Winston 'Blu' Harrison stood just shy of the wrinkled thin carpet in the parlor. He wore a Glen Plaid suit, with a broadly knotted tie.  Ashy blond hair hung limply across the square face, with skin drawn tight like a drum across the skull.  He was from away, not yet accustomed to the veneer of simple life over what could only be described as an intricate, contradictory belief system rooted deep into the puritanical roots of the oldest families. 

'Magnus. I'm Detective Harrison.  Are you sure you're alright?'

Magnus nodded. 

'May I sit down?' Blu indicated the wing-chair opposite the settee where Magnus had sat ever since the police arrived.

Magnus rubbed his fingers along the outer seam of his jeans. 'Why here?'  He didn't complete the sentence, almost afraid of the answer.

'Do you have any idea?' Blu sat on the edge of of the needlepoint chair.

Magnus didn't say anything. It was as though he folded up into himself, a shell forming around him like the crust of a dead volcano.

An officer burst into the room. 'Sir?'

Blu held his hand up. 'One moment?'

The officer wrote in his notebook, and handed it to Blu. Bludgeoned with flat metal object, not vase.  Blu nodded, and the officer left the room.

Ophelia sat at by the fireplace, merely to watch, as though she wanted to be sure that Magnus wouldn't break down completely.

Magnus took a deep breath.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

In.

Blu glanced around the room.  It was one of those perfectly proportioned types, painted an unfashionable color, and furnished in a melange of worn in heirlooms and antiques, that hung together in a loose sort of chic. The horn of a car blasted around the traffic rotary, as though it would help in the event of a traffic jam.  Detective Harrison believed in simply waiting.  A witness would talk if they really wanted to. 

Blu mentally reviewed the facts of the case.  At nine fourteen a.m. on a sunny Friday in late July, the body of an eighteen year old girl was found murdered.  She had been placed in a chair at the foot of the table in the dining room, her back to the sideboard.

She was not discovered in her home.

The body had been attacked from behind with a blunt metal object, most likely a frying pan or heavy metal urn.  After that, a ribbon necklace strung with pearls was tightened around the victim's neck, before they were transported to No. One Haymarket Square.

The deceased had been arranged as some form of demented June Cleaver or Donna Stone, as though a caricature of the model housewife from a nineteen fifties sitcom. 

Detective Harrison re-read some particulars.  Beatrice Lauren Wheatley, 481 State Street, Portsmouth, NH.  Only child, daughter of Charles and Alicia Wheatley.

'She had a crush on me.'  Magnus stared at the nailhead trim of a french footstool shoved under one of the side chairs.  'It was awkward for the both of us, especially since Eli had asked her out.'

'Eli...?' Blu allowed the name to trail off.

'Eli Thawne.  He lives across the street, the brick double house.  The Thawne's live on the right-hand side.' 

Blu jotted down a note.  'What about the young lady who called dispatch?'

'Ophelia?  She - she's nice.  She was on her way to drop a book at the library, and stopped by for coffee.'

'And her address?' Blu didn't mention the fact that Ophelia had told him that she had been to return a book she had borrowed from Magnus.

'The Carmichaels live in the big house on Middle Street next to the Rockingham.'  The house in question was built on a corner lot, with a paneled fence all around.  It faced the corner of State Street and Middle Street, snug up against Porter Avenue, next to the old Rockingham Hotel.

'Is there anything else?'

Magnus shook his head.  'No.'

'Very good.  We'll be in touch.' Blu stood, and moved toward the parlor door.

'Um, detective?'

'Yes?'

'Should I stay here?' Magnus was still on the settee, almost out of sorts with his surroundings.  He wasn't so much a gangly teenager so much as one that Blu's grandfather would have described as 'a strapping young lad'.  At the moment however, Magnus didn't so much look strapping as he did bewildered.

'Magnus, you can stay at my place.'  Ophelia set her library book on the table.  It was a hardcover copy of Envy, a Welsh Young Adult novel about a sociopathic young woman who manipulates the people around her to destroy them for her own self-aggrandizement.

'I couldn't do that.  Eli's family can put me up.' Magnus stood up, and walked through to the hall, and up the curved front stairs.

'He says that because my brother's back from college.  He like to visit with the Thawnes.' Ophelia said as she walked toward the stairs, to follow Magnus.

'Magnus and your brother don't get on well?' Blu asked.

Ophelia shook her head.  'My brother and I are very outgoing.  The Starks, they like to be it quiet.  You know, they don't go out much.  Because of that, they are considered one of the best families to know, because almost no-one actually knows them.'

The Stark-Woolfs were an old family, with a bloodline as cold and as blue as the Atlantic ocean a stone's throw from the family pile, built on the site of the original family homestead, just before the War of 1812.  They moved into the ornately furnished mansion, and never quite left.  A Baptist church was built next door in the early nineteen thirties, and the only reaction from the Stark-Woolfs was to begin attending, as Chapel Street Episcopalian church had taken on a new parson with interesting views on the Virgin Birth.