A Pyrrhic Mystery by Sarah Shaber

“You can’t guess, Simon,” said a barefoot young mother, her tiny baby snug in a carrier on her chest.  “A police detective questioned us. About Professor Petty.”

     “He got an earful, too,” said the retired librarian who owned the gingerbread Victorian around the corner, “but he wouldn’t tell us anything.  It’s suspicious, don’t you think? If Petty had just up and died, would there be this much commotion?  Petty’s son-in-law found the body.  I saw him let the police into the house.  He looked like death himself.”

     “The detective who questioned you, what did he look like?” Simon asked.

     “He was a big African-American man,” the librarian’s wife said.  “Middle-aged, short grey hair, handsome suit.”

     “Sergeant Otis Gates,” Simon said.

     “You know him?” the young mother said.

     “Yeah,” Simon said.  “He’s a homicide detective.”

     For a half a minute the group was silent, then they all started to talk at once. The librarian raised his hand to shush them.

     “For God’s sake, Simon, go over there and pump him for information,” he said.  “We need to know what’s going on.”

     Simon went.  He was curious himself, and worried, for that matter.  No one wanted a murder on the street, even if the victim was as unpopular as Petty.

     Of course the uniformed policeman watching the street out in front of Petty’s house wouldn’t let him by.

     “I’m a friend of Sergeant Gates,” Simon said. “Could I speak to him?  I live over there,” he said, gesturing across the street.  “The neighbors are anxious, as you can imagine.”

     “I recognize you, Professor Shaw,” the officer said.

“But I can’t let you inside.  You understand.”

     Just then Otis came out of Petty’s house.  He spotted Simon and raised his hand in greeting, then motioned Simon over to him.  The policeman let him through the yellow tape barricade, and Simon joined Otis on the porch.

     “Murder?” Simon asked him.

     “Definitely,” Otis answered.  “And no shortage of suspects, I hear.”

     “He was an awful human being,” Simon said.  “But still.”

     “The ‘still’ part is my job,” Otis said.  “Speaking of which, I could use your help.  Have you ever been in the house?  In the study?”

     “Yeah,” Simon said. “several times.”

     “Come inside,” Otis said. 

     Simon hesitated.

     “Don’t worry, the body is gone already.” 

Simon avoided corpses.  Most of the victims in his cases had been dead a lot longer than Petty, and viewing their remains gave him a headache.  He preferred to leave crime scenes and autopsies to the experts. 

     As he passed through the house, Simon noticed Petty’s son-in-law slumped on the living room sofa, his head on his hands.  A female paramedic sat at his side, a hand on his shoulder, speaking to him quietly.

      

Inside Petty’s study a tarpaulin covered part of the floor, concealing the gruesome evidence of the murder.  Otherwise the room was the picture of a scholar’s den.  Hundreds of books shared shelf space with Greek and Roman memorabilia, including plaster busts of Claudius and Pyrrhus and a rearing bronze warhorse missing its rider.

     “Is this stuff worth anything?” Otis asked.  “Could robbery be a motive?”

     “Reproductions, all of it,” Simon said.  “And I don’t see anything missing.”  

     “And that,” Otis said, gesturing towards the full size Greek warrior that stood in a corner.  “Fake, too?” “Yeah,” Simon said. “He ordered the stuff from a reenactment catalog.”  The Spartan mannequin was poised for war. A horsehair-crested leather helmet protected his head, while a wood and bronze shield painted with a ferocious face shielded his body.  He wore a canvas cuirass across his chest and bronze greaves strapped around his calves. A short iron sword with bronze fittings hung from his shoulder by a baldric, but his outstretched hand was empty.

     “Where’s the spear”? Simon asked.

     “Rammed through Professor Petty,” Otis said. “Pinned him to the floor.”

     “Good God!”

     “Yeah, and he didn’t die right away either.  Lived for an hour or so, according to the crime scene guys.  Died around midnight, they think.”

     “Damn.  No one deserves that.”

     “This is what I want you to see,” Otis said, handing Simon a pair of latex gloves, and stretching a pair over his own large hands.  Gates withdrew a leather belt from an brown paper evidence bag and gave it to Simon, who inspected it carefully.  It was an ordinary leather belt,

 

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A Pyrrhic Mystery © Sarah Shaber