A Trip to North Yorkshire

Bonhomme Bank

     The next morning is rather bleak, with purplish-gray skies threatening to burst forth with a rain shower. Beatrice serves buttered toast and eggs, along with sugared tea and apples. Mrs. Clarke makes an appearance, and she meekly nibbles on some toast before retiring to read in her spare bedroom. William is stone-faced after discovering the chilling murder note the previous evening, and I suspect I look rather grim as well. At ten in the morning the local police come to examine the corpse, and after falsely declaring the cause of death suicide, they cart it off to a mortuary, bring Mrs. Clarke along for the day to make funeral arrangements. The police couldn't find any evidence of murder, a rope was found in the room and nobody had left fingerprints on the body. They must have strangled him with the rope from a distance.

     Rose contrasts the stark blandness of the day with her squeals about last night's makeshift ball, about the "wonderful" Irish gentleman who "swept" her "away on a romantic adventure". This romantic adventure was actually more along the lines of one waltz. When she asks where I was, I tell her I didn't feel well; she accuses me of "not fully appreciating the kindness that suitors have to offer." Oh well.

     Rose takes a walk in the garden after our short luncheon of sandwiches, and I go up to my bedroom to read and try to ingest last nights events, perhaps ponder that note. And then, on my door, there it is; the crumpled scrap of paper resurrected and pinned on my door. It causes my fingers to shake as I pluck it off. To my surprise, someone has scrawled a message on the reverse side. 

      Alice, it says. I've found something. Meet me in my father's room. W. My heart sinks with dread. Half of me wants to uncover the truth of Mr. Clarke's demise, while the other half wishes I'd never been involved in the first place. But arbitrarily, my feet carry me forwards, and moments later I find myself knocking on the dreaded door.

     It opens shockingly quickly, and I find myself face-to-face with William. He seems taken aback, too, by how close we are, and steps back. "I'm sorry you had to come, it's my fault," he says, "But someone needed to know, and I don't think Mother could stand the news." I nod, and he lets me in.

     The acrid, sharp scent still resides in the sheets, curtains, and air in general of the room; I have to pinch my nose and the corners of my mouth turn down in disgust. William, seemingly unaffected by the smell, continues. "The note I pinned on your door . . . the one that's in your hand . . . mentions Bonhomme's Bank. My father  was . . . a gambler. He bought us things we couldn't really afford."

     "Oh?" Hence the shockingly majestic home. I should have expected as much - Mr. Clarke really only lived in England a few years, and the lingering American accents of all the Clarkes stand as proof. He couldn't have accumulated this much wealth in such a short period of time.

     "He would take out loans for all sorts of stuff . . . furniture, gardening supplies mostly. The house he won on bet with some chap whose grandfather had died and wanted to give the house away to him. My father won the bet, and, voila, the house was ours."

      How could my father have liked and been inspired by such an awful man? Perhaps the family kept his secrets for him. Why did Mrs. Clarke even marry him? Was he respectable then, before money corrupted him?

     "And I though maybe Bonhomme bank could be one of the many banks he took money from." For now the answer's Bonhomme bank. Could it be?

     "So I looked through his heaping pile of finances and documents, and I found this," William shoves a crispy, official-looking bank form towards me. 

      SIR J. CLARKE. LOAN FROM BONHOMME BANK, TOULOUSE, FRANCE. 170 POUNDS. REPAY TO: MATTHIAS BROLSMA. PURCHASED : LARGE GRANDFATHER CLOCK.

     "One seventy for a grandfather clock? It must be enormous." I muse out loud. Rapidly it hits me; Toulouse! "The note!" I burst out, unfolding it. "In Toulouse they understand. Bonhomme was in Toulouse!"

      William nods violently. "Yes, and then in refers to the time - "the day is young, the hour sank." I think our clue may rest with a clock of my father's."

     By now my doubt has been eradicated, I am fully convinced about this wild goose chase to pinpoint the murderer. It may be a hopeless endeavor, yes, but what else can I amuse myself with during this monotonous stay in England?

     An echo resounds up the staircase and into our ears. "Mother's home," William hisses, and we dash out of the room. To hear the word "murder" would shatter the heart of that thin wisp of a woman.

    Beatrice sequentially rings a tiny bell, calling us to supper. I step downstairs, finding Rose flushed and ravenous. "Alice!" she beams, "William!" Rose is far more chipper than usual, even giving Mrs. Clarke an uncalled for peck on the cheek as the fatigued woman plods upstairs to bed, not staying to eat. As if William and Beatrice can't hear, she comes up and whispers obnoxiously, "Today I kissed Benjamin in the garden."

     I groan. My poor naive sister. This Irish lad will probably be gone before she can blink, and I think she's far to young to be out with boys. Sometimes I wish we were young girls again, when there was none of this and we could play together happily all day. 

     Over a heavy dinner of puddings and meats, William whispers, "We'll find it after dinner."