John Manning - The Killing Room

“There is simply no way he wouldn’t have seen him,” Carolyn mused to herself, reenacting for the third time the order of events as Harry Noons had described them.

She stood on the terrace that led into the kitchen of the great house. Off to her right was the former entrance into the servants’ quarters. Once it had consisted of a series of stone steps that led into the basement. Now it was sealed over with concrete. But it was still plainly evident that anyone leaving that way would have had to pass right by this terrace. The place where Harry Noons had been standing when he rushed out of the house after hearing the screams from downstairs.

“And he saw no one come out,” Carolyn said to herself. “No one. He ran down there himself and saw no one. No one passed him on the stairs.”

Clem may have hid in the basement. That was the only logical explanation. He could have been hiding in the basement when Harry Noons came running back down the stairs. But by then, everyone in the household had come running themselves, and they searched everywhere for Clem. Surely they would have searched the basement. Surely, if Clem had been hiding, someone would have spotted him-if not immediately, then when he tried to make his escape.

No, the only answer was that Clem must have made a run for it up the steps into the main house and escaped through the front door. It would had to have occurred in the few seconds between the time Noons ran out of the kitchen and back down the steps into the servants’ quarters. But that was awfully unlikely, too: Carolyn had been up and down the staircase into the main house many times now, and Clem would have had to run out through the front foyer while the house was filled with people. How odd that no one would have seen him. But it was the only logical answer to how he had gotten out of the basement.

That is, the only logical answer if Clem had actually been the one to kill Beatrice.

The morning was cool, with a hint of autumn. The dew was still on the grass when Carolyn had tiptoed out of the house to once again reenact in her mind the day Beatrice was killed. Mr. Young and Douglas were still asleep; the servants had yet to arrive to begin cooking their usual sumptuous breakfast. The sun was still rising over the trees, the sky a wash of rosy pink with flecks of yellow. Carolyn walked back and forth through the wet grass imagining Harry Noons coming out of the sealed-up entrance and crossing the terrace, going inside the house to tell Mrs. Young he was finished for the day, then coming back out here when he heard the screams.

“Good morning.”

Douglas’s voice startled her. She turned quickly, then smiled. The morning sun cast a soft pink glow on his face. His hair glowed. He looked incredibly handsome in that light.

“Oh, good morning,” she said.

“Still perplexed about how the brute escaped?” he asked.

She nodded. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“He must have run past while Noons was standing in the doorway to the house, talking to my great-great-great-grandmother,” Douglas said.

Carolyn shook her head. “Look for yourself. He would have had to run right past here. Right here! This is where Noons would have been standing. He would have seen him!”

“Then when and how did Clem make his escape?”

“He could have left the basement immediately after Noons did, in those few moments when Noons was inside the kitchen, talking with Mrs. Young. That was the only moment when Noons might have missed seeing someone leaving the basement.”

“But the screams came only after Noons was inside the kitchen. If Clem left immediately after Noons did, as you say, he couldn’t have been down there killing Beatrice.”

“Precisely.” Carolyn raised her eyebrows. “In some ways, the timing actually offers a bit of an alibi for Clem.”

“Why are you so certain Clem didn’t kill Beatrice?” Douglas asked. “Clearly he’s involved in all of this. People have seen his ghost. He’s the man with the pitchfork.”

Carolyn shrugged. “I’m not certain he didn’t kill her. He may well have. He certainly seems the most likely suspect. Beatrice was murdered with one of the tools of Clem’s trade. He was there moments before she died, and they were arguing. She had just turned him down, so he definitely had a motive.” She smiled. “I’m just considering all options. It’s what investigators do.”

Douglas sighed. “And do they also visit sad old ladies confined to mental institutions?”

Carolyn sighed as well. The task ahead of them this day was not going to be pleasant. “When necessary, we do.” She glanced over at the rising sun, now seeming to set the trees afire. “You don’t have to go with me to see Jeanette. I can go alone.”

“No, I want to go.” Douglas looked sad. “I remember my father taking me to see her once when I was quite little. He always felt real bad about what happened to her. I remember that he told me that when they were kids, he used to think Jeanette was the most beautiful girl in the world. She was a little bit older than he was, and Dad would just sit there and watch her at family gatherings, transfixed by her. She was like his first crush. And smart, too. He always said Jeanette was so smart. That it was all so tragic because Jeanette had been going to Yale and was going to have this great life. When we went to see her, I remember how sad Dad was afterward. He kept repeating how beautiful Jeanette had been, and how smart.”

Carolyn nodded. She’d been reading about Jeanette Young. She had been a master’s student at Yale at the time she went into that room. Kip had found several of her student papers, and they were preserved in the files he’d drawn up on every member of the family who had been chosen in the lottery. Jeanette was involved in the women’s liberation movement, and had written extremely literate papers on the prevalence of sexism in academia and religious life and the marketplace. This was no timid little woman who could be scared into submission. Indeed, Carolyn found it fascinating that the one person who had made it out of that room alive was a woman. Was it Jeanette’s gender or the sheer strength of her willpower that had allowed her to survive? Or possibly was it a combination of both?

Of course, she could hear Howard Young saying to her that it would be hard to say that Jeanette survived, given what she had become.

They heard movement in the kitchen then. The servants had arrived. The smell of cinnamon bread baking was wafting across the yard. Carolyn and Douglas smiled at each other and headed inside.

Howard Young was apparently sleeping late, so they ate breakfast by themselves. Carolyn thought it peculiar that he wasn’t up to give her any last-minute advice about her visit to Jeanette. But perhaps the prospect of her visit to his unfortunate niece distressed him so much that he preferred not to talk any more about it until it was all over. Douglas had confirmed that the subject of Jeanette had always made his uncle quite sad. The whole family had always been upset about poor Jeanette.

But she was alive. And that was more than could be said about many members of the family.

Carolyn had been warned that she wouldn’t get much out of Jeanette. Kip had been to see her. All he had gotten was a blank stare. He had learned nothing. Even when Georgeanne had touched her hand, she had been unable to pick up anything concrete. “Peaceful,” Georgeanne said. “All I can tell you is that she feels peaceful.”

At least they could be grateful for that. Jeanette may have been lost to the world, but at least she didn’t spend her days in any kind of tortured misery.

After breakfast, they headed outside. Carolyn expected that one of Mr. Young’s cars would be brought around for them to use. The home where Jeanette was living was only about an hour away up the coast. But instead of a car, waiting outside in the front driveway was Douglas’s motorcycle.