Spare The Rod: Conclusion

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Dani flipped the page on her clipboard over and looked over her notes again. She'd looked through her various ideas a number of different ways over the past few days, but she always arrived at the same conclusion. Well, it was worth testing.

 

Dani tucked the clipboard under her arm and went to room 304 and after taking a deep breath, knocked.

 

"Come in" trilled Lisa's voice from the inside. Dani gently opened the door and surveyed the scene - Lisa reclining on the bed with a Shakespearian play for companionship while Cindy was writing a letter at the table. Dani also noticed a sharp, acrid stench in the room and coughed sharply as she wrinkled her nose.

 

"Oh no" Cindy said, deeply embarrassed. "I'm sorry. I thought I'd.." she begun, getting to her feet and picking up a large bath towel.

 

"It's OK, Cindy" Dani said gently, "I've figured it all out".

 

"You've .. what?" Cindy asked, disconcerted. Her hand wavered over the scented soap on her chiffonier. Lisa looked curiously up at the scene from her reading.

 

"The good news is the smell's not actually you" Dani said, strolling across the room to take the bath towel off Cindy's arm and fold it neatly over the back of the chair again. "But the bad news," she continued, "is that it's Biff".

 

There was a short pause.

 

"Biff??" Lisa and Cindy said in unison, horrified.

 

"Let me explain" Dani said, walking back over to the door and closing it gently with a click. "But open a window at least, it stinks in here. Stinks of .. him".

 

Lisa got up from the bed and slid the window open, parting the curtains as she did so. The stench came in a new wave, but then slowly began to fade.

 

"Okay", begun Dani, "let me sketch a scene for you. It's not pleasant, but then again, neither is murder. Firstly, everyone on this floor had a motive for Biff's death, yourselves included. I'd heard in the meeting of the improper advances and threats he made towards you, but what if one of you were .. liasing .. with Biff already? What if the only reason Biff had come to the room was because he knew he'd be able to get something that..." Dani paused, summoning up the courage to make the deadly insinuation, "..he'd gotten from one of you already?"

 

"Ew, with Biff?!" Lisa said, revolted.

 

"Good heavens, no!" Cindy chimed in.

 

"It would explain the strong presence of his scent" Dani said, "and especially all the showers you've been taking, Cindy. I can smell Biff in the room even now."

 

"Listen, I don't understand it either.." Cindy begun, weakly.

 

"Let me continue" Dani said, making a placating gesture with her hands. "it's not the most unheard of idea, in fact, I believe there's a book called "Lady Chatterly's Lover" by D. H. Lawrence which revolves around the very idea .. someone of class consorting with, well, ahem, someone with more brawn than brains. It's an interesting piece of literature. British literature.." Dani finished, casting a suspicious look across the room.

 

"Aha" she said, walking across to the bookshelf and taking out a copy of that very book, "we even have a copy right here. I wonder who it belongs to.. Lisa's the Drama major but.."

 

"It's mine" Cindy said, distressed, "but I own all different kinds of literature, especially British collections, Dani. I have Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Wordsworth and Byron, it's not as-"

 

"Uh uh" Dani said, cutting in, "allow me to finish." Cindy went silent and gazed morosely at Dani. Lisa looked from one to the other in puzzlement. "What's going on?" she said.

 

"To continue" Dani begun again, "we have motive. We also have ability, isn't that right, Cindy? Sullivan overlooked your strength when he was summing up the suspects because he was looking only for men, but you're as strong as, if not stronger than, some of the suspects he nominated. We saw that clearly enough when you helped Tony lift the front of Biff's car to turn the alarm off".

 

"Well, yes" Cindy said, flustered, "I might be somewhat strong, but it's unladylike to advertise the fact"

 

"Very genteel" Dani said, dismissively. "You also happen to be a Chemistry major, making you a science major that Sullivan overlooked as well. You use the science labs and more importantly, the gloves. In fact, I can see a box of DeMontford issue disposable lab gloves sitting on your desk over there even as we speak."

 

"All Chemistry majors are required to buy the boxes of latex gloves, it's course equiptment" Cindy protested, weakly. "Listen, Dani, I don't like where this is headed.." she went on.

 

"Neither do I" Dani said, cutting her off. "Finally, we come to opportunity. You left the room to go off and take a shower after you'd heard Biff's car take off"

 

"I did" Cindy said, "I took a shower. Scott saw me, Dani".

 

"He saw you enter the shower room" Dani said, "but who's to say you actually took the shower? You could have just waited in there until you'd heard Scott was gone, then sneak upstairs and break off the doorknob to your own room, sealing Lisa in (as you knew she was there) .."

 

"Why would I do that?!" objected Cindy, horrified.

 

"Because you need to make Lisa not be able to account for how long you'd be gone. You had to be able to go off and do other things" Dani replied, "even if I saw you leave the second floor, there'd be no accounting for which direction you took on the stairs - you could just as easily have gone down to the first floor instead of back up to the third. You could have slipped past Tony, busy with his concerns with pasta and then past Kevin, enthralled in his television show. You could have then waited, outside .. waited with a towel rod you took from the second floor bathroom, the same metal rod you could have hidden under your conveniently large bath towel in case anyone spotted you!"

 

"I didn't!" protested Cindy, tears welling up in the corners of her eyes, "you have to believe me, Dani!"

 

“I do”, Dani said quietly, “I do believe you, Cindy. After all, if you’d done it, you wouldn’t have been able to get back inside the building without being caught. After the car alarm went off, I left the second floor and came downstairs to the lounge, bringing Tony and Kevin with me outside, where we found the body. I didn’t pass you in the stairwell and no one else saw you in the lounge, so you were either in the second floor bathroom or possibly on the third floor. I considered the latter, but you’d have to sprint the distance of a football field to get all the way through the lounge and up to the third floor without being seen. That was another point against you being the murderer, Cindy, you have the brawn to commit the crime the way it was done, but the brains not to”.

 

“What do you mean?” Cindy asked, confused.

 

“Consider the iron bar being rammed through the car’s windshield in the way it was”. Dani offered, “You have the strength to do such an act, but the intelligence not to. Breaking the window would set the car alarm off and bring immediate attention to the crime scene – making it much riskier to escape. It’s a dumb thing to do. And Cindy,” Dani finished, “you don’t do dumb things like that. I know you didn’t do it”.

 

“So why did you come in here with all those allegations and accusations, Dani?” Cindy asked in a pained voice.

 

“I’m sorry about that” Dani said in a quiet, regretful voice, “but I wanted to give your roommate a chance to confess for herself”.

 

There was a long silence. Cindy looked back over her shoulder with a confused, pained look at Lisa, sitting ashamedly on the edge of the bed, tears in her eyes.

 

“Lisa?” Cindy asked, awed.

 

“What put you onto me?” Lisa asked Dani, quietly.

 

“Well,” Dani said, “look at it this way: only one person in Richter would be dumb and destructive enough to smash the windshield – Biff. Biff’s dead, though, and he obviously didn’t break his own windshield after killing himself with the iron bar or anything illogical like that. We’re left with an aspect to the crime no-one among our suspects would actually do. This was very confusing.”

 

Lisa nodded silently. “I didn’t mean to do that” she said, weakly.

 

“Exactly” Dani said, folding her arms, “I kept hitting the logical brick-wall, wondering how this crime could have been done given no suspect would have broken the windshield. But I was thinking about it all wrong, I should have realized all that proved was that whoever broke the windshield had to have done it unintentionally. Of course, it should have been obvious – but everything that’s been misleading about this case is that we’ve been making all the obvious errors. We’ve been thinking that since Biff was killed and his windshield smashed by such a great force, we should only suspect the kinds of people strong enough to exert that force, the people with muscles. Also, we’ve been thinking it had to be someone at the crime scene, or who had access to the crime scene. Another mistake.”

 

Lisa let out a melancholy sigh. “But that just meant it could have been anyone. What set you onto the fact it was ME, Dani?”

 

Dani shook her head slowly. “You acted every part perfectly, Lisa, but you made one slip-up. Think about it: you’ve been living in terminal fear of Biff getting you, worried about what he’d do to you when he got the chance and then, when we discover you upstairs, what were you doing?”

 

“Banging on the door and asking Biff to open it” Lisa said, glumly. “Damn, I was dumb”.

 

“Yeah” Dani said, “if you were so frightened of Biff, you should have been glad that you were locked into your room, not petrified - it would have meant you were safe from him. No, I’m guessing the real reason why you were yelling out Biff’s name and trying to threaten him when we came along was to add credibility to the illusion that you thought Biff was still alive despite the fact you secretly knew he’d been dead at least ten minutes”

 

“What’s going on?” Cindy butted in, confused. “This doesn’t make any sense at all”

 

“No, Cindy, what doesn’t make sense are Lisa’s actions on the night in question. I mean, think about it, if she was genuinely locked into her room the whole time and screaming to be let out, wouldn’t we all have heard her downstairs? You can hear the car alarm of outside from upstairs, so why not hear Lisa’s screams of upstairs from down next to the car? They’re practically as loud, for starters”

 

“So who locked her in??” Cindy asked.

 

“She did” Dani said, nodding in Lisa’s direction.

 

Cindy sat on the bed besides Lisa, her head reeling. “I can’t understand a single thing, Dani, I’m sorry. Lisa locks herself in the room, then somehow gets out and murders Biff, despite the fact she’s not strong enough to and somehow gets upstairs again and.. and..”

 

“Let’s start at the beginning” Dani said, flipping over a page in her clipboard. “Lisa and you are in the room, then Lisa tells you that you smell in order to make you leave”

 

“I did smell” Cindy said, shaking her head.

 

“No, you didn’t, Cindy. Think just of the facts here. You didn’t think you did, Lisa told you that you did. That’s what happened, and you took her word for it and went off. Lisa knows how sensitive you are about such unladylike things that you’d rather take her word for it than risk actually emitting a bad odour”

 

“But, I must have..” Cindy begun again.

 

Dani shook her head dismissively. “If you really did have a problem with odour, Cindy, it would have affected your clothes too. But you only took a towel with you down to the shower, so you obviously got changed into your original clothes again afterwards. You didn’t get an opportunity to change into fresh clothes because of the murder commotion (and would have found about the doorknob being broken off when you returned to your room to change clothes), yet when Tony sniffed you later he noticed you didn’t have a B.O. problem either. The evidence stacks up, and you don’t stink, believe it or not.”

 

“But.. but.. smell the air, Dani” Cindy said, blushing.

 

“As I said at the beginning, that smell is Biff. Biff smells like a zoo, Cindy. You could never come close to smelling that awful, no matter what your paranoia tells you. No doubt you’ve thought so because the smell’s lingered in the room for the past few days, but that smell’s not coming from you. If you want to know where it comes from, step over to the window for some ‘fresh air’..”

 

Cindy shot Dani a confused look and getting up off the bed, wandered across to the window. She stuck her head in the frame and took a deep breath, only to start coughing and gagging. Dani walked over to her side and took some of the curtains there in her paw and had a delicate sniff. “Ew” she said, “that’s a hundred percent Biff, alright”.

 

“The .. curtains?” Cindy asked, incredulously.

 

“We’ll get back to that later. Lisa’s made you leave to go downstairs and shower, so she has the room to herself. She closes the door, goes over to the window to look out at the moon or something ..and Biff’s car comes back, doesn’t it, Lisa?”

 

Lisa sobbed quietly and wiped her eyes. “Yeah, he did. And he.. he got out and then he.. he looked up and he saw me there, and he, oh Dani, have gave me a .. LOOK ..” Lisa shuddered, “.. I knew what he .. he meant to do. I had to stop him there and then”

 

“And you did” Dani said, solemnly.

 

“How?” Cindy asked, staring at Lisa, who couldn’t meet her gaze.

 

“I.. took the curtain rod. I just reached and grabbed it, dumped the curtains themselves on the floor and threw it down at him” Lisa said, gravely.

 

 “Not an inconsiderably solid metal bar in itself, it only increases in destructive power with gravity” Dani said. “It accelerated at 9.8 metres per second per second right until it connected with Biff’s head, Lisa, and deflected off into the car’s windshield, embedding itself and the alarm went off”

 

“I panicked” Lisa said, “because it suddenly sunk in what I had done. I knew I had to act fast. First off I realized I had to make it look like he was attacked on the ground, so I just grabbed a pair of disposable lab latex gloves from Cindy’s box of them on the desk and threw them out the window as well. You know, make it look like it was some guy who’d worn gloves”

 

“Gravity aided and abetted your crime again, placing them on the crime scene” Dani said, darkly.

 

Lisa nodded and choked back a sob. “Then I knew I’d need to remove any evidence from up here. I stuffed the curtain material from our own curtains under my bed and crept into the corridor. No one was about, thank Heavens, and I knew Biff wouldn’t be in his room so I ran in there and took HIS curtain rod with curtains and brought them back to my room to hang up in place of ours”.

 

“But how did you lock yourself in?” Cindy asked.

 

“Before I put the new curtains up, I took the rod and pried the doorknob off while the door was still open” Lisa begun.

 

“Using the strength of the lever to break something off you normally wouldn’t have had the strength to do” Dani finished. “Jeez, Lisa, gravity, levers, forces – Mikey’d be a proud physics major to know how much of the subject you know”

 

Lisa blushed slightly and wiped some of her tears away with her sleeve. “When I’d broken the handle off, I just closed the door behind me and then it was locked, locking me in..”

 

“And giving you an alibi” Dani said, setting her clipboard down by her side.

 

“I’m sorry, Dani .. I .. I know there’s no excusing what I did.. and now I gotta pay the price” Lisa said, staring at the floor.

 

“Well, to an extent” Dani said. “I mean, we know what the guy said he was going to do, and I’m sure the jury will be understanding..” She allowed her voice to trail off.

 

Lisa nodded and got to her feet. “One last thing, Dani. Why do Biff’s curtains smell like that? I feel like I’ve been victim to biological attack for the past few days”

 

Dani smiled slightly. “Biff used them as a towel when he was sweaty. It’s ironic, but the first thing he did to start this entire set of events off lingered to be his last remaining trace on this earth, incriminating his murderer”

 

Lisa looked Dani in the eye and smiled. “You’re a clever girl, Dani, but you don’t know what irony is” she added, squeezing Dani in a tight hug.

 

Lisa turned to face Cindy. “I’m sorry for letting Dani harangue you like that, Cindy. I was hoping to get away with it, but, well, guess I didn’t. I should never have let any of that happen, especially to such a good friend”. She squeezed Cindy in a hug as well.

 

“Oh.. of course” Cindy replied, in a daze, returning her a heartfelt hug. “And I’ll um.. I’ll write to you in prison, Lisa, every week. I’ll be there for you”.

 

Lisa cast her eyes downwards and turned sadly away. “No you won’t”.

 

“I will, Lisa, trust me” Cindy said, stepping forwards to take Lisa by the elbow.

 

“You won’t, Cindy” Lisa repeated. “Because I can’t go to prison”.

 

The reality of what Lisa said hit Dani and Cindy too late. Lisa broke away from them in a running pace, setting her left sneaker on the dresser edge while she used her accelerated force and uplift to propel her body through the window.

 

“LISA!” screamed Dani, crushing her eyes shut and turning away in the hopes of not hearing the thud of Lisa’s body hit the ground. “DAMNIT! I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN SHE’D DO SUCH A DUMB THING!”

 

Cindy just gaped at the broken windowspace. “I would never, ever, in a hundred thousand years have thought Lisa of all people could do such a thing. And .. not just this.. defenestration..  but what she did.. to Biff..” The words seemed unnatural to Cindy. She should be screaming. Or crying. This wasn’t her genteel British upbringing either, Cindy reflected, the reason Cindy didn’t feel shocked was .. had Cindy known this part to Lisa had existed all along? Who could tell? Cindy just felt tired, and not comforted (as she thought she’d be) when she realized the whole matter was over.

 

Dani nodded, her sad duty done. “I doubt .. she would have thought she could have done it either… but when you feel backed into a corner, Cindy, sometimes .. you just do what you think you need to do to survive. Still, that’s ..life for you” she finished up with a guttural choke, realizing she wouldn’t be able to go on talking without breaking down.  “I.. I.. gotta get down there” she continued, barging out the door, trying to will the tears away from her eyes.

 

Cindy slowly walked over to the window and looked down at Lisa’s crumpled body below. Already a crowd had started to gather around: a few looking up, a few looking at each other, a few looking away. No one looked down, however. No one except Cindy. A verse of poet W. H. Auden came to mind, and she spoke it.

 

"O stand, stand at the window
   As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
   With your crooked heart."

 

Cindy cried. She could neither blame nor forgive Lisa for what she’d done, but still had to live with the burden of understanding just why she’d done it. Autumnal leaves stirred on a breeze of coming winter and everyone felt the chill.

 

The End. Back to the Front.