Tobias Seamon

Next to the sleuth is his factotum, Miss Laura Falstaff. She has served as his second scalpel for upwards of ten years. Despite being the daughter of near-eastern diplomats, with close blond hair and blue eyes like a dove of the realm, she has lived up to the appetites typically associated with her surname. After a collapse of detente in her parents' ward, Miss Falstaff escaped the subsequent mass deaths and lived a mysterious existence in a neighboring country notorious for spices and irregular train schedules. It was there the sleuth, on unnamed business, found Miss Falstaff and rescued her from what he liked to refer to as, "a particularly Oriental form of shame." The verite of this claim is suspect, as Miss Falstaff was later delivered to the sleuth's cottage with upwards of twenty steamer trunks filled with objects d'art. The ferns remind Miss Falstaff of a party once on the embassy lawns, when the eminent hostess, drunk on corruption, took a croquet mallet to the tea service. Miss Falstaff was that hostess.

Ransom and Falstaff both are relieved of their thoughts by the creaking of the gilded lift. It descends slowly, and before it has even settled, the grate opens and the residents of Blacksquall Manor emerge. The circles under their eyes express the fact they were, a mere eight hours ago, emancipated from the burden of being suspects for murder. The bloody scene in the bog has left them exhausted.

First from the open lift is Dr. Julius Tourette. A once-successful surgeon, and a born liar, Dr. Tourette's grasp is famously excessive. Confined to the bleak midlands because of an egregious mistake at the operating table, he maintains a proud, savage anger to compensate for the loss of his blue-blooded clients and their black-inked chequebooks. He is never comforted by the fact that his skills of extraction are performed on farmers and other locals, nor is he pleased when they pay in eggs or chopped wood. He is a man who can afford his Bombay gin, with or without the credit of an obese shopkeeper. Unusual for a physician, Dr. Tourette is stooped, and often smells of sweat. These qualities may or may not have to do with his illegitimacy.

On the doctor's arm is his wife, Mrs. Calliope Tourette. An exasperated and exasperating woman, she is like a greyhound put to pasture: long nosed, excessively ribbed, grey of face. She finds the murk of her husband's past a bore, just as she found his affairs with the murdered Jeannine Croft a bore as well. In fact, she finds the murder a bore. Her impatience with these matters isn't a problem of lack of imagination, but rather, is the opposite. Razor sharp, and never one for the obvious or the typical, Mrs. Calliope Tourette is an author of mystery novels, and well versed in the intrigue of crime, though her culinary choices have also been considered criminal at times. The luncheon with the flayed crab-and-radish biscuits has never been quite forgiven. As always, she favors a splash of red in her outfit, on this morning, with unintentional rudeness, a crimson scarf around the neck.

Calliope and Julius both stand aside as the matriarch of the Manor, the widowed Abigail Tourette, slowly clomps out of the lift. Her heavy shoes and cane thump on the ancient parquet, and Julius winces at the cane's imprint. With her husband long dead after a fishing accident in the Highlands, Abigail is a rambling daydreamer whose sole concern has been keeping Julius' bastardhood a secret from her son. This caused much of the secret antagonism between Abigail and the murdered Croft girl, though Julius has known the truth of his parentage -- Abigail's second cousin, on leave during the war -- since the age of fifteen. The murder, and subsequent familial revelations, have unpeeled the elderly Tourette from reality. Within the recesses of her imagination, she inhabits a Parisian garret just up the boulevard from Madame Printemp's bawdy house, serving as lover to a playwright/pornographer. Although the Manor is within forty miles of the coast, Abigail Tourette hasn't visited the sea since the day she learned of the second cousin's death in the occupied city of Strasbourg.

Just behind Madame Tourette is her current gallant, the 64-year old James Whit. Still thin, with overlarge ears and a constant slight cold, wearing his usual grey suit and polished medals on the lapels, Mr. Whit is neither playwright nor pornographer, though he has qualities similar to both those professions of inquisition. A retired member of the Foreign Service, he wrote upwards of seven hundred reports detailing East German interrogations during the Cold War. Ostensibly among enemies, Mr. Whit made a number of friends during his years in Deutschland, and he remains in close contact with more than a few ex-Stasi, often taking his holidays at their lavish houses along the river Oder. James Whit was perhaps the least suspect of the Blacksquall household, with no one remembering him even once admitting to the Croft girl's existence. When she served at table, it was as if a phantom refilled his glass and removed his ravaged plates. A friend of the family since the patriarch's death, Mr. Whit was in fact of member of the disastrous fishing party in the Highlands. It was widely commented upon that he did all he was capable of, both during the tragedy and afterwards, as he consoled Madame Tourette.

Finally, last from the lift, is Ellie, the youngest of the Tourettes. Legitimate in every manner, the daughter is a wisp from one of her mother's Left Bank fantasies. Daydreamy, with Ophelia-esque aspirations for the stage and screen, Ellie Tourette is closer to the idiot than the savant. Inspector Ransom and Miss Falstaff both thought the girl retarded during their first interview, as she played with her toe rings incessantly and murmured strangely obscene nursery rhymes the entire time. Beneath the skin of imbecility, perhaps Ellie is more than meets the knife, though. The investigation dredged a near-miraculous volume of handwritten monologues for the stage from beneath Ellie's bed. When a duplicate copy of the monologues -- most from the fractured point of view of the prophetess Cassandra -- was found in another script in the murdered Croft girl's bureau, it became impossible to tell who had written what or when, and Ransom deemed the evidence inconsequential. Pale as a lily, Ellie Tourette often winces with the simple exertion of breathing, though the low, loose, flower-print dresses she favors wouldn't appear to stifle anything. Ever forgetful, she doesn't close the grate behind her. The gilded lift remains open.

Tall like most sleuths, Ransom is able to see over their combined shoulders, and views the family within the high mirror backing the lift. Abigail's faltering clumsiness, Julius's hopeless rage, Calliope's ribbed boredom, Whit's regimental iciness, and Ellie's humid sighs are apparent even without the help of a full reflection. Nevertheless, the murder has been solved, and everyone is exhausted from the killer's suicide in the bog the previous night. There is nothing left to dissect. Ransom hands the mackintosh to his factotum and goes forward to make his departures, Miss Falstaff a careful foot or two behind. They shake hands with the former suspects, who never realize the extent of Ransom's germophobic fears. With every palm crossed, he too winces for breath, clutching the stolen paperweight like a club in his left pocket. He would burn them out, all of them, if he could. Falstaff, ever a dove of the realm, scented lightly with spice, refuses to look at herself in the mirror of the open lift, preferring instead to remember a party on the lawns, when the eminent hostess, drunk on corruption, fled the scene and never returned. Miss Falstaff was not that hostess.

In Posse: Potentially, might be ...