Free Crime Story: Tell Tail

Sitting safe where you are–reading my words–you may think me mad, and that’s your judgement to make.
But I tell you, I’m not to blame for the murder on Mulberry Lane.
How unfair to judge me mad. For truly I’m more sane now than ever before. Now that I realize the truth about so many things.
The mulberry, for example. As malevolent as it is ubiquitous—and this needs to be recognized.
It’s dirty. It stains.
It needs to be held accountable.
The black hearted juice doesn’t simply mar the beige corduroy trousers or white cotton blouse. Oh, no! So too does the violet violence sneak into your heart.
I’ve known it for years, but only with the Mulberry Lane incident did I realize how far the pernicious things would go to inflict their madness.
The humid day was unusually warm for a Missouri June, with an outside temperature more akin to cookstove July.
Dressed in a light shirt and pants already described, I retired from the stifling oven of my wallpapered study to walk with my dog, Solomon, along the trickling river in the yellowing grass at Claysville park.
My brick, two-story home resides on the edge of the place and it’s often that I take my leisure there.
A line of wilting day lilies struggled in the long grass, listing to left and right.
Letting the beast run ahead, off his lead, I closed my eyes to the sun and breathed in what little breeze came off the water’s surface.
The creek’s edge was hard and crumbling so we stuck to the center of the trail, dappled as it was with sunlight where it swerved under an occasional walnut or elm.
At first our pace was brisk, but I’m afraid heat exhaustion set in to both of us quickly enough. A side path to a mulberry grove seemed a welcome respite.
Entering the shady place, Solomon barked as if in happy greeting.
A mixed breed wrapped in a coat of flowing dark fur, Solomon’s mongrel heritage betrays his name.
Wisdom is not his strong suit, and if he were more physically sound, I’d call him Samson.
Because of the long hair.
But Darcy named him Solomon as a pup, and Solomon he is.
He loved Darcy almost as much as me.
And so, he too owns a portion of the blame for the day’s events.
For just as I first picked up the scent of Darcy’s lilac perfume, the same familiar smells must have assaulted his nose.
And so he recognized our old friend, and ran to her.
She stood beneath the row of mulberry trees, the trail doubly stained with spots of dark shadow and the spatter of dropped berries.
But awful as they were, the berries were secondary to the terror inflicted on my mind at that moment.
For here was Darcy.
With a freshly place ring on that finger which forever barred me from her intimate company.
Why she was there, I don’t know. Maybe the life of a pastor’s wife was as stifling as the heat of my own wallpapered study. Maybe the afternoon’s malaise had driven her out to Claysville Park and the secluded lane in hopes of a moment’s excitement.
Perhaps in hopes of a private rendezvous?
In hopes of the heat rekindling old flames?
Did she hope to find me, where I so often stroll?
But even as I closed in on that delicate frame, that lightly powdered porcelain face, those tender lips—she raised a hand to her cheek and a single ray of sunlight stabbed thorugh the trees like a lance to strike that slim band of gold.
The ring! The ring!
Forever it will haunt me.
The sign that another—a man of the cloth no less—had received the reward for which I had toiled so long, for so many months of air-headed fluff and flattery.
I cast my eyes away, at the ground, just as another mulberry fell from the over-burdened leaves above.
There were scores of berries surrounding both of us. Some whole, some crushed to pulp. Some nothing more than a liquid dark stain in the dirt. Darcy and I stood in a veritable sea of wasted mulberries.
Already one had left it’s telltale black mark on the toe of my light leather boot.
“I should have to scrub that away,” I said to myself.
Darcy must have taken that as a greeting for at that moment she deigned to speak.
But the ring was again in my vision as she reached out to me.
And what happened next, I can’t—no, won’t—describe.
Simply understand that what happened to Darcy was not my fault.
It was the berries you see.
The berries that stained my fingers as they groped and squeezed.
Berries that fell onto the back of my shirt, my neck, my hair.
That marred my trousers as I knelt under the weight of my task.
And when I was done, the berries covered both myself and Darcy’s still husk.
Solomon’s bark woke me as if from a dream, and we retired quickly to the study where I appraised my appearance in the tall looking glass there.
Mulberry stains! Black and red!
Blue, indigo, violet. I had become a living palette for some madly depressive painter, each blot a reminder of the vile act I committed. Each stain a confession warranting my own choking death.
I’m afraid I went on something of a tear at that point. Normally tidy and well kept, my study became a clutter of turned over furniture and broken glass works as I raged to find washcloths and cleaning solvents.
Thankful Solomon’s water dish was dry—I found it afterwards perched on a priceless set of hardbound sonnets that might have been completely ruined.
Initially I set to work on my shoes, for they were the most discolored.
I scrubbed as if my life depended upon it—for I well knew that it did.
No one must be able to connect me with the grotesque figure on repose at Mulberry Lane.
After the shoes were spotless, I stripped out of my attire and examined every pore, every follicle, every highly evolved cell of my Grecian form, making sure to expunge every hint of the berry blood.
I decided to burn my clothing, and so stuffed shirt and pants into a compact canvas sack. After dressing in an immaculate suit of blazing white, I immediately took the incriminating apparel outside, dumped it in an iron trash barrel behind my home, and set it ablaze.
I entered my study through the back way only to find Samson crying at his overturned water dish, his unrolled tongue like a speckled parchment map.
For it too, was covered in mulberry stains!
And if his tongue, than so too his hair, the pads of his paws!
In my haste to cleanse myself of the afternoon’s doings, I had forgotten Solomon’s guilt.
And so I set to work.
Brushing, scrubbing with lye, wiping away the color from his ebony hair.
I picked seeds like ticks—that to a trained forensic eye—might give the poor beast away.
Finally, secure in his sanitation, I again saw the lolling, water-starved tongue, it dimpled surface dark with spots.
Damning the elusive nature of the berries, I rose to secure a dipper of water.
When a knock came at the door.
Heavy handed and sure of purpose.
“Open us, sir,” came the voice. “Official business, sir.”
Panic!
I made a half-hearted attempt to right a chair I’d tipped over in my rage. Replaced a book to a table.
But there wasn’t time.
The knocking became insistent.
I smoothed back my hair.
Appraised both myself and Solomon in the looking glass.
Other than the tongue, I saw nothing that would give us away.
The knocking became a pounding.
“I know you’re in there, sir.”
Quickly I shut Solomon behind a hallway door that led to my bedroom.
Then, with a deep breath, I opened the front entrance to the familiar face of Constable M______ framed as it was in muttonchops and a wig of sandy disarray.
“Good afternoon to you,” I greeted. “Pray tell, what’s this all about?
“I’m afraid I’ve got some rather sobering news, sir. Would you mind overly much if I stepped inside?”
“Of course not. Please, come in,” I said, the charming host.
As the constable made his way into the study and found a chair, my eyes furiously darted this way and that, alert for any sign of mulberry remnants.
Ever so gradually, I began to breathe at ease.
The room was clean.
I was clean.
Solomon whined behind his closed door.
“It’s about a murder, sir.”
“Murder? Oh my!”
“I’m afraid it’s an acquaintance of yours sir. A Mrs. Darcy Reynolds.”
“Not Darcy!” I said, thrusting my hand to my lips with a flourish.
For you see, I performed on the stage as an undergraduate, and this part of my deception didn’t worry me in the least.
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry.”
Solomon whined again, and I realized he had yet to have a drink.
To his credit, the constable watched closely as I feigned a few tears and let my shoulders shake just enough in light sobbing as to make the fellow feel uncomfortable.
He was simply doing his job.
“It seems to have just happened this afternoon. May I ask where you’ve been?”
“Of course, of course.” I regained my composure and answered straight forwardly. “I’ve been here all afternoon. Reading.”
Solomon pawed at his side of the door and, for the first time, the constable noticed that we weren’t alone in the house.
“Your dog, sir?”
“Yes, yes. He sleeps in my bedroom. Better ventilation. The heat’s more bearable there you understand.”
“I see.”
“Well, I just naturally closed the door when you knocked,” I said.
The constable raised his eyebrows as Solomon continued to demand his release.
“I wouldn’t want him to bother you,” I said.
“Wouldn’t bother me in the least,” said the constable, slapping his knee. “I love a good dog.”
“I really should get him some water,” I said. “The heat…,”
“By all means.”
As I rose, the next words froze my heart.
“Has the dog also been here all afternoon?”
I turned, holding tight to my calm.
“Why do you ask, sir?”
“No reason. Just wondering if you had let him out at any point?”
“No, no,” I carelessly assured him. “Solomon and I have been here together all afternoon.”
Fool!
Now what had I done?
If I let Solomon out into the company of the law, the constable will surely note mulberry stains on the dog’s tongue.
Which would lead to more questioning.
Perhaps a search in and around the house.
Maybe more questioning about why a suit of clothes might be burned on a hot summer afternoon?
Surely they’d been rendered harmless ash by now?
Or had they?
“Solomon must have his drink,” I said and first excused myself to a kitchen area where I slowed my thinking while pumping full a pan of fresh water.
There was nothing to fear.
I would walk into the next room and set down the pan of water.
Then, I’d open the door, releasing poor dehydrated Solomon.
Thirsty as he was, his keen nose would go for the water before visiting the constable.
And the last vestige of mulberry stains would be wiped away.
Again, I told myself, there was nothing to fear.
I carried out the plan flawlessly, and reclaimed my chair as Solomon lapped at the water with greed.
“What else can I do for you, Constable?” I asked.
“Beautiful dog,” he said.
“Thank you.”
Lap, lap, lap.
The sound of Solomon’s tongue on the water was music to the ears. Each splash a cleansing acquittal.
“Shame to keep him cooped up in a hot apartment all afternoon.”
“As I said, the ventilation in the bedroom is better.”
Still Solomon lapped at his water, drinking it all in, filling his stomach with the cold, life-giving liquid.
Lap, lap, lap.
The sound like a drum, pounding out a rhythm. Like a heart beat.
“I just think a dog might like a walk thorugh the park.”
“No, no. I’ve been by his side all afternoon. Right here.”
“You’ve been by his side all afternoon.”
“That’s right.”
“I see.”
“He rather likes it inside,” I said, for it seemed the constable was looking for more.
But I couldn’t understand the questioning, and was growing more irritated by the second.
Lap, lap, lap.
Hadn’t the cur finished his portion yet?
“If that’s it then, I’ll be on my way.”
I watched the man rise from his chair, not trusting myself to stand without a tremble.
Lap, lap, lap.
What was it about that infernal drumming? That obnoxious, overriding sound of Solomon, gorging himself on water, his stomach swelling to the point of—
“Your dog, sir.”
The lapping had become a series of halting, gagging grunts.
Standing, I admit to falling against the arm of the chair as I witnessed the dog’s involuntary spasms.
Mouth wide, belly convulsing.
“Not to be alarmed,” said the constable. “He simply took in too much water at too fast a rate. He’ll be fine in a moment.”
And with that, Solomon gave up the contents of his stomach.
“Villain!” I shouted. “I admit the deed! Here, here! The mulberries!”
And I was forever lost in an acrimonious sea of black and red and violet and blue as a recognizable, barely digested fount spilled out at the constable’s feet.