Fic: Suspect, Weapon, Room (4/15)
Title: Suspect, Weapon, Room
Author:a_glass_parade
Beta:idoltina
Artist:gwladus
Word Count: 43,000+
Rating: R - people die, it's a murder mystery!
Characters/Pairings: Blaine Anderson, Brittany Pierce, Finn Hudson, Quinn Fabray, Noah Puckerman, Rachel Berry, Kurt Hummel, Santana Lopez, with cameo appearances galore!
Warnings: People die. Repeat: people DIE. People you like die. This is an AU based off of the murder mystery movie 'Clue'. So...people die. Just...letting you know. Also warning for slapstick humor and terrible jokes.
Summary: Mysterious invitations have been sent to certain notorious citizens of the Chicago area, asking them to gather at creepy Dalton Manor for a dinner party with an unknown host. Blaine Anderson, masquerading as humble butler Wadsworth, must exert all his considerable efforts and charms to keep everything under control and solve a significant problem when guests, servants and unexpected visitors start to turn up dead by various means! A modern riff on the 1985 cult classic film 'Clue' finds our beloved McKinley misfits reluctantly banding together to try and escape dinner with their lives.
Chapter Four - Dirty Not So Little Secrets
Blaine worked to get his nerves under control as he led the guests into the study and gestured for them to take seats on the cozy leather sofas and chairs. Mr. Boddy was being far more uncooperative than he had anticipated, very recalcitrant and stubborn. He had a feeling that this would cause trouble all around.
He crossed over to the desk, leaving Yvette to serve the cognac around the room. Awaiting him there was a large, bulging manila envelope, sealed tight and with his name on the front. Open After Dinner, admonished additional instructions in heavy black Sharpie. Blaine hesitated only a moment before picking the envelope up and opening it, extracting a large clump of papers and photographs.
Oh, my. This was certainly interesting.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he finally said, glancing up from the first sheet of paper he'd pulled from the envelope. “I am now instructed to tell all of you what you have in common. Unless -” Warily, Blaine observed Mr. Boddy, who was looking more and more disgruntled by the moment. “Would you like to do the honors, sir?”
“What? Why me?” The questions were belligerent. “Do they know who I am?”
Blaine shrugged and shook his head. “I don't think so. You've never told them.”
This, if anything, seemed to make Mr. Boddy even more angry. “It's a hoax,” he declared, jumping to his feet and beginning to stride out of the room. “I suggest we all leave!”
It was worse than Blaine had expected. He threw the envelope back down on the desk and sprinted out the door after the other man. “I'm sorry, sir, but you cannot leave this house!”
“Oh, please. Like you can stop me, you're the size of a Christmas elf.” With an extra burst of speed, Mr. Boddy reached the front door and yanked at the knob. It stubbornly refused to budge. “Hey!”
“All the windows have bars. And all the doors are locked,” Blaine informed him, skidding to a stop and trying to catch his breath. “No one's getting out.”
He hadn't realized the other guests had followed them out of the study. “Excuse me! I believe this is unlawful imprisonment!” Ms. Peacock snapped, and for a wonder, all of the other guests agreed with her. Loudly.
Blaine spun to face them. “Excuse me! Hello!” No one paid him any attention. Fine, then. He stuck two fingers into his mouth and let out a piercing whistle that had everyone crouched over and covering their ears. When they all straightened up and began to glare at him, he nodded. “Please, everyone. Return to the study and everything will be explained.”
Grumbling, everyone turned around and began to file back into the study. Everyone, that was, but Mr. Boddy, who walked straight past Blaine without even a sidelong glance. “Mr. Boddy, please, if you will -”
Boddy kicked up into a run and headed for the other end of the house. “Mr. Boddy! This way, please!”
But the man ignored Blaine's protests and lurched into the conservatory. The all glass room was illuminated only by the lightning of the persisting storm as Blaine skidded in after him, stumbling over a potted rhododendron that had been tipped over into his path. Mr. Boddy laughed at him, nasty and mocking.
“So. You gonna stop me now?” Boddy gestured around the room, the light of desperate insanity in his dark blue eyes. “Well?”
Blaine looked up from where he was calmly scraping potting soil from his shoes. “You can't get out that way,” he replied, keeping his voice light and mild. Boddy simply laughed again, harder.
“Why not? It's a room made of glass!” Stooping down, he picked up a small potted cactus and Blaine watched impassively as he hauled his arm back in preparation to hurl the plant at the window.
Almost on cue, a snarling Doberman leaped up on the window, snapping and foaming in the rain. Mr. Boddy dropped the plant and recoiled.
“There's no way out,” Blaine told him, taking him by the arm and beginning to lead him back to the study. “Now. If you'll come with me and we can get this over with?”
Kurt Hummel was used to odd things in his line of work, but this evening was really sort of shooting to the top of the list.
He watched as the butler dragged the strange and volatile Mr. Boddy back into the study and deposited him into a chair by the door. Boddy glared around the room at all of them, but said nothing, seemingly preferring to slump down and sulk.
Wadsworth, however, had rounded back towards the desk and picked up the enveloped he'd had in his hands previously. “Now. Where were we?”
“You were going to explain what was going on,” Miss Scarlet snarled, lighting a cigarette and managing to make even her exhalation of smoke indignant. “Get on with it.”
The butler shrugged. “All right. You're all somewhat famous, and you're all being blackmailed.”
Kurt watched as the Colonel looked up with a patently false look of surprise on his face. “We're what?”
It looked like Wadsworth was looking back down at the papers he'd pulled out mostly in an effort not to laugh. “Ah, blackmailed. You've all been paying a lot of money for quite a while to keep some nasty little secret of yours out of the public eye.”
“Ridiculous,” Ms. Peacock snapped, crossing her arms over her chest and sticking her chin in the air. “Completely ridiculous. My life is an open book. I have nothing to hide, I've never done anything wrong. No one could possibly blackmail me.”
“Really?” Now Kurt could tell the man was really working to hold back his laughter. “Okay. Does anyone else want to deny it?”
No one did. Kurt didn't know what everyone else's reasoning was, but he just didn't see the point. Obviously Wadsworth was holding evidence in his hands, why bother?
“Excellent. Well, since everyone here's all in the same boat, there's no problem with revealing a few details, right?” Wadsworth beamed around the room, seeming undaunted by the lack of equally friendly response. “And, well. My instructions say that's what I'm supposed to do, so...Br - Yvette, if you'll excuse us?”
As the maid wandered out of the study, Mrs. White held her hands up in an appeal to the butler. “Is this necessary? Do we have to be humiliated like this?”
Wadsworth's smile softened with sympathy. “I'm sorry. I have to follow orders.” Shuffling the papers, he looked over at Professor Plum first. “Starting with you. You claimed at dinner to be a struggling musician with a side line in teaching, but that's not really true, is it?”
For the first time, the ludicrously Mohawked 'Professor' looked deeply uncomfortable. “Well...”
“In fact, you are one of the foremost rock guitar instructors in the Chicago area, banking on your prior minor but not entirely insignificant fame as a tour guitarist for aging 80's metal bands like Whitesnake and Motley Crüe.” Wadsworth's eyebrow quirked in interest. “You specialize in teaching older men with mid-life crises how to 'rock out with their cocks out' and have actually been doing very well for yourself.”
Plum looked even more uncomfortable now. “I guess, yeah.”
“A shame your weakness for cougar groupies did you in.” With a tsking noise, Wadsworth shook his head. “Caught with the trophy wife of one of your older clients at the wrong time, now you're paying blackmail to keep him from finding out so he doesn't kill you.”
“Disgusting,” Ms. Peacock sniffed, only to have Wadsworth round on her with his stack of papers. Kurt thought the woman could have stood to show a little more fear, the butler was obviously eager to poke a few holes into her ego.
“Really? You? Standing on moral judgments, Ms. Peacock?” Wadsworth shuffled through his papers. “As a shining theater starlet, you're the local face of PETA in the Midwest. You're a publicly committed vegan and proud member of the Jewish community as well. How then do you explain the fact that you own stock in Hormel?”
“I...I...” Ms. Peacock was clearly floundering for words. “The stocks were a gift from a non-Jewish relative! I kept them in case of a rainy day.”
“Kept them? You later purchased enough stock on your own to become a member of the board of directors!” Grinning almost maniacally, Wadsworth flipped to the next page. “And you quite happily accept large yearly gift shipments of bacon and other pork products for use in your own kitchen. What do you have to say to that?”
“I say it stinks,” Miss Scarlet smirked, firing up another cigarette.
“How dare you?” Ms. Peacock shot back. “Bacon smells heavenly.”
“Oh, so it's true!” Back across the room, Professor Plum seemed to have recovered from his embarrassment and was rocking back and forth laughing. “I knew I recognized you. You're a member of my temple! And you're a shit Jew.”
“I am not! It's not true, it's all a horrible lie!” Leaping to her feet, Ms. Peacock began to pace the room in agitation.
“Well. I guess we're all glad to hear that,” Wadsworth replied, not looking particularly glad at all, more smug and patronizing. It was kind of a cute look on him, Kurt decided. “But you've been paying a lot of money to keep that story out of PETA's hands for the last year.”
Mrs. White spoke up, folding her hands across her black-clad lap. “I'm willing to believe you, Ms. Peacock,” she began, though it looked as though it pained her to say so. “I, too, am being blackmailed for something I did not do.”
“Me too,” Colonel Mustard spoke up, looking uncomfortable with the obvious lie.
“Heh. Not me,” Ms. Scarlet chimed in, as pleased as a cat with a bowl of cream.
At this, Wadsworth frowned and fished through his papers. “You're not being blackmailed?”
“Oh, I am,” she assured him. “But I totally did what I'm being blackmailed for.”
At this, Colonel Mustard looked even more uncomfortable, but Professor Plum perked up, intrigued. “Oh yeah? What'd you do?”
Now Ms. Scarlet directed her smirk at Colonel Mustard while she answered the Professor. “I run a specialized companionship service that caters exclusively to professional athletes, providing them with elegant escorts for high-profile sporting industry events, for a modest fee.” She shrugged. “Sometimes the dates run kind of long, but that's an individual choice for each girl.”
“Wow. You ever branch out into music?” Professor Plum sidled up closer to Ms. Scarlet, fumbling for a pen and paper.
She merely looked bored. “You can't afford my rates.”
The discussion sparked a memory of dinner in Kurt's brain. “Is that the whole thing behind 'Puffy Nips'?” he asked, curious. “Colonel Mustard is a client of your service?”
“No way!” The Colonel was on his feet now, too, as outraged as Ms. Peacock had been. “I totally don't need to hire girls!”
Kurt deployed his very best scathing glare. “I was asking Ms. Scarlet.”
Whirling to face Ms. Scarlet, the Colonel pointed at Kurt. “Tell him it's not true!”
“It's not true,” Ms. Scarlet parroted to Kurt, eyes wide and innocent.
“But is that true?” Professor Plum asked, frowning in confusion.
“No, of course it's not true,” Ms. Scarlet assured him.
Kurt laughed. “Ha! So it is true!”
“A double negative!” Wadsworth burst out triumphantly, swapping a satisfied - and otherwise fully loaded - glance with Kurt. Kurt dropped a clandestine wink back. Oh, that butler, he was cute.
“Double negative?” Though it seemed impossible, Colonel Mustard now looked more confused than ever. He leaned down to Ms. Scarlet and whispered, “Does that mean you have pictures?”
“Sounds like a confession to me.” Crossing his arms over his chest, Wadsworth looked really pleased with the proceedings. “In fact, the double negative has led to proof positive. You just gave yourself away.”
“Shut up, will you?” Mrs. White snapped unexpectedly at the hapless Colonel. “He's only making you look like an idiot.”
“Oh, he really doesn't need my help for that,” the butler demurred modestly. Kurt had to stifle a laugh again. He loved a wicked sense of humor. Too bad this seemed like way too awkward an occasion to ask the guy out on a date.
Professor Plum spoke up again, curious. “Anyway, what's so big a deal about an athlete hiring an escort? Don't they do it all the time? No one cares.”
“Unless the athlete catches mono from the escort a mere week before the Super Bowl and passes it to his teammates through shared bottles of Gatorade.” Wadsworth cast a reproachful look at the Colonel. “Took out the entire offensive line and all the reserves. They had to forfeit. No one knew he was patient zero...until now.”
Now the Professor was furious. “I had money riding on that game, you asshole!” Diving across the room, he tackled the Colonel around the waist, sparking a noisy tussle. Kurt watched with interest - this evening really was swinging wildly between super interesting and super awkward. He kind of liked it.
All too soon, Wadsworth waded in and started pushing and slapping at both men. “Stop it! Act like adults, please! We have a long evening to get through and there's no time for you brawling like thugs.”
Kurt couldn't help it. “You sound like you went to a prep school.”
“Maybe.” Wadsworth turned back to face him, dropping a wink as he nudged the Colonel in the side with his shoe. “Do you like schoolboys?”
“I'm going to start barfing rainbows if you two don't cut it the fuck out,” Ms. Scarlet announced, looking ill. “Meet at the glory hole later, let's get back to the subject?”
A charming blush spread across the butler's face. “Of course.” With one last shove to both of the fighters, Wadsworth returned to the desk and retrieved his papers. “Ah, Mrs. White. We come to you. It looks like you've been paying our friend the blackmailer since your husband died under...ah...mysterious circumstances?”
Ms. Scarlet barked out a laugh, making Mrs. White bristle with indignation. “What's so funny?”
“I get it! That's why he's lying around on his back all day!” Ms. Scarlet kept chortling, ignoring the glare of daggers she was receiving from the widow. “In his coffin!”
“I didn't kill him,” Mrs. White protested, but it was a protest Kurt didn't believe for one second. She was frightening enough to have done it, he thought, and Ms. Scarlet seemed to agree.
“If you didn't...” Ms. Scarlet pointed out, lighting up her third cigarette and ugh, Kurt wanted to snatch it away and stomp it out, disgusting habit. “Why pay blackmail?”
“Who wants a scandal?” It was Mrs. White's turn to stand and pace the carpet, twisting her fingers together as she spoke. “Arthur and I didn't have a very good relationship. He was deranged...a lunatic. Very controlling. He'd threatened to have me killed in public.”
Colonel Mustard - not surprising by now - was confused again. “Why would he threaten to have you killed in public?”
Wadsworth tapped on his arm. “I think,” he began once he had the man's attention, “he had threatened, in public, to have her killed.”
“Oh.”
Ms. Scarlet wasn't done. “So I guess that was his final word on the matter.”
A delicate shrug and tiny smile from Mrs. White. “Death is fairly final.”
Kurt couldn't dispute that. “What did he do for a living, if I might ask?”
“He was a director.” Mrs. White crossed the room and accepted a cigarette from Ms. Scarlet. “He liked to have everything laid out and just so and very by the book. I'm afraid it was a terrible shock to him when he died. That hadn't been in the script. But there you have it.” She heaved a melodramatic sigh and inhaled a lungful of smoke before sitting back down. “Found at home, dead, with his head cut off and...ah...his...you know.” She nodded down at her lap.
Kurt reflexively crossed his legs, and it didn't escape his notice that the other men did, too. Ouch.
“I,” the widow went on, a trifle unconvincingly, “had been out all night. At the movies. Did you know there are theaters that still do double features? I had to go pretty far outside the city limits for it.”
“And do you miss him?” pushed Ms. Scarlet, a look of avarice all over her pretty face.
“It's a matter of life after death.” The tiny smile on Mrs. White's face widened. “Now that he's dead, I have a life. The 'Real Housewives' franchise was very interested in the idea of a rich widow.”
Wadsworth was the first man to recover from the shock of hearing about the castration. “I...er...ahem. But the director...he was your second husband. Your first husband was also in show business, as it were, and he's gone as well.”
“Yes, he was an impressionist.” Mrs. White nodded. “Samuel spent quite a lot of time in Las Vegas for his show.”
“Which is in fact where they found his body,” Wadsworth interjected, looking slightly ill. “In the concrete foundation that had been recently laid for the new wing of the Flamingo.”
Mrs. White beamed. “They said it was the best impression of his career.”
Kurt couldn't take any more. He was the only one who hadn't been revealed and if anyone was going to do it, he wanted to be that person. He got to his feet. “Excuse me. I have something to say.”
Wadsworth looked up from his papers, curiosity all over his face. “Yes?”
“I prefer to do my own unmasking,” Kurt answered, a ghost of a smile on his lips. “I am a fashion designer. And I use real fur in my designs. But my public statement is that all of my fur is synthetic - which is true, in the case of anything sold to the public. However, anything on the runway or sold to a certain special clientele is trimmed in real fur and I myself only wear real fur.” He lifted his chin in stubborn pride. “I feel no personal shame in this, but I'll be ostracized in the fashion community if any other designer confirms it, so I pay the blackmail.” He sat back down. “Thank you.”
“How awful,” Ms. Peacock sniffed, earning herself Kurt's best derisive chuckle.
“I don't think you have any room to judge me, Ms. Jewish American Pork Princess.”
Professor Plum looked up, frowning hard. “So what about Silent Bob in the corner?” he asked, indicating Mr. Boddy. The seventh guest had indeed been utterly quiet throughout the proceedings, simply watching in interest. Even now, he didn't say anything, simply offering a self-satisfied smile to the other guests.
“Haven't you guessed?” Wadsworth asked in return, appearing to be genuinely surprised. “He's the one who's blackmailing you.”
The room erupted in chaos.
Chapter Five - A Series Of Fortunate Events (Depending On Your Perspective)
Author:a_glass_parade
Beta:idoltina
Artist:gwladus
Word Count: 43,000+
Rating: R - people die, it's a murder mystery!
Characters/Pairings: Blaine Anderson, Brittany Pierce, Finn Hudson, Quinn Fabray, Noah Puckerman, Rachel Berry, Kurt Hummel, Santana Lopez, with cameo appearances galore!
Warnings: People die. Repeat: people DIE. People you like die. This is an AU based off of the murder mystery movie 'Clue'. So...people die. Just...letting you know. Also warning for slapstick humor and terrible jokes.
Summary: Mysterious invitations have been sent to certain notorious citizens of the Chicago area, asking them to gather at creepy Dalton Manor for a dinner party with an unknown host. Blaine Anderson, masquerading as humble butler Wadsworth, must exert all his considerable efforts and charms to keep everything under control and solve a significant problem when guests, servants and unexpected visitors start to turn up dead by various means! A modern riff on the 1985 cult classic film 'Clue' finds our beloved McKinley misfits reluctantly banding together to try and escape dinner with their lives.
Chapter Four - Dirty Not So Little Secrets
Blaine worked to get his nerves under control as he led the guests into the study and gestured for them to take seats on the cozy leather sofas and chairs. Mr. Boddy was being far more uncooperative than he had anticipated, very recalcitrant and stubborn. He had a feeling that this would cause trouble all around.
He crossed over to the desk, leaving Yvette to serve the cognac around the room. Awaiting him there was a large, bulging manila envelope, sealed tight and with his name on the front. Open After Dinner, admonished additional instructions in heavy black Sharpie. Blaine hesitated only a moment before picking the envelope up and opening it, extracting a large clump of papers and photographs.
Oh, my. This was certainly interesting.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he finally said, glancing up from the first sheet of paper he'd pulled from the envelope. “I am now instructed to tell all of you what you have in common. Unless -” Warily, Blaine observed Mr. Boddy, who was looking more and more disgruntled by the moment. “Would you like to do the honors, sir?”
“What? Why me?” The questions were belligerent. “Do they know who I am?”
Blaine shrugged and shook his head. “I don't think so. You've never told them.”
This, if anything, seemed to make Mr. Boddy even more angry. “It's a hoax,” he declared, jumping to his feet and beginning to stride out of the room. “I suggest we all leave!”
It was worse than Blaine had expected. He threw the envelope back down on the desk and sprinted out the door after the other man. “I'm sorry, sir, but you cannot leave this house!”
“Oh, please. Like you can stop me, you're the size of a Christmas elf.” With an extra burst of speed, Mr. Boddy reached the front door and yanked at the knob. It stubbornly refused to budge. “Hey!”
“All the windows have bars. And all the doors are locked,” Blaine informed him, skidding to a stop and trying to catch his breath. “No one's getting out.”
He hadn't realized the other guests had followed them out of the study. “Excuse me! I believe this is unlawful imprisonment!” Ms. Peacock snapped, and for a wonder, all of the other guests agreed with her. Loudly.
Blaine spun to face them. “Excuse me! Hello!” No one paid him any attention. Fine, then. He stuck two fingers into his mouth and let out a piercing whistle that had everyone crouched over and covering their ears. When they all straightened up and began to glare at him, he nodded. “Please, everyone. Return to the study and everything will be explained.”
Grumbling, everyone turned around and began to file back into the study. Everyone, that was, but Mr. Boddy, who walked straight past Blaine without even a sidelong glance. “Mr. Boddy, please, if you will -”
Boddy kicked up into a run and headed for the other end of the house. “Mr. Boddy! This way, please!”
But the man ignored Blaine's protests and lurched into the conservatory. The all glass room was illuminated only by the lightning of the persisting storm as Blaine skidded in after him, stumbling over a potted rhododendron that had been tipped over into his path. Mr. Boddy laughed at him, nasty and mocking.
“So. You gonna stop me now?” Boddy gestured around the room, the light of desperate insanity in his dark blue eyes. “Well?”
Blaine looked up from where he was calmly scraping potting soil from his shoes. “You can't get out that way,” he replied, keeping his voice light and mild. Boddy simply laughed again, harder.
“Why not? It's a room made of glass!” Stooping down, he picked up a small potted cactus and Blaine watched impassively as he hauled his arm back in preparation to hurl the plant at the window.
Almost on cue, a snarling Doberman leaped up on the window, snapping and foaming in the rain. Mr. Boddy dropped the plant and recoiled.
“There's no way out,” Blaine told him, taking him by the arm and beginning to lead him back to the study. “Now. If you'll come with me and we can get this over with?”
Kurt Hummel was used to odd things in his line of work, but this evening was really sort of shooting to the top of the list.
He watched as the butler dragged the strange and volatile Mr. Boddy back into the study and deposited him into a chair by the door. Boddy glared around the room at all of them, but said nothing, seemingly preferring to slump down and sulk.
Wadsworth, however, had rounded back towards the desk and picked up the enveloped he'd had in his hands previously. “Now. Where were we?”
“You were going to explain what was going on,” Miss Scarlet snarled, lighting a cigarette and managing to make even her exhalation of smoke indignant. “Get on with it.”
The butler shrugged. “All right. You're all somewhat famous, and you're all being blackmailed.”
Kurt watched as the Colonel looked up with a patently false look of surprise on his face. “We're what?”
It looked like Wadsworth was looking back down at the papers he'd pulled out mostly in an effort not to laugh. “Ah, blackmailed. You've all been paying a lot of money for quite a while to keep some nasty little secret of yours out of the public eye.”
“Ridiculous,” Ms. Peacock snapped, crossing her arms over her chest and sticking her chin in the air. “Completely ridiculous. My life is an open book. I have nothing to hide, I've never done anything wrong. No one could possibly blackmail me.”
“Really?” Now Kurt could tell the man was really working to hold back his laughter. “Okay. Does anyone else want to deny it?”
No one did. Kurt didn't know what everyone else's reasoning was, but he just didn't see the point. Obviously Wadsworth was holding evidence in his hands, why bother?
“Excellent. Well, since everyone here's all in the same boat, there's no problem with revealing a few details, right?” Wadsworth beamed around the room, seeming undaunted by the lack of equally friendly response. “And, well. My instructions say that's what I'm supposed to do, so...Br - Yvette, if you'll excuse us?”
As the maid wandered out of the study, Mrs. White held her hands up in an appeal to the butler. “Is this necessary? Do we have to be humiliated like this?”
Wadsworth's smile softened with sympathy. “I'm sorry. I have to follow orders.” Shuffling the papers, he looked over at Professor Plum first. “Starting with you. You claimed at dinner to be a struggling musician with a side line in teaching, but that's not really true, is it?”
For the first time, the ludicrously Mohawked 'Professor' looked deeply uncomfortable. “Well...”
“In fact, you are one of the foremost rock guitar instructors in the Chicago area, banking on your prior minor but not entirely insignificant fame as a tour guitarist for aging 80's metal bands like Whitesnake and Motley Crüe.” Wadsworth's eyebrow quirked in interest. “You specialize in teaching older men with mid-life crises how to 'rock out with their cocks out' and have actually been doing very well for yourself.”
Plum looked even more uncomfortable now. “I guess, yeah.”
“A shame your weakness for cougar groupies did you in.” With a tsking noise, Wadsworth shook his head. “Caught with the trophy wife of one of your older clients at the wrong time, now you're paying blackmail to keep him from finding out so he doesn't kill you.”
“Disgusting,” Ms. Peacock sniffed, only to have Wadsworth round on her with his stack of papers. Kurt thought the woman could have stood to show a little more fear, the butler was obviously eager to poke a few holes into her ego.
“Really? You? Standing on moral judgments, Ms. Peacock?” Wadsworth shuffled through his papers. “As a shining theater starlet, you're the local face of PETA in the Midwest. You're a publicly committed vegan and proud member of the Jewish community as well. How then do you explain the fact that you own stock in Hormel?”
“I...I...” Ms. Peacock was clearly floundering for words. “The stocks were a gift from a non-Jewish relative! I kept them in case of a rainy day.”
“Kept them? You later purchased enough stock on your own to become a member of the board of directors!” Grinning almost maniacally, Wadsworth flipped to the next page. “And you quite happily accept large yearly gift shipments of bacon and other pork products for use in your own kitchen. What do you have to say to that?”
“I say it stinks,” Miss Scarlet smirked, firing up another cigarette.
“How dare you?” Ms. Peacock shot back. “Bacon smells heavenly.”
“Oh, so it's true!” Back across the room, Professor Plum seemed to have recovered from his embarrassment and was rocking back and forth laughing. “I knew I recognized you. You're a member of my temple! And you're a shit Jew.”
“I am not! It's not true, it's all a horrible lie!” Leaping to her feet, Ms. Peacock began to pace the room in agitation.
“Well. I guess we're all glad to hear that,” Wadsworth replied, not looking particularly glad at all, more smug and patronizing. It was kind of a cute look on him, Kurt decided. “But you've been paying a lot of money to keep that story out of PETA's hands for the last year.”
Mrs. White spoke up, folding her hands across her black-clad lap. “I'm willing to believe you, Ms. Peacock,” she began, though it looked as though it pained her to say so. “I, too, am being blackmailed for something I did not do.”
“Me too,” Colonel Mustard spoke up, looking uncomfortable with the obvious lie.
“Heh. Not me,” Ms. Scarlet chimed in, as pleased as a cat with a bowl of cream.
At this, Wadsworth frowned and fished through his papers. “You're not being blackmailed?”
“Oh, I am,” she assured him. “But I totally did what I'm being blackmailed for.”
At this, Colonel Mustard looked even more uncomfortable, but Professor Plum perked up, intrigued. “Oh yeah? What'd you do?”
Now Ms. Scarlet directed her smirk at Colonel Mustard while she answered the Professor. “I run a specialized companionship service that caters exclusively to professional athletes, providing them with elegant escorts for high-profile sporting industry events, for a modest fee.” She shrugged. “Sometimes the dates run kind of long, but that's an individual choice for each girl.”
“Wow. You ever branch out into music?” Professor Plum sidled up closer to Ms. Scarlet, fumbling for a pen and paper.
She merely looked bored. “You can't afford my rates.”
The discussion sparked a memory of dinner in Kurt's brain. “Is that the whole thing behind 'Puffy Nips'?” he asked, curious. “Colonel Mustard is a client of your service?”
“No way!” The Colonel was on his feet now, too, as outraged as Ms. Peacock had been. “I totally don't need to hire girls!”
Kurt deployed his very best scathing glare. “I was asking Ms. Scarlet.”
Whirling to face Ms. Scarlet, the Colonel pointed at Kurt. “Tell him it's not true!”
“It's not true,” Ms. Scarlet parroted to Kurt, eyes wide and innocent.
“But is that true?” Professor Plum asked, frowning in confusion.
“No, of course it's not true,” Ms. Scarlet assured him.
Kurt laughed. “Ha! So it is true!”
“A double negative!” Wadsworth burst out triumphantly, swapping a satisfied - and otherwise fully loaded - glance with Kurt. Kurt dropped a clandestine wink back. Oh, that butler, he was cute.
“Double negative?” Though it seemed impossible, Colonel Mustard now looked more confused than ever. He leaned down to Ms. Scarlet and whispered, “Does that mean you have pictures?”
“Sounds like a confession to me.” Crossing his arms over his chest, Wadsworth looked really pleased with the proceedings. “In fact, the double negative has led to proof positive. You just gave yourself away.”
“Shut up, will you?” Mrs. White snapped unexpectedly at the hapless Colonel. “He's only making you look like an idiot.”
“Oh, he really doesn't need my help for that,” the butler demurred modestly. Kurt had to stifle a laugh again. He loved a wicked sense of humor. Too bad this seemed like way too awkward an occasion to ask the guy out on a date.
Professor Plum spoke up again, curious. “Anyway, what's so big a deal about an athlete hiring an escort? Don't they do it all the time? No one cares.”
“Unless the athlete catches mono from the escort a mere week before the Super Bowl and passes it to his teammates through shared bottles of Gatorade.” Wadsworth cast a reproachful look at the Colonel. “Took out the entire offensive line and all the reserves. They had to forfeit. No one knew he was patient zero...until now.”
Now the Professor was furious. “I had money riding on that game, you asshole!” Diving across the room, he tackled the Colonel around the waist, sparking a noisy tussle. Kurt watched with interest - this evening really was swinging wildly between super interesting and super awkward. He kind of liked it.
All too soon, Wadsworth waded in and started pushing and slapping at both men. “Stop it! Act like adults, please! We have a long evening to get through and there's no time for you brawling like thugs.”
Kurt couldn't help it. “You sound like you went to a prep school.”
“Maybe.” Wadsworth turned back to face him, dropping a wink as he nudged the Colonel in the side with his shoe. “Do you like schoolboys?”
“I'm going to start barfing rainbows if you two don't cut it the fuck out,” Ms. Scarlet announced, looking ill. “Meet at the glory hole later, let's get back to the subject?”
A charming blush spread across the butler's face. “Of course.” With one last shove to both of the fighters, Wadsworth returned to the desk and retrieved his papers. “Ah, Mrs. White. We come to you. It looks like you've been paying our friend the blackmailer since your husband died under...ah...mysterious circumstances?”
Ms. Scarlet barked out a laugh, making Mrs. White bristle with indignation. “What's so funny?”
“I get it! That's why he's lying around on his back all day!” Ms. Scarlet kept chortling, ignoring the glare of daggers she was receiving from the widow. “In his coffin!”
“I didn't kill him,” Mrs. White protested, but it was a protest Kurt didn't believe for one second. She was frightening enough to have done it, he thought, and Ms. Scarlet seemed to agree.
“If you didn't...” Ms. Scarlet pointed out, lighting up her third cigarette and ugh, Kurt wanted to snatch it away and stomp it out, disgusting habit. “Why pay blackmail?”
“Who wants a scandal?” It was Mrs. White's turn to stand and pace the carpet, twisting her fingers together as she spoke. “Arthur and I didn't have a very good relationship. He was deranged...a lunatic. Very controlling. He'd threatened to have me killed in public.”
Colonel Mustard - not surprising by now - was confused again. “Why would he threaten to have you killed in public?”
Wadsworth tapped on his arm. “I think,” he began once he had the man's attention, “he had threatened, in public, to have her killed.”
“Oh.”
Ms. Scarlet wasn't done. “So I guess that was his final word on the matter.”
A delicate shrug and tiny smile from Mrs. White. “Death is fairly final.”
Kurt couldn't dispute that. “What did he do for a living, if I might ask?”
“He was a director.” Mrs. White crossed the room and accepted a cigarette from Ms. Scarlet. “He liked to have everything laid out and just so and very by the book. I'm afraid it was a terrible shock to him when he died. That hadn't been in the script. But there you have it.” She heaved a melodramatic sigh and inhaled a lungful of smoke before sitting back down. “Found at home, dead, with his head cut off and...ah...his...you know.” She nodded down at her lap.
Kurt reflexively crossed his legs, and it didn't escape his notice that the other men did, too. Ouch.
“I,” the widow went on, a trifle unconvincingly, “had been out all night. At the movies. Did you know there are theaters that still do double features? I had to go pretty far outside the city limits for it.”
“And do you miss him?” pushed Ms. Scarlet, a look of avarice all over her pretty face.
“It's a matter of life after death.” The tiny smile on Mrs. White's face widened. “Now that he's dead, I have a life. The 'Real Housewives' franchise was very interested in the idea of a rich widow.”
Wadsworth was the first man to recover from the shock of hearing about the castration. “I...er...ahem. But the director...he was your second husband. Your first husband was also in show business, as it were, and he's gone as well.”
“Yes, he was an impressionist.” Mrs. White nodded. “Samuel spent quite a lot of time in Las Vegas for his show.”
“Which is in fact where they found his body,” Wadsworth interjected, looking slightly ill. “In the concrete foundation that had been recently laid for the new wing of the Flamingo.”
Mrs. White beamed. “They said it was the best impression of his career.”
Kurt couldn't take any more. He was the only one who hadn't been revealed and if anyone was going to do it, he wanted to be that person. He got to his feet. “Excuse me. I have something to say.”
Wadsworth looked up from his papers, curiosity all over his face. “Yes?”
“I prefer to do my own unmasking,” Kurt answered, a ghost of a smile on his lips. “I am a fashion designer. And I use real fur in my designs. But my public statement is that all of my fur is synthetic - which is true, in the case of anything sold to the public. However, anything on the runway or sold to a certain special clientele is trimmed in real fur and I myself only wear real fur.” He lifted his chin in stubborn pride. “I feel no personal shame in this, but I'll be ostracized in the fashion community if any other designer confirms it, so I pay the blackmail.” He sat back down. “Thank you.”
“How awful,” Ms. Peacock sniffed, earning herself Kurt's best derisive chuckle.
“I don't think you have any room to judge me, Ms. Jewish American Pork Princess.”
Professor Plum looked up, frowning hard. “So what about Silent Bob in the corner?” he asked, indicating Mr. Boddy. The seventh guest had indeed been utterly quiet throughout the proceedings, simply watching in interest. Even now, he didn't say anything, simply offering a self-satisfied smile to the other guests.
“Haven't you guessed?” Wadsworth asked in return, appearing to be genuinely surprised. “He's the one who's blackmailing you.”
The room erupted in chaos.
Chapter Five - A Series Of Fortunate Events (Depending On Your Perspective)