A Piece on the Mantel

A Piece on the Mantel

By James Ott

Governor Bellamy’s engraved invitation requested my attendance at a birthday celebration for his wife, Mellisa, who I knew as Mel.

The request was old-style formal: “Cocktails at six. Dinner at seven. Carriages at nine.”

I felt for the invitation in the side pocket of my dinner jacket while approaching the mansion. Electric lights blazed through windows of the so-called People’s Palace, a glowing white, nineteenth century replica of a French chateau. Strange, I thought, the parking lot was nearly empty. My wrist watch chimed with the six o’clock reminder.

At the main entrance, I questioned whether I should knock. The front door opened and a servant, an elderly male dressed in tan-colored livery, welcomed me with an affected smile.

“We’ve been expecting you,” he said. “You’re Mr. Reynolds. Come this way to the Reception Room. My name is Jordan.”

I walked behind Jordan surprised that he knew the name of a state senator’s lowly chief of staff. We entered the room outfitted for a party, clusters of flowers, bright lights, and birthday balloons.

“Bourbon?” he asked.

“On the rocks,” I replied.

I walked toward the fireplace attracted to the blazing fire. Jordan returned with a large tumbler and a cloth napkin bearing the state’s logo. I took the glass with a thank you and sipped at the drink watching the fire dancing and sending up sparks. I was alone and wondered if I had misread the invitation. I put my drink under the napkin on the high mantel and withdrew the invitation from my jacket pocket. I was right. Cocktails at six.

“I can take the invitation,” Jordan said.

He had returned quietly like a cat. He took the invitation and walked away.

I reached for my drink on the mantel and reached too far. I felt cold metal. I placed my hand on the thing and moved it off the mantel. It made a scraping noise. In my right hand I grasped the grip of a blue-steel Smith & Wesson revolver. I grabbed the barrel with my left hand. With my right thumb I tripped the release for the cylinder. Loaded cartridges filled two chambers. Another had been fired, leaving an empty shell. You could smell the pungent odor of burnt gunpowder.

I was thinking, “hey, look what I’ve found,” when Jordan returned, saying. “I can take care of that.”

He opened a white handkerchief and asked me to lay the revolver in it. I did so and said, “How on earth did a revolver end up on the mantelpiece?”

“Sir,” he said without eye contact, “I have no idea.”

I watched the fire for a while and noticed a hole in the wood mantelpiece. It looked like a bullet hole. Odd, termites in the People’s Palace? Astonished I picked up a copy of a magazine., Fifteen minutes passed when Governor Bellamy entered the room. He looked the role of a southern governor, ample silver hair brushed back, a tanned complexion, and a smile that leapt on command to his face.

“Reynolds!” the governor called out.

“Thank you for the invitation. It’s not often I am invited to the mansion.”

“Entirely my pleasure.”

“The strangest thing,” I said, “There was a loaded revolver on the mantelpiece. It’s been recently fired.”

“Oh, that’s nothing. We had some people from a sportsmen league in here earlier today. I’d bet one of them left the thing. I’ll have my secretary investigate on Monday.”

“Just thought it odd.”

“Of course,” he said, his gaze turning from me as if his mind were churning out an idea.

Guests began to arrive. Even in the sedate surroundings of the foyer, whoops from politicians and ripples of laughter produced an ambience of manufactured, semi-hysterical glee.

“Where’s our Mel,” someone shouted.

“She’s coming. It’s her day and she’s taking her time,” the governor said.

Guests moved to the reception room. Livery-clad attendants spread through the crowd offering trays of drinks of bourbon and wine. The room quieted to the buzz of conversation. Jordan came to me and said, “Mrs. Bellamy wants to see you. Come this way.”

I followed him, surprised at the personal invitation. I knew the governor’s wife. I’d seen her at church every Sunday. We sat in pews near one another and often spoke after the service. By chance, a week ago we met at a department store and chatted while her security team stood by. A newspaper photographer happened to loiter by the governor’s limousine when I walked with her carrying a heavy package she had purchased. The photograph was published in the next day’s capital newspaper. I was identified by name as a state senate aide. The caption read, “The aide is close to the governor’s wife’s age.”

I received a few e-mails and messages calling me Mrs. Bellamy’s new lover. These were erased as a lot of tattle.

There’s no doubt that Mrs. Bellamy was a beautiful woman. She was at least two decades younger than the governor. She stood in heels nearly as tall as me and walked in a self-assured manner, head held high as if she was balancing a heavy book on her head. Her long blonde hair fell to her shoulders. Piercing blue eyes, not overly made up, seemed to summon the truth about anyone she saw. Overall, Mrs. Bellamy gave the impression that she always got what she wanted, no matter what.

On the second floor Jordan opened the door to a room of overwhelming whiteness. Silk drapes at the windows. A canopy bed of glossy linen. A white rug. One almost pleaded for color somewhere. But the only color was Mrs. Bellamy’s face, slightly tanned and framed by her blonde hair and those penetrating blue orbs. She sat at a vanity and spied me through one of the three mirrors.

“Come in Reynolds. Don’t be shy.”

I hesitated for a moment. It was after all a bedroom. Still, I quickly dismissed any moral concern and accepted the summons as innocent.

“Happy birthday, Mel,” I said, drawing near her.

“Thank you,” she said, smiling with those knowing blue eyes. “We are the capital’s new and hot couple.”

“I received a few messages. Such nonsense.”

“People believe it. Pictures in the newspaper are worth a thousand words. The governor is a believer. He took a shot at me last night.”

“What! Are you all right? That is so sad.”

“What is ‘so sad!’”

Governor Bellamy shouted the words as he had entered the bedroom. He was red-faced and furious.

“You let a senator’s aide into your bedroom, and I have been blocked from entering this room for over two years.”

“That’s no one’s fault but your own,” Mel said.

The governor stormed off, slamming the bedroom door behind him.

I was aghast. True, I liked Mel. She had been friendly and I respected her as the governor’s wife. But now, clearly, I had been mistakenly labelled as her lover.

“Lord,” I said aloud, “what next?”

“Don’t worry about it. Bellamy is all bluster. He won’t go public. He’d never jeopardize his political starship.”

“If he feels that way, what about others?”

“I’ll live. He’s not a very good shot. Let’s forget it. I must make an appearance downstairs. Watch the governor’s reactions. He will smile and everything will look just lovely to the rest of the world.”

“I can only hope it truly is.”

I left on my own and stepped down the stairway to the reception area. A string-and-wind quartet played and I found another tumbler of bourbon. Joining other senate aides, I breathed deeply and talked about the weather. Rain fell outside and thunder rumbled.

At the top of the staircase, Mel stood erect as a high-born lady. The quartet launched into a medley of Stephen Foster songs. Her entrance was grand. As she joined the crowd below, the music switched to the birthday tune. True to her prediction, the governor beamed at her with a broad smile and led applause for the first lady. She joined him and a cluster of well-wishers.

The dinner gong sounded at seven o’clock. Assembled guests, seated at a dozen tables, dined and chatted for the next hour. I observed the governor and Mel seated at a formal, elevated table. As the dinner proceeded, the governor was distant toward Mel, seldom turning her way. He talked and laughed with a woman to his left.

Brandy and cordials were served. Jordan surprised me, presenting me with a snifter.

I sipped and watched Mel leave the main table and climb stairs to the second floor. The brandy failed to sweep away my discontent. It had the opposite effect. I felt strange and looked around the dining room with a feeling of despair. I wondered what my mother, a widow in another town, would say about the accusation of an illicit affair.

Jordan surprised me again, his head close to mine and speaking into my ear. “Mel has asked that you join her in her room.”

“Lord,” I said again and left the table as quietly as I could. I followed Jordan and the climb on the stairs was difficult. I could feel myself bending over and trudging up steps.

Jordan left me at the bedroom door and stepped away when I knocked.

“Come in,” Mel said, surprised. “Oh! It is you.”

In the dining room downstairs the governor stood at the dais and said, “I hoped to offer a toast for my darling wife and wish her the best on her birthday, and I find that she’s not here. She’s missing.”

At that moment a shot rang out. It came from the second floor.

I had entered Mel’s room. I felt dizzy and collapsed on the floor. I heard the shot fired. A totally blank period followed. The next thing, I was being awakened by a state policeman wearing the old-style campaign hat. He slapped my face.

“Why did you kill the governor’s wife?” he asked.

The blue-steel Smith & Wesson revolver was next to me.

For a period that I cannot answer for, there were flashes of reality and then nothing. I felt a needle penetrating a vein in my arm. I could make out a hospital room and people looking at me. Although I was not certain, I occupied the bed. I felt embarrassed and defenseless, totally in the grip of others.

Then the awful situation came back to me. I blurted out, “How is Mel? Where am I.”

No one answered me.

^^^^

A day later, still in the hospital room, I had nearly recovered from my collapse. A doctor said, “Your blood showed some alcohol content and a trace of flunitrazepam. It’s a depressant often used to treat anxiety. Do you use it regularly?”

“Never. I had several drinks at dinner.”

“I took the liberty of examining your medical record. There is no reference to any drug. It’s possible that it was administered to you either on purpose or by accident.”

His comments delighted me. What he said contrasted with news accounts in the capital newspaper and on radio and television broadcasts. Reporters assumed that I had murdered Mel. Articles and newscasts cited police evidence: my fingerprints on the revolver, my presence in her bedroom at the time of the shooting, and naturally, the alleged affair.

As I lay in bed, I realized I had to summon the courage to fight the accusation. I would be like David battling the Goliath of the state governor and anyone who may have assisted him. A police officer was stationed at the door. I called for him.

“I’d like to speak to the officer in charge of this investigation as soon as possible.”

I thought that being honest and making a case to the chief investigator represented my only chance. The officer said he’d contact Detective lieutenant Mark Jones. That evening, Jones came to my hospital room.

“You wanted to see me.”

“Yes. I’ve got to tell you what happened at the dinner party. I am innocent.”

“Tell me from the beginning.”

I had no trouble recounting everything that had happened, from my early arrival at the party, the discovery of the revolver and the bullet hole in the mantel, to the fatal summons to visit Mel’s bedroom. The detective received my story with a stone-like face that reminded me of a bust in an Egyptian museum. I despaired and turned over in bed.

“My Lord,” I pleaded, “What can I do?”

That evening Jones returned. He was neatly dressed for a detective wearing a tan raincoat and a high-crown baseball hat bearing the State Police logo.

“I found the bullet hole. My sergeant dug it out of the wood. We also found the scraping scratches on the top of the high mantel where you said the revolver was hidden. And guess what? Your invitation to the party was in the garbage. We noticed that it was a special print. ‘Cocktails at six, not six-thirty’ like other invitations. The governor wanted you there early. He must have had some kind of plan for you. We don’t know why the revolver was stashed away on the high mantel. But once you left your fingerprints on the gun, the governor hatched a plan to implicate you in the murder. Jordan’s handkerchief showed traces of gunpowder. He must have used it again when he fired the fatal shot.

“What you told us was true,” Detective Jones said, a smile breaking on his face. “We’re holding Jordan on suspicion of murder. When we showed him the evidence, he crumpled like waste paper. Jordan said the governor made him do the shooting. The poor dope had a ton of gambling debt and had asked Bellamy for money. Now, we’ve got to tie his eminence to the murder of his wife. That won’t be easy. But you are free to go.”

Fully recovered now, I felt a sense of relief that dropped my shoulders and made me feel like a boy on his first long bicycle ride. I said to Detective Jones, “I will gladly testify in court. I will do anything to help you put the governor behind bars. One more thing. I will never root around on high mantels ever again. You never know what you might find there.”

The End