Murder by Installments, Ep. 20
Howdy folks, and welcome back. This is Episode 20, but if you’d like to start with Matt Slade’s hardboiled adventures from the beginning, you can find them all here.
Episode 20
“What do you think you’re doing?” Claire Brazelton hissed in my ear as we followed the butler down the endless corridors to meet her father.
“He hired me to find out who killed him. I’ve told you all this.”
“And you think it’s me? You’re dragging me home to face the music, is that it?”
“Did I say that?”
“You killed… I don’t know how many of Kavanaugh’s men. Hijacked a car, dragged me here at gunpoint.”
“If that doesn’t convince you I know what I’m doing, I don’t know what to tell you.”
We rounded another bend in the long hallway. It boggled the mind how much space these tycoons managed to enclose. Might as well be the heart of Philadelphia. I knew only too well what my tiny office cost me, and that wasn’t on millionaire’s row.
At sight of the heavy oak door at the end of the hall, Claire tried to make a break for it. She’d been whining, but hadn’t done anything physical. When she suddenly shoved me into one of the old-fashioned tin suits the money men stand around to convince the rest of us that great-great-grandad was a man of action.
What a shambles. Gorgets and sabatons, arse over teakettle. If she’d just run, she might have gotten away while I untangled myself. At least for a while. Old Matt Slade can be a damned determined bloodhound if the right gent is footing the bill, and I suspected Brazelton would, at least for as long as the old man’s health held out. I’d follow her as far as I had to.
It wasn’t necessary, the dogged pursuit through the capitals of Europe. She didn’t run, she stayed to kick me. A pointed lady’s boot in the ribs is no fun, but I grabbed her stockinged leg and pulled. She fell like a toppling tree on top of me, her tweed cased body the only soft, warm thing in the pile of cold, hard steel. Not very chivalrous, I suppose. I wondered fleetingly if the Sir Knight whose iron underwear we were rolling around on disapproved. But then, most knights were just thugs in armor. So what if they dressed it up in virtue and honor and duty? It was a protection racket.
Sir Knight was no better than me, I thought. Just doing what the robber barons of his day paid him to.
I rolled Claire off in the clatter of steel gauntlets and breastplates on the marble floor while I got painfully to my feet. Butler Thornycroft wrung his hands, watching the precious stuff scattered and dented. He at last moved in to...do something, I guess. He just got in the way of getting the dame back on her feet, so I elbowed him out of my way and dragged her up.
“Now, now, doll, play nice.”
“You—”
I didn’t wait to find out what she was going to tell me about myself. I just gave a shove of my own, starting her moving toward the oak door.
“Come on. Let’s get it over with. Go see daddy dearest.”
She walked under her own power, which was good. I didn’t think I was up to dragging her this morning.
At the door, the butler reasserted himself. He darted in front and opened it.
“Mr Brazelton, sir? A Mr Matthew Slade to see you, along with Miss Claire.”
The rumble from inside was indistinct, but the tailcoated butler told us, with all the pomp and dignity he could manufacture for the scene, “The Master will see you now.”
The Master indeed. I walked in to find that, far from the junior grade throne room I’d expected, we’d been led to ‘The Master’s’ own bedroom. He lay, looking far more unwell than when last I’d seen him, (had that only been yesterday?) in my downtown office. The big four poster was all the throne he’d be getting now.
“Fast work, Slade.”
“I had a few breaks.”
“I can’t say I’m surprised. When I realized it had to be poison, my first though was of my loving daughter, the one who studies poisons.”
“You did?” she hissed. She seemed genuinely shocked.
“Of course, girl. Wouldn’t you?”
“No! Of course not! I study toxicology to find what medicines can be made from the poisonous substances in nature. You think I would use my knowledge to kill? Even you?”
The old man was wracked with a fit of coughing. When he finished, he croaked “I did.”
Claire spun to face me. “This is why I don’t talk to him. He’s not Daddy, not really. There’s no warmth, no trust. Not since Mama died. Just cold, hard Brazelton, the magnate. So impressed with himself…”
“I’ll have to see my lawyer… my business manager. She won’t enjoy the spoils of her crime. I’ll make a new will. Nothing for her,” another fit of coughing intervened, before he sneered “nothing for her precious university.”
“Sir, all due respect, but that’s not why I brought her here.”
“It isn’t?” asked Brazelton.
“It isn’t?” asked Miss Brazelton.
“It isn’t,” I told them both.