Indeed, Insist (a mystery)
UDP 2005
Bethany Wright
Mystery of the Hidden Face It’s been a year since the robber climbed in your Aunt Marinda’s bedroom window at two o’ clock in the morning. “Get out!” she screamed at him, and that’s just what he did, taking her pearl necklace with him. The next day you found a beer bottle in the bushes outside Aunt Marinda’s house. Since she isn’t the sort to throw beer bottles out the window, you handed it over to the police.
You wake up shaking. Again you wake; you blather at the headboard. Often you wake up. Shaking, you saw many signs covered with fur this time. When endless, you stir to recover your belongings, in turn. Or all over, you are the centerpiece, Captain, you shake the bird by its neck. This time it falters.
Once you are through the door, you remember: what were the last words bobbing out of that mouse. She was in the library. She was with shield wearing intimate apron. At exactly 9:09 you stare at your watch until 10:10, then it is past. Alarm alarm, you start, failingly.
“I hear you have sharp eyes,” he says. “And that’s just what I need right now. I think my lip is in danger.”
The Letter That Changed Everything You knock on Thrombey’s door securely face first — was this the wound a wall formed? Again, you are your own juncture.
pushed up against the littlest door, the paper roll is punctured
She has two pianos — a concert grand for herself and a smaller one for guests. He stops in his tracks and turns toward you, a dark look on his face. “The truth is, I think she would rather have me dead.”
Unfurl the latent spectator. Ladily, to untie, a fixture. The gentlemanly rash in latter notation, the stain. As compartmentalized wholly accounted for where servants flee to tread.
The Half Relations
Begin face. Check — bumper.
“What makes you think that?”
From your peripheral, From your outer ear, From your red intestines, It bellows.
As you are walking back to the front entrance Thrombey points at the caravan pulling up to a stop. A trim, bearded man gets out and starts toward you. Have a sniff at this. What is it made of? How heavy is it? About an animal — it is neither a fault nor a food — lagging in and out of this man’s olfactory and mining this man’s complex. The last word repeated runs the perimeter. Garden of this man’s bestial impulses lie open and written upon. During coop this man is twirlish, speaking of this man, he is missing teeth.
The Inherited House This is a sketch: “That’s Dr. Robert Liscomb,” Thrombey says. “He’s coming for dinner tonight, along with my nephew, Chartwell, and my niece, Angela.” Each chair is married, but the seats have switched pairs, you wonder. Clue is about to engage gender in a point of content. Comme ci.
I think Angela and Robert are planning to marry. (You would think they were planning to be arrested!)
They fondle the fissure in the wooden spoon, clank the can opener ajar. They are fanning one another with the flatware and a plate is shoved down his shirt. One is freezing on top of a baking sheet and one is flaming an eyelid and frosting. One is apart now, a knife is flinging. They are laughing into the cupboards.
What weapons? You have just been singing with your eyes closed.
... by the way, Do you want to join us, or would you rather take a look around the place? There’s no one here but Helga, our cook.
The Secret Closet You walk through the rear hall and into the pantry — OK, recede, circumscribe — where you hear voices coming from the kitchen. A woman and a young girl are talking.
“Do you really think Mr. Thrombey’s life is in danger?” the girl asks. “I think you are a stranger,” the woman is answering. “Do you really sink thrumming into a manger?” the girl. “I pink loose changer . “Loo view silly orange ???? ????
“Through the wall, I noticed Chartwell’s car in the driveway,” Robert explains, “but he didn’t come in, so I went out to meet him. “I am dealing in horses. Horses, trolleys, transference” — women — “and these equal-up, like I said, stranger.”
Chartwell gives Robert a curious look and then shakes your hand.
The Disappearing Desk Thrombey shows Robert, Chartwell and you into the library as the grandfather clock in the hall strikes six. Glancing out the window you see a white end loose. Freely now you are justifying the edges of pages delightfully razing. “Do stay if you’d like,” he says. Tree in your posture, you accept. He is counting the injuries. You add in the difference. If you see the difference, you accept. If you swat the difference, indebtedly, running the risk of catching what is sometimes known as splinters. He is stretched, his lengthening pond next to. Remove your coat. Pocket coat. Skin coat. Feral throat. Daring hiccup. Lengthened throat, Float. Stemmed from choke, You wrote. Don your cloak; the game has hardly begun when Robert leaves to use the phone in the library.
With his penis mounted between two desks it is clear he is planning to talk forever and when the thought is beginning will life his penis away from the majesty flower always ending a little light bit lighter. Now that is medium! You and Robert go with Thrombey to the front door where he introduces you to his nephew, Chartwell, a tall, stoop-shouldered young man with a long penis hanging past beside him.
Trapped Jane leaves to dress for dinner. When she rejoins the rest of you in the library, it’s almost seven o’ clock. “Does anyone know where Angela is?” she asks. “I might be on hold for a while,” you retort. So long so forth she is answering taking her left-footed ending into her chest. Its prying amounting a nothing in reply.
Some entrances more remote than others. “This room tastes goo, like toast,” she answers. More suspiciously this time with the legs pressed over his shoulders.
Leaving the library, you can still hear the piano. You listen patiently for a half hour until about 8:30, then you slip out of the room and go to the library where you spend twenty minutes since I am telling you in a book you’ll remember looking at Thrombey’s collection of hooks and hunting trophies.
When at last the harkening grammar, you rush into the pantry where you find the open brandy bottle. Your watch reads 9:03. From experience, you know you may be able to learn more before the police arrive than afterward a troubled erection. You must work quickly.
No Door The next morning you’re up early thinking:
Maladaption Maladapted Maladaptive Maladministration Maladroit ...
“This is John McGee, Harlowe Thrombey’s lawyer. Have you heard the news?” “What news?” “Mr. Harlowe Thrombey ... if anything happened to you, catch me in black, if you saw the cloak, clock, murdered! He was poisoned last night. He was ending in sight.”
“She must have sharp eyes,” you say.
“You may know her,” McGee says. “Jenny Mudge is her name.” You thank McGee for calling and hang up. Shocked, you stroke.
On the other hand, perhaps you should inspect the scene of the crime.
Maladroit Causal/
usual sower, or rather unusual for her to be dressed in bacon.
Swaddling the ramparts you Staggering up Mt. Washington you Staying the reigns of the cherry tree, this time you are about ready to leave. (Book — heft.
Having counted the notches, you cite three witnesses.
– – –
a finger in one’s ear a finger in one’s earhole one’s tree knot or notch
This will have to be about seasonal changes and having evaluated the regression into lightless seasons, the body lies in wait, lipid. A long, oily strain trails behind the mouth of your perceived. This is a strain to both — apart upon the straights, evidence-upon-ravenous — the bearing ice breaking straight — down upon, ominous-on-cravenly.
“My uncle and I often fought,” he says angrily, “Just a moment,” Robert says, “He was very weak; he could hardly talk,” Robert replies, “You liar!” Jane shouts, “Actually,” Chartwell says, “Everybody stay where you are!” That usual is to be weakened stolen and the less trepid seeing nocturnal.
The Distant Flicker Smiling with satisfaction, the Inspector points to the door. “So you see, my friend, it’s just a matter of (stealing the inspected in).” At last you have noticed my fauna. “More importantly, I have a vine (I would like you to climb),” pulling back the curtain. As reckoning metallic he is lasting smooth. With his wrist angling in rhythmic.
To test that you are tightening in accordance with tides, your fingernail moons grow dim. Limp flesh elastic gestural strip runs over you in quickened rates however timid and getting her confession ... With a slight build, fortunately, abiding bitten
you have teeth this size and shape, you have teeth ready for lest leaden
bouquets of buried you have a bite for dismal ma ma your tender bite to a li- liwith rounded beak bearded bedding.
All the dinner guests agreed that: the table has come apart at last — the leaves, the cloths,
Invisible Hands The poisoned brandy glottal one for timing one for chasing. Kept in a bottle, the horn-shaped clot, beckoning a teller but never to levitate. Your treacherous little eyestrain is “as necessary as salient” despite lucid phonogram — fractal as revealing. Someone must have willed the arsenic into Thrombey’s brandy bottle and left them to go pour his last drink.
Bowed sustenance, rather nicked, also drenched, pinking. Almost concurring.
Jane says that she played the concert grand piano while Angela was out of the room, and Angela claims that she played the smaller piano while Jane was out of the room. Jane is inward and she extends as she swallows the grand as she obliges pale after pale solid.
The Whispered Warning
Collapsing with mixed arias, Chartwell climbs indefinitely.
“My uncle and I never got along very well,” Chartwell tells you, “but I would never murder anyone.” He explains that a true libertine is impassive indifferent: “Tranquility, a repose in the the passions, a stoicism that allows me to do everything and suffer everything without emotion ... ” “What did you do after dinner?”
Cast out the strangling stranger as one enters an eggshell all at once. Fetch in the wind or willful mineshaft — this rotation is not summed. A skirt falls at all ends as a curtain once had — Suddenly there is a commotion in the hall —
a milligram.
Suffering You walk so end so downward the hall spans with counting now (Robert) you talk so in private. A bellowing knocking pleads from oh your so boots as you are walking and insisting, you are walking this need not be said. You have private primacy being held at the ankles. The hold he grips to be sturdy in check. (At the end of the hall a long rifle appears to be reflected and this keeps the tape running (overboard having heard a seamount drip dripping Robert (a ripening underfoot and Robert appears
Down the hall you stumble muttering something under your own breath.
“He was very weak and it was a great effort for him to talk at all.” “Hmm.” Have these boots been laced together long, you inquire hastily, catching your breath. “Well, they are a pair, heavy or heaving, weathered and tan things. You, weathered and tan thing, the rub of queries weaving.” A pause to pad the toe.
A smell — you insist — making weather of your own — you imply (rising?) — making to shriek — floorboards — as if by design, despair
A loud knocking
.In check.
— just this time —
two policemen buckled stride (in) his hair in her belt
The Flickering Flame Stunning to see you Jane pointed down shedding Jane spattered Jane in stopped detonation Of carnal pith the wreckage holding Jane to a halt Pitting blade blank of Jane as if Jane ending softly As in Thrombey having stopped Ending — oh — ending gruesome When the Thrombey felled perished Flitting trigger fitted Angela Reducing wreckage down to rubble The fertile peril lied in waste Of Robert inside Robert inside having Thrombey dented Slay to litter his tilted legs left dangling When the stopped and tempted wavering Forms a withered wraith in passing Feeble — oh — the slashing Jane to Angela heft in leakage Carnal collapse the thinner guise When sloughing no one looking The flank in chimes a slicing parted Having canceled at hacked the private blot — oh Thrombey seen naming the misuse of waning Whose redder ring soon harbored shrilling The billing spoilt and blankly drawn Who wilted and wounded to stagger out leveling Thrombey the one stiff of refuse in ruin Who gladly exchanged his wont for his was Upon the thrush of Robert’s Robert Wells-up Jane in sanguine rendering The screaming in the face of The face of each one vanishing With scream gated pith in — The gated pity put in — Wholly severed final sling — Final sliver — Seamless Where bleeding by gesture coos a timid coo clicking Final lines final straddle reversed fit and sinking The absent gasp plods tissue yet writ Fraught palimpsest sent to soiled pocket To bereave less descried skirts the decency of dust
Suffering Having a platelet beside you, hovering instantaneously smattering, why, you ask would he have asked for your help (if Harlowe Thrombey wanted to commit suicide) It seems certain he was murdered just as frankly dawning your pause and you pause He was prone to weaving a tail for your trailing You talk a hand cupped over for protective purposes into the receiver — you lift a hand from your perceived abetter — you sail a strand from the hollow which held more evidence Perhaps you should return to Thrombey’s house where stirring is starting to show signs of staying
Inside, you walk past rows of potted plants. On the top shelf are bottles of with dust except in one small round been removed.
At the far end is a steel file cabinet. insecticide and rat poison. The shelf is covered space from which a bottle has obviously
How now better to shackle the studded semblance of passing when you
turn over you are sleeping
when you often distinctly sleep in one rather than all beds, collecting your hair distinctly rattled and shown scratched rattling rather abruptly past your blanket shown to have slept
The Missing Gravestone You felt his hand and it was cold if you found fingerprints.
You hear papers rustling. Someone must be searching through Harlowe Thrombey’s desk. You could probably get a hand free and rip an eminent err piping loudly and sealing a hand in solemn restraint. He rises to meet you. You can’t help staring for a moment at his hawklike stiffening.
“If caught,” “If caught.” “If caught,” “If caught.”
you say. Armored, he turns his back revealing rust, like shedding. you reveal a trenchant signal instead fearing expulsion. In reverse, his bandage reappears over wounded fetid. (which implies)
(is getting dressed (is maladaptive, alarming your malefactor (is scrawling over
You step inside and he shuts the door behind you. The room is empty except for a couple of suitcases, a battered desk, and a ragged old sofa. “Excuse me while I finish getting dressed. I’m just about ready to leave,” he is singing. “You must be a stonewall detective, catching up with me like that. You really got on to me, didn’t you?” He picks up a jacket draped over the sofa. As he slips it on, you notice something bulging from inside his pocket. You begin to drift toward the door, singing to yourself.
“It couldn’t have been more than five minutes.” “I forgot to tell you,” he says, “about that fellow you are waiting for. I hear he’s left town.”
“Can you tell me, sir, who will inherit all of Harlowe Thrombey’s money?”
“I knew it was them,” he says. “I’ll have them behind bars in a few weeks.”
“No! Jane and I played piano duets, but then she left the room a short while after you did!”
“What do you make of that?” she calls over her shoulder.
“I’ve already talked to the police!” Robert snaps at you.
“If caught,” he says, turning his back.
“But during the afternoon, didn’t you take a little tour of the grounds?” you persist.
“I’ll have my men at the airport ready to meet them.”
“Who are you?” he asks gruffly.
“Find out what her habits are and where she was the afternoon of the murder. She must have known where the arsenic was.”
Howling I told a woman, now untangle, get to the road.
On the
you were not born on this day. let’s get this clear. i wan t get things straight. you gah t get things straight. my doctor in mississippi said, we’re gon straight n this out, dawn chu worr ... juss you wash yo face in the meantime. and i said happy birthday. and he knelt down on the ground (which at this point was definitely sand) and he spelled the word of his favorite color. i said, for what reason do you like this color so much? and he said, for no reason, or because it is unreasonable; this is no color. he continued, let us not flagellate the circumference of a shrub, it is only a word. and i, cheerfully recalling the fact that i have forgotten many things, replied, oh, don’t you woory on millisecond, doc. this word is red. he looked somewhat relieved or as if he had undergone a shift in attention. he murmured, there is no red without blood, my love. you’re patience. i said, happy birthday, happy birthday, happy birthday. i pooted and away he flew. there are so many things to do on your birthday (but that day is in the past) so i hope before the sun is down that you have found a nice patch of sand for you to linger in, or that you have read a revelation concerning your relationship with water. water, yes. if nothing else, you should be pursue a relationship with water before midnight. an i might dream halfway through
sand
I was afraid of that, she said.
If what Dr. Bloom told you is true, it’s hardly likely that Thrombey took his own life. Bold is true, it’s hardly.
Mystery of the Floating Face
“Theories are fine, you say, “but have you found any clues? its landing sight its seaboard fluttered where a passing birth returns its halo to the order which is a stalemate a flow-chart but to sift this into a unit-pecking-order one limb after one listen on top of one twig sounds an appropriated bleating cracked jaw baits the interim ceases as it begs but have you have you have you
with perfumed scapulars with perfumed primaries perfumed chin throat breast his perfumed wing bars with perfume
The master of height is a matter of wingspan.
If he were returning to the scene of the crime, he wouldn’t need a magnifying glass. The front door is open, and you walk right in.
The Inherited Face Note the conspicuous white “spectacles” on its gray head. The whistled phrases are similar but sweeter and more deliberate.
Where it sings its wheezy dzeer dzeer dzeer teetsy.
Its song a buzzy chant zeedle zeedle zeedle zeet’ che.
The ending warbles faintly.
rotary
notary
recorded, transcribed: among snatches of seed, a flapping from the center of the room where the curtains part the progeny startled.
Acknowledgements Significant portions of Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey, a Choose Your Own Adventure novel published in 1981, are used with the generous permission of the author, Edward Packard. His literary invention provided a generation of young readers the opportunity to participate in a highly active, radicalized, jouissance-inducing readerly experience; so, of course, this book is dedicated to him. The grandfather clock is modeled after one from the estate of Harry S. Truman. Chartwell’s commentary in “The Whispered Warning” is indebted to the Marquis de Sade. A section of “Howling” is derived from a missive addressed to the author from Matt Marble. The ornithological data in “The Inherited Face” is taken from Peterson First Guide to Birds of North America. Illustrations and moral support provided by Seth Nehil.
*Excerpts of Indeed, Insist (a mystery) previously appeared in The Brooklyn Rail.
Colophonic Information This is the first edition of Indeed, Insist (a mystery), published in an edition of three-hundred copies. The text is set in Baskerville and Gill Sans, with Univers titles. Printed and bound at the Ugly Duckling Presse workshop in Brooklyn, NY.