The Outsmarting of Criminals: A Mystery Introducing Miss Felicity Prim (5 page)

Sipping her tea and trying to stop her hands from trembling,
Miss Prim questioned her new career choice for the first time. It was one thing to read about clever murders and brilliant criminal masterminds, but quite another to encounter the victim of a horrible crime. The man lying on the basement floor was a son and grandchild to someone; he was also, most likely, a friend, husband, lover, uncle, colleague, neighbor. And he had such lovely blue eyes: the type of eyes that would look fondly at a child, provide a
frisson
of pleasure to a young lady, gaze indulgently at an elderly aunt or grandmother. Beneath that wild hair was a human being who’d lived and breathed, a man with interests and ruling passions.
Anyone who knew him wouldn’t have been intimidated by all that hair
, Miss Prim thought. In the 1970s she’d had a suitor with feral hair and an untamed beard; he’d been a pacifist, a poet, a lover of nature and animals.
Yes
, Miss Prim thought,
such hair is the sign of a free spirit, a kind heart. It is the short-haired, buzz-cut Wall Street types of whom we must be cautious.

Miss Prim
had known that, sooner or later, she would encounter Death in her career as criminal outsmarter, but she hadn’t expected to make his acquaintance quite so soon. No, she’d expected that early cases would focus on more mundane matters. Perhaps she’d help a neighbor locate a missing niece, or help the friend of a friend determine who had stolen her prize-winning pumpkin pie recipe. After successfully disposing of those cases, she would have moved up to things like petty theft and perhaps even a robbery or two.

But murder? No, it was
much too soon for murder.

Miss Felicity Prim
took stock of her situation. Everything she’d planned for her new home—its coziness, its comfort, its safety—had vanished the moment she’d found the man in her basement. A murderer had found his way into her house once. What would stop him from doing so again? The next time, would he slit her throat while she lay sleeping?

Bruno nuzzled
supportively against her leg as she lifted the phone receiver and called information to request the phone number of the Greenfield Police.

“Hello,” she said, slowly and calmly
, when someone at the Greenfield police station answered the phone. “This is Miss Felicity Prim of Rose Cottage. I would like to report a murder.” Then, feeling very much a fool, she burst into tears.

A Handsome Detective

Miss Prim was waiting at her parlor window when the cars drove up. She had told the police there was no need to send an ambulance—the poor man was quite dead—but they sent one anyway, its bubble screaming as it drove along her quiet street.

So here she was, quiet and retiring Miss Prim, at the center of exactly the type of drama she’d spent her entire life avoiding. She doubted that the day’s events would endear her to her neig
hbors, whom she hadn’t met yet, or to the wealthy people who lived in the large homes on the ridge above Undercliff Lane.

The door chime pealed, and Bruno, sensing an onslaught of people from whom he would have to protect Miss Prim, barked menacingly. “Really, Bruno, you can be
quite
convincing,” she said, patting his head reassuringly. “No one would say you are not earning your kibble, so stand down, please.” Bruno’s tail wagged furiously, and he obliged Miss Prim’s request by taking his growls down a few notches.

Waiting o
n the other side of the door was a handsome police officer, a man Mrs. Charity Prim would have called a “tall drink of water,” to the delight and scandal of her better-behaved friends. Taking him in with a long sweeping glance from his head to his feet, Miss Prim decided she heartily approved of his physical being, from his salt-and-pepper crew cut, to his large brown eyes, to his strong nose and lips, to his cleft chin and prominent jawline, to his admirably fit physique, to his shoes, which were nicely polished and maintained. One sideburn was slightly longer than the other, and she noticed that his fingernails could have used a good shaping. But all that was to the good; if there was one thing Miss Prim did not like, it was a persnickety male. Besides, the imperfections only made the man more intriguing. “Delight in disorder,” Robert Herrick would have said.

“Mis
s Felicity Prim?” the man asked. When Miss Prim nodded yes, the large man extended his hand. “I’m Detective Ezra Dawes.” He stepped aside to introduce the two officers standing behind him. Pointing to a chubby but not very jolly-looking man who was peering into the shrubbery, Dawes said, “That’s Officer Martin Reed, and this”—pointing to a woman who was no taller than 4’6” and no heavier than 90 pounds—“is Officer Rebecca Fremlin.”

“Hi,” said Officer Fremlin in a surprisingly gruff
, two-pack-a-day voice. “Not exactly the welcome wagon you were expecting, I bet. I mean, you just get here and bam! There’s a dead guy in your house. I hope you didn’t kill him, we don’t go for that in Greenfield. And don’t bother with the Rebecca thing. Call me Spike. Everyone else does. I don’t have the time to tell you why right now, but if you really want to know, then stop by Maude’s sometime when I’m off duty and –”

“Spike,”
Detective Dawes interrupted, “maybe you can offer local color and your life story later.”

Spike
looked at Miss Prim and rolled her eyes heavenward, as if to say “What a bore he is.” Miss Prim liked her instantly.

“In the basement, right?” Fremlin asked.

“Yes,” Miss Prim responded. “Just go through the parlor and into the kitchen …”

“
Hey, no offense, Miss Trimm, but it’s hardly a mansion. I’m sure we can find the basement. Come on, Reed. And yes, I smell the cinnamon rolls too, but it would be rude to ask her for one, so don’t.” Fremlin made eye contact with Miss Prim again, this time giving her a “Men-they’re-so-predictable-and-all-the-same” look.

“You’ll have to forgive Officer Fremlin,” Detective Dawes said. The
words tripped off his tongue easily, signaling Miss Prim that he’d made the same request many, many times in the past. “She’s forthright, perhaps to a fault.”

“Well, there is certainly something to be said for getting straight to the point,” Miss Prim
replied. She’d spent enough years observing human behavior in Doctor Poe’s office to understand the psychology that drives a person as petite as Rebecca “Spike” Fremlin.

“I need to ask
you a few questions, Miss Prim. You won’t mind, I hope.”

Now this i
s rather dangerous
, Miss Prim thought. She’d always had a soft spot for men with lovely manners; and when the men looked like Detective Ezra Dawes, the size of that soft spot tripled or, in this case, quadrupled. This was one of her hidden secrets: She was far from impervious to the charms of a dashing man, as long as she found the man sincere and authentic. As for charmers, schmoozers, and snake-oil salesmen: She could smell them coming from a mile away, and she treated them accordingly. The pharmaceutical salesmen who tried to get past her to Doctor Poe could attest to
that
.

“O
f course, Detective Dawes. Would you like a cup of tea? And a cinnamon roll, of course.”

“T
hat would be great, Miss Prim. I just want to go downstairs and look around a bit before the techs do their work.”

Thirty
minutes later, sitting at Miss Prim’s small dining room table with a gooey cinnamon roll and strong black tea in front of him—how alarmingly, and attractively, large he looked sitting there!—Detective Dawes took out a notebook and began his questioning.

“Would you
go over exactly how you found the body, Miss Prim? Tell me everything, step by step.”

So Miss Prim repeated the story she’d told
him hastily on the phone: how she’d been rummaging in the attic, how she’d found the wooden star, how she’d sprung the hidden door.

Dawes scribbled
in his notebook. “Other than turning the body over, you didn’t move it?”

“That’s correct. I wanted to see if he was still alive. When I realized he wasn’t, I thought I shouldn’t contaminate the crime scene.”

“Why do you think it’s a crime scene?”

“
Because the hidden door was closed tight and the light switch was turned off. If he’d gone down there himself, I’d have found the door open and the light bulb on. There’s no source of natural light in the basement, so it would have been too dark down there to do anything if he
hadn’t
turned on the light. He was nowhere near the staircase, so he couldn’t have fallen down the staircase and died. And the wound with the blood … and the expression on the poor man’s face … it all seemed to suggest that a crime had been committed, here or elsewhere. But I am assuming elsewhere.”

Dawes looked at Miss Prim with curiosity. Miss Prim couldn’t quite read his expression. Did it say
, “This one’s got what it takes to be a criminal outsmarter”? Or did it imply “Great, another one who watches too much TV and fancies herself a forensics specialist”?

“And how did you
come to the conclusion that the man died elsewhere, Miss Prim?”

“
I ran up the stairs and called you as soon as I realized the man was dead, but while waiting for you, I went back into the basement and looked around with my flashlight. Don’t worry, I didn’t touch anything I hadn’t already touched. But I didn’t see a trail of blood. It made me think he might have been killed somewhere else and then dropped in my basement.”

“You said earlier you
just moved into the house today?”

“I bought the house
several months ago, but I’ve been busy having it painted, repaired, and furnished. I’ve been here for an occasional day or afternoon since I bought Rose Cottage, but this will be the first night I’ve spent in Greenfield. Before today, I’ve always gone back to New York at the end of the day.”

“Were you here every time something was delivered, or
when work was done on the place?”

“No. In fact, most of the time, I wasn’t. I used a local realtor,
Olivia Abernathy”—Dawes nodded in recognition—“and she was happy to help with all the arrangements.”

“For a fee, of course,” Dawes said, knowingly.

Miss Prim nodded. Perhaps Olivia had nickeled and dimed her more than was strictly necessary, but real-estate agents had fallen on tough times during the recent economic woes, and everyone was entitled to make a living. Besides, Olivia’s efforts had saved Miss Prim a great deal of time and effort (if not money), and for that she was grateful.

“So, you don’t know who
Olivia gave keys to?”

“No, I don’t. She assured me that everyone she hired was local and trustworthy. I left detailed instructions regarding what I wanted done and where I wanted the furniture placed, and each time I showed up, everything had been done exactly as I asked.”

Dawes scribbled another note. “I’ll talk with Olivia and get a list of everyone who’s been in the house. After the M.E. examines the body, I may need you to account for your whereabouts over a particular period of time. I don’t mean to make your day more stressful, but it’s standard procedure, so we should get it out of the way.”

“I understand, Detective
Dawes,” Miss Prim said. “Also, if you need to take my fingerprints, I assure you I shall cooperate.”

Dawes threw another inscrutable glance
at her. “Your fingerprints?”

“I assume you will dust the house for prints, and of course you’ll need to eliminate mine from consideration. To do that, you need to have a set of them, yes?”

“I must say, Miss Prim, you certainly seem well schooled in these matters. Patricia Cornwell? John Grisham? Michael Connelly?”

“Life, Detect
ive Dawes. Life.”
And
Cornwell, Grisham, and Connelly; but far be it from Miss Prim to allow a good-looking man to score quite so many points during a first meeting.

“Last question
, and then I’ll ask you to come to the station to sign a statement. Do you have any idea who the man might be?”

“None whatsoever. I’ve never seen him before.
I had considered looking through his pockets to see if he had any identification, but I reconsidered. I figured you would do that soon enough.”

“That was the right decision, Miss Prim.
Has anyone ever told you you’d make a good detective?”

Miss Prim positively beamed.

A moment later, Officers Reed and Fremlin entered the dining room.

“I
t’s all taped off, Boss,” Reed said to Dawes.

“Yeah, it’s good to go,” said Fremlin. “We’ll wait
here for the M.E. if you want to go back to the station, Ezra. Hey, Miss Limm, I gotta tell you, there sure is a lot of dust down there. I felt like I was gonna get black lung. Listen, it’s your house, do what you want, but I’m just saying.”

“I do plan on
undertaking a thorough cleaning once you are all done here, of course,” Miss Prim replied.

“This place is
real cute,” Fremlin said, surveying her surroundings. “Is it campy on purpose? I mean, come on with the frills. Is that real lace? People still make that stuff? And doilies? What are you, like a hundred or something?”