Ilysveil: The Hidden Vengeance
by J. H. Zech
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3 |
part 2
“We are all old friends. Occasionally we come to this cabin for a night of cards or mahjong,” William said.
“Did any of you have any relation to Maria Crossham?”
“We were all her students ten years ago,” Theodore said.
“Oh? Then each of you has a motive to avenge your mentor.”
“Hold on a second here. That was ten years ago,” William protested. “It’s a little late for revenge. And besides, we were her students, but we weren’t that close. It takes a certain passion to enact vengeance, which I doubt any of us have for Mrs. Crossham.”
“All right, then, let’s hear your alibis from midnight to four.”
“We all turned in around midnight to our own rooms,” Charles said. The others nodded affirmatively.
“Then that means no one can corroborate your alibis.” Joseph crossed his arms. “Tell me exactly what happened last night up till midnight.”
“We agreed yesterday to meet up at seven in the evening in the cabin as usual,” William said. “When everyone arrived, we had a blast drinking and playing cards and mahjong. Winston didn’t look well throughout the night, and I think it was around eleven when he wanted to retire. He went up to the second floor, and we continued playing until midnight.”
“That’s a little different from your story, Charles,” Joseph said. “You said you all turned in at midnight.”
“Don’t give me that look, Inspector. I thought you were just talking about alibis. In other words, the dead don’t count.”
“Then, did anyone go off alone between eleven and midnight?” Joseph asked.
“No,” Theodore answered. “We were all together playing from eleven to midnight. No one left even briefly. At least until midnight, our alibis are airtight.”
“Then the culprit must have killed Winston while you all were asleep,” Joseph said. “Do any of you know what Winston wrote in his notepad?”
Theodore shrugged. “He didn’t tell us.”
William added, “I don’t know that he wrote anything in there at all. He said the notepad was new and flipped through the pages occasionally, much like how we roll dice in our hands to ease our nerves while gambling.”
Stacia crawled out from under the bed. “Has anyone found the murder weapon?”
“It’s right outside the window,” Gorton said.
Joseph walked over to the open window and peered outside. On the dirt ground by the cabin directly below the window was a knife and a bloody apron laying in a puddle. He was about to leave the window when he noticed a rope hanging from a large nail below the windowsill. Joseph pulled up the rope and stretched it. The rope was tough, dry, and rough. Probably strong enough to support a person’s weight.
“Looking at this rope, someone may have climbed up to the window. How was the body discovered?” Joseph asked.
William said, “We were about to have breakfast at seven, but Winston didn’t come down, so I went to check on him. He wasn’t answering, so I opened the door and saw he was dead.” He shuddered. “I was pretty shocked, so I ran down and told everyone.”
“Do you know if the window was locked when Winston went to bed?”
“I’m not sure,” Theodore answered.
“It was definitely unlocked,” William said. “His room’s window lock was broken, and I hadn’t gotten around to fixing it yet.”
“So, the story goes like this,” Stacia said. “You all played games from when you met at seven until eleven. Winston retired for the night. Then you all continued for a while and turned into your rooms at midnight. At some point between then and four, someone from the outside climbs up the rope and into Winston’s room, since the window lock is broken. He stabs Winston in a rage, and then climbs back down and discards the murder weapon and the apron used to shield himself from blood spatter. Does this sound reasonable?”
Everyone nodded.
“Then we should check for footprints outside the window. And if any of your footprints match the ones outside, you’ll have a lot of explaining to do,” Joseph said.
They went around to the back of the cabin where the apron and knife were. Police officers picked up the items and put them in separate bags. Joseph and Stacia searched all around the area but couldn’t find any footprints.
“It’s as I feared. It rained last night, so the footprints have likely been washed away,” Joseph said.
“Can we go somewhere I can sit? My feet are hurting again,” Stacia whispered.
“We can’t let it seem like you’re just idling about.” Joseph glanced around him. “There’s a storage shed over there. You can take off your heels inside. If anyone asks, I’ll tell them you’re investigating something for me.”
Stacia nodded and went into the small storage shed behind the cabin.
Joseph pulled Gorton aside. “You said Winston didn’t have any current known enemies. His friends said he was acting strangely after the skeleton showed up. And the brutal method of murder certainly points to revenge as a likely motive. If you put it all together, if this was the work of an outsider, then the culprit could be someone with a connection to Maria Crossham. Who in this village was connected to her?”
“She didn’t have many friends. It’s not like anyone hated her, at least up until the whole modernization campaign, but she mostly kept to herself, so she naturally didn’t form connections. The ones I would say with a strong connection to her, whether friendship or enmity, would be the four in the cabin and the former mayor Thompson.”
“I know the four were her students, but how is the mayor connected to her?”
“He was her main opponent. She advocated in favor of the railway station, and he opposed.”
“Since there’s no railway station here, I’m guessing the opposition won. Did they do anything in particular to win?”
“If I had to name a key moment, it was when Mrs. Crossham’s students turned against her. Originally, they were also in favor of the railway station like their mentor, but the mayor convinced them that preserving Harrenville’s traditions and lifestyle was more important. After they switched sides, she was isolated and soon disappeared. At that point, many thought it was a suicide. Since the investigation was inconclusive, we had to close the case.”
“I’d like to talk to Thompson. Where can I find him?” Joseph asked.
“Unfortunately, no one knows. He was driven out of town by an angry mob after the townsfolk found out he’d been embezzling their taxes and taking bribes from local merchants.”
“When was this?”
“Nine years ago. It’s far too late to pick up on his trail.”
An officer came running up to them. “Inspector, we’ve searched every room in the cabin, but we didn’t find the paper.”
“Isn’t it possible Winston had torn out the page before he even came to this cabin?” Gorton asked.
“It is. Maybe the notepad is unrelated to this case. Winston wouldn’t have bothered to tear out a page before he started writing if he was at death’s door. If only we could find that missing page, we could be certain whether it’s relevant.”
Stacia approached them, wearing her heels once again. “I found something in the storage shed you should look at.”
Joseph and Gorton followed Stacia back to the storage shed. It was musky, old, wooden shed, the kind that could be found in any countryside. There was some firewood stacked up alongside an axe and a broom.
“What I wanted to show you was this.” She pointed to four shovels laying against the wall. They were aged with reddish rust, and the wooden handles had cracks. “The dirt on these shovels is fresh.”
“So, that means someone used them to dig recently,” Gorton said.
“Do you think it’s someone from the cabin? Or did an outsider use them and secretly return them?” Stacia asked.
“A thief wouldn’t go out of their way to return shovels they stole. But if that someone is from the cabin, was it the victim or the culprit that used the shovels?” Joseph said.
“We should check their shoes for traces of dirt,” Stacia said. “We’ll know who’s been digging.”
“This isn’t Vathel. This whole town is covered in dirt roads. Even our shoes have dirt on them. Someone’s shoes having dirt wouldn’t prove anything.”
Shoes? An epiphany struck Joseph. “The bigger issue is, were they digging to bury something or to find something? And what is that something?”
“This is all your fault!” Charles’s shout came from the front of the house.
They ran towards the front of the cabin, and Stacia teetered after them.
Charles had grabbed William by the collar, and several officers were coaxing him to calm down.
“This whole gathering yesterday was your idea. You own the cabin, too. I would’ve never come here if I knew I was going to get pulled into this mess!” Charles yelled.
“How was it possible for me to know this would happen? If I had that kind of foresight, I would be living in a manor in Vathel, wealthy beyond what your tiny imagination can comprehend,” Williams said.
“Maybe you knew because you’re the culprit or hired some nutjob to do it for you!”
“Cease with the baseless accusations! Winston was our friend.”
“I know you’ve been borrowing from him since your investments crashed and burned.”
“Come on, Charles. We’re all friends here. Let’s not go at each other’s throats like this,” Theodore said in a soothing voice.
“I don’t want to hear that from you. Rumor had it, Winston was cheating on his wife with yours. Everyone in town knows it.”
“Those rumors are just plain slander. My wife did no such thing. And if you want to play it that way, didn’t Winston introduce you to the woman who swindled you?”
Joseph whistled. “Guess the pressure got to them. We have motive from all of them.”
“If a rumor is enough for a motive though, I bet half the town would have one,” Gorton said.
“That’s enough, folks,” Joseph said. “No one is going to get hauled away based on hearsay. Rest assured, everything will be based on the facts and evidence.”
Charles, William, and Theodore all looked dissatisfied but quieted down nonetheless. Stacia emerged from behind the cabin and tapped Joseph on the shoulder.
“I found something while I was trying to walk back to the front. Come with me,” she said.
Joseph motioned Gorton to follow him, and they came to the back of the cabin, below the window. Stacia held up a tiny white-ish scrap. “I found this here. It looks like paper. Is this from the notepad? But it looks burnt.”
Joseph took the corner-shaped scrap and examined it carefully but couldn’t make out any writing. He held it up next to the notepad, and the texture and color matched. “Was a lighter found in Winston’s room?”
“No. We don’t believe anyone stole it either. He didn’t smoke, though the other three do, so it’s possible one of them burned this page,” Gorton said.
“There would have been no reason to burn the page until something had been written on it. No one saw Winston writing anything before he retired, so likely he wrote while in his room. But what did he write that was worth burning?”
Stacia said, “Maybe he wrote the name of the culprit as his dying message.”
“Winston wouldn’t have been in any shape to grab a notepad and pen and write on it after being stabbed so many times. It’s much more likely he would have just written something in blood. And if he had somehow managed to get a pen and his notepad, there should at least have been blood on the notepad even if the pen were wiped clean.”
“Back to square one then,” Gorton said. “Without any other leads, I think we have to start with the outsider motivated by revenge for Crossham theory.”
“What if Winston had written something beforehand knowing he would be murdered?” suggested Stacia.
“Whatever he wrote, it’s unlikely he wrote the culprit’s identity,” Joseph replied. “Winston would have been hesitant to sleep in the same building as someone he knew wanted to murder him.” Joseph paused. Beforehand. Perhaps he had been thinking about this missing page all wrong. Whatever was written didn’t necessarily have to relate to this murder. But what information would threaten the culprit enough for them to destroy the page if it didn’t contain the identity of the murderer?
It struck Joseph, and he had an idea, but there wasn’t enough proof to come a definite conclusion. He whispered to Stacia, “I need you to go look for something, discreetly. Come back to our cabin when you find it.” He filled her in on the details.
“I remembered I forgot something in the shed. Please go on without me. I’ll catch up,” Stacia said to Joseph and Gorton.
They left her behind and returned to the front of the cabin, where the three men were waiting besides the front door.
“Can we leave now? We’ve been here all morning, and my wife and kids must be worried. The assistant said it herself. An outsider snuck in and did it,” Theodore said.
“Exactly. You already heard what we had to say. I’m leaving!” Charles shouted.
“If you don’t have any evidence to hold us, I believe we have a right to leave,” William said.
Constable Gorton scratched his head. “I suppose you’re right. Since it’s likely that an outsider is the culprit. Just come with us to the station so we can take your statements officially, and then we’ll let you go.”
Joseph crossed his arms and leaned against the cabin wall. “I wouldn’t let them off the hook just yet, constable.”
“What’s your problem?” Charles cried.
“No, it’s not my problem. It’s yours. This wasn’t an act of hot-blooded hatred by an outsider. It was a calculated and practical, cold-blooded murder. And the culprit is one of you.”
William gasped. Their faces froze.
Gorton did a double-take, regained his composure, then said, “Please explain yourself, Inspector Wrenheit.”
Copyright © 2021 by J. H. Zech
