Eli Thawne lay sprawled across the leather cushions of the square chrome framed sofa in the front parlour of the brick double house. Lupins were stuck in a white glass vase on the mantelpiece, the purple flowers more vibrant in the white painted room. Eli played with a thin wooden bookmark, turning it end over end, as he read a book by Pastor Bill Frankton, Absolution For The Soul. His eyelids would close, and he would snap them open, desperate to stay awake..

His eyes closed, and he shifted.  The book fell onto the coir matting flung across the floor, kuh-thunk. A bee buzzed through the flowers planted between the sidewalk and the house, protected by a spiky iron fence. Eli was a sound sleeper, the sort who would miss the Apocalypse if it happened above his head.  He slept through multiple sirens and vehicles parked across the street at No. One Haymarket Square.  It wasn't that there was much need for sirens, when the only person in trouble was a corpse.

Even though it was midday, Eli slept on.  He had been to a concert the night before, up in the Lakes Region near Holderness, north of Winnipesaukee.  Eli was an avid fan of The Watercolourists, an Indie Electro-Pop group from Quebec, who were on an underground tour of New England.  He had driven down to Portsmouth after the concert, and crashed on the sofa in the front parlor.  After he jerked awake around six, Eli had picked up Pastor Frankton's book that lay on the coffee table, and begun to read.  He passed out again around quarter to nine.

The doorbell rang.  Eli jerked awake again.  He rolled over and landed in a heap on his hands and knees.  One forearm on one knee, then the other hand on the angled upper leg, and he scrambled to his feet, shoving off with the arm of the sofa as support.  He brushed aside the sheer curtain over the window to see who it was.

Magnus stood on the step, a navy canvas duffle bag at his feet. 

Eli opened the door, and stopped when he saw the crime scene tape draped across the front door of the Stark place.  'Is everything ok?'

'No.  I got inconvenience for breakfast, with a side of murder of the girl who had a crush on you.' There were times when Magnus would say something incredibly sarcastic.  Eli would sometimes wonder how he could stay friends with Magnus, then he would remember.

'And you want to stay here?'

'Could I?' Magnus tipped his head.

'Hey Mom!' Eli turned and yelled toward the kitchen.

'What?' Mrs. Thawne stepped into the hall, pencil in one hand, script in the other.  Elinor Thawne was a playwright, critically acclaimed for her semi-biographical drama based loosely on her grandparents incarceration in Japanese-American internment camps during the Second World War.

'Can Magnus stay over a couple days?'

Mrs. Thawne frowned. 'What's wrong?'

'There's a body in the house. It's easier to stay out of the way entirely until Mom and Dad get back.' Magnus said, his voice sagged like a fallen tree. 

Mrs. Thawne pulled him into a hug. Magnus didn't like to be touched, but he allowed the hug, this once. He still held the duffel bag in one hand, and a book in the other, a boxed volume of poetry by Leonore Putnam, a poetess laureate of sorts who had lived in a lighthouse on the Isles of Shoals for years. After some time her granddaughter surreptitiously published the poetry to much critical acclaimed, only for it to fall into obscurity after the author passed away in nineteen twenty-seven at the age of eighty-four. 

After Mrs. Thawne pulled away from Magnus, he set the duffle bag next to the antique tansu cabinets stacked up in the corner of the turn of the front stairs.  Ophelia had packed most of it, only stepping in after he had packed socks and underwear himself.  She said that 'personal items are to be packed by the person to whom they belong'.  After that she asked him about every single item she placed in the duffle bag, 'this, that, will this do?'  Then placing what she saw fit, in spite of Magnus's half-hearted answers.  Ophelia had rooted through the bedside table, and found nothing to snack on.  'I'll send over something when you get the nibbles in the middle of the night.'

'I don't think I eat too much at night.' Magnus had replied.

'You don't eat much period.' Ophelia then shoved a Breton striped sweater into the bag.

The exchange ended after that, with the bag zipped and strapped, Ophelia handed it to Magnus, with the copy of Forever Composed Of Nows, plucked off the the bookshelf and shoved into his other hand. She followed him down the stairs.

'Don't worry about it, I'm sure Detective Harrison will wrap everything up before the news even finds out.' Ophelia rested her hand in his upper arm as they stepped into the front hall.

'Ok.' He nodded, and stopped at the door.

Detective Harrison stood in front of the dining room, and and watched. He watched as Ophelia rubbed her hand up and down Magnus's arm, and as Magnus nodded his head, whilst deeply interested in the cracked paint on doorframe.

At the Thawne's, Magnus followed Eli up the front stairs. The coir matting on the stairs was rough against his feet, but comfortable. He glanced at the Yves Klein painting halfway up the stairwell, six brushstrokes of black to show three figures in dance. Eli led the way to the third floor guest room, with an ornamental kimono hung above the headboard of the patinated brass bedstead.

'I - I need to - to call my folks.' Magnus said.

Eli nodded his head. 'Ok.' He pulled the door shut as he turned away. He paused, 'So dinner is quarter after seven.'

'Thank you.' Magnus nodded. He paced back and forth across the chrysanthemum and peony patterned rug as he dialled his dad's cell phone number. It rang. And rang.

'Hello?'

'Hi dad?'

'Magnus!' Magnus could hear his Mom's excited reaction. 'How's everything back home?'

'It's - it's ok. Well, not - not really. I mean, well, Beatrice is -' his voice caught. He stopped. 'She's - she's -' He buckled. His knees went out from under him, and he sank to the floor, one hand braces as he began to weep. 'She's dead. Beatrice is dead.' A rivulet of mucus trailed down Magnus's nose as he leaned back on his knees to wipe his eyes with the heel of his palm. 'She was in the dining room, strangled. Her pearls, someone strangled her with a string of pearls.'

'Magnus? Magnus.' His Mom was on the phone now. 'Calm down. Deep breaths sweetie, deep breaths. In. Out. In. Out.'

Magnus nodded, even though she couldn't she him. 'Uh-huh.' He tried to take a wavering breathe, and began to cry more. 'She was in your chair. I don't know why, she looked so right, before I saw the - saw the -'

'Don't say it. Not at the moment. Just breath.' His Dad was back on the line. 'Mom is looking for flights back home right now.'

'But you were supposed to be at tea at the King David today.' Magnus could not think of why he thought of what he did; his parents much anticipated anniversary tea at the King David Hotel. It had come into his mind in the middle of the intrusive replay upon replay of the moment he saw Beatrice's face, swollen and bruised, with dried blood across the skull, matted into her hair. He couldn't think of anything else.

There was a knock on the door. Mrs. Thawne opened the door, and knelt beside Magnus. She gently praised the cell phone out of his hand.

'Amelia? Skip? Helena. I'm with Magnus right now, don't worry. We'll look after him.'

Magnus couldn't hear what his Dad said. Mrs. Thawne had her arms wrapped around his shoulders. 'It's ok. It's ok. You'll be alright. Nothing can hurt you.'

Magnus took a few shuddering breathes. 'Uh-huh.'

'There. Now go take a shower, and put on some fresh clothes, and then dinner. You'll feel better.'

Magnus nodded as he stood up.  He picked up his duffel bag as he stepped out of the room to the bathroom down the hall.  He shuffled a bit as the  bag thumped against his legs.  After he dropped it on the closed lid of the toilet, Magnus turned on the hot water to the clawfoot tub, and adjusted the shower head.  He closed the door, and pulled off his shirt.  He stared at the mirror for a moment, then turned away.  He had worked too long, too hard, to change from who he was ten years ago, when he was eight.  When there was that one time, when he had no control, no way to stop anything.  He hated not being able to say 'Stop, stop, this it, I'm done.'  It had only happened once before, and now, it was happening again.