2DEATH COMES AT MIDNIGHT
Bencolin was troubled.
It wasn't so much the fact that he had forgotten to phone his friend Alex and call off their trip to the Hamptons (despite his continued promises that would not occur). It wasn't the fact that he had misplaced the keys to his basement (again). It wasn't the fact that that basement key also happened to share the same keyring as the replicas of every door to his house (although it wasn't something he was terribly happy about, to be fair). It wasn't the fact that he had left his leather wallet at work. No - the fact that Mr. John Bencolin was somewhat of a "clumsy wreck of what one could only assume was a man under those constantly questioning hazel eyes" (as a certain friend of his would've often poetically put it) had nothing to do with his troubles at that moment in time.
He had received a letter.
A letter with no stamp or return address.
A letter which simply read:
"On the night of February 13th, at precisely 11:59, a murder shall occur
in your bedroom, Mr. Bencolin.
Sincere apologies."
Naturally, it was left unsigned.
Bencolin wanted to believe it was a prank. He really, truly did. After all, it wouldn't have been the first time. His father was the (former) Chief of the Paris Police Department, known for solving the vile and impossible. Something which his son always found strangely fitting, considering how he'd always seen him as a vile and impossible man. As did many others, undoubtedly.
He had been nicknamed "The demon detective", after all.
So, it was not uncommon for John to be associated (mistakenly, he believed) with the name - even after he'd moved to England and left the watchful eye of the man some were known to mistake for Mephistopheles if they were ever to bump into him in the cold night. These "incidents" were few and far between, but they when they happened, his heart could never help but jump a bit. After all, nobody likes to have death threats waiting for them in their mailbox after a long and tiresome day of patching up torn coats. Especially when the fault never actually lied with John himself, but rather his father's investigations. It was usually the work of the man (or men) his father had been pursuing at the time who, taking a page straight out of a shoddy and cliched play, believed they could instill fear into the devil's heart through his son. Unfortunately, what the criminals never counted for was the fact that John swore to himself he would never speak to his father again - no matter what the circumstances. It is a bit of a hitch when the man one is trying to threaten never finds out he is supposed to be being threatened.
He generally never reported the attempts, believing he could always look after himself. And this, up to that point, had proven to be the correct decision. Despite the threats, he was still alive and breathing - still living his life as honestly as he could. His supposed enemies were as cowardly as they were desperate like all the other criminals, he figured.
As such, the letter in his hand shouldn't have bothered him in the slightest.
But it did.
Because something told him - some gut feeling rose inside him. The same gut feeling no doubt his father had to have possessed to maintain his strong position and fearful reputation. A feeling of dread. He felt as if he was to be swept away by a marching current of the sea and taken into the unknown.
This is no prank, is it? he thought, as he glanced down once again at the contents of the letter, which was now placed on top of his kitchen table. A simple message. And yet one he couldn't make heads or tails out of.
For one, they weren't threatening him directly. All the letter had said was that a murder would occur in his bedroom. It never said he would be the intended victim... which might just have been wishful thinking on his part. After all, Bencolin lived alone. If anyone was to be found dead in his bedroom, it would have been him. But why such bizarre wording, then? To Bencolin, it almost seemed like he was to merely find the body. Which only made the whole matter even more bizarre to him.
Secondly, why even send a letter at all? The sender must've assumed that he would phone the police as soon as he read the contents, thus making the police come to his house, thus the bedroom, thus having the supposed crime scene under the police's watchful eye, thus making the execution of the murder at the given date and time completely and utterly impossible.
If it was a threat, it was pointless.
If it was a practical joke, it wasn't funny.
And yet, once again, the same feeling from before continued to haunt Bencolin, to the point of forbidding him to even so much as move. He could not explain why he was so suddenly shaken and... afraid.
It was at that moment that he finally realized.
As the sun began to set, the troubled man found himself to be a victim of the inevitable passage of time. The cold February day was slowly, but surely, coming to an end.
The cold February day of the 13th.
"Sincere apologies, huh..." Bencolin helplessly sighed.
The most bizarre element of the entire incident, however, was not the letter.
It was the fact that, despite his premonition, despite his fears, despite his suspicions and despite his doubts - when the clock struck 10 that night, Bencolin had still not called the police. He had not called anybody, in fact.
Instead, he'd gone to his neighbor's, Anderson's, and helped him move some of their old furniture up to the attic, just as he had promised to do a few hours earlier. It was, in fact, the reason why he had called off his trip with Alex. (Although, he couldn't recall at the time if he had remembered to phone and tell Alex about that little fact).
Bencolin's father would've found the course of action idiotic. Although Bencolin himself couldn't really hold it against him - he suspected that anyone sane would've looked at it the same way.
"You look terrible." Anderson spoke up after the two had sat down on the stairs after moving the last of the old dining room chairs, each one amazingly missing exactly one leg. "I mean - don't get me wrong, you always look terrible - I mean, look at you - but now you look... especially terrible."
"How exactly did you manage to even walk around this place with all that furniture?" Bencolin yawned, scratching his stubble.
"I mean, you haven't even shaved in... how long, man? How exactly do you think you're supposed to become some rich guy's trophy wife?" Anderson took a sip of his beer. He'd forgotten to offer any to Bencolin - though he suspected it was probably because someone as cheap as Anderson only bought one bottle per day, just in case the world suddenly decided to end and he'd accidentally spent three pounds more on beer he was never going to drink.
"It's nice - that furniture. Have you considered maybe patching it up and selling it off for some quick cash?"
"And geez man, look at your hair! I'm starting to think you crawl up into a cave when you go to sleep at night." Another swig.
"I think I saw some Mahogany there. I know someone who'd pay nicely for it." Bencolin scratched the back of his head.
"Look..." Anderson set the bottle next to him. By the sound of it, Bencolin could've sworn that it was already empty. "...I know you've been through a lot since the divorce, but you know that wallowing in self-pity ain't gonna do you much good."
"The house looks a bit emptier, now that I think about it, though."
"...Johnny. Come on. You gotta start listening to what I'm telling you here. For God's sake, you look like a tramp!"
"And you look like an American."
Anderson chuckled. "What gave it away, I wonder, I wonder?"
"It was mainly the part where I looked at you and thought that you were a crack addict."
"Hey!"
"Oh, and the snotty, I-know-better-than-you attitude."
"Well-"
"Look. I'm fine. Just fine." He didn't look Anderson in the eye.
"...You know, you might've changed your name to John, but it doesn't take a genius to tell you're French."
"How so?" The frustration in his voice was slowly becoming more and more apparent.
"It's mostly the fact that you're a sentimental idiot." Anderson pointed to Bencolin's left hand, a satisfied smirk on his face. "You've still got the ring on."
Silence.
"...So?" Bencolin finally said.
"She ain't coming back."
"No, I mean - why does that make me French, you idiot?"
" 'Cause it's true. Besides, you were the one to throw out stereotypes first."
"Because they're true. Yours just don't make any sense."
"Whatever you say, Mr. Bovary." He picked up and prepared to take another swig from his bottle, only to put it down with an annoyed grunt. "Look, all I'm saying is - you're killing yourself here."
"Well - if I am, it's my decision, isn't it?"
"Never met a guy that liked being miserable."
"I don't. But not like there are any alternatives."
"You know, I take it back. You're not French. You're just stupid."
Bencolin sighed tiredly. "I already knew that."
Anderson followed suit. "All I'm saying is-"
"I know what you're saying."
Silence, once more.
The troubled man wondered if every discussion with his friend had to end in such a way.
It was not something for which he held Anderson accountable - quite the opposite - it was himself that was the biggest problem in the entire picture. A sad picture. The portrait of a man who would turn back to his most precious of successes and most glorious achievements and wonder if they were all merely catalysts to his current state of mind. A man who wished to go back and change the direction of the train tracks. A man who was, in the end, now as weak as he was willful and determined in his younger years.
...Younger years.
Above all, Bencolin believed himself to be old.
The definition of such a harsh accusation in the ever-changing currents of time, space and people varies depending on who you ask. To Bencolin, someone like Anderson, for example, who was roughly around the same age as him, was still quite young. A youth reflected not in the visibly worn-out face of the American, but his spirit. Something which Bencolin often yearned for as he ever so often looked at his own reflection during some of his many sleepless nights. All he saw was an endless, unsatisfied longing for change which he knew he would never receive.
The second wave of silence was broken with a realization.
"It's 11." The troubled man quietly spoke.
Anderson, in turn, looked at his wristwatch. "...Oh. So it is!"
"I should be heading back home. I've, um... Got a few things to take care of."
"At eleven?" Anderson grinned.
"At eleven." Bencolin repeated disinterestedly. And yet, Anderson noticed a sudden change in his eyes. Was it excitement? Fear? Or something else? He couldn't tell. For better or for worse - he never could with that troubled man.
"Alright, fine then. Let me walk ya out."
The two men descended down the stairs and began to approach Anderson's front door.
"Where is your delightful wife, by the way?" Bencolin remarked as he grabbed the doorknob. Anderson could only shrug.
"Dunno. She said she had some errands to run. Imagine she'll be back soon. Why ya ask?"
"No reason." He pulled the door open.
"Now, when I said you should try and moving on, I didn't mean my wife, John!" Anderson said in his usual mocking tone as he tapped Bencolin's shoulder.
"Jennifer is all yours, have no fear of that."
"Hoh! Such confidence!"
The troubled man stepped outside. "I mostly say that because of that one small fact that she's a terrible person that nobody else would dare touching with a 12-foot pole." His face remained as cold as the outside air.
The door slammed shut behind him without another word.
For all of his attitude, Bencolin knew that if there was one easy way to get rid of Anderson for some time was if you pushed the subject of his wife. The man was, in the end, a hopeless romantic at heart. Which, in turn, explained some of his fascination with Bencolin's own endeavors on that particular field.
It was snowing.
It had been snowing for quite some time.
And while that fact should have been apparent to anyone that even bothered to look at the sky or the road or the houses or even their own clothing, it took Bencolin some time to make the observation as he slowly made his way back to his house.
And while that fact should not have been of any importance to anyone, as it had snowed just days earlier - Bencolin found himself unable to move. He could merely look.
And he chose to look at the sky.
He chose to look as the snowflakes made their gentle descends to the dirt-stained ground below. No matter how much he tried he could never keep his eyes focused on just one. He was distracted time and time again by another one just moments after spotting one of interest. In a matter of minutes, it turned into a game. After a couple of more - it was an endurance test.
The time was perhaps inappropriate, all things considered, but Bencolin cared little. His mind began to slowly drift.
"Jacques." A distant voice spoke to him. A voice that he had come to despise. "You should not feel any remorse for the dead. Remember! There are two types of people in the world - the wicked and the weak. The wicked shall receive death not as a gift - but as punishment. Like a disease, they shall be extracted from society and simply replaced by someone else. Thus, in a way, one can argue that they are never truly gone to begin with. Perhaps that thought could comfort one. ...Assuming there should be any reason to mourn such people.
The weak, on the other hand, shall merely receive what they were waiting for. It is like standing on the train tracks, yes? What else would you expect aside from being hit by the speeding train? It was their own choice not to move - something they could have done. Instead, they choice to cry and call for help. Alas, they did not know that everyone else has no desire to help them or is in the same situation themselves."
"And which one are you?" Bencolin asked the voice.
"Does it matter? Either way, you're not mourning." The voice replied calmly.
"No... not for you, at least."
"Then, for who?"
"For myself, of course." he chuckled.
"Then I wish you the best of luck fighting the oncoming train."
And just like that - the voice disappeared as swiftly as it had come.
"This... wouldn't be such a bad night to die on... would it?" He eventually mumbled and continued his walk down the street without another word, his black coat gently fluttering in the wind.
It was, perhaps, somewhat wrong to imply that Bencolin had done nothing about the supposed incoming threat. Especially after deciding that the matter was as dire as it was. But Bencolin believed his decision of not calling the police was perfectly justified. True - their involvement would have probably prevented what was to come, but it would have also very likely simply delayed the culprit's actions. After all, under such circumstances, nobody would've dared to pull off such a stunt, as it was concluded earlier.
But what they would have dared was to sent another letter. This time specifying another date and time. And after that one another. And after that one another. And after that one yet another. And Bencolin knew from his father's practices and his own handful of run-ins with the law in his younger days that there is a point in time when the supposed protectors simply stop caring. They would not respond to Bencolin's call forever. (In fact, he was quite convinced that they would've accused him of wasting police resources at one point or another).
As such - he realized that there was only one course of action. Assuming the culprit was a man of their word - catch them in the act.
Now, approaching such a situation alone WOULD be foolish - even Bencolin realized that much. As such, he called the only person he figured could help him in such a situation.
A detective.
A detective who Bencolin found was knocking on the front of his door just as he was approaching it himself.
"Good evening." he said calmly to the woman.
She turned around, meeting Bencolin's cold gaze - the surprise in her eyes only matched by the visible annoyance. "Where on Earth have you been?!" she shouted at him, showing no concern for the time or the neighborhood's good night's sleep. "First y' tell me that somebody's going t' get killed, and then you leave me freezin' me ass at your doorstep! I left quite a party 'cause of y'!" It showed. The dress she was wearing was not cheap, Bencolin deduced.
"Did you wait long?"
"Did I-?! What in the blazes d' y' think?! What part of 'freezin' me ass off' did you fail to interpret, man?!"
"I apologize, then."
"You will when I give you a nice backhand!" she crossed her arms. "Look, if y' wanted me to come over, you could've at least told me y' were goin' to kill yourself or sumthin'. Would've at least sounded more believable..." she sighed.
"And yet, here you are."
"And yet, here I am." she agreed.
This was detective Mary O'Dolan. And if there was one thing an individual had to know about her - one thing she would go out of her way to make absolutely clear about herself and her nature was that she was Irish.
And you would be damned if you did not acknowledge it as the truth.
Bencolin had met the seemingly hot-blooded woman while he was still in France. She was on vacation, and in just a few days, the two had grown quite close. And while it was a friendship he never regretted, deep down he cursed fate that it had saddled him with yet another...
Detective.
Mary moved aside and let Bencolin unlock the front door (which he had locked on his way out, naturally) and the two moved into the small, but neatly-kept living room. ...Well, "neatly-kept" on paper, at least. Not even someone as usually laid-back as Mary could ignore the layers of dust that had begun to form in the corners of the room. It was something she often reprimanded Bencolim for. In fact - it was something she quite demandingly told him to take care of on her previous visit just a couple of days ago. It was clear that it had fallen on deaf ears. And while on any other day, she would've given in to the urge of smacking the troubled man on the back of his head, she was far too preoccupied with the thoughts of what Bencolin had called her for.
Upon sitting down, Bencolin calmly explained in detail on what his predicament was.
"Can't it just be a prank?" she raised her eyebrow.
"Hence, why I didn't call the police." Bencolin shrugged.
"Right. But y' had no problem callin' me up."
"Hey - I just don't..." he scratched the back of his head. "...I don't want to die."
"So y' want us to die together, is that it?"
"Actually, I was more hoping for a brave sacrifice on your part, giving me the chance to take down the culprit."
"Y' arse."
"Quite ironic, coming from you."
"What's that supposed t-?! Oh, never mind!" she growled. "So, shouldn't we be in your bedroom or sumthin'?"
"We will, eventually, but I doubt there's going to be anything to see. Before I left, I checked it - no dead body or a murderer waiting for me with a knife. There's only one window and it can only be opened from the inside. Sure, you could try breaking it, but the bedroom's on the second floor - you can't reach the window from the outside even if you wanted to. Unless you used a ladder or something, but I don't think anyone would be stupid enough to go down that route. That leaves the door. I made sure to lock it before I left and brought the key with me."
"They could've still broken it down, y' know."
"True, but they would've also had to have broken down the front door then. I locked it, too. Since, as you saw, it's perfectly fine (and locked), the only other method of entry is through the other windows on the house. And it's the same deal as with the bedroom one. Can't open them from the outside. ...Sure - they could reach some of the first floor ones, but I checked them a second ago. Didn't see any broken glass."
"Which would mean..."
"At least at the moment, we should be the only ones in the house."
Mary sighed. "Y' could've just called the police, though. We're not all incompetent hicks, y'know."
"A bit funny, coming from you."
"Y' callin' me incompetent?!"
"I didn't say that." Bencolin leaned back in his armchair. "I'm just saying that, for someone who spends most of her day reading stories in which the police ARE relatively incompetent aside from one particular detective that manages to put the pieces together and reveal a spectacular and far-fetched solution..."
"Just because I read the damn things don't make it like I actually believe in 'em or anythin'!"
"But it makes it funny."
"Then y' have the weirdest sense of humor I've ever seen!"
"Why do you like them so much, anyway?"
"Because they're not boring?" she replied almost instantly. "Well, t' be fair, I generally stick to the ones from the 20s. Those were the best."
"The ones that have seemingly impossible crimes, right?"
"Right!" there was a sudden amount of enthusiasm in her voice. "I mean, the current stuff is just... too violent for me, honestly. And they're less detective stories and more thrillers."
"I thought they were one in the same." A smirk on Bencolin's face.
"No, you didn't. You're just tryin' to get me to smack you upside the head."
"Is it working."
"Maybe." she eyed him like a beast just waiting to strike. He, however, wasn't exactly unsettled by it. It was hard to be when one was so used to it by that point. "The oldies... are more puzzles. More like a game. A challenge from the author to solve the crime before the detective. Which... admittedly... um... doesn't happen... all that often."
"Mainly because the solutions are just insane?"
"Depends on the author, but pretty much." she concurred. "But hey, that's part of the fun, if you ask me."
"Finding out how wrong you were?"
"More like finding out how creative the human mind can be when it comes to murder." she smiled. "Still, most of the fun is just human curiosity, I guess. When I start, I just got t' know, y' know?"
"I guess everyone is like that."
"Really? What about you?"
"What about me?"
"You're not really the most curious o' types."
"Well... Hard to be intrigued in a mystery when you know the solution won't surprise you."
"Really? How can you say that for sure?"
Bencolin casually glanced at the antique grandfather clock positioned neatly (and perhaps somewhat unusually) in the corner of the living room. Midnight was just around the corner.
"Want to bet?" he said, turning his head back to Mary.
"Y' were always a poor gambler."
"Fortunes change, you know."
Mary looked at him skeptically. "Not for everyone."
"I like to think it's a matter of perspect-"
Before Bencolin had a chance to reach the end of that sentence, he had already lost the wager.
As a gunshot rang across the house...
It had only taken a second to get over the initial surprise and shock, as the two were on their feet in a matter of mere seconds. Only one thought ran across both of their minds: the bedroom. Bencolin didn't bother to look at the grandfather clock a second time to confirm if the prediction was correct down to the second and instead dashed up the stairs to the second floor.
"Wait!" He could hear Mary's voice behind him, but he had no intention of stopping.
A gunshot.
In his home.
Bencolin had no choice but to fear the worst.
And yet, as he finally reached the door to his bedroom, there was a bizarre sense of relief. The door was still locked, just as he had left it. And he had the only key. And yet, the feeling of relief did not last for long, as the sense of dread and impending doom from earlier in the day took over him once more. He stood at the door, motionless, as Mary finally caught up with him.
"Are y' insane?! Y' can't go rushing int-"
"Do you have your gun with you?" he turned to her.
"Wh-? N-No!"
Bencolin only nodded, motioning her to step aside as he pulled the key from his pocket. A key which he was convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt was there the entire time since he had locked the door initially. And he was not mistaken in that regard.
He slid the key into the lock and turned it only once. This, in the back of Bencolin's mind was strange as he, for all his clumsiness, was someone who had a need to always turn the key twice when locking a door. But there was no time to think anything of it. He pushed the door open and rushed inside the bedroom.
The room was pitch black. The only source of light was coming from the outside hallway. And yet, in was enough for Bencolin to make out something he knew was not there when he inspected the room just hours earlier.
Almost left as a present, neatly placed in the center of the room, facing the doorway, was the body of a woman.
"Stand by the door!" Bencolin commanded Mary, who was about to follow him inside.
"Hey! I'm the dete-"
"I said: Stand by the bloody door!"
He carefully approached the body. And while Bencolin hoped with every fiber of his being that she was alive and that everything that had occurred up to that point was a part of an elaborate prank or a dream or a hallucination or... something else - he knew. A voice in the back of his mind told him. And as he kneeled down and inspected the woman, checking her pulse, he had no choice but to listen to it.
She was dead.
Shot in the back.
"Is she-?" Mary asked cautiously.
"Yeah." Bencolin quietly replied.
As if the sight of the dead woman in the state that she was wasn't bad enough, Bencolin's heart jumped for the second time that night, as he realized that he knew this woman.
It was Jennifer. Anderson's wife.
"...Bencolin? Bencolin!" Mary continued to shout at him from the doorway. Asking him questions. But he didn't respond. He barely even registered her presence anymore. Instead, he jumped to his feet and looked around.
"He's still here!" he announced.
"Wuh-?" Mary said, stunned.
"The culprit! He's still here! He has to be!" Bencolin explained. "Look! The window's untouched! The door was locked! I'm the only one that had the key! We heard a gunshot! There's no way he could've left through the door, and he couldn't have used the window, since he wouldn't have been able to close it afterwards! He's still in the room! He must be!" And with that, he began desperately searching.
"Bencolin, I-" Mary said, attempting to set foot into the room.
"Just guard the door in case he tries to make a run for it before I get to him!" he told her, anger now dictating the tone of his voice. Mary did as she was told.
He checked under the bed, the desk, he checked behind bookshelves, he checked behind the door, he even looked at the ceiling and under the carpet and yet-
Nothing.
Absolutely nobody.
Bencolin and the body were the only ones in that bedroom.
"H... how...?" he could only say, absolutely stunned. Was this... a suicide, then?! That seemed like the only logical explanation - except it made even less sense! There was no gun from which she could've supposedly shot herself with. Not to mention the fact that she had a bullet wound in her back.
Besides, how would she have gotten into the room to begin with? Or - rather - how could have anyone gotten into the room? As Bencolin himself earlier pointed out - the only methods of entry were the door and the window. The door was locked by him and the only key was in his possession. The door was not broken down or tampered in any way when Bencolin had stood in front of it just moments earlier. Even if it had been lockpicked, it's unreasonable to assume that the culprit managed to lock it afterwards. The window, as well - the culprit couldn't have used it to access the bedroom from the outside without breaking it. It had been left untouched.
And even if one was to put all of that aside - the very act of entering Bencolin's house should've been a challenge. There was no sign of anyone entering or being there when he inspected the house before entering the living room.
Perhaps afterwards?
No - he would've surely heard someone moving about his house. It was far from big, after all. And he would've especially noticed if somebody had attempted to go up the stairs to the bedroom - he had a clear view of the staircase from where he had been sitting in the living room.
Therefore, not only was the culprit's escape impossible - but so was their entrance.
"This is..." Bencolin said as he began to tremble.
"...an impossible crime. Just like from the oldies." Mary calmly remarked.
"I've called the police." she announced as she sat down next to Bencolin, who was now sitting on the living room sofa, his head buried in his hands. "They should be here shortly."
"Doesn't change the fact that she's... she's..."
"I need y' to calm down."
"Calm down?! There's a dead body in my- And-"
"I know. I'm not blind, y' know." she sighed. She wanted to remind him that she had suggested they go upstairs and take a look the moment they'd entered the house, but she knew that it was not the time nor the place for an "I told you so". "Let's just try to think about this logically, yeah? There's got t' be an explanation."
"Mary, I've been over it a hundred times in my head and I can't make sense of it!" Bencolin spoke through his teeth.
"Let's see... We know that the culprit must've already been in th' room by the time we sat down in the living room."
"Mary-"
"I can rule y' out as the culprit, since you were right next to me when it happened."
"Mary, I-"
"Now, the real question is - how'd they get in, eh? The answer to that probably tells us how they got out. Any secret passages?"
"What? No. Listen, Mary-"
"Hrm. Alright then. If you say so. Maybe if-"
"Mary, for the love of God would you shut up?!" Bencolin jumped from his seat. "My friend is dead! I KNEW about what was going to happen and I- I told nobody!"
"You told me!"
"I could've told the police! I... If... My God, what am I going to tell Anderson?! That's his wife lying there in my bedroom, Mary!"
"You did what y' thought was rational."
"Rational, my arse! I could've done something! I could've taken it seriously! I could've... I could've... Bah, I don't know! I could've at least... I... Damn it all, Mary, it should've been me! I should be the one lying there!"
"Bencolin..."
"My God, how could've I've been so stupid?! Catching him red-handed?! What was I thinking?!"
She said nothing.
"It... it doesn't matter who killed her. This is my fault!"
The sound of the grandfather clock echoed in the room.
"It should've been me..." he repeated. "She had a life. She... she could've been happy. She was happy, dammit!"
Mary sighed.
"Let's just think about how this was possible for a minute, shall we?"
"I don't care! Let the police handle that! I... I just..."
"Listen, Bencolin, nobody likes pages and pages of self-pity. The reader is getting bored and we're nearing the end - do your job."
...Huh?
"...What did you just say?" Bencolin's eyes widened ever so slightly.
"I said that y' should sit down and try not to think about it. Lord knows y've had enough things on your plate. You should just let the police handle this. Sorry I'm tryin' to pressure you about this. I guess I'm just nervous, too."
Bencolin did not move. "...Right." Was it just his imagination?
"Say, Bencolin, what did you have for breakfast this morning?" Mary asked him out of the blue.
"Um... what?"
"What did you have for breakfast?"
"What does that have to do with anything?!" he snapped at her.
"Just answer the question."
"I don't remember! Who cares?!"
"Alright. Fine, fine. No need to be like that. Just tryin' to get your mind off things."
"By talking about breakfast?!"
"Fine. We'll talk about our times at the toilet. I found a decapitated head in mine this morning, what about you, Bencolin?"
"Jesus Christ, Mary."
"Alright. So much for lightenin' the mood!"
"Has anyone ever told you that you are absolutely out of your bloody mind?"
"You would be the first."
"You are absolutely out of your bloody mind, then." he said, sitting down hopelessly in the armchair.
He couldn't get the dead body out of his head. Who could in such a situation?
After all, he knew that the murder would occur and he had failed to stop it. The murder was that of his neighbor's wife. The killer had done so under impossible circumstances.
These three things combined would break anyone.
And while Bencolin was perhaps not broken in the strictest sense of the word, he had certainly gone from troubled to disturbed.
Very disturbed.
Who would do something like this? he wondered. And he kept wondering, as no clear answer formed in his mind. Why would anyone do something like this? Because of the connection to his father? While possible, Bencolin had trouble accepting such an answer. This was no typical threat. This felt personal... and yet, so cold at the same time. How could anyone do something like this? The question was as literal as they got. The impossible crime. A locked room. A trick.
Whodunnit? Who committed the crime?
Whydunnit? Why was the crime committed?
Howdunnit? How was the crime committed?
All three of these questions were basic trademarks of...
"...a bloody mystery novel." Bencolin sighed, still as helplessly as before.
He was never a big fan of them. It wasn't so much because of all the death and killing. Nor because of the smugness of the detective and their unrealistic showmanship in the final few pages. Or because of the unrealistically happy or romantic endings. Or because of the far-fetched solutions that made one question the author's state of mind.
It was simply because... they lacked humanity.
The characters, the people in the stories always felt more like tools rather than actual... well, real people, to him. Like pieces on the chessboard, all with their specific moves. Like actors on the stage, all with their specific lines. Like variables in an equation. All for the sake of forming a puzzle for the detective to solve. Who these people are, what they've done, what they shall be - none of it truly mattered. Not to the detective, and thus not to the reader. One is only allowed to know elements related to the crime. Everything else is a loose end.
And a good story cannot have any loose ends.
Having grown tired of waiting for the police, against his better judgment, Bencolin returned to the bedroom. It was bizarre to him - the fact that he would do so. But his body felt like it had moved on its own.
He ended up searching. For what, he did not know. Something he'd missed? Something that would explain the entire strange episode? He could only imagine. But somehow, he knew that there was something to be searched for. Once again, how or why, he did not know.
It was hard, not thinking about the corpse through the entirety of the search. But he pushed forward. He managed to compose himself.
Once again, he checked under the bed, the desk, once again, he checked behind bookshelves, once again, he checked behind the door, once again, he even looked at the ceiling and under the carpet and...
...And he eventually found something. Under the bed.
Something he wasn't sure how he'd missed the first time around.
It was an object, no bigger than his hand. It was brand-new, by the looks of it. Bought... just for the occasion, if Bencolin had to have guessed. It looked slightly... modified, though. It probably would've had to have been, considering its use.
"This is-"
Alas, before he would ever get a chance to acknowledge what he had found, a sharp pain in his back would forever rob him of the moment. In almost an instant, his vision went dark and his mind numb, being only able to focus on the numbing pain that had spread throughout his entire body.
He could hear that he'd dropped the object from the sheer shock.
"I'm sorry." a familiar female voice behind him spoke. It was gentle and... surprisingly kind.
And yet, Bencolin knew that it was the voice of a wicked heart.
"I only now got to look at the last page of the story." the voice continued. "It's not what I would've done... well - it wasn't, anyway. I'm so sorry, Bencolin!"
He did not reply.
Silence filled the room once more.
And it was in that silence that Jennifer Anderson's killer pulled out the knife from Bencolin's back, pushed him away from herself and let him bleed to death, as the granfather clock downstairs finally struck midnight.
He was dead.
And he never even knew that she wasn't actually Irish. (Although, to be fair, he should've concluded as much from all the frankly poor attempts at a genuine accent.)
Without another word, she picked up the object Bencolin had dropped and slid it into her coat pocket. Well - the coat wasn't hers. It was Bencolin's. But she'd always wanted it - and now was as good at time as any to take it for herself.
After all, what better thing to do after homicide than to add robbery on top of it?
Still, it was a shame things had ended the way they did. With Bencolin dying and whatnot. She'd envisioned him to be the detective that solves the impossible crime. The bringer of justice. And yet, in the end, she appeared to have changed her mind.
She sighed. "Changing the course of the story at the last minute. How annoying of you, dear writer. How annoying, indeed! Look at everything we'd done and you suddenly deciding to kill him off. Now, what's the point of the entire trick when the man with all the facts is dead?
That was a very bad decision, writer. A very bad decision, indeed."
She sighed, yet again.
"I barely got any proper spotlight, as well. I mean, what was my motive in all of this? Am I supposed to be just nuts? What kind of character do you take me for?"
She exited the room, closing the door behind her.
"Not like Bencolin was given much better treatment, either. I mean, really - Bencolin? As in, Henri Bencolin from John Dickson Carr's novels? Well - his son, from what I can gather, but still. A bit distasteful, in my opinion. One should always ask for permission, after all..." she giggled to herself. "Never mind the fact that Carr's been dead for, what? Fifty plus years now?"
Clearly, the woman was completely mad.
"It's a bit unfair to him, as well. He was essentially nothing more than a walking reference, wasn't he?"
She began her descent down the stairs.
"It's never easy to be the culprit in a detective story. No matter what, I always lose. Either my trick gets solved and I get the noose or something like this happens and it's all ambiguous and leaves the reader empty inside. Somehow, the latter scenario even leaves me unsatisfied."
She appeared to have been under the impression that she was a character in a mystery novel. How peculiar.
"Oh, well. I might as well solve it for myself, then. At least I'll manage to receive some satisfaction from the whole ordeal, huh?"
She stepped outside into the cold night. It was still snowing.
It was, ultimately quite simple, the entire trick. And all it required of me was one object. Well, two. Well - three, I suppose.
The first was the basement key. Not the basement key itself, but the keyring which contained all the replica keys Bencolin owned. I took it when I came to visit him a few days ago. He clumsy wreck of what one could only assume was a man under those constantly questioning hazel eyes. As such, I knew that he wouldn't have thought much of the disappearance.
Next was the gun. Since I'm a detective, acquiring one isn't exactly an issue, now is it?
And finally, there was the audio recorder. That one was the most important one to the whole scheme, I suppose.
First, I sent Bencolin the note. As I knew him well, I figured he wouldn't call the police (or he would, but then I would just keep sending the notes until he didn't - still, I knew he wouldn't). That meant he would either call me or call nobody. If he hadn't called me, I would've just pretended to stop by, say I was... in the neighborhood and decided to check in. He was going through such a tough time, after all.
But since he did call me, all was good.
Next, I killed the first person I happened to stumble across. Anyone would've done, really. The fact that it was that neighbor's wife was probably the work of the author trying to keep the cast of characters as tight as possible. And maybe give him character development. Either way, I personally didn't care.
Then came Bencolin leaving his house. For this, I didn't have to do anything. The writer had made it convenient for me, as I suspect he would. While he was at the neighbor's house, I snuck into his home using the replica keys, dragged the body upstairs and into the bedroom, set the tape recorder under the bed, locked everything up and waited at his doorstep. When I saw him approach, I pretended like I'd just been waiting for him.
The rest was easy enough - wait until the recorder (which I'd modified slightly to make it loud enough) play its recording of a gunshot, rush upstairs and make it seem like the murder had happened just at that time.
Since I killed the woman outside, her body was already completely cold by the time I'd dragged her upstairs, thus making her time of death impossible to determine. Since I also made sure not to drag any snow with me (what little there was I just would've covered up by walking around the room myself at some point), the case against me would've been even harder to build.
But alas, the writer had to have his way. And now all that effort was for nothing. Nobody that (eventually - I mean, I never actually called the police) stumbles across that scene will find anything noteworthy about it. Just two dead people.
Oh, well...
...
...Although.
"I really..." she said as she reached the subway station, preparing to take a trip back home. "I really am sorry, Bencolin. But we all have our roles to play, don't we? All of our destinies are pre-written, aren't they? It's really a shame that you had to be you. And it's a shame that I had to be me.
But hey... this is all just... a detective story...
...Right?"
Her train was fifteen minutes late. Nothing surprising for a city which he saw as desolate and irritating. There was nobody else at the station but her. She moved closer to the tracks, crossing the yellow line. Hoping to see if it was at least approaching.
It was at that point that she must have lost her balance.
Diving forward, before she was ever truly aware of what was happening, she found herself on her back, lying on the tracks.
She wanted to curse, but she found herself unable to speak. She wanted to get up and run, but she was unable to move. She couldn't understand it. She refused to understand it.
But then she remembered.
I forgot... no matter what happens to the protagonist...
...The criminal must always be punished.
The tracks began to vibrate ever so slightly.
And Mary smiled.
"Sincere apologies, huh...?"
THE END