Masquerade: A Nevers and Moon Mystery - Part II
‘If you could please assemble the household, we’d be happy to tell you exactly why we’re here.’
Chapter 4
‘If you could please assemble the household,’ Cleo said to Mrs Ray. ‘We’d be happy to tell you exactly why we’re here.’
‘Alright, then.’ Mrs Ray nodded and briskly walked away. She returned to the parlour a few minutes later with Peter and Mallory at her heels. Peter hovered gloomily just inside the door. Mallory sat down and folded her arms, looking quite cross.
‘I couldn’t find Eliza,’ Mrs Ray said. ‘Dr Eliza James, the family doctor. She must still be sleeping.’
‘That’s fine,’ said Frank. ‘There’s something I’ve been wondering about. Perhaps you could help me, Mrs Ray.’
‘Yes?’
‘What’s that?’ Frank pointed towards a small table that stood beside the wall, with a large empty vase on it. Well, actually he was pointing behind the table, where there was a steel box embedded in the wall.
‘A dumbwaiter,’ said Mrs Ray. ‘We don’t use it. I’m not even sure it works.’
‘Fascinating. Let’s get started,’ Cleo said. ‘In 1976, this location registered a massive spike of radiation, six times more powerful than a hydrogen bomb. At first, the authorities feared it was a bomb but, obviously, that wasn't quite it. Nothing to see here, just an ordinary house. But the readings continued. The scientists chalked it up to technical error.'
'Oh, yes,' Peter nodded. 'Can’t trust a machine.'
'Quite.' Cleo nodded. 'But not this time. The thing about scientists is that they check their results over and over. And every time, no matter what they changed, the readings came out the same. There was no outward sign that anything was amiss and yet, there it was, unseen and unfelt; an invisible Hiroshima.'
She gave them a moment to process that bombshell.
'Why now?' Mallory asked. 'If this has been going on for so long, why are you here now?'
'Because that wasn't the end of it,' said Cleo. ‘The readings stopped the night Valentine LaGrange, your grandfather, disappeared. Then they came back again for a brief window the night your father went missing. The powers that be can make their peace with an unexplained phenomenon but not one that comes and goes, possibly taking important people with it.’
‘So do you know have any clues as to what it is?’ Mrs Ray asked.
‘Absolutely none,’ Cleo said with a smile. ‘At least, not at this time. But we think at least one of you might know something about all this. So, if that person could just tell us what we need to know, we’ll be on our way post-haste. Anyone?'
The night before, Mallory woke up abruptly around midnight. She felt thirsty and headed downstairs for a glass of water. Standing in the kitchen, she noticed muffled voices coming through the walls. Mallory couldn’t identify who was speaking or where they were, but this is what they said:
‘What if someone finds out?’
‘No one will. There’s no crime committed.’
‘Yeah, right. Except for murder.’
‘There’s no proof. No proof, no crime. Now go to bed you silly goose.’
Peter looked positively animated, his ears burning a bright red.
‘I see what’s happening here,’ he said loudly. ‘This is a scam, isn’t it? You’re just parasites, trying to get your hooks into a poor, bereaved family. Well, I’ll tell you what you can do…’
‘Excuse me,’ Cleo said, interrupting Peter’s tirade. ‘Does anyone else hear that sound?’
That seemed to make him even angrier, but then he heard it too. It was a low, whirring sound, and it was coming from the dumbwaiter. Frank was standing beside the machine, a sheepish expression on his face.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I just wanted to see what would happen if I pressed the button.’
‘At least we know it works,’ Cleo shrugged. The dumbwaiter came to a stop. Frank casually opened the door and peeked inside, then immediately recoiled in horror.
‘Mrs Ray?’ Frank asked. ‘Is Dr James a brunette?’
‘Yes, yes, she is.’
‘Then I don’t think she’s sleeping.’ He gulped and swung the door open. The battered corpse of Dr Eliza James tumbled out of the dumbwaiter and onto the parlour floor. None of them reacted for a moment. And then Mrs Ray did the only sensible thing under the circumstances: she fainted.
Chapter 5
While Valentine LaGrange and Renfield Ray had many successful films to their name, their crowning glory was the seminal movie “The Ninjas of the Saigon”. Set in Vietnam, the film was the first to be shot in the country after the end of the war.
“Ninjas” broke all box office records in every market it was released in and nabbed ten Oscars in the year it came out. Its legacy was even more stunning, as it inspired countless remakes, parodies, and blatant rip-offs.
However, you would have a hard time finding the movie now. This is because one day, without any warning, every copy of the film mysteriously vanished. Even the glowing reviews and awards were gone, as if they never existed to begin with.
The world simply forgot.
After the discovery of Dr James’s body, Mrs Ray became extremely distraught and had to be taken up to her room. While her children attended to her, Frank and Cleo followed the dumbwaiter down to the basement. Frank turned the light on. In its warm glow, they saw pools of the late doctor’s blood congealing on the floor. Some of it was splattered on the walls.
‘Sloppy,’ he said. ‘They barely even tried to hide the evidence. Not a pro, I’m guessing.’
‘You noticed the body, right?’ asked Cleo. ‘The eyes?’
‘I noticed.’ Frank shuddered. ‘The killer cut them out. But why?’
‘How much do you know about retinal vasculature patterns?’
‘Not enough.’
‘Ms Moon,’ Peter called from the top of the stairs. ‘Mr Nevers? Are you down here?’
‘We’ll be right there,’ Cleo yelled. In her normal voice, she said to Frank, ‘Let’s go. I don’t see anything.’
‘Give me a minute.’
‘This is not our case, Frank,’ Cleo hissed. ‘We’re not here to solve any murders.’
‘It’s not that,’ Frank said, staring fixedly at a point just beyond the stairs.
As has been said before, there was nothing particularly special about the basement, apart from it being a crime scene. It was a large underground space with a disused dumbwaiter in one corner, a washing machine in another, and a furnace in a third. Frank was looking at the fourth corner.
A few minutes later, they returned to the kitchen and found an anxious Peter waiting for them, far removed from both the volcano and the storm cloud that they’d seen before. Now he was more like a lost bee, frantically trying to fly into a lightbulb.
‘Mom’s upstairs, crying,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
Peter seemed younger than he did before, helpless and in desperate need of assistance.
‘It’s okay, Peter,’ said Frank. ‘Where’s Mallory? Did you call the police?’
‘Mallory’s upstairs with Mom,’ Peter said. ‘The police… wasn’t home, but I left a message with his wife.’
‘Alright then,’ said Cleo. ‘Why don’t you head upstairs and have a lie-down? We’ll take it from here.’
Suddenly, there was a knock on the front door. It echoed through the house, sending a chill down Cleo’s spine.
‘We’ll get that,’ she told Peter, sending him up to his room. She looked at Frank and he took her hand. Together, they walked to the door.
Chapter 6
It was an old man, with a slight hunch and a friendly face.
‘Sorry to bother you,’ he said. ‘My car broke down back there.’ He waved towards the road. ‘Would you mind if I used your phone?’
‘It’s not our house, I’m afraid,’ Frank said. ‘But come on in.’
The old man followed them to the living room and they offered him a seat beside the fire. He gave them a grateful half-bow and sat down to warm himself.
‘I’m Granger,’ the old man said. ‘Vincent Granger.’
They introduced themselves and showed him where the phone was, then went into the kitchen to talk privately.
‘So,’ Cleo said. ‘Looks like we’ll have to investigate a murder after all.’
‘Well, right now I think Mrs Ray is looking very suspicious.’
‘She’s beside herself!’
‘Maybe too beside herself,’ Frank argued. ‘It could be an act. Or…’ He paused, looking outside through the small kitchen window.
‘Do you see a cat?’ he asked Cleo.
It was a fluffy black cat, and it was rubbing itself against a large leafless Linden tree that stood behind the house. It looked quite bored and forlorn; the way cats do. Excusing himself from his conversation with Cleo, Frank fetched his coat and set out to bring the feline in from the cold.
No sooner had he stepped out of the door, Frank cursed his own bleeding heart. It was, to put it in a word, frightful. The wind stung his eyes, filling them with tears. Struggling against the elements, Frank made his way towards the tree.
At the end of his epic 12-foot journey, Frank arrived at the Linden and discovered that the cat was nowhere to be found. Bewildered, he looked around for any trace of the little black monster that had lured him out of the house in this terrible weather. Nothing.
In despair, Frank turned his eyes back to the house and was utterly gobsmacked to see the cat sleeping comfortably in one of the first-floor windows. A moment later he realized that it was snowing. How did I not notice?
Night fell. Having somewhat recovered, Mrs Ray went down to the living room. There was no sign of anyone else and the lights hadn’t been turned on. Just as she was about to flip the switch, Mrs Ray caught sight of something that made her shriek her lungs out for the second time that day.
The noise brought everyone to the living room, where they found Mrs Ray lying unconscious on the ground. Cleo fetched a glass of water from the kitchen and sprinkled it on her face, rousing her.
‘Mrs Ray, what happened?’ she asked.
The woman didn’t respond. She was too scared. Her lips trembling, she raised one shaky finger and pointed towards the far wall, which sported floor-to-ceiling windows that one could use to walk out onto the front lawn (if there had been a well-maintained lawn in place outside). In the darkness beyond, they could just about make out the silhouette of a man with his back towards them.
Frank lit a candle and cautiously approached the windows. With a quick flick of his arm, he opened the window and pulled the mysterious figure inside.
'Constable Glott?!' Mrs Ray exclaimed. 'What on Earth are you doing?'
They asked him, while Peter attended to the lights. Once the room was lit again, Frank and Cleo could see that Constable Glott was not at all like they had imagined. They had expected a grumpy geezer, too lazy to get off his chair and do some actual investigating, yet here was an energetic young man with a boyish face.
'I was in the neighbourhood,' said the Constable. 'And the missus called, said you lot wanted me to come right away. Said there’d been a murder, she did. A murder, I tell you! In Hawthorne? Not bloody likely.'
'Of course, not.’ Frank said. ‘You didn't ski here, did you?’
'No, why?'
'Just checking. Mallory, would you mind turning on the radio?'
Mallory, still somewhat shocked, gave a quick nod and did as Frank asked. Through a haze of static, the metallic tones of the radio began to sound.
'… Repeat. A severe weather alert has been issued across the county. As of four o'clock today, all major roads and highways have been blocked by snow. Residents are urged to stay indoors until the storm passes. Stay tuned for hourly updates as the situation progresses…'
From a chair turned to the fireplace, there came a voice that said, ‘Looks like we’re all in trouble.’
Mrs Ray screamed once again.
‘Who are you?’ She yelped when she caught sight of Mr Granger. As it turns out, the old man had fallen asleep in his chair waiting for a mechanic to arrive and rescue his car from the snow. He apologised profusely for having scared them.
Cleo got to her feet. ‘I’ll put the tea on,’ she said. ‘And we can all have a nice chat.’
TO BE CONTINUED.
Stranger and stranger :0