Art Pact 95


Inspector Brownstone paced the room majestically, each leg placed purposefully on the ground before his center of gravity swung over it and the other leg was picked up, placed, and in its turn loaded. Like a giant stork he moved around the edge of the study, and like a stork he paused ominously every few steps, craning his neck and peering over the head of the unfortunate who he had stopped behind. Sometimes he murmured to himself as if satisfied by the some opaque thought process going on in his mind, sometimes he tutted and stroked his chin, sometimes he expelled a great huff through his nose, sending a wave of cold air that would hit the person before him in the back of the neck and travel down their collar like an unwelcome guest. Several of the more nervous "guests" shivered or jumped slightly as he passed them, or twisted uncomfortably in their seats in a vain attempt to keep him in their field of view. The whole effect was uncannily predatorial, although it was spoiled the instant the Inspector opened his mouth and began to speak.

"I have asked you here-" he squeaked.

"My god, man," said Devereaux. "What's wrong with your voice?"

Inspector Brownstone glowered at him, and ran one finger underneath his collar, loosening it from his neck. Whatever he had intended by the action, it had no obvious affect on his vocal chords, for his reply was as high-pitched as before, perhaps even more so. Lady Trellis, made overly sensitive to such matters by her musical training, winced as Brownstone hit a note just a fraction below C7 as he spoke.

"There is nothing wrong with my voice. Someone - the murderer, I expect - has tampered with my power supply. I discovered the saboutage this morning, when I rose from my recharge station. I expect the guilty party was hoping to silence me, but he"--he paused significantly--"or she"--another long pause--"or it, will find that Brownstone is not so easily silenced!"

He had walked, during this speech, into the center of the room, stopping for a moment in time with each pause. In the middle of the assembled guests, he turned a slow three hundred and sixty degrees looking each of them in the eye for a few seconds before moving on to the next. He started, and finished, with Mr. Ronson.

"Mister Ronson," he squeaked. "Let us begin with you. Is it not true that you feel aggrieved towards Lady Trellis because you learnt that she had amended her will and cut you out of it?"

Ronson, looking to his left and right, then lowered his head and mumbled something.

"Speak up!" Squeaked Brownstone dramatically. Milly, the smallest serving bot, burst into laughter, which cut off with a yelp when Brownstone wheeled round to stare at her. After fixing her with his steeliest gaze for a few seconds, he turned slowly back towards Ronson. "Let us hear what you have to say for yourself, Mister Ronson."

"I don't know-" said Ronson.

"But you must know!" Brownstone interrupted. "Ignorance is no excuse in the eye of the law!"

"-what aggrieved means." Ronson concluded.

Brownstone simply stared at him, but from her position in the corner of the room the house-matron could see that the fingers on his right hand were rippling in a drumming pattern across the exposed metal at his hip.

"It means..." he squeaked slowly, sounding not entirely unlike a balloon laboriously deflating, "..that you snuck into the conservatory on the night in question, carrying the can full of petrol and filled with a burning rage that lead subsequently to a more literal burning - the burning of the petrol, that caused a blaze that you hoped would extinguish the life force of your aunt in vengeance for the perceived slight!" Brownstone concluded with a triumphant finger pointed in the air. This gesture, intended as an interpretive pose indicating his QED inadvertantly solved the problem of the missing budgerigar, since after a few seconds it fluttered down from its hiding place at the top of the main bookcase and landed there. Either Brownstone did not notice it or he chose deliberately to ignore it, because he lowered his hands again and folded them up behind his back, the budgie clinging on so as to ride in place, ultimately ending up upside-down.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," said Ronson. "I'm allergic to petrol. I told you that - I can't be within ten meters of it. I told you that when you first interviewed me."

"Did you?" Brownstone frowned.

"He did," Milly said timourously. The others nodded.

"Oh," squeaked Brownstone. "Who am I thinking of, then?"

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