The Phantastic Apparition Social Society Presents: A Murder of Sorts at Unlivington Manor, Chapter 3
Everyone watched a blue wash cover Mildred’s face and her body collapse like a rag doll, if a rag doll wore a very expensive gown and sparkling jewels. They gasped.
Mildred’s face did not, in actuality, turn blue. She had been standing under a light fixture that had been replaced with a technicolour party bulb for one of Unlivington Manor’s shindigs in the sixties. It periodically clicked on, almost as if a little disco spirit was still left in the place. Her shriek and near faint, however, were real.
“My glove! Polly has ripped a hole in one of my favourite gloves!”
Polly massaged her fingers. “So you decided to attack me with a wine glass?”
Mildred observed the broken glass as she rose to her feet. “And ruin heirloom glassware? No.”
No one answered, and everyone started to feel like whoever was behind the crime was getting more aggressive. That added an additional chill to the air, so Shaughnessy flicked off the air conditioning. Tension filled the hallway. It could, one might say, be cut with a knife. Suddenly a bell’s chime sounded, and it nearly shocked them all out of their clothes.
Todd held a tray with the fish course, and he did not look pleased. “The chef will not delay another course, and since you all seem to be crowded out in the hall, she insists you take the mackerel escabèche here,” he shoved a delicate plate into each of their hands and immediately left.
“I don’t think we can rule those two out,” Vincenzo complained between fish, which was, to his disappointment, delicious.
It was a bit of a squeeze to have six ghosts crammed into a hallway with plates of mackerel escabèche, but Camille was used to fitting in crammed spaces and seemed perfectly fine. “I don’t think we can rule you out. You clearly have a motive to off the ghost who offed your family. I think planting the dagger directly over your chair was a red herring; it was never a threat—you know you lean to the left! Where were you, Vincenzo, when Iggy was bleeding to life in the ballroom?” Camille may have been bent into a ball, but her outraged eyes were sharp as nails.
“I told you before, I was unfortunately cornered by Shaughnessy singing about the blue boat that circled the magical sea. Now let’s finish this fish so we can torture Iggy into telling us what really happened.”
It dawned on everyone, embarrassingly late, that asking Iggy what had happened might just be the most productive thing to do. Polly reached again for the keys, then stopped. “Wait, did you say Shaughnessy was singing about the blue boat which circled the magical sea?”
“I did, and be careful, or—”
“’Twas the third night we sailed on the briny sea, ho ho, the air was cold, yo’ ho, the air was cold …”
“See what you’ve done. He won’t stop until he reaches the part with the whale.”
Everybody in the room knew this sea shanty, for Shaughnessy had sung it every dinner party for the last sixty-six years. Its melody sung of pirates who sailed a blue boat at the edge of the world, encountered an army of cursed merpeople, battled with swords in the midst of a maelstrom, and ended with a whale swallowing everyone. It’s a bit of a delight but goes on for six minutes, and every section follows the exact same rhythm, so it can feel very repetitive. Nonetheless, the verse with the merprincess’ flaming blade is quite graphic and hilarious. If there weren’t more pressing matters at hand in the manor, going though it all would be a great way to spend the evening. But more pressing matters there were, and the sea shanty illuminated a very important piece of the gory puzzle.
Six minutes later, Polly furrowed her brow. “And this would have been the time when Iggy was missing from the conservatory, and Mildred had just returned?”
“Yes, now if you would, Polly, open the door.”
Rex took in Polly’s words, swallowed the last of his fish, and turned up his nose. Not at the smell but at the thought that had crept into his head. “I thought Mildred said when she returned to the conservatory, Shaughnessy was singing the B section of the melody, which would be the opera tune that goes up high in the middle. The Ballad of The Blue Boat doesn’t have a B section—it’s all the same.”
If ever there was a time to be grateful for Shaughnessy’s singing, it was now. Vincenzo was caught. “Well, he sang both this evening Rex, this isn’t new.”
“No, but the song he was in the middle of singing when Mildred returned would be the one he was singing at the exact time Iggy was missing. Mildred is saying that’s the opera. You’re saying it’s the blue boat.”
“The songs all blend together at this point, Rex! I didn’t know I had to commit Shaughnessy’s concert to memory! All right then, Iggy left after the sea shanty with Mildred, the opera began, Mildred came back, Todd rang the bell, we walked down the hall, and I think we all know what happened next. Let’s bring Iggy out here and put it all to rest!”
Polly placed the key in the lock, but before turning it, stopped once again. “Todd didn’t ring the bell for the soup course today. We all noticed, because usually he’s able to ring it in perfect time to the tune. But you just said: ‘Todd rang the bell’. That means you weren’t in the room. So where were you when Shaughnessy was entering the B section of the melody?”
Vincenzo was cornered, and accepted that the only way through this fiasco was to come clean. So he did with a flustered explosion of anger. “Fine, if you must know, I had ducked behind the Chloris statue because Rex had hurt my feelings, and I didn’t want anyone to see me upset. I’m a vengeful ghost, not a sobbing one!”
“You expect us to believe that?” Mildred laughed. “Your defence is that Rex hurt your feelings? Over what?”
“I’ll keep that to myself, but I was ducked behind the Chloris statue, so I didn’t hear the music. I know it sounds ridiculous, which is why I’m determined to open the closet and have Iggy clear my name.”
There was nothing left to do now but ask Iggy if Vincenzo’s story was true. Vincenzo stood tall, Mildred crossed her arms, Shaughnessy opened his mouth, Rex shushed him, and Polly unlocked the closet door. It was empty. The Phantastic Apparition Social Society looked to each other, and discovered they were missing more than just Iggy. Camille had disappeared.
A collective panic rose in the hall, and Mildred tried her best at crowd control. “Before we dive into a frenzy, let’s not stray from the fact that Vincenzo’s story is still unverified. You want us to believe that by hiding behind the statue, you couldn’t hear Shaughnessy’s singing? Preposterous! ”
“Don’t tell me you’re unaware of what’s behind the statue, Mildred.”
Mildred would never be deemed as someone who didn’t know every detail pertaining to Unlivington Manor, so she marched into the conservatory. “Very well. I’ll go stand behind the statue of a flower deity and somehow be convinced that I can’t hear singing. Then we can find Camille, who I suspect is working with you. If I still had nerves, this whole turn of events would be on them. As expected,” she stepped behind the Chloris statue and smirked, “my hearing is unaffected.”
Vincenzo reached over to the statue and pulled down on one of the carved flowers, which triggered a door to silently swing open from the wall and reveal a secret passageway. The group gasped (they were getting very tired of that). But this gasp was triggered by two things: first, the realization of a secret passageway within the manor; and second, the mangled feet of Camille, which lay twisted in a deep pool of red. The ooze trickled slowly towards the feet of Vincenzo, Mildred, Rex, Polly, and Shaughnessy.
“Now I’m starting to suspect the caterers, because we were all together just now,” Rex grumbled. “I wish they had done away with me first; this is annoying.”
From the clump that was Camille, a grunt was heard, and she unravelled herself. “I wasn’t doing anything, I was just—”
“What is that?” Mildred pointed to the wall, where something clearly was, but Camille was doing a very good job of twisting and turning in front of it.
“Nothing,” she was obviously lying. Her arms flailed in distraction. “Let’s not forget Vincenzo. He hates Iggy! He re-alived her!”
Shaughnessy took Camille aside so everyone could get a good look at what she had been hiding, and it was absolutely frightening. There was a piece of paper tacked to the wall, and on it a portrait of Iggy, smiling at a dinner party from a year past. What was frightening about it wasn’t the content of the portrait: Iggy was sitting in a chair in the conservatory beside the old gramophone, sipping on a Clover Club cocktail. The frightening aspect was Camille’s drawing—she was very untalented in that area. If it weren’t for the word Iggy scrawled above the head with an arrow, it might have been impossible to make anything out. But it was Iggy, and things did not look promising for Camille.
The rest of the Phantastic Apparition Social Society waited impatiently for Camille to explain herself. She took a deep breath. “I know this looks bad. But trust me when I say it’s not criminal, I am not responsible for Iggy! Once Vincenzo stated talking about the Chloris statue I knew you all would come in here, so I came to get rid of it, because I didn’t want it to get misinterpreted,” she rubbed at the red stain on her outfit, “but then I tripped, and fell, and that’s how you found me.”
Vincenzo looked down at the red liquid on the floor, and sniffed. “Liquorice and pine. This reeks of Mildred’s mourvèdre.”
Mildred made wine, which she thought was a success, and the rest were too intimidated to tell her otherwise. Polly spotted some broken glass in the corner and picked up a cork. “So you’re not re-alived?”
“No,” Camille’s face showed she wished perhaps she had been re-alived, because an angry portrait of the victim hidden in a secret passageway looked very incriminating.
“Hang on,” Mildred scowled, “there is something that cannot be overlooked. Something more horrendous than Camille’s drawing.” Mildred loomed over Camille, eyes flashing with a desire to put this whole problem to rest. “Remind us, would you? How was it that you came to be a contorting ghost?”
Mildred was referring to the accident ten years past, during which Camille the clairvoyant ghost became Camille the contorting ghost. That night, Iggy went running from the manor in a frenzy just as Camille was walking up to the doorstep. Iggy flung the door open, which caused Camille to take a step back and nearly trip down the stairs. Then Iggy brushed past her with arms flailing, which did knock Camille down the stairs, and onto the hood of the gardener’s van, which terrified the gardener, who slammed on the gas, and caused Camille to fly off the vehicle and into the sky with the force of a canon, and plummet into a tree.
The gardener never returned, and Camille had been contorted ever since.
The realization that Camille had a very clear motive washed over the passageway, and Polly rushed towards Camille. “Then you’re responsible for it all, including throwing a broken glass at my hand back there! I need my hands, you know!”
“More twisted than her every limb, was her mind and darkened soul …”
Shaughnessy stood in between Camille and Polly, and Polly had to eventually give up on her hopes of crushing the contortionist. Her face turned sour. “Someone restrain the culprit. I’m going to go find Iggy and see if she’s still bleeding. What if Daisy and Todd see her? This is awful!” Polly turned back into the conservatory in a huff, leaving the rest in the passageway.
Camille, desperate, began to babble. “Iggy had a habit of hurting others and claiming innocence, and though I may never forgive her for this,” she distorted a limb, “I did not re-alive her! Alright fine, I thought about it, if I’m being honest, I even got an eyelash, but someone beat me to it! I was in the conservatory during the song!”
That was true, and perplexed the others, which only made them more frustrated.
Vincenzo sneered. “Whatever happened to your clairvoyance, Camille? Funny how you haven’t brought that up since your turned into a pretzel. If this wasn’t planned by you, you should be able to tell us who planned it!”
“My clairvoyance was changed since the accident. When my limbs are all twisted up, my thoughts scramble with them. I can only see into the future when I’m incredibly relaxed, and even then, it doesn’t extend beyond the person who’s directly in front of me. And obviously, there is nothing relaxing about tonight!”
“That sounds like an even stronger motive to ruin Iggy’s afterlife, then.” Rex pointed down the passageway. “Let’s see where this leads, and you can tell us where you’ve hidden Iggy.”
Shaughnessy led the charge down the hall as the group ignored Camille’s protests. “Through a darkened tunnel we all marched on, to end the evening’s crime.” Shaughnessy opened the door at the end of the passageway. “To end—ahhhh!”
A large antique globe came spinning through the air at full speed (not unlike Camille’s body ten years past), smashed into Shaughnessy’s skull, and the song was never finished.
