The Outsmarting of Criminals: A Mystery Introducing Miss Felicity Prim (29 page)

“I suppose we should be grateful for a defiant populace, Detective,” Miss Prim said. “Now let us get out of here immediately, if you please.”

They filed up the stairs, out the door, and into the waiting police cars.

“Oh, I’ve forgotten my handbag,” Miss Prim said, unbuckling her seat belt. She had removed
her handbag from her shoulder when she and Dolly had attempted to get some rest, but she’d kept it close at hand until the rescue. “I must retrieve it. Life would be much too inconvenient without it.”

“I’ll go with you, Miss Prim,” Kit
volunteered.

“That’s quite all right, Kit. I am not one of those fearful women who is easily traumatized. I know exactly where it is. I’ll be back in
a jiffy.” That promise made, she returned to the house, descended the stairs into the basement, and retrieved not only her preferred handbag but also her backup bag.

O
f course Detective Dawes wouldn’t have allowed her to return to the house on her own; she saw his shadow out of the corner of her eye.

“Detective, how kind of you to …”

The man looming over her was not Ezra Dawes. It was a man wearing a rubber face mask crafted to look like Richard Nixon.

She had not come this far to be defeated. She’d been mugged
on the streets of Manhattan, and this hulking figure appeared even more intent on harm than the man who’d knocked her down on Lexington Avenue, taking her handbag and her dignity with him.

In one fluid motion Miss Prim reached into her bag, grabbed the Laser Taser 3000, released the safety, and shot 50,000 volts into her tormentor.

As the man lay twitching on the floor, she thought,
I must see what this arch-criminal Everett Mansour looks like
. She reached out, grabbed the mask, and pulled it over Everett’s head to reveal the face of Doctor Amos Poe.

The Murderer, Discovered

Spike conducted Miss Prim and Bruno home while Ezra Dawes drove Doctor Poe to the hospital and Martin Reed brought Dolly to the police station, at Dolly’s request.

“But
Dolly,” Miss Prim had asked, “why do you need to go to the police station tonight? Detective Dawes said we can give our statements in the morning. And I truly would prefer not to be alone right now.”

“Oh, Miss Prim,”
Dolly had replied through tears. “This has all gotten so completely out of hand. I have to talk to the police about Doctor Poe
tonight
. He’s one hundred percent innocent. I know how it looks, Miss Prim, but he loves you. He wouldn’t harm a hair on your head. You have to believe me.”

“Until tonight,” Miss Prim had responded, “I
would
have believed you. But the events of the evening have proved otherwise, I think.”

“No, no, no. I promise, I’ll explain everything after I talk to the police.”

Lorraine had jumped into the conversation. “Felicity, I’ll be happy to keep you company until Dolly returns. Let me go home first to check on Lucian—I gave him a very tricky logic puzzle to work, one with no solution—and then I’ll meet you at the cottage.”

Now, after enduring Spike’s worried monologue about all the mold spores to which Miss Prim and Dolly had been
exposed in that dank basement, as well as her predictions that both women would end up with gangrene, tuberculosis, or rickets, Miss Prim was installed in Rose Cottage, awaiting Lorraine’s arrival. Bruno remained one step away from her at all times. His eyes reprimanded her:
Please do not ever do
that
again
.

She
was working to recover her equanimity; being kidnapped and held captive had been upsetting in the extreme. The experience had not been the romantic, suspenseful adventure that novels had led her to believe it would be. True, there had been no bomb ticking in the background, no load of nitroglycerin or TNT ready to blow her and Dolly to kingdom come, no weird contraption to keep them immobile, as in some of those disturbing Scandinavian thrillers. But the experience was still humbling, especially as she considered the possibility that she might have spent her last days on Earth in that basement. Was that
likely
to have happened? No. As fiction had taught her, the amateur/cozy sleuth always lives to see another day, another case, another book in the series. But
could
it have happened? Yes, it could have.

Still, none of it was nearly as frightening and surreal as the
revelation that Doctor Poe, who had professed love for her, had plotted against her and Dolly. She simply could not fathom the reason. Doctor Poe loved literature, as all good doctors do, but it seemed highly unlikely that he had teamed up with Everett Mansour to steal Benjamin’s copy of
Songs of Innocence
. After many years of successful practice in Manhattan, Doctor Poe was quite well off; thus money could not have been the motivating factor. Or could it? Perhaps the doctor was a drug addict or an inveterate gambler who had squandered his fortune and who saw the original book of Blake’s poems as an easy, lucrative sale on the literary black market?

And what had Dolly meant when she said she’d explain “everything”? Hadn’t Dolly already explained “everything” while they were stranded in that basement? What more could she have to say?

Well, all would be revealed shortly. In the meantime, Miss Prim saw the opportunity to close another aspect of the investigation. Given the intensity of the day’s events, she’d had to put aside the piece of information Kit had given her. (Was it only this morning? It seemed so long ago.) Now, finally, the time had come to discuss her theories with her neighbor and sidekick.

S
he didn’t have to wait long. Shortly after she’d set the tea to steep and tied Bruno to his tether in the backyard, the front door opened and Lorraine breezed in. She’d changed out of the getup she’d been wearing at the crime scene (Pippi Longstocking braids, denim overalls) into a dark-brunette pageboy wig and a long, flowing gown.

“
Well, Felicity,” Lorraine said in her forthright way. “Here you’ve just had a brush with something violent, and there you are, looking as put-together and as calm as ever. You really are a marvel.”

“As are you, Lorraine,” Miss Prim replied. “I must say I prefer this
—Louise Brooks?—look to today’s earlier
ensemble
.”

“Oh, that. Sometimes I don’t feel like putting in the work it takes to be glamorous. The overalls are my way of saying to the world, ‘Don’t expect the elegant Lorraine Koslowski
today. Today, she’s just a Pandora in blue jeans, like Grace Metalious.’ I see the tea and coffee are ready, so let’s have at it and you can tell me what in God’s name happened to you today. I’ll say this, you had all of us damned worried, Felicity.”

“Lorraine, if you don’t mind … I am going to
relate this story many, many times over the coming weeks. I’m hosting a small gathering tomorrow—well, actually, later today—and I’ll provide all the details then. Will you and Lucian join us?”

“
Of course.”

“Lovely. Now, for tonight, I would l
ove nothing more than to listen rather than to speak. All of that screaming in the basement has made me rather hoarse.”

“You got it, kid. What should
we talk about? Lucian’s recent discovery that the Garden of Eden was located in Lubbock, Texas? The extortionate prices that Prothero’s has started charging for produce? Oh wait, I’ll tell you about an interesting little tidbit I recently picked up …”

Miss Prim thought,
Now is as good a time as any
. She jumped in with both feet.

“All of that sounds most interesting, Lorraine. But what I would really love to hear about is the secret passage that connects your house and mine.”

Lorraine, not usually lost for words, remained silent.

Miss Prim rushed to reassure her friend.
“I’m not angry, Lorraine. I know you have very good reasons for keeping the passage a secret. But there
is
a passage connecting our houses, and it explains how Lucian found his way into my basement. The night Lucian disappeared, I heard whispering down there, and I would have sworn I heard two voices whispering, not one. The first one was Lucian’s. The second was yours. Wasn’t it, Lorraine? You were pleading with him to come home, but when I started down the stairs, you fled.”

Lorraine nodded. “I knew you’d figure it out sooner or later, Felicity. The first time I met you, I knew you were a clever one.”

“It wasn’t I who figured it out,” Miss Prim admitted. “It was Kit. He overheard Detective Dawes and me talking about the ‘locked-room mystery’ in my basement. Having a typical teenage boy’s adventurous imagination, he took it on himself to research our houses at the historical society, where he found a copy of the houses’ original plans. Ridgemont was the master house, and Rose Cottage was originally intended as a guest house or a residence for Ridgemont’s domestics. Olivia Abernathy said she didn’t know about the hidden basement, and I believed her; and I now see how mistaken I was in trusting her. Perhaps she sought to cover her prevarications by telling partial truths. She told me that our two homes had been built around the same time, after you told me that Rose Cottage had been built many years after Ridgemont. I tried to ask you about it, but we kept getting interrupted. In the meantime, Gil Fellowes confirmed that our houses were built around the same time, but he didn’t mention anything about the secret passage.”

Lorraine shook her head
. “No, Felicity. Olivia wasn’t lying. At least not about that. She’s only been in Greenfield about six or seven years. Lucian and I have been back about three. We came back after his condition made it impossible for us to travel. I suppose Olivia could have talked to some of the Old Timers, who might have mentioned that Ridgemont and Rose Cottage are about the same age, but I doubt she would have known about the passage or about your basement. The only people who know are Lucian, I, and Elizabeth Saxe-Coburg. I certainly haven’t told anyone about it, though I suppose Elizabeth might have babbled indiscreetly about it. I doubt it, though, because she has a few skeletons in her own closet. And Lucian was always extremely secretive about it, too. You have to remember, Ridgemont was built after the war, and everyone was still feeling upset, paranoid, and threatened by a world that had spiraled out of control.”

“But if Lucian kept it a secret, how would Kit have found a copy of Ridgemont’s plans at the Historical Society? ”

“I’ll tell you how,” Lorraine said with a huff. “I’m sure Gil Fellowes tricked Lucian into it when I wasn’t watching or during one of Lucian’s escapes. Gil may appear to be an absentminded scholar, but he’s single-minded in his pursuit of cataloging absolutely everything that has happened in Greenfield. You know academics, Felicity. They know how to sweet-talk people into sharing top-secret documents. I’m sure Gil played on one of Lucian’s delusions to convince him to share the house plans. And Gil isn’t always forthcoming with information, even when you ask him directly. It’s that academic thing.”

Miss Prim looked into her friend’s eyes.
These are not the eyes of a criminal
, she thought.
They are the eyes of someone who is protecting the man she loves
. But the time had come to solve the mystery of the body in her basement. She forged ahead.

“Now, Lorraine, what I’m about to say is likely to upset you. Before I say it, I want you to know that you have a true friend in me, and that I would not say or do anything to hurt you or harm you. Do you believe me?”

“Yes,” Lorraine said, simply.

“Then I am going to outline a possible scenario. Will you tell me, truthfully, if what I suggest is what really happened?”

Lorraine cast her eyes down and nodded.

“I think it was Lucian who killed the man I found in my basement. And you hid the body down there. Am I right?”

“He didn’t mean to. It was an accident.”

“That is exactly what I thought, Lorraine. You yourself hinted that Lucian can turn violent when he feels threatened. I think this
stranger somehow threatened him and Lucian felt the need to protect himself. So he picked up something within reach—the chisel—and drove it into the man’s stomach.

“I think you came home and
saw what Lucian had done, and you needed to hide the body until you could dispose of it properly. My basement was the ideal hiding place. The body could have stayed down there a good long time, and I never would have found him because I didn’t know the basement existed. But I kept asking myself, If you didn’t want me to know about the basement, why would you leave the wooden star in a box of old magazines in my attic? It wouldn’t take me long to realize that the star matched the impression on the kitchen wall, and then discover the basement and the body.

“But you weren’t the person who put that box in my attic, Lorraine. Lucian was. He likes to carry boxes around. He was carrying one at Ridgemont on the day I met him, and he brought one into my basement
on the night I found him down there. And of course the box in my attic was filled with Hollywood gossip magazines, which are your favorite reading material, as well as the inspiration for much of your wardrobe.”