The Missing Piece
Josephine Haskell raised her head, glanced at the antique Ridgeway mantel clock above her fireplace and saw that it was almost midnight. She stretched her arms above her head to relieve the tightness in her upper back, the result of leaning over a card table for four hours, working on the latest of a long line of jigsaw puzzles.
"It's time to go to bed, Mehitabel," she called to her cat that was sleeping on the Chippendale wing chair.
The animal meowed in protest of being awakened, stood up and arched its back in its best Halloween-cat pose. The pampered feline then strutted out into the hallway, used the litter box that was discreetly tucked away in the corner of the laundry room and finally ran up the stairs toward the master bedroom. Meanwhile, the mistress of the house maneuvered her wheelchair to the old-fashioned wrought iron elevator that had been installed for her use in traveling between the floors of her mansion.
Many years earlier, when Josephine was only thirty-two years old, she injured her spine in an accident. Much of what happened that night she managed to block from her conscious mind. All she could remember was that there was a dreadful fire in Greystone Manor, the grand house that was home to generations of Haskells dating back to the early eighteenth century before passing into the hands of her husband's parents.
Tragically, her husband, both of his parents and his sister all died in the conflagration. Josephine was the only one who managed to escape the deadly blaze. When the police and firemen arrived at the scene, they found the fire burning out of control and Josephine's unconscious form lying on the lawn where she landed after having jumped from a second-story window to escape the inferno.
After several minutes, the noisy, slow-climbing elevator car came to a jarring stop on the second floor. Josephine opened the gate-like door and rolled her wheelchair down the wide hallway to the bedroom. Mehitabel was already there, curled up on the thick satin comforter, snoring softly.
Before turning in for the night, the old woman wheeled herself into the spacious bathroom, and by using the handrails strategically placed throughout the room, she was able to prepare herself for bed. Josephine had not always been so self-sufficient. When she was initially released from the hospital, after spending several agonizing months in the burn unit, the vulnerable, paralyzed woman was forced to rely on a team of trained nurses to bathe her, dress her and carry her from chair to bed and bed to chair. Most humiliating of all, she could not even go to the bathroom without the assistance of those non-smiling caregivers in their starched white uniforms. It had been a physically painful, emotionally disturbing and utterly dehumanizing period in the wealthy widow's life that she preferred not to relive.
* * *
Early the following morning, not long after the sun rose and cast bright beams of light through the bedroom windows, Josephine was awakened by Mehitabel's persistent pacing back and forth across the bed.
"I know," she moaned, throwing the blankets aside, "it's time for your breakfast."
Having achieved its purpose in waking up its owner, the cat jumped off the bed, raced out of the room and headed down the stairs toward the kitchen by way of the litter box.
With far less speed and dexterity than Mehitabel had exhibited, Josephine slowly and carefully maneuvered herself off the bed and into her wheelchair. After getting clean clothes and lingerie out of her closet and armoire, she rolled into the bathroom and got dressed.
It was the start of a new day, another monotonous twenty-four hours that would not be much different from the day before or the day before that, and would most likely be the same as the day after and the day after that.
Ever since the day Josephine left the hospital and returned to her New York City penthouse apartment—a hideously scarred, embittered, crippled woman (she was never one to mince words, not even for the sake of political correctness)—her days and nights were an endless procession of boredom, frustration, depression and desperation. Twice she tried to end her life by taking an overdose of prescription painkillers, but both times one of her robot-like caregivers managed to save her from death's door by administering a large dose of syrup of ipecac. Eventually, however, the morose widow began to accept her sad fate: she would never walk again.
Although she faced a difficult future, Josephine did have one thing in her favor: money and lots of it. Her late husband, Carter, came from an extremely affluent family, and upon the death of the last four members of that prosperous clan, the vast Haskell fortune went to the widow, the only one to survive the fire.
After the estate was settled, Josephine retreated to the Haskells' Newport, Rhode Island, mansion (an immense seaside "cottage" left over from the Gilded Age) and made it her personal sanctuary. She spent a small fortune filling it with things to occupy her in her self-imposed seclusion. The great library was stocked with books since she read on a daily basis. A home theater was built in the basement so that she could view her favorite as well as newly released movies in the privacy of her own home. The finest stereo equipment was brought in along with an extensive collection of compact discs. When the widow was not reading, watching a movie or listening to music, she occupied herself by doing either crossword or jigsaw puzzles.
Even though she no longer contemplated suicide, Josephine had no interest in socializing with other people. Once the house was outfitted with the latest equipment for the physically impaired, she let the nurses and most of the household staff go. Only the housekeeper, three part-time maids and a cook remained, and the mistress of the house spent as little time with the help as possible. For all intents and purposes, she lived the life of a recluse.
The only living creatures Josephine did not shun were her cats. There had been two others before Mehitabel; both lived to a ripe old age. The lonely widow wept bitterly when those two animals died, for she had truly loved them, just as she now loved Mehitabel.
"Here you go, sweetheart," she announced as she placed chopped salmon served on a Lenox china plate at the head of the dining room table. "Come and get it."
The cat promptly jumped up onto the chair, put its paws on the table and began to eat.
Its loving owner leaned over and stroked its silky gray and black coat.
"That's my baby," she cooed.
While the cat ate the expensive salmon, Josephine dined on a jelly doughnut and a cup of coffee. There was little doubt that the animal ate better than its mistress.
No sooner had the widow finished her breakfast than the housekeeping staff arrived, and the three maids silently went about cleaning the rooms and doing the laundry. The cook would report to work around two in the afternoon, in time to prepare Josephine's dinner.
"Good morning, Mrs. Haskell," the birdlike housekeeper chirped as she removed the dirty dishes from the dining room table.
Josephine brusquely acknowledged the woman's greeting and then wheeled herself down the hall and into the library. There, she picked up the latest Dan Brown novel and read for most of the morning. When she tired of reading, she went to the home theater where the old movie projector had recently been replaced with a plasma television, a Blu-ray player and a state-of-the-art sound system.
"Mehitabel," she called to the cat that was sleeping on the sofa.
The animal stirred and looked at its owner, hoping for a tasty cat treat.
"What do you feel like watching today?" she asked the cat as she thumbed through the Blu-ray discs. "All About Eve? Lost Horizon? Ah! How about A Tale of Two Cities? We haven't seen that one in a while."
Josephine put the disc into the player, selected PLAY MOVIE from the menu and leaned back on the sofa next to her pet to watch Ronald Colman star as the heroic Sydney Carton.
Thus the day passed in peace and contentment. Finally, after a delicious dinner of veal scaloppini, string beans almandine, crème brûlée and a cup of after-dinner espresso, Josephine retired to the den and worked on her jigsaw puzzle while Mehitabel slept on its favorite Chippendale seat.
Since being confined to her wheelchair, Josephine had completed several hundred different puzzles of subjects that included works of fine art, Americana, seascapes, scenic landscapes and architectural masterpieces. For novelty, she sometimes did two-sided, three-dimensional, mosaic shapes and irregular border puzzles. What she enjoyed most, however, were the mystery puzzles, ones that combined the adventure of a detective story with the challenge of a jigsaw puzzle.
The one she was currently working on reminded her of an Agatha Christie novel. Several characters were either sitting or standing in an old English drawing room. Dominating the scene was a very staid British-looking gentleman in an indiscriminate military uniform, a man Josephine had dubbed Colonel Mustard. The cast of characters also included a prim and proper elderly lady (obviously a personage of wealth and good breeding); a beautiful and mysterious young woman of dubious pedigree; a swarthy, foreign-looking young man with a pencil-thin mustache; a gray-haired, overweight cook; and, of course, the traditional English butler.
"What would a drawing-room mystery be without a butler?" the mistress asked her cat, who was sound asleep, as usual.
For the remainder of the evening, Josephine continued putting together pieces of the puzzle, paying attention to the small details in the scene that were not visible in the reproduction of the picture on the box cover.
"Aha, Mehitabel! The man with the pencil mustache has a red stain on his shirt cuff. Could it be blood?"
Obviously, she expected no response from the cat. She spoke to it only out of habit.
When the hour neared midnight, Mehitabel, responding to an internal clock, got down from the chair and headed toward the litter box in the laundry room.
"Is it bedtime already?" Josephine asked, stretching to relieve the familiar stiffness between her shoulders.
She wheeled herself out of the room, disappointed that she would have to wait until the following night to solve the mystery.
I hope the butler didn't do it, she thought. That would be such a cliché!
Thus, another evening had come to an end, but as Scarlett O'Hara once prophesied, "Tomorrow is another day."
* * *
The following morning and afternoon were much the same as the previous ones. The only exception in her routine was that Josephine watched The Great Gatsby rather than A Tale of Two Cities. Breakfast and lunch were the same, but dinner was different. The cook prepared spaghetti and meatballs instead of veal scaloppini.
The wheelchair-bound widow had not always been such a creature of habit. Before the fire, her life had been full of fun and excitement. She and her husband traveled a good deal, entertained friends, went to parties and enjoyed a full social life. As Mrs. Carter J. Haskell, III, Josephine ate at the best restaurants, stayed at the most expensive resorts, wore the latest fashions and shopped at the finest stores. Had it not been for Carter, however, her life would have been much different. It would have changed drastically had he left her for that ... that ....
Well, suffice it to say her life just would not have been the same.
After dinner, Mehitabel headed for the Chippendale wing chair as Josephine rolled to the card table. As was her habit, she conducted a one-way conversation with the cat.
"I ought to finish the puzzle tonight. I only have about a hundred pieces left. Of course, I can't say for sure who the murderer is yet, but I've got a good idea."
With fewer pieces to choose from, Josephine was able to work at a quicker pace.
One hundred pieces ... seventy-five ... fifty ... twenty-five ...
"That's odd," she said to the sleeping cat. "I hadn't noticed before how much Colonel Mustard resembles Carter's father."
Josephine spent most of the evening completing the background of the drawing room: the mahogany bookcases, the bay window and the family portraits hanging on the walls. She had not paid much attention to the portion of the puzzle that was already completed. Now she did.
"I could have sworn the older woman was wearing glasses," she said, perplexed at the details she had previously overlooked. "And the foreign-looking young man, what happened to his pencil-thin mustache?"
At a loss for an explanation, Josephine shrugged and continued placing the last pieces.
Twenty ... fifteen ...
"The cook! Where's her apron? I know she was wearing an apron last night."
Ten ... five ...
"Wait a minute! The butler has disappeared. I distinctly remember there was a butler in the corner, standing near the door. Something very strange is going on here, Mehitabel."
Four ... three ... two ...
"Damn it! There's a piece missing."
Josephine moved the box top and then the bottom, but the missing piece was not underneath either. It was nowhere on the table. She rolled back and looked on the floor.
"There it is."
She leaned forward, stretching every muscle in her shoulders and her arms in an attempt to reach the puzzle piece that had fallen on the floor beneath the card table.
"I got it," she announced in a strained, but triumphant voice.
Puzzle piece in hand, she straightened up, wheeled back to the table and placed the last piece into the empty spot in the puzzle.
"There, I'm fin—"
Josephine's words were cut off by a scream that died in her throat.
The entire picture in the puzzle had changed. The English drawing room was gone; the setting was now the dining room of Greystone Manor, the former Haskell family home. The very British-looking Colonel Mustard turned into her father-in-law, the elderly prim and proper lady greatly resembled her mother-in-law, the plump cook became her sister-in-law, the tanned young man with the mustache was her husband and the mysterious young woman was Josephine herself.
Before her terrified eyes, the picture changed again. The four Haskells were unmistakably dead, and Josephine was holding the murder weapon in her hand: the empty bottle of poison she had put in the wine they drank with dinner.
"No!" she screamed as she frantically started pulling the puzzle apart.
Hundreds of pieces flew into the air and fell onto the floor.
"No! No! No!" Josephine cried, trying desperately to destroy the evidence of her past crime.
Only when the puzzle had been reduced to a thousand separate, scattered pieces did Josephine calm down.
Mehitabel, sensing the lateness of the hour, left the wing chair and headed for the litter box.
"It must have been my imagination," the widow said, trying to rationalize the situation and quell her fears. "Maybe my doctor is right. Maybe I do spend too much time alone in this old house. I'm going to have to get out more, make new friends, do some traveling."
The fear had subsided somewhat, so Josephine wheeled herself out into the hallway and toward the elevator.
"I definitely need to socialize more. This solitude must be affecting my mind."
She wheeled herself into the elevator and pressed the button. The metal cage began its slow, torturous climb to the second floor.
"I don't like the looks of pity everyone gives me, but I'll just have to get used to it. I've had to get used to so many things since ...."
The elevator came to a shuddering halt halfway between the first and second floors. Josephine was not worried because there was a manual lever for just such an occasion. She would not be able to get to the upper floor, but she could safely lower herself to the ground floor. Josephine grabbed the lever and pulled. It was stuck.
"Damn it!" Is everything going to go wrong tonight?
She pulled with all her strength, but the lever still would not budge. In a fit of frustration, Josephine slammed her fist down on the button, causing sparks to shoot out of the control box.
"Oh great! Now I've really broken it. I suppose it's my own fault. I should have replaced this old unit years ago."
Distasteful though the idea was, she would have to spend the night in the elevator, she realized, since the housekeeping staff would not return until the following morning. She closed her eyes and dozed off, but then Mehitabel's meow sounded from below.
"What's that smell?" Josephine asked.
It was an odor she knew all too well. Something was burning.
"Oh no! Please, God, NO!"
The sparks from the elevator control box had fallen onto the hallway carpet below. They then smoldered there for over an hour before finally igniting. Josephine grabbed the bars of the elevator and shook them wildly, like a prisoner trying to break out of jail.
"Help!" she screamed, but there was no one in the house except the cat to hear her cries.
Before long, Mehitabel ran down the hall, through the cat opening in the back door and out into the fresh night air. Josephine Haskell was left alone in the house with nothing but her guilt, the rapidly spreading fire and the certainty of her own impending death to keep her company.
I once completed a mystery jigsaw puzzle. (It was a mystery I could complete it with Salem underfoot.)
