Jocelyn Marthe - The Body under the Piano

I WILL TELL FIRST about making a new friend and save the dead body for later. This follows the traditional rules of storytellinglull the reader with pleasant scenery and lively dialogue, introduce a few appealing characters, and thenaha!discover a corpse!

The friend I found was not a nice young lady introduced by Mummy or Grannie Jane. He was a boy! A foreign boy. He was, to be truthful, a bit peculiar. But I determined to be open-minded, as potential friends did not often come my way. Except of the made-up sort. I had a whole schoolroom full of imagined girls and their fictional endeavors to occupy my solitary hours. I named them and clothed them, worried about their spats, and rejoiced in their reunions. But they did not ever think of me.

A real person my own age was quite out of the ordinary.

After my dance lesson late on a Saturday morning in October, I went into Mr. Dillons sweet shop downstairs from the Mermaid Dance Room on Union Street. Just as always, I took a moment to scratch the ears of Frostypaws, the shop cat. Just as always, Charlotte was with me. When would Mummy understand that a person of already-turned-twelve can get through an hour of life without a nursemaid?

Charlotte and I lingered as the other girls from my dance class paid for their violet pastilles and buttermints and went home with their own unwanted nursemaids to their lunches. I preferred to make my selection in a considered manner, without needing to speak in front of anyone listening. An audience caused in me a dizzying panic. Mummy said that being shy was temporary, that someday Id speak as easily to unfamiliar grown-ups as I did to Tony, my dog. But each time the words caught in my throat, someday felt further away.

Because Charlotte was the one who carried the tuppence that Mummy allowed for sweets, she waited patiently for my decisionas she must, since it was her job to do so, and sometimes to wait on me, to keep me safe and to explain things that needed explaining.

My sister, Marjorie, had gone to proper schools, but by the time it was my turn, seven years later, Mummy had developed certain notions about the education of children not like those of other parents. Children should roam free, she felt, though always close to home and under the steadily watchful eye of a nursemaid. Free-roaming bodies and brains would result in greater wisdom and well-being. This meant no school, no governess and no friends.

I learned history and literature from Mummy and from books in Papas library. For natural science, I explored the garden. Going to All Saints Church every Sunday was for Bible stories and religious studies. I practiced dance with Miss Marianne, in the Mermaid Room, and played the piano and the mandolin with other lady teachers. Papa had been the one to teach me mathematics, but my skills in that area had faltered since last November when he died. I did not miss arithmetic, but I missed Papa with every breath. The Morton family, with all of England, had mourned Queen Victorias demise nearly two years earlier, but since then wed learned the truth in our own house. Grief was a story with endless forlorn endings.

None of my lessons, nor any of the books Id read, had yet explained how the smallest occurrence might cause a tremendous impact on the universe. If I had chosen chocolate buds on that Saturday, as I usually did, instead of strawberry drops (in the jar on a higher shelf, reached only by using a stool)And if Frostypaws had picked a different moment to pounce on her masters bootlaces (dangling so temptingly from atop the stool)And if the bell on the shop door did not announce customers with such a strident jangle (causing Mr. Dillon to twist around in surprise)Hector Perot would not have walked through the door into the mayhem of shattered glass and scattered sweets, and we would have had no reason to speak to each other.

At the time, I did not see that a sequence was unfolding. One never does. Afterward, it was clear how the moments piled up, each leading naturally to the next, quietly altering the course of things. At the time, however, in Dillons Sweets & Sundries shortly after noon, poor Frostypaws squawked like a chicken and fled behind the barrel of demerara sugar. Mr. Dillon had landed on his large behind, but waved us off as he struggled without success to regain a vertical position. Charlotte and I crept closer, using the toes of our boots to push shards of broken glass and cracked strawberry drops into a pile. The bell-jangling newcomer stood just inside the door.