The Outsmarting of Criminals: A Mystery Introducing Miss Felicity Prim (6 page)

“
Spike,” Dawes interrupted, “I think we should have a more
professional
look around, with Miss Prim’s approval of course.” He glanced at Miss Prim.

“
Yes, of course,” Miss Prim said. “I’ll keep Bruno with me.”

While the detective and the two officers nosed around, Miss Prim
sat, patiently sipping her tea, thinking about Spike Fremlin’s lace and doilies comments. She had always found such furnishings delicate and refined. Were her tastes old-fashioned, outmoded? No, not at all, she decided. A country cottage must have lace and doilies to have credibility. Everyone knows
that
.

“Miss Prim, is there an attic?
” Dawes asked. “We should have a look up there, too.”

Miss Prim rose and led them to the narrow
attic staircase. After they climbed the stairs, she pointed to the boxes that the moving men had placed against the walls. “Those are all boxes of books that just arrived earlier today, so they wouldn’t have anything of interest in them. These boxes”—she nudged one of them with her shoe—“were in the attic when I got here. At first I thought the previous owner left them behind, but I don’t think that’s right, because I don’t remember seeing them when I did the final walkthrough with Olivia. So it’s a bit of a mystery how they got here. I found the wooden star in this box.”

Dawes got down on his knees,
snapped on a pair of rubber gloves. As he rummaged through the boxes, Reed and Fremlin wandered around the attic. “More dust,” Fremlin muttered. “Someone told me dust is made up of dead bodies. Hey Reed, you think that could be true? That would be freaky, eh? Dead people all over our houses and we don’t even know it …”

Dawes held
up the chisel that Miss Prim had discovered earlier. He examined it closely. “Oh boy. I think we may have found the murder weapon.”

Cooperating with the Police

Returning to Rose Cottage after being fingerprinted and signing her statement, Miss Prim unlocked her front door with trepidation, wondering what might await her on the other side. She heard Bruno barking, and that was comforting; it was good to know that her faithful companion of less than 24 hours avidly defended the homestead while she absent, not just when she was present.

Before taking her jacket off,
she placed a call to the locksmith, asking him to come over as soon as possible. Two hours later, as the crime scene investigators finished dusting the cottage for prints, the locksmith arrived to replace all the door locks and install locks on all the windows.

It had been
thoroughly disconcerting day, and Miss Prim felt quite exhausted and emotionally drained. Still, in keeping with Mama’s dictates that one must remain active in managing one’s life, she’d formulated a decisive plan of action that she would begin implementing after a good night’s sleep. She’d asked Detective Dawes to give her a photo of the murdered man. Spike, who’d been present at the time, had told her she was a ghoul for requesting such a thing. Miss Prim had replied, “Not at all, Officer Fremlin. I shall be meeting many of my neighbors and other townspeople in the coming days, and I thought I might take the opportunity to help you discover the victim’s identity. Of course, if anyone recognizes him, I shall ask him or her to contact you immediately.”

“I’m not sure about that
, Miss Prim,” Dawes had responded haltingly. “It’s not exactly established procedure …”

“Oh,
let her do it, Ez,” Spike had ordered. “Creepy McGee took plenty of pics, I’m sure he can find one that isn’t too gruesome. The stiff’s face is gonna be all over the papers soon enough anyway. Besides, we’re gonna need all the help we can get. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re not exactly overstaffed at the Greenfield PD.”

Recogni
zing the truth in Spike’s words, or just unwilling to remain on the receiving end of her harangue, Dawes had used the station’s color printer to print a not-very-good copy of one of Creepy McGee’s photos. It wasn’t much, Miss Prim thought, but it was a start.

After preparing a bowl of kibble for Bruno, Miss Prim
kicked off her shoes and lay on the couch, trying to decide how to spend the rest of her evening. As her mind shuffled through the possibilities, the telephone rang. Hoping to hear a friendly voice on the other end of the line, she lifted the receiver.

“
Good evening, Rose Cottage.”

“Miss Prim? Is that you?”

“Oh, Dolly! How lovely to hear from you! I have just sat down after a somewhat wearying day.”

“Do you have time to talk
, Miss Prim? You must be busy getting the house ready.”

“I always have time for you, Dolly.”

“I said to myself, don’t bother Miss Prim. Give her some time to enjoy her new house before you start harassing her. But I couldn’t help myself. The office is in a complete uproar. The patients just won’t accept that you’re gone. And poor Doctor Poe, he’s so distracted. Norah is trying to be his right-hand woman, but she’s being sort of unctuous about it, if you know what I mean. I’m afraid Doctor P doesn’t see through it, the way the rest of us do. Already she’s talking about computerizing everything, as if computers can solve all of the world’s problems.”

This was exactly the sort of gossipy conversation Miss Prim needed after a tough day.
As Dolly recounted tales from the office grapevine, Miss Prim struggled with the question of whether to regale Dolly with a retelling of the day’s events. Her first inclination was
not
to mention finding the dead body in the basement or its aftermath. Both Dolly and Doctor Poe had expressed concerns regarding her new career, and she did not want them to worry. But Miss Prim had made a vow, months earlier, that she would not behave in the stupid manner of so many fictional heroines—those supposedly intelligent women who nonetheless ventured into dangerous neighborhoods alone at night, or followed an armed suspect into a crack house, or found ridiculous excuses to avoid sharing the details of their lives with friends and family. Miss Prim reasoned thus: If you don’t share the events of your life, your secrets, your dreams, and your passions with your friends—then they are not your friends at all, and you are nothing more than a character who exists to service a plot. And she was not about to let anyone level that accusation against
her
.

So, amidst Dolly’s gasps of shock and disbelief, Miss Prim related the entire story, downplaying the effects of the day’s events on her
psyche. For she
was
shaken, mostly because she hadn’t counted on the emotional after-effects of stumbling onto a real-life crime. Perhaps, up to this point, her mostly optimistic brain had not paid enough attention to the challenges that beset protagonists who undertake careers in criminal outsmarting: alcoholism, broken marriages, estranged children, drug addictions, sexually indiscriminate behavior, lone-wolf syndrome … the list went on and on. These trends in the personal lives of criminal outsmarters did not necessarily mean
she
would succumb to such weaknesses of character. But Miss Prim could sense, after only one day and only one crime, that her new career might carve deep, and not altogether desirable, impressions on her perceptions and belief system. She would have to guard herself against fearfulness, cynicism, paranoia, and a host of other unpleasant possibilities.

“Oh, Miss Prim!” Dolly exclaimed
after Miss Prim completed her narrative. “You have to come back to the City tonight. I can’t stand the thought of you being there all alone.”

Miss Prim did not relish the idea either, but one must get on with it, mustn’t one?
And perhaps in reassuring Dolly of her safety, she could reassure herself, too. “Now, dearest, there really is nothing to worry about. This murder has nothing to do with me. In fact, the detective in charge of the case agrees with me on that. It would have been obvious to the murderer that Rose Cottage was not occupied and had not been occupied for quite a while. No cars in the driveway, no window treatments on the windows, no lights on at night. The cottage was an ideal place to hide the victim until the body could be disposed of. Now, let’s talk no more of this. I want to hear about you. How are things going with Benjamin?”

Benjamin
Bannister was a young patient of Doctor Poe’s. A quiet graduate student studying magical realism at Columbia University, he’d been suffering from migraine headaches. In the manner of inward-looking graduate students, he had mistakenly self-diagnosed these as the manifestations of a brain tumor. He and Dolly—who, at the statuesque height of 6’2”, found the Manhattan dating scene more challenging than most young women—had begun meeting for coffee, then for lunch, and just, in recent weeks, dinner.

“I’m glad you brought him up, Miss Prim. I need your advice. I just don’t understand how
relationships work and what I’m supposed to do and not do. Or say and not say. We have such a nice time when we’re together, but everything is left so …
unstated
. Zoroastria said I should be more forward, invite him to a movie or a concert, cook him a nice meal. So I suggested a play and he seemed … hesitant. I backpedaled immediately, and then it got a little awkward. The next day I stopped at a deli and bought him a little bamboo plant as a peace offering. The doorman called his apartment, but Benjamin wasn’t there, so I scribbled a note and left the plant at the front desk. Then I went into the Barnes & Noble across the street, and when I came out I saw Benjamin leaving his building! He was there the whole time, which meant he didn’t want to see me. I felt so awful, but when I got home there was a message waiting for me, thanking me for the plant, and he sounded really grateful and sweet. I just don’t know what it all means. Or doesn’t mean.”

H
ow many times over the decades Miss Prim had engaged in variations on this conversation with friends, cousins, siblings, colleagues! Despite technological progress and the advances made by civil society, men and women still had not learned to communicate with each other.

“Dolly,
the course of true love never did run smooth, to quote my dear Mama. Magical realism is a difficult taskmaster, and it may be that Benjamin was too engrossed in his studies to hear the doorman’s buzzing on the intercom. Or he might have stepped out to the laundry room, or the garbage shoot, when the doorman attempted to make contact. Simply act as if nothing has happened and let nature take its course. Do not overthink; doing so amounts to self-torture.”

Dolly sighed. “
Miss Prim, you always know the right thing to say.”

“Well, not always, dear
est, but sometimes. It’s one of the benefits of getting older. But Dolly, may I ask a favor? Would you not share my adventures here in Greenfield with Doctor Poe or our friends at the office just yet? The doctor has so much on his mind right now, and I don’t wish to add to his worries.”

Dolly promised to take Miss Prim’s secret to the grave
—perhaps not the best metaphor given the circumstances—and the two friends decided that they’d soon find time to meet, whether in Manhattan or Greenfield.

After making sure
the cottage’s doors were locked, Miss Prim removed the Laser Taser 3000 from her handbag, placed it on her nightstand, climbed into bed, and turned off the light. Five minutes later, her telephone chimed. She climbed out of bed and went to the parlor to answer the ring.

“
Rose Cottage,” she said, tiredly.

The only response was a quiet
click
as the caller disconnected.

Enter the Sidekick

If fiction reflected reality to any significant extent, Miss Prim thought, the media would be hovering at her door, drooling like vultures, early the next morning. Situations like hers were tailor-made for cub reporters who have grown weary of reporting on the activities of the women’s club and school board. A mutually beneficial alliance might be forged with these journalists, provided they were not of the sleazy, stab-anyone-and-everyone-in-the-back-for-a-good-story category. Thus Miss Prim looked forward to greeting the pulsing throngs of the Fourth Estate.

But as the morning wore on, she had no visitors, and she grew weary of waiting for them. They would find her soon enough, she thought, so she brewed
and sipped a cup of tea as she prepared to leave the cottage to engage in that most pedestrian of activities: grocery shopping.

The doorbell pealed.
It begins!
Miss Prim thought, straightening her skirt and checking her fashionably styled silver-white hair in the hallway mirror.

She opened the front door to find a
tall, frail woman a decade or so older than herself. The woman’s arms were wrapped around a heavy paper sack overflowing with crackers, dried sausages, and sprigs of fresh herbs.

The woman’s appearance was altogether extraordinary, Miss Prim thought. She wore
purple striped jeans and a yellow blouse with magenta polka dots. The blouse was dotted with pins featuring the logos of heavy-metal bands: Motorhead, Pantera, AC/DC, Grim Reaper, Apocalyptica, Ethel the Frog, Anthrax. Most surprising was the woman’s thick, waist-length black hair. A wig?

“Good morning,” Miss Prim said pleasantly.