“I’m sure,” I snapped.
Clothing, snaps, buckles, straps. After about five or ten minutes of a bashful silence, I heard him say, “Okay. I might need help with my bowtie.”
“I’m not sure I can help with that. Weren’t they in-style when you were still alive?”
“I never had the occasion to dress up,” he said. “I was a trapper in Canada.”
“A trapper?”
“My family came from Italy originally, out near Sicily. We moved to Canada. My Dad became a trapper and taught me. We hunted animals for pelts. Mostly wolves, beavers, minks. It was an honest living,” he said. “Are you decent?”
“Decent? Probably no. Dressed? Absolutely.”
“Okay,” he said. “On three.”
At a count, we both turned and looked at one another. His eyes stared at me from behind his spectacles, and he grinned.
“Look at you. French maid outfit, basically. Ooh la la.”
“I’m sure this is period-appropriate,” I said. “You look pretty spiffy yourself.”
Spiffy was an understatement. He had on white gloves, a coat and tails, and a cummerbund tight enough to bounce a quarter off. He looked the epitome of class with his glasses on. I found myself uncomfortably attracted to him.
Think about Eddie, I thought. Eddie who isn’t here. Oh, that was a treacherous line of thought. I tried to pick it up and tuck it away, on a back burner on the four-corner stovetop of my active mind and moved forward to help him with his bowtie. It was quick and easy, but there was a vulnerability to him standing like he was over me, his throat exposed and adam’s apple bobbing as I tightened and arranged his tie.
“There we go,” I said. “All period appropriate.”
“Alright,” he said. “Let’s go find something out.”
A nearby chest hacked, opened its maw and creaked. Eyes blinked up from whorls in the wood. We jumped.
“Look at you,” Richard’s voice said. “All ready for the fancy dinner party. Look, I’m sorry. I could sneak you in as servants, but I couldn’t make you upper crust. That would clash too much with the echoes here.”
“What did you do to us?” Vic asked.
“You’re in an Echo-void,” Richard said. “That’s what I think of it as. It’s a collective house memory. Everybody’s memory is here. They all remember things a little differently, but the wood sorts out the deep details. Anyway. There are four main suspects. The Duke, the Orphan’s Mother, the Fool, and the Illusionist. Can you remember that?”
“The Duke, the Orphan’s Mother, the Fool, and the Illusionist,” I said.
“Exactly!” the chest said. “They’re the four dinner guests I had that evening, and each had their own sort of grudge against me. You should start with the Duke. If you can investigate his room, you may find some sort of detail or motivation he had.”
“Why can’t you do this?” Vic asked.
“I am these memories,” the chest said. “They are a part of me, and I’m a part of them. When I start the Echo again, I get pulled into it, and I lose myself. I have tried to retrace my time, to remain conscious, but I find that what I want to see alters the Echo. I have gone through this particular evening’s Echo two-thousand, three-hundred and eighty-nine times. In each case, I was brought to believe a different outcome. After a while, I realized I was influencing the events from inside and therefore, my participation as a neutral observer means I will never remember what happened. Stacey, however, is an interloper. Introducing her allows an impartial observer.”
“What if what we do changes the Echo?” Vic asked.
The Chest opened and closed.
“That was supposed to be a shrug,” Richard said. “Look. This is all new territory. Just do the best you can. Worst case scenario, the characters riot, and you’re stuck in the Echo.”
“Oh,” Vic said, and his voice was pointed. “Not so bad, then.”
“See? You agree with me. Alright. Get out there. Serve canapes. Listen to gossip. Find who killed me!!!”
And then the Chest’s lid fell closed, and the whorls were just whorls in the wood again.
“Let’s just get this over with,” Vic said.
