The Murvelli Murder

15. The Evidence of the Cook

Good day, madam," Max greeted.

The plump woman sat down without replying. She was shivering in an apparent apprehension. Soon she broke into tears.

"Oh God, I'm so scared," she cried out. "It's such a bad and gruesome affair I can't make head and tail of it. Oh!"

"I don't understand," the perplexed detective asked. "What do you mean, madam?"

I'm sorry I don't know what's happening to me." She took a handkerchief and sniffled into it. "I must be losing my head."

"Can you calm down a bit let's go over this from the start?"

"Why, yes, I guess I can do that." She wiped her face and then she appeared calmer that a moment ago.

"You are Beatrice by name?"

The poor liitle old woman affirmed with a nod.

"When did you come into the service of the deceased?"

She thought for a moment with a distant look in her eyes. "Oh besides the driver, Mr. Hutton, I came into this house before everyone else. Say, it's been eight years now. Oh how time flies."

"Before coming to this house, have you ever met with the deceased?"

She shook her head. "It was the same day he saw me hawking food on the roadside, oh the Lord bless his good soul, that he took me into his service."

"So,what do you know about him?"

"Oh dear, you should have seen how much of a gentleman he was. How nice he treated us. He never scolds, never complains about what we do, he gives us freedom and pays us well. He was good, almost too good to be true, if I may add. My, it's true the saying, 'the good ones never last.' She was almost sobbing again.

'Almost too good to be true.' It reverberated in Max ears. "Did he display any odd behaviour or any habit at all worthy of note?"

"Well, he was quiet as he was nice. No, pride was far from his countenance. He often keeps to himself and retires to his room after dinner. He doesn't have a lot of friends over, save for one or two visitors who come to discuss business. Oh yes, he keep late nights too and when I bring him coffee at night, he likes receiving fresh air by opening the window instead of putting on the air conditioner."

"You brought him Coffee last night?"

"I did."

"Oh, and then you poisoned it."

"By God, I swear I would never commit such a despicable and vile act. By the way, he was stabbed surely, not poisoned?"

Max was listening attentively while jotting down salient points. Then he asked the woman to recount all that had happened since the day Jason returned from school.

She recounted everything just as Max had heard previously up to the point of the row between Jason and his late father. Then the woman began to shiver in her chair.

"You know those horror movies you watch where you hear creepy noises and you don't know what produces them?"
she had her head bent to the left and was staring at the floor as she spoke.
"So it was. I had gone to his study to give him his coffee. He was in a very bad mood apparently as a result of the clash with his son. I left and went to my room. I felt sorry for the man and his son. I'm never comfortable when two people in my fancy are quarrelling.

"Soon he called for his coffee. About five minutes later I got it ready for him. He was in his study then. You could already tell that it was going to rain heavily soon due to the thunder and lightening. I went back to my room. I couldn't sleep. It started raining heavily soon after. The whooshing sound of the wind became scary like never before. Even the chirping of the crickets and squacking of frogs spoke bad omen. I had switched off the light in my room. I had heard a sound, like a thud. I couldn't make exactly from whence it had come. It felt... Like a vibration along the walls. I could feel it in my room. And then it sounded like the clanging of metal, you know. And at the same--I don't even know. I'm just confused. It must have been the wind causing things to hit each other.