateur dramatics class over in Estherbridge once a week. We usually did it then."

"Are you aware that he's left a sum of money for you?"

"Yes. Joe told me tonight."

"In the conservatory after dinner?"

She nodded. "I really don't know why. I am grateful, though. Maybe he realised how down-in-the-dumps Joe and I were getting and corteously gave us a charitable donation, if you will. I do thank him for that. He wasn't so bad, after all." She smiled, seemingly lost in a fond memory.

"How did you manage it, though?" Chart asked crassly. "How could you --"

"It was easy, really. I closed my eyes, thought of Joe most of the time."

"You really do love him, don't you?"

"Yes...yes, I suppose I do." She giggled, smiling whole-heartedly. "I never really thought of that! I mean, I've said it often enough to him but...I guess I really do mean it. He's forgiven me, anyway. Our little discussion in the conservatory - I explained everything the best I could. That is, until the wretched Doctor came in! What a fool he was. I had a good mind to tell him to get lost. But I held my tongue."

She crossed her legs and capped the knees with folded hands.

"What was this seance like?"

"Oh, don't, honestly it was awful! Madame Rose, the delusional dear, really thinks she had something. I'm so glad I got out of there when I did. I heard she turned the lights completely out and everything shortly after I left."

"The lights were on when you were in there originally?"

She nodded again. "Well, not lights as in from the chandelier, but candles. Candlesticks all around us. She says she had to blow them all out to get better results. Obviously nothing was happening with them all lit. Last I heard nothing happened when they weren't, either."

Pry grunted, Chart scrawled his pen across the note-paper.

"Please don't suspect my Joe. He wouldn't have killed him! Sure, he was angry. But he's a terribly tolerant man. He's put up with an awful lot with me. He deals with things in his own way. Not with violence, not at all. I'm certain he left Perkins alive and well when he exited the study."

"Thank you, Miss Scarlet --"

"Ah!"

"-- Jacqueline. We'll be in touch if we have any more queries. Congratulations on the money you're getting."

She smiled and departed the room.

Chart fanned himself with the notepad. "Gah, she's gorgeous."

Pry looked at his partner with amusement, and a little bit of pity.

To be continued...