Two Tocks before Midnight Page 3

  Thomas seemed to be on the verge of becoming belligerent, but after a moment, he reposed himself and returned to his seat next to the window without verbal complaint.

  “The department is a mere five minute walk from here. The drawing should be here momentarily.”

  But the captain had told his officers to wait outside for a full hour before entering with a satchel containing a blank sheet of drawing paper.

  Minutes passed. Most members seemed to enjoy the waiting as if watching the lead-up to the climax of some exciting play.

  And so it was: the captain’s play.

  Thomas, however, seemed more and more troubled. I no longer stared at him directly, but even a casual glance told me he understood the game we were playing.

  The clock against the wall was near Thomas. Its tick-tock seemed to unnerve him more. Did its sound remind him of the two Tocks?

  I will summarize that hour with the following: Most members were most amiable despite having no knowledge of our drama. Toward the end, however, a few began to tire of conversation and wished to return home no matter the risk. Thomas took the opportunity to speak up.

  “This is intolerable. You can’t keep us here like rats in some insane experiment,” he said, standing.

  “An interesting metaphor, Thomas,” I said, seeing my opportunity. “An experiment expects some result. What kind of result do you expect?”

  He was quiet. I could see sweat on his forehead. It was not at all warm. There was no doubt then; he was guilty and I had him.

  “You are of course expecting your face on the paper.”

  “Oh, come now old boy,” began one member in defense of Thomas. “Do let’s put all this aside. Haven’t you had enough fun at his expense today?”

  “But,” the captain said, raising his hand effectively silencing the entire room. “What if the accusation is true?”

  The room was ablaze with discussion, half of them looked on Thomas, the other half looked on me.

  Thomas was shaking slightly when the knock to the door silenced the room once more. The officer walked in and after shooting a stern look in Thomas’ direction, he handed the satchel to the captain. The captain opened the bag and pulled the sheet of paper half-way out with an ostentatious display. With slow, deliberate motions, he returned the paper to the satchel and cleared his throat.

  “There can be little doubt, now.”

  “There was no witness!” Thomas shouted.

  “How could you know?” I retorted. “Unless, of course, you were there.”

  “I was here, you fool. I was here when the arrow was shot, when Joseph fell to his death!”

  “The arrow, yes. Joseph’s death, no.”

  “But Thomas was shot by an arrow,” someone replied, rallying to Thomas’ defense. “Someone who went to the trouble to create his own alibi would have no reason to risk being killed.”

  “Thomas is an expert marksman. He knew exactly where to stand to not hit any vital organs,” I explained, keeping my eyes burning on Thomas. “But you were not intending to even graze yourself, were you? When you came inside around 11:30, there was no wind. I conferred with a policeman who was outside at the time. You aimed the crossbow precisely on target without correcting for wind. At 11:45 when the arrow was fired, however, there was a slight western wind, pulling the arrow to the left. You had intended it to come close, but not touch.”

  “But,” someone else said, “how on earth could he have fired a crossbow across the street while physically standing here?”

  “A candle fuse. You lit the candle shortly before 11:30. It burned for fifteen minutes at which point, the wick set off a fuse which released a weight pulling the trigger. The kickback from the launched arrow pulled the last nail causing the already dead Joe, bow, and rock to fall to the ground. With the poor light outside, the thread that you used to tie the rock is practically invisible. Not knowing what to look for, the police wouldn’t have bothered with one of a hundred rocks on the street. You had intended to retrieve this on your way home, hadn’t you?” I said, pulling out the rock and then dangling it from a two-foot thread held by my fingers.

  “But if he used a candle, surely we would have seen its light?” This time, Christopher spoke up.

  “The crossbow was set on a piece of wood on the edge of the balcony. The candle was behind that wood, shielding its light from our view.”

  “You are insane,” said Thomas in a fit of rage.

  No one spoke in his defense.

  “But the look of surprise on your face when the arrow flew into the window was not feigned. Oh, no. You were not expecting the shot so soon. Again, the wind worked against your wishes. Instead of twenty minutes, the candle, being fed with extra airflow, burned to the fuse at the bottom in fewer than fifteen minutes.”

  All eyes were on Thomas who was now silent, clearly thinking out his options.

  “I have to admit, it was ingenious. Had I not witnessed a candle fuse before among miners in Southern France, I would have glossed over the slight remnants of wax on the balcony.”

  “You have no proof.”

  “Do you remember,” I said, taking a step toward Thomas, “when Joseph returned to pick up the parchment and we told him the parchment was a forgery? We told Joseph nothing of our reasons. And yet, the parchment we found at the Chelsea museum corrected the Hebrew and stylistic issues. The exact issues we as a group spoke of only among ourselves.”

  “Surely Charles heard…”

  “Charles was not there,” I interrupted, anticipating his words. “Charles only returned to us this last evening, hanging.”

  “You still have no proof,” he said almost in a scream.

  “We have a witness.”

  Thomas whipped out a pistol; I pulled out mine. The captain and the policeman beside him also had their service pistols drawn. The rest of the members huddled, gasping at the unexpected development.

  “But I must ask,” I said as calmly as possible. “Why all this? What purpose did all these deaths serve?” (Memory recalls my voice much steadier than how it really was.)

  Thomas was silent but kept his gun steady.

  “There was money at stake, of course, but there was something else, wasn’t there? Something personal,” I said, trying to read meaning from his expression.

  “Who was Joseph?” asked the captain.

  “You don’t know by now? Charles Tock’s half-brother of course. He was an idiot, but Charles pampered him to his own hurt, blinded by some sense of loyalty to family.”

  Thomas was suddenly talkative.

  “Come, let us sit down at the station and have a long talk,” said Captain Barnwell.

  Thomas backed up against the window, shards of glass pricking his back.

  “All right. I’m giving up,” he said, showing the broadside of his gun. But just as he appeared to lower it, he threw the pistol with a great force across the room. Instinctively my eyes followed the flight of the pistol. Turning back to Thomas, I watched as he leapt out the broken window.

  We all rushed to see him roll off an awning and fall into the street.

  “Quick! Downstairs!”

  We all ran down, breathlessly expecting a fourth body for the night. But reaching the location a mere thirty-seconds after Thomas had jumped, we found no body. Bits of bloodied glass and wood fragments were everywhere, but no Thomas.

  The street, at that time, was poorly lit. Even with the lantern, he had ample shadows in which to hide. We scoured the neighborhood, but found… nothing.

  In the morning, minute trails of blood were found indicating he had entered the apartment building across from our meeting hall. Somehow, the bloodied mess of a man had crept inside while we were all flying down the stairs.

  A door to door search revealed his hiding place. He was not there, but the occupant, a woman in her forties, was tied and gagged. We had expected the worst, but she was alive. She had watched, bound, as he mended his wounds and left early in the morning.

  Neithe
r the police nor the Agora Society ever found Thomas. It would remain a pet project that would pester Captain Barnwell until the day he died some ten years ago.

  But stranger still, every year, on October 24th, I have always received a curious card in my mailbox. The card always arrived with but one word on it.

  The first year—the first anniversary—that I received the card, it read, “Tick.” I discarded it as some nonsensical childish prank without even considering the date. However, the second year, the card read, “Tock.” I was terrified. Of all the Agora members, I had been most integral in discovering Thomas’ hand in the matter. Captain Barnwell had a man stay at my house for the next week.

  Of course, nothing ever happened. Except for the card alternating between “Tick” and “Tock” every year, I never saw or heard from Thomas again.

  A few times I stayed vigil all night watching for him to insert the card. I learned he used delivery boys to leave the cards, never exposing himself directly. I always interrogated the boys—a different one each year—but they all said the same thing: the benefactor was a stranger. A tall man with a scarred face—undoubtedly caused by the jagged glass during his escape. And they were all paid handsomely for the delivery. Investigating the location the boys gave presented no clues and no Thomas. Ever.

  The cards came religiously every year exactly on October 24th. Every year until last year... It now being November of the following year, I feel that I truly am the last of the Agora Society.

  The mystery has only recently been made manifest. A few days ago, I was visited by a woman named Lottie Phillips who presented me with a letter. She was a charming woman in her mid-thirties, well-spoken and dressed royally. She had a Southern accent that, until reading the letter, had concealed her identity to me.

  She said she had discovered the letter addressed to me after her father’s death. Being curious, she traveled from Georgia to deliver it herself, hoping to learn something more about her father’s mysterious past. The contents of the letter revealed her to be Thomas Phillips’ daughter. I then realized that Thomas had taken his wife down south to hide from the law.

  The letter was as follows:

  My Dear Carl,

  By receipt of this post, you have evidence that Thomas Phillips is dead. What I did after the Agora Society is irrelevant and by offering you this information, I only ask you not disturb my family.

  I became acquainted with Charles through the bank of my employment. And from that acquaintance, I was introduced to the Agora Society, his brother Joseph, and most importantly his daughter Carolyn.

  I soon discovered Joseph’s lust for money. Charles’s brother was stupid and a petty thief, but I must admit, the forgeries were his idea. Upon seeing the blank parchments that Charles had acquired during one of his travels, Joseph asked of their value and from there the idea of the Book of Jasher forgeries was born.

  We began work on our scheme a full year before the events of that horrid October. To keep our secret intact, Charles and I rarely spoke to each other at the Agora and we both never spoke of our families or social activities.

  Emotional attachments are so often the downfall of great enterprises and so it was with ours.

  I asked Charles for his daughter’s hand in marriage. Carolyn and I had already pledged our love and needed only her father’s permission.

  But it was not to be.

  He was furious and resolute against the idea of giving his daughter to a criminal as he called me. He would have broken off all contact with me had we not had the matter of the forgeries together.

  A few months later, Carolyn and I secretly eloped and moved across town. I still kept residence at my old place to receive visitors and of course to meet with Charles and Joseph, but at night, I flew to Carolyn. Her father, who did not know her whereabouts, was distraught.

  We planned to move to a new town and leave it all behind, eventually sending Charles a letter explaining our marriage. I even gave notice to the bank. During that time, we were careful not to expose our location to anyone who knew her father. I double-backed and made false turns to thwart onlookers from learning of us. Carolyn wore heavy scarves around her head as disguise.

  But Joseph found us.

  He threatened to tell Charles of our marriage and to tell Carolyn about our activities—the facts of which she was never made privy.

  Charles of course was in despair. He had no idea what had become of Carolyn and assumed the worst. He contacted the police and posted bulletins describing her appearance. It was then that Charles quit the Agora Society and plunged completely into what he was best at: creating the forgeries. And so, the three of us, encouraged by Charles’ determination, doubled our efforts.

  Again, it was Joseph’s idea to approach the Agora Society in hopes the experts there would certify the authenticity of the parchment. Such an endorsement would surely had fetched ten times the amount we were seeking.

  The Book of Jasher became Charles’ sole reason for living. If you remember his nervousness that night he appeared with the parchment, he had not had the will to go back to hear your conclusion.

  As you so keenly surmised, I instructed them according to the points you made clear and, together, the three of us created and sold corrected parchments for a tidy profit.

  If it were not for your insistence, our little endeavor would have succeeded without harm. But after reading your advertisement, Charles felt we could not continue. While strong in mind, he was exceedingly weak in will.

  One day, standing before Joseph and me, he declared his intent to confess the whole matter. Clearly, this was not acceptable to Joseph or myself. To have such a blight against my name was unthinkable. For Joseph, the reasons were as personal as they were financial.

  We tried to stop him, but he was most insistent.

  It was Joseph’s idea to kill Charles and to have the body discovered at the Agora Society. I argued against it, but Joseph again threatened to tell Carolyn about our activities if I didn’t go along. I relented after devising a way to rid myself of both Tocks so Carolyn and I could begin our marriage properly. It required Joseph’s strength and… his death.

  It turned out the Agora for the location was a good idea—and would have worked, I am sure, had you not been there. Joseph would be a natural suspect among any of you. Hence, the decision to have the hanging at the Agora was perfect. When Joseph, the perceived murderer, died attempting to murder me, no one with any knowledge of our activities would be alive. And with me being among the victims, no one would suspect me of the crime.

  But back to that night.

  The fool Charles had fled to the Agora Society no doubt with a mind to confess to you all that evening. For us, to find him outside the doors waiting for you to open it, was fortuitous.

  Of course, I had made a copy of the key from when I was on key duty and had easy access to the inside. From there, with big Joseph’s help, it was an easy matter to subdue and hang Charles.

  You may wonder about Joseph. He was indeed Charles’ half brother, but with Charles threatening to end the easy (for Joseph) income, jealousy overruled reason. Charles was the favored child—for his well-formed brain and the fact that Joseph was born a bastard. He hated his brother with passion and only tolerated him thus far for his money-making potential. That gone, Joseph preferred to see Charles dead. Dead men can name no names.

  Regarding this, I was in happy agreement with Joseph. But Joseph had too much knowledge about our enterprise and more importantly, there was the matter of his blackmail.

  While Joseph did much of the work as I commanded, he did not know the end of my plot. He asked why the candles. I softly replied, “You’ll see.” But now I realize I had lied. He never would see.

  You may wonder why I have not sought revenge against you. After all, you are responsible for me losing a lot of money. I should also mention the fact that you are responsible for the deaths of three persons.

  I had intended to seek revenge, slowly. I wanted the “Tick
Tock” letters to strike fear into you before I pounced. I planned an elaborate setup far more advanced than that of October 24th, 1859. But as time passed, my passion ebbed, my business increased, and most importantly, Carolyn and I had a child. I eventually lost all zeal in the matter. I did continue the yearly cards out of tradition and nostalgia. I do hope you enjoyed my efforts.

  You may further wonder why I write this. I shall never post this letter while alive, but in lieu of a confession, this enables me to offer you—should you outlive me—a fuller account of that evening.

  Your Obedient Servant,

  TP

  Having no hand or knowledge in the affairs of her father, I felt it best to let Lottie Phillips live her life without knowing her father’s darker side. I told her nothing of the contents of the letter, but spent the time, instead, telling her stories of her father before that dreadful night, before he became the murderer of her grandfather and uncle.

  After she left, I realized Thomas had given his daughter a name cognate with “Charles” as well as my name, “Carl.” Lottie is a pet form of Charlotte which is also related to churl. I spent that night in thought. Was the name given out of respect or guilt? Perhaps some attempt at penitence?

  So there, the matter is resolved and the world has the full story. Having only learned much of it recently myself, I feel somewhat relieved, completed.

  Thomas had intended to tear the Agora Society apart, but it had quite the opposite effect. We gained some measure of fame due to the incident and many of our members went on to great worldly success. Captain Barnwell often visited as a welcomed guest. He would present particularly troublesome cases for the club to consider. And as a group, our members became closer than family.