Chapter 23 -- Explosion

The explosion woke me up. I turned on the bedside light and looked at my clock. It was 1:30 AM. I put on a robe, and went looking to see what had exploded. Nothing seemed disturbed on the ground floor. On my way upstairs to the second floor I smelled gunpowder in the air. I had a horrible premonition of what had happened. The women on that floor were all at their doors looking out into the hall. All of the women except Erica, that is. I went directly to her door and knocked.

"Mary Susan here. Is everything all right."

"Yes. Please come in. I heard the sound of the bolt opening. Erica stepped back to let me in. She was holding my grandfather's cavalry pistol in her hand pointing vaguely downward. It was still smoking and was obviously the source of the gunpowder smell. She nodded her head slightly towards the wall across the room to my right. At first I couldn't make out what I was looking at, then I saw the body on the floor, then the brains and blood and gore on the wall above and behind it, and then the horror of it all came over me and I froze, unable to take my eyes off of the scene. After a few seconds, I looked down again at the almost headless corpse, then back at Erica."

"It's Robert Miller, or whoever he really is. I shot him. Thanks for lending me the gun."

"What happened?" It was absolutely all I could think of to say.

"They killed Klaus. They threw his body in the canal. This is the guy they sent for me. I shot him. I'm sorry about the wall. I didn't know it would make such a mess."

I stared at her for a long moment. Her face was calm and I had never seen her eyes quite so blue. I said, "Put the gun down on the dresser. Come with me. I'll call the sheriff."

The women on the floor were still looking at Erica and me from their doorways. "Constance, please go upstairs and rouse the men, then everyone please go to the parlor and remain there."

Once in my office with Erica I closed the door and called the sheriff. A man answered immediately and announced that he was the night deputy.

"There has been a shooting at Begley House and I'm afraid someone is dead. Do you know where that is?"

"Who is this?"

I said my name and after a few rather useless exchanges of the same information the deputy said that someone would be there in a very few minutes and not to disturb anything.

Several of them arrived shortly afterwards, some in uniform and others not. The sheriff who seemed to be in charge and who also seemed to have been gotten out of bed very recently to come here wanted to see the scene. I took him up to the second floor. For some reason, Erica came along behind us.

The sheriff carefully pushed the door to Erica's room open and walked in. The smell of gunpowder was still very strong. He turned on the ceiling light and looked around the room. When his face got to the dead man on the floor it got very serious.

"What happened?"

He didn't sound excited or aggressive. He had taken in the body on the floor and the mess on the wall. He looked at the cavalry pistol on the dresser and then at the smaller pistol on the floor next to the body. I hadn't seen that before, although it was in plain sight next to Robert's hand. The sheriff looked inquisitively at Erica and me.

"I shot him," Erica said simply, "with the pistol on the dresser. As soon as I saw the gun in his hand I knew I could shoot him. If I had waited any longer, I wouldn't have had the chance."

"What happened before that?" the sheriff wanted to know. "How did he get into the room? Did you invite him in?"

"He came in through the window, as he always did. I pretended to be asleep. He was looking in my briefcase when I turned on the light. I knew he would come tonight. He had to, after what happened at tea this evening. Or I guess I mean last evening. By the way, Mary Susan, thanks for letting me have one more chance. I was getting tired of the game."

The sheriff walked over to the window, saw that it was open, saw the rope ladder coming down from the room above. He looked back at Erica. "So you didn't invite him in, but you knew he would come."

I spoke up. "It's a long story. Once you've looked at the room all you want to, could we move the conversation somewhere else?"

The sheriff agreed. He called for several of the non-uniformed policemen to come upstairs to the room.

"Have a good look around. Get the Coroner out here, although I'm pretty sure we won't need him to tell us the cause of death. Don't touch the body until he comes. Take pictures, dust for prints, the whole thing. This is quite possibly a crime scene. Treat it as such."

The other sheriffs deputies, or whatever they were, didn't seem to me to want to touch the body much anyway. I led Erica and the sheriff downstairs to my office. I noticed that Erica was now between my and the sheriff. Once I got them into the office, I motioned the sheriff to my desk. He looked puzzled, then pleased. "Thank you. Mrs. Begley, isn't it? That's who the desk sergeant said you were."

"I'm Mary Susan Begley," I responded. "I own Begley House. The others rent rooms from me by the semester while they attend college. Everyone calls me Mary Susan. If you don't object, I'd like to sit in on your interview. I might even be able to contribute a few things."

"I have no objection at this point. It's never a good idea to interview a suspect, especial female, without a witness. Things get said. Ideas get around. I feel like you will make an excellent witness."

Turning once more to Erica, "Now, first tell me your name, and then tell me the story, all of it. Take your time and don't leave anything out."

Erica did that. The story had not improved with time. It still sounded quite impossible, silly even. The fact of the corpse upstairs was the only thing that made at least some of it real. Erica finished her story by relating the shooting itself.

"Where did you get the gun? I haven't seen one of those things in a long time."

Erica glanced at me, then turned back to the Sheriff.

I spoke before she did. "She borrowed it from me. It was my grandfather's, left over from the civil war."

He called his office and requested a stenographer to be roused from his sleep and to report to Begley House. When the stenographer arrived, he took the seat behind my desk and Erica, on request, told her story again, exactly the same way in exactly the same words. After the story was told a second time and the stenographer had indicated that he was satisfied that he had the whole thing correctly, the Sheriff dismissed him and turned once more to us.

"Please come down to the Courthouse later on this morning, say about 10:00 to read and sign your statement. I am expecting both of you. Until then please don't say anything about this to anyone. We will be leaving once we have finished our inspection of the scene and have had the body removed. We will also take the pistol. There might be an autopsy, but for the life of me I can't understand why. You are free to go for now. Don't go upstairs until we finish. I'll let you know when that is."

Sure enough, there was a uniformed deputy standing at the foot of the stairs when Erica and I left my office. I directed Erica into the spare bedroom downstairs. "You can stay here for the time being. I'll see that your things are brought down as soon as I can. You probably won't want to go into the parlor just yet. I'll say something to the other guests and wait in the parlor with them until we are allowed to return to our rooms."

Then, finally, I talked to the group still sequestered in the parlor. They were eager to learn everything and I told them almost nothing. There had been an act of violence involving Erica and Mr. Robert Miller. Mr. Robert Miller was dead. There was no danger at all of any further disturbance. They were to remain here until the Sheriff released them. There would be further explanations in a day or so, when more information was available.

This did not satisfy anyone at all. I never thought it would, but it was all they were getting out of me that night. I had had enough, and I also knew that I hadn't heard the last of it by any means and that I had better be discrete until I did.

I wondered that the Sheriff did not take Erica into custody. I was to wonder about that again later on. I also foolishly wondered if I would get the pistol back.

At 3:15 by the clock over the fireplace the Sheriff knocked on the parlor door and then came in. "You are all free to go back to your rooms now. Miss Landsdorf's room and the room directly above it are locked and sealed. They are not to be entered until the seal is removed. That might be several days. Is that understood?"

It was. Every head nodded solemnly and silently.

"Mary Susan and Miss Landsdorf will meet me at the Sheriff's office tomorrow morning. Everyone else is requested to remain in Brown's Crossing until further notice. We will probably want to talk to each of you before the investigation is completed. Thank you for your cooperation."

The Sheriff left, and the guests returned to their respective rooms. There was no further conversation. I started for the now unguarded staircase when Margaret caught my eye. "May I go with you? I can help with Erica's things."

"Not if you are the least bit squeamish. I mean that. It is not a pleasant sight."

"I'll be OK, I think." She followed me up the stairs.

I carefully removed the Sheriff's carefully placed seal and we went into the room. The body had been removed but everything else was exactly as I had last seen it. It wasn't too bad if you didn't look at the wall or the floor in front of it. Oddly enough, there wasn't much smell, of either gunpowder or death, possibly because the window was still open. We bundled up Erica's clothes and school materials as best we could and took them downstairs to the spare bedroom. We found Erica sitting on the bed, looking very tired but dry-eyed.<\p>

"Thank you. I wasn't looking forward to going back into that room, at least not tonight."<\p>

"This room was intended for the cook. Our cook lives close by and doesn't use the room. You can have it for as long as it takes to renovate your old room, or for as long as you want."<\p>

As we were leaving, Margaret said, "I'm right next door. If you want somebody to be with you, just pound on the wall or something."

"What a kind action," I thought, "how very preceptive of Margaret."

Erica even replied. "Thank you. I might do that."<\p>

It seems silly somehow to relate that the rest of the night passed without incident.