Detective Herrington stood in the morgue office.  It was painted a neutral white, with large prints of magnolias on the walls and several lemons arranged in the squat glass vase on the driftwood coloured desk.  He waited for the coroner to show him what went wrong with the Wheatley murder.  It wasn't until he had actually studied the Stark-Woolf's dining room did he think anything was out of the ordinary.  The sideboard had been set in an alcove, flanked by plain panelled doors, the table unfurled down the room to the front windows like a red carpet, with the chairs ranked like palace guards either side.  All that was needed was the Queen on horseback to inspect them, but there had been a rather nice Tang dynasty terra cotta stallion on Irish lace on the sideboard.  A collection of blue and white china was all set all around it on plain wooden plinths, not one out of place.

The coroner slooped through the door, and opened the file cabinet, not a word, not a glance.

'Excuse me, Detective Herrington, three o'clock.' Blu said.

'Yes Detective, it's two fifty-three, I don't have to acknowledge you for another seven minutes.' The coroner didn't look up from the file.

'Yes, well, I -'

The coroner put up a finger to cut him off.  Then she closed the file and set it on the desk, before she turned around. 'Viola Cabot.  Like the cheese.  I am sorry about just know, I prefer to keep a strict schedule.' Her voice was all broad vowels and sharp consonants, schedule pronounce 'shed-yule'.  She extended a bony hand, and surprised Blu with a strong grip.  Dr. Cabot laughed at his expression. 'It's from the rib-cutter.'

'Indeed.'

She picked up a lab coat from the coat rack by the sliding glass door into the morgue. 'You'll want this.  Walk with me.' She tossed it and Blu caught it.
He followed Dr. Cabot into the tiled room, and stopped at the edge of a stainless steel table lumpily draped with a sheet.

'The victim is in cold storage.' Dr. Cabot said before she pulled back the sheet.  Carefully laid out were the dress, pearls, and shoes worn by Beatrice Lauren Wheatley at the time of her untimely demise.

'Unfortunate, this was a classic Dior style dress, most likely Parisian.  It's vintage, but the blood and stains are interesting.'

'You appreciate clothes.'

'One has to when one attends dinner parties.' Dr. Cabot said effortlessly.  'In all honesty Detective, what did the murder say to you?'

'Well, it appeared that the victim was dressed after being murdered.  And the pearls were an obvious decoy.'

'What do you know about the blood?'
Dr. Cabot waved a gloved finger over the stains, tracing them in the air. 'It's her own.  The fluids are partly hers, partly unknown, most likely a cornstarch based glaze meant to resemble something else.'

Blu's forehead crinkled.

Dr. Cabot walked around to the pearls. 'I had an expert look at them. Freshwater pearls, the ribbon is silk grosgrain from North Japan. The undergarments are interesting. Simple, and unviolated.'

'But the dress -'

'Made to look otherwise. The scene was manufactured. Now, the boy who discovered the victim, could he do it?'

Blu looked up at Dr. Cabot.  A few thoughts scampered across his brain, mostly of the yes or no variety.  'No.  He has the strength, but not the fortitude.  Strangulation perhaps, or a shooting in self defence, but not this.'

'Any others?  I heard about the girl.  Any person who names their daughter after a Shakespearean hysteric must be desperate to breed a murderer.' Dr. Cabot draped the sheet back over the clothes.  She walked over to the wall of rolling shelves, and opened one of them.  She rolled out Beatrice, and pulled back the sheet.  'Interesting young lady.  She broke her arm perhaps five years ago, it healed nicely.  Good teeth, she had braces.'

Blu studied the face.  Drained of blood, it was more like waxed cardboard than flesh, her left hand still curved as though a pen had just fallen to the floor.  Her eyes had gone from blue ringed with black to a milky glazed look, with a bit of blood dried across the cornea.

'Lot of blood for a head wound.'

'All head wounds bleed profusely, but this one is odd. I've never actually seen this sort of cut before, but it makes me think of something I saw once, a very long time ago.' Dr. Cabot mercifully did not attempt to exhibit the serpentine gash at the back of Beatrice's skull.

Blu knocked on the door of the Carmichael house. Detective Grayson stood next to him, craned this way and that to peek into the wavy glass window sashes. Ophelia opened the door, a yellow apron printed with daisies wrapped around her.

'Detectives.' She swung the door wide, as though a challenge, that she had nothing to hide, they could search if they dared.

'We have some questions.' Detective Grayson stepped forward.

'Certainly, please, come in.' Ophelia turned, and picked up a book off of the marble topped table as she led them into the living room. 

A drowsy sort of room, the Carmichael's living room was heavily lived in, dingy, even.  Blu noticed that the grandfather's clock was on the top-heavy golden oak side.  It sounded the hour with a cheap Westminster Chime action.  Blu remembered the ornately inlaid Dutch grandfather's clock under the broad front stairs of his grandparent's Saint's Rest mansion.  It always seemed to boil back down to time, no matter what happened, it appeared that it was time.  Blu turned around and sat down on the chesterfield sofa by the fireplace.

Tabitha Grayson nodded toward the fireplace.  A thin line about nine inches high was marked into the sooted brick lining of the fireplace just inside each side of the mantelpiece.  A scallop of soot spread over onto the brick fireplace, with cinders and ash tumbled down onto it.  'It looks like you've done some things over.' 

'Yes, well, we haven't gotten around to cleaning the fireplaces out.  I do like a fire in the evening, it lets you sit back and relax.'

'A soporific.'

Ophelia tipped her head like a bird. 

Blu explained himself. 'It helps you sleep.'

'Yes.  It does.'

Tabitha leaned toward the bamboo and rattan coffee table. She opened a coffee table book titled Underwater Dogs. She absently paged through it. 'Does anyone else live with you?'

'My brother left for school this morning, and dad's away on business.'

'And your mother?'

Ophelia motioned to the mantelpiece. A steel urn engraved with butterflies sat pride of place, a bud vase with fresh flowers on either side.  'Mama departed our presence when I was fifteen.  Nothing's really changed since then.'  She over enunciated really, not with the broad colour of the Stark-Woolfs or the Wheatleys. 

'I see.' Detective Grayson took the lead.   'What was your relationship with the deceased?'

'Bea and I grew up together.  She was lots of fun, but we didn't spend as much time together as we used to.'

'Can you tell us why?'

Ophelia readjusted her gaze and squarely faced off with Tabitha. 'Ok. Bea dated my brother for a bit. Then they broke up when he went to Brown. He came back to visit for the summer. They didn't talk.'

'Was Beatrice ever here the night before she died?'

'She dropped by just before I went to bed, she wanted to talk with Fred. They talked, and she left.'

Blu glances up from his notebook. 'And your brother...?'

'He left for Brown this morning. We figured it was best to simply go on as usual.'  Ophelia ignored the reactions, blissful in the knowledge that she had done best for herself.