The Bizarre and Untimely Death of Margaret Spoon

By Elwood Gray

It was a dark and stormy night. The door of the room was closed and locked from inside. Even the high clerestory windows were shut against the rain, although their latches had long been broken. The fire sputtered on the hearth, and a book with torn pages lay open on a small table by the armchair. The cover on the parrot’s cage had been removed — unusual for this time of night — and the parrot cowered in silence on the far corner of its perch. The bottle on the small table was nearly empty. A broken glass lay under the pool table. The pool game had been left in mid-play. Only the drapes in the corners of the bookcases moved gently as pounding resounded through the room, a deafening banging on the door. And Margaret Spoon lay on the hearth-rug — dead.

***

The door gave way, and the room filled with butlers and maids, relatives and houseguests, even a neighbor who’d been enjoying an evening walk with his basset hound and was curious about the brouhaha.

“Don’t touch anything!” shouted someone.

Within minutes, the police had arrived and emptied the room of spectators. Fingerprint marks were examined, fragments of glass were captured and whisked away to the lab, strange marks on the rug were investigated with intensity. Everything was thoroughly photographed, catalogued, and puzzled over. One by one, the houseguests dispersed to anterooms to gossip and surmise, and the neighbor took his dog and left.

Finally, only detective Simmons remained, talking quietly with Brimley, the butler, and Chas Spoon, Margaret’s nephew.

Simmons turned to Brimley and gave him strict instructions to keep the door locked until the coroner arrived. Brimley moved a chair in front of the door and sat on it, his eyes solidly staring at the wall across the hallway. Chas, obviously distraught, looked away.

“What’s your story, young man?” Simmons walked with Chas toward the kitchen.

“I loved Aunt Margaret. I can’t believe someone would do something like this.”

“Why are you so sure someone did? The door was locked. It looks like a suicide to me.”

Chas looked up. “You didn’t know Aunt Margaret. She loved life! She would no more commit suicide than abandon one of her own family. No, I’m sure someone did this. You have to find out who.”

They arrived in the kitchen as coffee was perking and sat down at the table. The maid left the room hurriedly.

“We didn’t find a suicide note,” said Simmons, “either in that room or in the woman’s bedroom, so there may be something to what you say. However, it’s hard to kill someone from behind a locked door.”

“It must have been poison in the bottle, don’t you see?” Chas was agitated.

“There’s no reason to get excited. The lab will have all that in the morning. Without a note or some other indication of a suicide, this case definitely belongs to homicide — although I have my suspicions the other way.”

Chas turned his head and put his fingers to his eyes. “What could possibly have caused her to do it? She had everything, plenty of money and family.”

“Did she have a paramour? A lover?”

Chas looked startled. “Aunt Margaret? Certainly not — at least not that I ever heard of. She never leaves this house, really. I think I would have known if there was anyone. I mean, we were nearly the same age, she and I. I would definitely have known.”

“So you live here, too, do you? Anyone else besides you and the staff?”

“Officer, there are constantly family members flitting in and out. The place is a regular hotel for Spoons and outlying relatives. Personally, they bore me to tears. I hide in my own library unless someone needs a fourth for pinochle.”

“Where is your library?”

“Just off the hall there. Nowhere as elaborate as Margaret’s, of course.”

Simmons walked Chas back through the door and up the hall. Brimley the butler gave no notice of their presence. “Your library is here? Does it share a wall with Ms. Spoon’s receiving room?”

“I never thought about it before, but I suppose it does.”

“Where were you when this whole ruckus started?”

“I was entertaining the Flossides in the drawing room, at the other end of the house. I believe one of your other officers took our statements already.”

“Is your door normally locked?”

“Yes. My private papers are in that room.”

“Thank you, Mr. Spoon. I’ll be in touch if I have any further questions.”

Chas seemed startled, but recovered himself. He unlocked his library door and went inside. The room looked small and inviting, walls of books and papers with a small desk, and a fireplace in the wall shared with the adjoining pool room. Chas nodded and closed the door behind him.

The detective thought for a moment, walking back into the kitchen. He removed his shoes and went quietly back to the door of Mr. Spoon’s library. At first he heard nothing, then a rustling of papers and subtle sounds of moving furniture, then nothing again. After a moment, more rustling, a few drawers opening and closing, and the smell of pipe smoke drifted through the doorway.

Simmons heard the coroner arrive and was just about to give a surprise knock when the door opened of its own accord.

Chas, brandy in hand, looked quite startled. “Detective Simmons, are you still here? Is there anything else you require?”

“No, thanks. I’m off now.”

“Right.” Chas glanced down. “Don’t forget your shoes, Detective.”

***

Simmons returned to the station for coffee in the odd busy silence that pervades a precinct in the early hours before coroners and labs produce results. His boss, Chief Mars, came in after daybreak and found him in an empty interrogation room, swirling his coffee and staring at an empty blackboard.

“Nothing yet?”

“No, sir. I have a feeling something fishy is going on, but it’s nothing I can place my finger on. Everyone checks out, and the live-in nephew is appropriately shocked. All in all, it looks like a suicide, but it sure would be easier to swallow with a note and some sort of personal motive. We turned the room upside down and found nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Word back from the coroner?”

“He was just arriving as I was leaving. I stuck around outside to make sure he had what he needed. More coffee first, I think.”

The phone was ringing on Simmons’ desk in the main room.

“Simmons here. What? You don’t say. When? Thanks, Jim.” Simmons looked at his boss. “The woman was known to hang out in there at all hours with the doors locked, even with guests in the house. The lab says there was definitely cyanide in the woman’s drink, and only her fingerprints on the glass and the bottle. But get this — they didn’t find cyanide in her system, although some of that was on the carpet. Instead, they found a compound that would make her appear dead when she wasn’t.”

Chief Mars jumped. “So she isn’t actually dead?”

“No, she definitely is, but not by poisoning. Jim says the cause of death was trauma to the back of the head — pretty darn fresh. The bruises hadn’t even clotted by the time she was on the table in the morgue. She couldn’t have been gone for more than half an hour. Chief, she was still alive that whole time we were there. Our suspect list just went from zero to everyone in the house, including our own officers.”

“Seal the place off.”

***

“I’m sorry, folks, but this is now a homicide investigation, and you’ll all have to remain here for questioning.” Simmons spoke to the crowd of well-dressed socialites gathered in the morning room. “Enjoy your breakfast and please try to be cooperative. We’ll interview each of you in the pool room. Ms. Spoon’s body has been removed by the coroner.”

There was a general shiver before everyone went back to their crumpets.

Each guest was brought into the pool room, where a desk was set up for questioning. A few had no idea that a death had occurred in their midst, and some wept openly at the loss of kind Ms. Spoon.

At midday, a lawyer arrived, carrying a summoned document — Ms. Spoon’s will. Simmons and the Chief weren’t surprised to see that the bulk of the estate was mostly left to the younger cousin, Chas, with the somewhat odd stipulation that he not marry outside the family. Chas acknowledged that he was aware of this, but couldn’t see how it impacted the situation.

“Of course we talked about wills. Mine says something similar,” Chas said to the officers. “I adored my aunt, and we were only a few years apart in age. I think she was always a little jealous and worried I might go off and marry some gold-digger — perish the thought! Now, if you will excuse me, I have a meeting with our vicar to arrange for the funeral. This is a terrible time.”

Chas walked, quickly but nonchalantly, toward the garage. Simmons looked sideways at his boss and went to his own vehicle.

Simmons followed Chas’ luxury car at a safe distance to a large cathedral. The vicar met Chas outside and took the passenger seat, and they drove on, past several cemeteries, until Simmons noticed they were coming back into town. They stopped a block from the coroner’s office, got out, and walked briskly into the office.

Simmons got out of his car as well. As he arrived, the door flew open, and Chas ran out.

“It can’t be!” he shrieked, yanking his hair.

Simmons and the vicar tried to grab his arms, but he pulled away to run up and down the sidewalk. He jumped on top of his own car and flew out into traffic, just in time to be mowed under by a garbage truck.

***

“Yes, they were to be married,” the vicar said quietly, his head down. He was alone with Simmons and the Chief. “The family, of course, would not have approved, nor would the church under most circumstances, but they believed the woman to be with child. Their plan was for her to mysteriously die and then come to life in the coroner’s office, from which they could leave with their millions and start a new life somewhere else. They didn’t count on Margaret winding up actually dead.”

“I have the chief coroner under arrest,” said Chief Mars.

“What do you think happened, Father?”

“I think the hand of God appeared. There is no other explanation.”

“We’ll have to keep looking, then. We haven’t located God just yet.”

***

Simmons stood in front of the pool room door, his eyes narrowed, and glanced down at Brimley. “You say no one has been in or out?”

“No, sir,” Brimley said without looking up. “Not a soul.”

“Did you hear anything from inside?”

“Not a thing, sir.”

“Let me in.”

Brimley stood aside and opened the door. The room looked exactly as it had before. Simmons looked at the photos of the room — all the same. Windows and curtains the same. Furniture the same. Even the stains on the carpet looked the same. The parrot still stood in the back of its perch with the door open, quietly watching.

Simmons set the batch of pictures down on the pool table. “Hell.”

“Corner pocket,” said the parrot.

“Huh? Boy, I bet you heard that a few times, eh?” Simmons turned to the parrot.

“Corner pocket, sharp.”

Simmons looked back at the photos. The balls on the table were slightly different. Yes — in the photo the red ball was near the center, and the solid yellow near the edge of where his hand was now. The balls were rearranged.

“That’s odd,” Simmons said, again to the parrot. “Did you do this?”

“Corner pocket, corner pocket,” the parrot repeated and turned to face the back wall.

Simmons looked into each of the corner pockets. In one he found the striped yellow nine, and the next two were empty, but in the fourth he found the solid red three-ball that was in the photograph. He reached in to retrieve it. It felt sticky. He set it down on the table, traces of blood on his hand, and called to Brimley to bring in the Chief.

At the base of the sticky pocket, he noticed a small brass lever painted black. On an impulse, he reached in and pulled it.

The bottom of the table swung down toward his feet, and a figure tumbled out. It was a disheveled, withered-looking young man.

The Chief ran into the room as the young man staggered backward into a corner and fell into an armchair.

“Who the hell are you?” Simmons shouted.

The Chief drew his gun.

“That won’t be necessary, officer,” the young man croaked. “I heard someone in the hall say he died, didn’t I?”

“Chas Spoon? Yes. He committed suicide when he found out Margaret Spoon was actually dead.”

The young man smiled resignedly. “Yes, Chas. Then it was never meant to be. He never loved me, after all.” He sighed. “Such is life.”

The young man’s eyes teared up briefly. He shrugged, removed a vial from his shirt pocket, and drank the contents. He convulsed for a moment and landed on the floor unmoving.

***

“Just so I get it all straight,” said the Chief for the third time over his third cup of coffee. “This kid knew all about the rich nephew’s plans to elope with his aunt, but foiled the deal by killing the aunt in the hopes that he could run off with the nephew? That just sounds like bad fiction.” He reached into his hip pocket and drew out a metal flask, and, also for the third time, poured a liquid into both his own cup and that of Simmons across from him.

“It looks that way, Chief. I thought I’d seen just about everything before this.”

“No one’s seen everything, son. But after a day like this, we sure get one step closer.”

Elwood Gray is the author of the 1960’s underground cult classic science-fiction series, Earl Grey, Earl Grey in Time, Earl Grey Wasting Time, Earl Grey Losing Time, and The Lost Earl Grey. He currently resides in Gold Gulch in the fabled Santa Cruz Mountains.