A Murder Short

A Murder Short


When most people hear screaming and the sounds of a whole hearted struggle they assume someone, somewhere is in need of help. However the people of Southwood were so use to it erupting from number six on Mildred Av. that they scarcely noticed when a horrified scream and several loud thumps were heard late at night, or early in the morning, however you care to describe it.
Fighting was one of the many things the Swooapples did well. Among the other things were cheating, lying, and getting money. The Swooapples had lived at number six for many years and were considered the richest people in Southwood. The family consisted of a large, bed ridden matriarch and her weedy little husband. Over the years they had produced a motley group of offspring. This offspring of three girls and one strange young man. Never having had to support themselves the Swooapple children fed off of their parents.
None of them really liked each other and they were only comfortable when they had something bad and nasty to say about someone else. The only time you could see more then one Swooapple getting along was when they were plotting or tormenting. Plotting, however, happened very rarely since they almost always started fighting after five minutes together. The people of Southwood were accustomed to their fighting that they didn’t even roll over when they heard the screaming. Truth be told not even the Swooapples noticed anything amiss in the household. In fact, it wasn’t until Lydia the housemaid came the next morning that anybody knew there had been a murder at number six Mildred Av.

Lydia came from a decent family with a decent background. She was young and plain but a hard worker. A head of long brown hair and muddy brown eyes made her almost invisible when put into a crowed. She received a rather large check each week from the Swooapples and a large bonus every Christmas. This, unfortunately, was only because no one else would work there. Masses of maids before her were either sent away or ran screaming from the house. The Swooapples were a very hard family to please but Lydia had found the secret to them. If they didn’t notice you they didn’t bother you. Lydia used this information to avoid the Swooapples attention. Regrettably this didn’t work all the time and occasionally she was subject to Susanna’s hurtful jabs, Junior’s painful observations or St Clair’s air of superiority. But all in all she was never fully tormented.
Lydia had finished school at the age of fourteen and started work in the mills making little toy figurines. She gave up this job when she was seventeen to begin work at the Swooapple residence. The work was hard but the pay good. It was with the money working at the Swooapple house that Lydia was able to rent a little apartment above Miss. Kaytinlin’s bakery. It was small and furnished simple, but it was almost twenty minutes away from number six and at the end of the day that was all Lydia cared about.
The chores of a whole staff of maids and butlers all had to be done single handedly by Lydia. This meant that Lydia was at number six very early in the morning and left very late at night. On the particular morning of the murder Lydia had over slept and was very late to the house. It was her job to wake the family and give Mrs. Swooapple and her dogs breakfast in bed. Lydia raced across the neatly trimmed grass of number six and straight into the kitchen. She immediately and furiously started to cook Mrs. Swooapple’s egg benedict, runny, extra hollandaise sauce, exactly six and a half pieces of sausage and bacon), toast, both sides thickly buttered, a small cup of hollandaise sauce for dipping and a small grapefruit half all washed down with a cup of each coffee, decaffeinated coffee, tea, orange juice and a special tonic of lemon and lime juice with just a bit of vodka mixed in. Not to mention the ground steak and freshly made rice for her two vicious dogs that guarded her bed.
Lydia prepared all this from scratch and loaded them onto silver trays. She carefully lined up all of Mrs. Swooapples pills on the tray and tentatively carried the tray to the main stairs. It was then that she saw the body. It was dressed entirely in black and sprawled out at the bottom on the stairs. Its legs and neck were bent at odd angles and a small amount of congealed blood swelled at his mouth. Lydia screamed and clutched the tray tightly to her. Hurriedly she stepped around the body and rushed upstairs to the master bedroom where she shook Mrs. Swooapple awake.

Gab Sinclair Britannica sat on the train looking worried. He had been asked by a friend in the Southwood police to come have a look at a case that the police had thought rather open and shut. It appears that two thieves had entered the house and one had tripped on the stairs, fallen and died while the other had taken off with a large amount of valuables. To the Southwood police the death was an accident, their only concern was to find the accomplice. The owner of the house however had insisted that the man was murdered. She was also very convinced that she was the one that was supposed to die, not him. Ignoring the claims of the police she began to call investigator after investigator trying to get someone to believe her. When none of her private detectives could find anything amiss she started making daily vigils to the police station, demanding that they do something about the attempt on her life. Gab’s friend Captain Kirk Kelly had finally broken down and asked Gab to come have a look.
Gab was, by all means, a very strange man. He was a very tall man with long, long legs, a fair complexion, and rosy pink cheeks that are quit cute on a child but very embarrassing on a grown man. On is head he had what is best described as a mop of thick curly blond hair that stuck out at odd angles. He was particularly fond of long, knitted, multi colored scarves that he could wrap around his neck several times and still have yards left to drop to his knees. He had worn the same worn out, mid thigh length coat for years now and the once pitch-black cloth began to fade and wear thin in the elbows. His pants were almost always too short for him and he always had on two different pairs of socks. Despite his socks however, his shoes were always shiny and black but almost never tightly tied.
Gab liked photographs. He liked taking them; he liked looking at them. In fact he had a wide range of cameras and was never without at lest one. Today’s camera was a No 2 folding pocket Brownie (model B). It was a little leather bound camera that folded up and had a little leather handle for carrying. This particular camera was about twenty years old but still in working condition. It had been discontinued in 1915 but had been kept lovingly by an old man who had recently passed away.
Gab had been asked to look into the old man’s death by his daughter who was worried that his second wife had murdered him. The girl, although kind and gentle, had a great dislike for her stepmother and was convinced that she had murdered her dear old father. Gab had investigated the matter quite deeply and had found that the stepmother had played no part. Although the man was murdered it was not by the stepmother or the daughter, both of whom would inherit great sums of money. The truth was that the old man’s assistant had been drugging the old man’s midday tea for months. Once the old man was asleep the assistant would steal valuable cameras and photographs and sell them. He had unknowingly killed the poor man one day and had not known what to do so he acted surprised and went about his business.
Although the girl was not fond of the end result, she truly wished it to be the stepmother, she still had to pay Gab and having decided to sell her half of her father’s camera collection, as did her stepmother, had no problem handing over an inexpensive item like the pocket Brownie.
Gab received many of his bobbles in this fashion; his very first scarf was among these. It was a red and gray little number knitted by a lady who lived down the street when he was younger. She had been widowed twice and was estranged by both her two sons. She lived alone with two pure breed Boston terriers that she had cleverly named Stella and Fella. Stella had once been a prime breeder in her day and had produced many fine pups. The widow loved these dogs and treated them like her children.
The widow lived peacefully with her dogs until one day little Stella disappeared. The widow became panicked and soon fell ill. Gab couldn’t stand to see her in such a state so he took on the case free of charge. He soon found the hooligans responsible for Stella’s disappearance. A young couple that wished to make some spare cash had taken Stella and was planning to put her with their own mutt. Gab successfully rescued Stella and returned her to the widow before the couple could follow through. The widow was absolutely ecstatic when Stella returned. She would not allow Gab to leave empty handed so in return for his great service to her she made him his first scarf.
Gab was not a particularly smart man, he was not a perfectionist or in any means considered on of the great detectives of his time. He couldn’t do the simplest of crossword puzzles or understand the great writings of his or any other time. What Gab could do though was be quite. A great many things are said in the presence of a person half forgotten. Gab could stay quite for hours. He would just sit and listen to every word. Sometimes he would take notes in a small brown notebook but for the most part he just stayed quite and nodded in just the right spots.

Gab stepped off the train and was instantly startled by the sight of a pretty women standing at the platform. She was tall, although almost a foot shorter then Gab himself, with white, creamy skin, long silky, black hair done up in lose curls that cascaded down her back and the most digusted look upon her face. If you had seen her face and not the surroundings you would almost certainly think that she was standing in the middle of a slum, or a wast center, or at lest looking at something that was never ment to be viewed by human eyes. But of course Gab saw the surroundings around her and knew that her expression most certainly did not match the circumstance.
The Southwood train station was little used since no one really had any need to come or leave Southwood. It was mostly used as a pit stop for weary travelers who wished to leave the tedious stop and go of the train. There was, for the convenience of the travelers, a little café that served a simple menu as well as well kept benches and a small history of Southwood on a little wooden plaque surrounded by flowers. The station was well kept and orderly, and although it was not used much the town took great pride in knowing that the train did indeed stop here and was under no restraint what so ever to let it become run down.
It was odd then that the young lady would have such a look of distain about her. Odd to any stranger, but to the people of Southwood and to Gab, as clear as a photograph. This of course could only be Mrs. Swooapple’s eldest daughter, St Clair.
St Clair sniff and wrinkled up her nose,
“So, you must be him then.” She said in a board tone of voice. Gab nodded. “Well, they said you looked odd, Captain Kirk that is not my mother, although she told me you might look odd, being uneducated and all.” St Clair put her hands on her hips and rolled her eyes when she said the word “uneducated” like it was a personal insult to her. She looked Gab up and down and said in a tone that suggested she didn’t care one way or the other,
“Well, you better get in the car then.”
“Wait,” Gad said just as she was turning around, her eyes flared with out rage at the command.
“Please, Miss. St Clair isn’t it?” She made a small sound in the back of her throat in reply that Gab took as a yes. “I was wondering, ma’am, could I take your picture?” He held up his pocket camera and pointed to it. She threw her head back and sent a wave of hair swinging to both sides.
“Well if you must then.” She replied, a slight hint of vain pleasure in her voice.
Gab looked at her in her knee length red skirt and coat. The coat had a high fur collar around the neck with sleeve cuffs to match. She wore high red hells and a matching purse. Gab stepped back and put the camera to his eye. He waited just a second, but that was enough. He snapped the picture just as a look of outraged disgust stretched across her face.
The ride to the manor house was not entirely uneventfull. The car was a large, black contraption that rumbled along and dominated the road as a summor wrestler might dominate a small city side walk. Meaning that all the other cars on the road gave them a large birth, even going so far as to go off the road. Gab didn’t wonder why they did this, driving up front with the young mister Joe B. Good (soon to be great actor as it showed on the large head shot he gave the detective), he knew the reason.
Joe B. Good was ocationaly hired by the Swooapples to drive their great beast of a car. Although not many people, and by many it is ment that no one, would work for the Swooapple family, Joe B. Good was a strange exception. In his early thirties he was a tall heavy set man with dull blond hair that was shaped into waves on his head. Manicured nails and enormase steal rings decorated his hands while imitation leather boots clad his feet. His great ambition in life was to become the next great picture star. He swore he was moving to Hollywood as soon as he saved enough money. The problem of course being that he never seemed to have enough money to even by a train ticket.
The reason Joe B. Good was so good at his job was that he never shut up. His mouth was always open, his lips bearly closed. For this reason he was never quiet long enough to be yelled at or to be offended. Joe B. Good was the most incredible talker that Gab had ever heard, however his driving skills left much to be desired. He drove wildly at top speeds, ignoring stop signs, stoplights, pedestrian crossings and in one instant a little old lady being helped across the street by several young boy scouts. By the end of the ride Gab was so happy to be done that he practically threw him self on the Swooapple’s neatly trimmed lawn.
Gab was met in the Swooapple’s parlor by Captin Kirk and three of his deputies. The good captin was short in stature but in no way short on authority. At a total of four feet eight inches he ruled the Southwood police station with an iorn fist. He enforced every law from the most serious to the most frivolus. He had stirred up quite a bit of controversy when he had given the principal of the elementary school a ticket for riding his bicycle below the stated minimum speed limit on main street. But all in all Captin Kirk got things done in a timely, orderly fashion. He was a balding man with a neatly trimed mustache, a deep voice that didn’t exactly go with his small stature and a primly pressed uniform. Gab, being very tall, had to bend over to shack the good captin’s hand.
“Well, Mr. Britannica, I’m glade to see you made it.” He said in his deep tone
“Please, call me Gab Captin.” Gab replied laughing, a ridiculous grin spreeding across his face.
“No I think I’ll call you Mr. Britannica if you don’t mind.” He replied gruffly. Captin Kirk thought Gab to be a rather odd man. He was brillent in a stupid kind of way he supposed by very, very odd. Captin Kirk had met Gab at his cousin’s wedding. A butifulle, tall girl that Captin Kirk had only met a handful of times. Gab was there on the grooms side. The groom’s great aunt twice removed to be precise. He hardly knew Gab at all, their only conversation being that day. However, Captin Kirk was a busy man and couldn’t be bothered with the Swooapple’s problem. It was a botched burglary, that’s all. He had chosen Gab because, in Captin Kirk’s mind, he was utterly uncappable of anything and would keep the Swooapple’s active and content. To Captin Kirk anyone who gallivanted around in a multi colored scarf passed his knees would know nothing of crime or how to solve it.
With out ceremony or explination Captin Kirk thrust a thin file into Gabs hands and said, very curtly,
“Here ya go lad. Have fun.” And was off.
Gab was very surprised at his behavior but since he was not from around just chalked it up to reginal differences in etiquiet and watched the Captin march out with his lackies flocking behind.
After being left alone by Captin Kirk, Gab was at a lose. He wasn’t sure exactly what to do. Grizzelda had given him one last glare before leaving him at the front parlor and the nice young woman who had brought him in was no where to be seen. With nothing else to do Gab sat down on the stiff velvet cousine of a chair and reviewed the file.


Lydia had left Gab only a mon