Chapter Ten

SPLAT. Flutter flutter. SPLAT. Flop flop….THWACK!

 

Mary reached down and picked the dying bird up by a feather with her forefinger and thumb. Its wings unfolding like a tiny accordion as she lifted it from the floor where she had beaten it to death. The bird, an unwelcome and unexpected guest had flown through the open window and had not been able to make its way out again.

 

Her grandfather had taken her hunting once in the English countryside when she had been younger. Her mother had been against it but she was her grandfather’s only grandchild and all of his own children had been girls. She had just turned ten and her grandfather decided he had to impart his hunting wisdom on someone. Mary had the appearance of a lady, but the hunt had stayed with her all this time.

 

“Don’t breathe, don’t move,” he could still hear her grandfather saying to her.

 

She dipped the dead bird in a pot of boiling water to loosen the feathers. Some of the feathers slipped out of their hold effortlessly. With others she had to pinch the tip near the rubbery pore so hard between her fingernails that she tore the skin. The bird’s, and her own.

 

After gutting the poor bird she rubbed spices into its skin and slipped it in the oven. Her own little feast. The others could have some wine. Wine is the blood of Christ, after all.

 

As she dressed and rouged her cheeks, scenes of the last time she had seen Lessie floated though her head. “He didn’t do it for me! Mary, he did it for you!” Her husband had been sitting outside on the veranda as the women yelled back and forth. Like hell he did it for me, she thought to herself. But then, sometimes, she thought he might have.

 

A knock at the door brought her back to the present moment with its smell of salt and seared bird flesh.

 

“Betsy!”

“Hello, Mary. This is Bishop.” Bishop nodded his head graciously and stepped through the open door after Elizabeth. She had told him a bit, leaving out all the details, about how her relationship with Mary had soured.

 

They stepped wordlessly into the drawing room where Mary took up some glasses for the wine. “You know its curious…” she paused. “I popped out earlier to pick up a paper. Terrible the way they splash those photos all across the pages. That poor girl. I mean, well, Betsy you know how I felt about her. But, even so. To use such images to sell those damn things! But like I was saying, its curious. Well, perhaps it’s not that surprising considering....” her words trailed off.

 

After a few beats she continued, “…its just, in those photos…she’s wearing my clothes!”

 

She gestured to a stack of papers. Bishop rose from his seat and walked to the table where they sat. While taking the paper up in his hands he asked, “In the photos from the crime scene? She was wearing your clothing when she was killed?”

 

“Or someone put them on her after,” Elizabeth offered as she nervously bit the skin around her thumb nail.

 

“Well. You’re the detective. I don’t wish to speculate. I want no part in this and I had nothing to do with it. All I know is that that is my dress! I had it custom made for me by a designer friend and I don’t know how she got it. I think that’s something worth investigating! Who was it that broke into my closet! Lord knows if I find out who is trying to set me up…and who is stealing my nice things….”

 

“I’m sorry? I thought you wanted no part in this, Mary,” Elizabeth smirked.

 

Mary, who was in the middle of pouring a glass of wine set down the bottle with a heavy thud and then tossed the crystal glass of wine backwards over her shoulder, as if discarding the wrapper of a candy bar. The scent of burnt bird flesh again entered her nose. She stomped off to the kitchen to take care of it.