The verser wakes under a kitchen table in an old house with wallpaper that is coming loose at the corners, he hears a tumbling noise to his right, and sees the bald head of a man come to rest above his shoulders at the foot of the staircase. From the way the head is tilted, its clear, it is a final rest.
You hear a thudding sound of what could be a number of footsteps on old oak floors upstairs.
Going over to the man, you see what looks like a pair of hickey's on him. One on his neck down amidst the collar, and the other on the back edge of his bald ring of hair.
At the top of the stairs are three women. They stand in front of their respective doors from left to right.
Letitia is the most attractive of the three, and the most shocked looking. She has a dry toilet plunger in her hand, and the door behind her to her suite is closed.
Maude, in the middle, looks wild-eyed, but with penetrating glances. Her door is flung wide open, and a half-moon observation window in her door to her suite seems half broken out. She says vexedly that their landlord was always going to fix it, but he did not, and in her excitment she flung the door open, and smashed the door handle against the wall, jarring the glass loose.
Rayna, to the right, has a thin cavalry sabre in her hand. She is standing in front of the wall vent from which puffs miniscule amounts of heat, and she is shivering. She claims to have been frightened at the noise and come out with a weapon that her father, the late Captain of Horse gave her.
They agree that the Landlord, a cheap so and so, who lived in the attic, was inclined to come down before breakfast, stand at the top of the stairs, and stretch before walking down. The general consensus among them is that he must have overbalanced this one day, and fell. Terrible tragedy.
And you say?
