Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, mvt. 1 by Philip Glass
Snow. It drifted lazily from the sky slowing the passage of time indefinitely. The sun remained cold in the white sky and melted none of the thick, wet flakes. Detective Peter Sean arrived at the end of the storm in front of the DuPage Estate. The front way was salted and shoveled, but was concealed by blue and white police cars parked in front. A mass of people was being held back at the door; those in back were craning their necks over others in the front. Peter maneuvered through the crowd and bowed when he got to the door.
“Come right in, Detective.” One of them moved aside for him.
The front parlor was filled with loitering policemen who merely showed him towards the staircase before continuing their conversation over coffee, which the maid had prepared. He followed the clicks of cameras’ flashbulbs and crinkle of plastic bags to the study where the Lieutenant of police was stationed with a crew of seven or more scientists and investigators.
“What happened?” Peter asked.
The Lieutenant turned to look at him. “A homicide set to look like a suicide. You know.”
“Quite.”
The Lieutenant of police was a woman about a head taller than Peter. Her red-brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail out of her face and she was wearing a man’s uniform; too baggy around the shoulders and tight around the bust and hips. She had her arms crossed against her chest, resting her weight on her back foot and biting her lip as she oversaw the work.
“She was hanging from the chandelier, when the whole thing went down. The crash woke up the house and that’s about when they called the police. Everyone in house confirms the victim as Mme Chantal DuPage, lady of the house.”
“So what did you find to think it was a homicide?”
“She has no rope burns around her neck and the doctors that came by said her neck wasn’t broken and her windpipe intact. They said there was no way she would have died from the rope, she wasn’t up there long enough.”
“Even so, it would have shattered her windpipe.”
The Lieutenant shrugged. “I just report. You figure it out. And get this: there are no other marks on her body. She wasn’t stabbed or shot. The only thing we found was a couple of bruises.”
“No one left the house?”
“Of course not,” she said. “What kind of a system do you think I run? I’m not sloppy!”
“I’m sorry to have doubted you, Lieutenant.”
“Are you going to run another questioning?”
“Depends on what you found?”
“Nothing really. Everyone had a motive.”
The servants were all in the house. That was confirmed by M. DuPage. Dinner that night went according to plan: the lord and lady of the house were entertaining several guests including the wealthy Leponts and their son Samuel. The table was set with blue linen with white napkins with the good silver ware and blue china dishes. Several times, their cherished cook had to bustle people out of the kitchen so that she could finish her work with no distractions. Banisters were dusted twice and the candles lit moments before the guests had arrived. While the occasion was mostly to impress the Leponts so that they consented to marry their son to Elise DuPage, the only daughter of the DuPage family, the other guests there talked about politics and gossip that was going around the “common people.” The marriage would mean the well being of their daughter, who otherwise, would end up working in a factory or in the poor house. In an effort to save their family name, the DuPage family was using the influences they could.
Chantal DuPage was very well connected to her daughter and noticed every blush and shy look Samuel and Elise shared more than anyone else present. The two had been seeing each other long before the marriage was even brought up to M. DuPage. All the previous events had brought Chantal to suggest the marriage to her husband, but she did so extremely discretely and pretended, this night, to take no precedence in the orchestration of the evening. It was a night when the two men of the households would decide for themselves if the marriage would work. None of the other guests suspected a thing and when M. DuPage and M. Lepont talked in the parlor after dinner over coffee, it was a bit of a surprise to the family, though a pleasant one. Samuel was the oldest son, but he was a bit lame from childhood illness and walked with a limp and crutches, if he walked at all. Most of the time, he was in a wheelchair and excluded from regular conversation because of his disability. M. Lepont was afraid he would have trouble marrying him off, despite the fortune connected with the eldest son, but his fears were diminished by the polite invitation of M. DuPage. Still, he wondered how desperate the DuPage family would by to ask for their only daughter to marry his son. He had tried before and failed to marry his oldest son off, it was quite a change for someone to ask and he was a bit wary.
The conversation ended in indecision, but with high hopes. Mme DuPage went up to her bedroom after the festivities and got ready for bed before joining her husband later in the library to discuss the marriage proposal. The house was still when M. DuPage left the room and returned to the bedroom before a crash sent him back to the library to find his wife tied up in the chandelier, now on the floor.
“Whether or not he was surprised at this is up to question,” Peter said as he paced the parlor between the household staff and guests. Everyone alive was assembled before him looking a bit nervous and ill. The room was as still as a photograph and Peter had the impression if he dropped a handkerchief on the carpet, it would make a noise.
“Well,” he said laughing, a little, “I can say with absolute certainty that he was surprised to find his wife like that. After interviewing all of the people involved in that night and carefully matching up stories, I’ve determined who did it.”
“Please, Detective, we don’t have all day,” the Lieutenant said softly. Even though the room was silent, he knew that he was the only one to truly hear her.
“Well, the murderer knows how she did it, so I don’t need to recount it to you. Elise, why don’t you come along with our lovely lieutenant of police? No one here wants to hurt you in a struggle.”
Elise nodded her copper head and stepped forward. A shudder wound through the room like a breeze in winter, but Elise remained strong as she held her hands out to be tied up.
“Why, Elise?” Samuel asked.
Her eyes glittered with tears. “She knew, Sam. I couldn’t keep it in and I didn’t want her to tell…”
“Knew?” M. DuPont prompted.
Elise fixed on her hands without a word
“Do you mind if I share?” Peter gently asked. When she didn’t answer, he continued, “I had mentioned prior that Elise and Samuel had been seeing each other. But they stopped when Elise found out she was pregnant. It was hard for her to keep in, so she told her mother, as happy as she was at the time, and her servant. Mme DuPont promptly started convincing her husband to go through with the marriage. But apparently our young murderess was scared her mother would tell her father in an effort to convince him to marry them off and poisoned her mother’s tea during desert. Mme DuPont didn’t actually touch the beverage until she was in the library talking with her husband. Once M. DuPont left, she dropped dead and Mlle DuPont, who was hiding in the closet, tied her up in the chandelier, knocked out the footstool from under her, and ran out of the room to her bedroom across the hall. There was the bang and she ran out again to join the rest of the household in the library.”
Silence met his words as everyone stared dumbstruck at the carpeting. M. Lepont looked furious but he refused to look at M. DuPont, who had slumped down onto the nearest chair and remained looking down.
“We’d better go,” the lieutenant said, gently leading Elise out the door. Elise gave one fleeting glance to Samuel before she left, making eye contact with no one else before the door slammed shut.
The room remained precisely the way it was as he was giving his recap of the events the night before. The silence was deafening and the stillness of the room made him think of wax figures.
“What’s going to happen to the baby?”
The question came so fast and quiet, Peter lost the speaker in the suddenness of it. “We’ll take care of her. Lieutenant Payne never mistreats her prisoners.”
Silence.
“Well then, I’ll leave you all to your preparations for the funeral. I’m sure the trial will be next week, but you’ll have to keep in touch with the lieutenant. Well, you all must be very busy so I will leave you to your work.”
Peter tipped his hat and walked out the door closing it gently behind him as he left. The cars were gone off the driveway and the crowd had dispersed with the police. Poor girl, Peter thought as he got into his black car and drove away from the large DuPage Estate.
This entry was posted on Saturday, December 1st, 2007 at 1:02 pm and is filed under Fiction Prose, Mystery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.