Smokewater Drive was a good street. Quiet. Expensive. Covered with millions of gallons of grass.
On that day it also had a squad car. Empty, like a snailless shell.
It sat in front of 148 Smokewater Drive, and that was most certainly NOT empty. Stuffed, cramped, overflowing, bulging, crammed, those were the words for the dining room. Everyone from the corner of Smokewater and Clarence on, all squished into every chair and every corner and Mr. Wallthroose was sitting on the table. Mrs. Chinbone and Mrs. Wallthroose had tried very thoroughly to persuade him to move, but he was feeling deaf at the moment and wasn’t budging.
This minor drama aside, all focus was on the man of the hour, of the plan, on Mr. Burton Q. Benthic. He was short and moustached and astonishingly bald. He didn’t gleam; he somehow exuded light from every dead would-be-follicle, every pore. If the power had blown out in the house, Benthic’s skull would have lit the room quite comfortably and indefinitely.
“I suppose you’re all wondering why I gathered you here today,” he said.
“It’s about the murder,” said Walburt Heddington.
“Yeah,” said Mrs. Wallthroose.
“Obviously,” said Edith Goose.
“Yes, yes, get ON with it,” said Mrs. Chinbone. “Come ON, Mr. Wallthroose!”
“Can’t,” said Mr. Wallthroose serenely. “Waiting for the murder.”
“There’s already been a murder!”
“Exciting part’s already over then. Not budging.”
“OFF!”
“Alright, alright, alright, settle down,” said Benthic. “Fine. I’ll tell you. It’s about the murder.”
“Knew it.”
“OFF THE TABLE!”
“No.”
“Yes, it’s about the murder,” said Walburt Heddington, peevishly. “We all knew that. Shut up and get on with the damned thing. What’s the news and who did it?”
“I’m here to reveal that I know who committed this crime, the killing of local garbageman Henry P. Floss, on his Thursday route, on this very street!”
“Yeah, yeah, put up or shut up,” said Mrs. Wallthroose. “Get talking!”
“First, I will explain how I came to my conclusions, in excruciating detail.”
“Boring,” complained Mr. Wallthroose. “Hurry up!”
“My first suspects were you and your wife, Mr. Wallthroose,” said Benthic, twinkling smugly in his own balding incandescence. “You had the motive: an overflowing recycling bin, obviously caused by Mr. Floss refusing to accept your recycling last week-”
“Bullshit we did NOT put the cardboard and plastic together, he was lazy and-”
“-and you most certainly possessed the means, in the form of Mr. Wallthroose’s collection of antique haberdashery blades.”
“Originals,” said Mr. Wallthroose proudly.
“But you lacked that most crucial of elements: opportunity. You are known snorers according to your neighbour, and never awaken before 10 AM on a weekday.”
“Jackass,” said Mrs. Wallthroose.
“Hey now!” said Walburt Heddington.
“Poltroon,” said Mr. Wallthroose.
“Look, I’m just saying!”
“So it can’t have been the Wallthrooses. Of course, what of Mr. Heddington? Unlike the Wallthrooses, he is an early riser – as a peeping tom, he has to be, in order to set up his camera network that peers into your bedrooms and bathrooms every morning. That kind of complex system costs money to maintain, update, and operate. And of course, they could be used to memorize Mr. Floss’s route, memorizing the exact moments at which he might let his guard down to scratch his groin or eat a snack or urinate on someone’s lawn. Such as he did every week to Mr. Heddington’s lawn, as verified by the small patch of dead grass next to his driveway. Motive and opportunity both!”
“Hey, I never-”
“But not only is Mr. Heddington lacking in firearms, he is a noodly person with feeble arms and no grip strength, while Mr. Floss was a robust specimen at six foot three inches with arms like a gorilla. No, Mr. Heddington lacks method, or at the very least, proper armaments. His rage must remain fully impotent.”
“Hahahahahahaha,” said Edith Goose, politely.
“Oh my goodness, tee hee,” said Mrs. Chinbone.
“Heh heh heh heh,” observed Mr. Wallthroose. “What’s so funny?”
“He’s IMPOTENT,” said Mrs. Wallthroose into his ear.
“Oh. But what’s the joke?”
There was a very brief and very simple and sad struggle to keep Walburt Heddington from violence until he got tuckered out.
“Right,” said Benthic, mopping his radiant scalp with a handkerchief that came away shining as if it were diamond-laced. “Where was I? Oh yes, Walburt Heddington is impotent.”
“Heh heh heh he-”
“Shut up, Mr. Wallthroose. So what of Edith Goose? She’s young and strong and the provincial shot-put champion, and has a clean line of fire from her bedroom window to her garbage pickup location. Furthermore, Mr. Floss’s skull was crushed by a large, heavy object! Furthermore, she is a known early riser due to the demands of her training! Furthermore, she has been repeatedly ogled and cat-called by Mr. Floss! Method, motive, and opportunity!”
“Three ‘furthermores’?” said Edith. “Really?”
“Excuse me,” said Benthic crossly, “but I’m trying to dramatically implicate you.”
“Yes, but come on. Three?”
“Shut up,” said Benthic.
“Make me.”
“Alright, alright, alright. Fine. Anyways, yes, Ms. Goose does indeed possess all three essential qualities to any good murderer, but in addition to having his skull crushed Mr. Floss was also electrocuted, stabbed, strangled, and shot. Although I’m certain Ms. Goose has knives and rope in her home, this all seems a bit excessive for one murderer. Speaking of which, we come to Mrs. Chinbone.”
“Oh wonderful!” exclaimed the lady in question. “This is so exciting!”
“Indeed,” said Benthic.
“Not you. You’re sort of boring. And you smell funny, like skulls and oil.”
“Be quiet. Now, Mrs. Chinbone. You have despised Mr. Floss for years: the garbage department has no less than sixteen annual complaints on record from you for the past three years, all of them relating to Mr. Floss and his conduct. You took an instant dislike to him for picking his nose and wiping it on his pants, fumed when he stepped on your lawn, and got into an argument about him about whether Batman could beat Spider-man.”
“Batman doesn’t have radioactive blood. The whole idea is nonsense, and I told him as much.”
“Indeed. Motive, you are not lacking in. Opportunity? You have time on your hands to spare. But method? Mrs. Chinbone, you are – permit me to be blunt – as frail as a clay pigeon. You couldn’t hurt a fly, let alone Mr. Floss.”
“There you are, then,” said Mrs. Chinbone. “And you aren’t too swole yourself, young man, so kindly watch those stones you’re casting from your glass home.”
“I undergo the same physical training as the rest of the department. But that is neither here nor-”
“Lifting donuts, perhaps.”
“Shut up,” intoned Benthic gravely.
“Make me, you impudent little scamp.”
“ANYWAYS, what Mrs. Chinbone does have interests me a good motive. Everyone in this room has a good reason – well, a reason, anyways – to want Henry P. Floss dead, although some of you lacked the means and others lacked the opportunity. But you all would have wanted him a corpse. And now we must return again, to the curiously mutilated nature of the body.”
“Are you going to accuse us of pulling a murder on the orient express?” demanded Mrs. Wallthroose. “Because frankly, I’d rather be dead than cooperate with that Walburt creep on anything.”
“Hey!”
“Same,” said Edith Goose. “And no offence, but I don’t think I’d need that much help to kill someone.”
“Kill someone?” inquired Mr. Wallthroose with interest. “Who? The detective?”
“Christ no,” said Benthic hastily.
“Excuse me,” inquired Mrs. Chinbone, “but I’ve never read ‘murder on the orient express.”
“He’s insinuating we all murdered Henry together,” said Edith Goose.
“Oh.”
“More implying, more implying,” said Benthic. “But now we must consider a final clue: the piece of porcelain embedded in Mr. Floss’s left sole.”
Everyone sat there.
“Well?”
“Stop screwing around,” said Mrs. Wallthroose flatly.
“Yeah, get to the point,” said Walburt Heddington.
“Fine,” said Benthic. “Look at this piece of china: does it look familiar?”
“Oh yes,” said Mrs. Chinbone. “It’s from my favourite teapot! I broke it last week. Such a pity, I was enjoying a nice cup and then there was this awful noise from outside-”
“That was me,” interjected Edith Goose. “I’d crushed one of Walburt’s cameras between my hands and was screaming at him.”
“Oh my. I thought it was cats making love. Anyways, I dropped the teapot. Had to junk it.”
“Just so. Mrs. Chinbone, how much garbage do you produce in a week?”
“About a ha’-pound, after holidays.”
“I see. And in your experience, is Mr. Floss a cautious man?”
“Goodness no.”
“So we might presume that Mr. Floss might carelessly heavy your bag onto his shoulder, expecting little to no resistance, and suffer incisions due to his laissez-faire attitude?”
“Oh why not!” said Mrs. Chinbone cheerfully.
“Quite so! He cut his shoulder, then dropped the bag on his foot and suffered further injuries. Vexing, and likely deeper than he suspected, but not enough to keep him from his duty. So he proceeded to Mr. Heddington’s residence, where he emptied the trash in a bad mood, as can be seen by the violence with which he threw it in haphazardly, in these photos of the dump truck. After that came the Wallthrooses, and here is where things begin to go awry: Mr. Wallthroose, do you recognize this gun?”
“Never seen it,” said Mr. Wallthroose, very quickly.
“Wait a sec,” said Mrs. Wallthroose.
“No, put it away.”
“Wait a sec. Wait one cotton-fucking second. Herman, you piece of shit – you threw out my elephant gun!”
“No I didn’t!”
“You did! You threw out my grandmother’s rifle! This is an antique! You can’t get ‘em like this anymore!”
“Said you’d shoot me with it!”
“It was a joke!”
“You don’t joke six cups in!”
“I’m HILARIOUS six cups in!”
“Not where I’m sitting!”
“Excuse me,” said Benthic, “but I’m solving a crime here. Now, see how it’s been fired recently?”
“You threw out my grandmother’s rifle fully-loaded?!”
“You kept it loaded?”
“Just in case!”
“Case of what? Elephants?”
“Shut up,” said Benthic politely. “Now, Mr. Floss was hasty in his pain, and as he stuffed the Wallthroose household’s garbage away, he seems to have inadvertently fired this gun into his left shoulder. The pain sent him staggering backwards – even though it missed any large veins or arteries by some miracle, it shattered his bones quite badly – and he put his foot into Ms. Goose’s trash, where it crushed the already-mangled remains of Mr. Heddington’s surveillance camera.”
“That’s his fault, legally, right?” asked Edith Goose.
“Hey!”
“Shut up, creep.”
“Anyways, he then spasmed his way into the back of his truck, where an item of Mr. Heddington’s trash – a USB cable, I believe – was dislodged and became tangled around his neck. In his thrashing, oxygen-deprived, electrically-shocked state, Mr. Floss lost all sense of balance and reason and half-choked himself to senselessness before falling over and smashing his brains out on the sidewalk. An act of god caused by negligent trash disposal. Quite rare.”
He smiled at the room.
“So the murderer is….nobody?” asked Edith Goose.
“Quite so.”
“What’s that, a reverse orient express?” asked Mrs. Wallthroose.
“Maybe!” said Benthic.
“Are we going to be charged with anything?” asked Walburt Heddington.
“Oh, the garbage department will send along some small fine or something,” said Benthic. “And now I must bid you all farewell.”
“Excuse me, young man?” inquired Mrs. Chinbone. “Do you mean to say that you stressed us all out and wasted a whole street’s time just to inflate your own ego?”
“Quite so,” said Benthic. “Quite so.”
With a quick tip of his hat, he covered his glowing cranium. And as the light left, so did he.