The Gable’s Family Mystery — Part 2
Murder’s Row: Chapter 2 — Part 2
The Gable’s Family Mystery — Part 2 is part of an ongoing serialized story titled Murder’s Row. For more information about this story, check out my Murder’s Row Story Blog for more details.
Richard thought it would be rude to go past the gate in front of the Gable’s property without consent from the people who lived there first, so he begins to holler to get the attention of one of the residents of the farm who could then open the gate for them, and soon, a somewhat wide fellow with brown hair, a heavily worn, brownish-red, long sleeve fleece radiator snap pullover with a few buttons running down the center of the top of it, and a pair of grayish-green pants comes walking towards their direction. Even though the man was a couple of yards from reaching the gate, he could still see Jack and Richard perfectly fine — “Hello there, what can I help you folks with?”
“We heard from around town a little boy went missing on your property — ” Richard says in a somewhat projected voice. He then glances at Jack, then back to where the man is walking — “Would you mind if we did a bit of investigating to see if we could find him?” The man who is approaching the gate still has a little ways left to go before reaching it, so he doesn’t give a response for a few seconds as he continues to walk towards their location —
“Come again? What about the little boy?” says the man once standing on the opposite side of the gate. Richard stands somewhat nervously, then turns his head to look at Jack, and Jack peers ambiguously at Richard from one side of his face.
“We wanted to know if you mind us doing some investigating to see if we can find out what happened to the little boy who went missing from your property recently,” explains Jack.
The man portends a face of doubtfulness bordering on worry — “Well, we have had a lot of visitors come here just to know what all is going on…” the man says with an air of skepticism in his voice.
“Please, if you wouldn’t mind, my friend here is a PI; we came up from London as soon as we heard the news of the missing boy!” says Richard very emphatically. The man standing on the opposite side of the gate seems somewhat confused, but he eventually unlocks the gate, which is a little bit taller than half the height of the nearby fencing that surrounded the perimeter of the property, to let them onto the property.
They are formally introduced to the man who shakes their hands and who introduces his name as Mr. Howard Gables, the uncle of the boy who is missing. From there, Howard directs them both to where the main house of the family is located, and they all begin to walk in that direction.
By the time them three had walked up to the residency, it was already twenty-minutes-past-4 in the afternoon.
04:21 PM
As they become within 400 yards or so of the façade of the Gable family home, a woman opens the door and stands right in front of its threshold where there is a rectangular portion of ground made of cement that juts forwards, and that goes down by another step before it reaches the ground below it. The Gable family home itself seems to be on higher terrain by a minor incline than the rest of the terrain around it where Jack and the others are currently standing. She has long blond hair and a very ovular-shaped head. She is about 5'6" in height and has a slim body profile, but for she still has a bit of chubbiness on either of her sides; this doesn’t seem to apply to her waist area, however. She is also wearing a very noticeable tight-fitting bodice over a pink, short-sleeved, and ruffled-up shirt as far as dress-wear over her upper body.
“We got company; they said they wanted to investigate the disappearance of Gregory!” said Howard, also via yelling, but not quite with as much projection as the lady had.
“Oh, not this again!” the lady shrieks. “Howard, tell them to leave now! No more sleuths who just want to run rumors amuck about our — “ “Relax, Angela! Come down from there and meet them for yourself! They said one of them is a private investigator — they came up from London! — I’m confident we can trust them!” Howard yells back to the woman. Meanwhile, Jack and Richard stand a few feet apart at varying angular degrees in front of the Gable’s house, not trying to get in the middle of whatever is taking place.
The lady who is perched on the edge of the cement pair of steps and the opening of the door’s threshold looks at Jack and Richard with much reluctance on her face.
There is the sound of a chair’s legs being scrapped against wooden floorboards, though each time in short bursts. “Alright, I think we may begin,” says Howard.
The mystery woman has since let Jack and Richard into the Gable’s house. All four of them: the woman, Howard, then Richard, and then Jack sit in that order clockwise in chairs that make a circular formation, with the largest space between each of them being between the woman and Jack. They are sitting in an area of the house, which is at the far end of one of the rooms, and they are some distance from the family dining room table, which is behind where Jack and Richard are sitting as well. There is also a window on the wall that is directly north of where Jack is facing, and another on a wall located towards Jack’s left, which is oriented between where the dining room ends and this space of the house begins. There is also a small table about knee-high in front of all of them, and on the table are a few tea cups (with saucers), but Jack declined such an offer, as did Richard.
“Why don’t we begin by introducing ourselves,” says Jack; “I know who you are,” — pointing to Howard with his charcoal pencil — “and you are — ?” he points to the mystery woman.
“I’m Angela Gables,” says she. This is also the moment when Jack is able to see that she has a double chin. “Good, then I’m Jack, and my friend here is Richard.”
Richard stands himself up on his two feet and then outstretches his arm to Howard to give him a handshake without moving his feet, then does the same thing with Angela (though this time he did have to take a step forward in front of where he is standing) before making himself comfortable in his chair once again. Jack is perfectly fine just sitting where he is, though he did grab onto the brim of his hat before nodding his head to respectfully introduce himself.
“So about the boy that has gone missing — tell me about him; his name, age, that sort of thing,” says Jack, his pencil in hand and a little notepad resting on his right thigh, his other hand making sure it stays in place; both items he retrieved from his suitcase just for employment purposes in this case.
“The boy’s name is Gregory, named after his grandfather, and his birthday was just this past July when he turned nine years old,” she says. She then quickly turns her head to look at Howard for some kind of reassurance.
“And is he your son? — What is his relation to you two,” Jack says.
“He’s my son” — Angela by now is looking at Jack. “However, his father is not here at the moment because he is on one of his work excursions,” Angela replies —
“And does the father do that kind of thing often?” asks Jack. He held his arm, holding his pencil as if he was placing its elbow on his thigh, but rather held it higher up in the air. Angela turns her head to look at Howard once again, and Howard once again looks at her with a similar expression. Howard’s face looks similar to that of actor James Carter, most well recognizable for his role on the hit British TV drama Downton Abbey, except that Howard has a head more round on the sides of the top than Carter’s head and has less wrinkles on his forehead region than Carter does as well. He also has a scruffy-looking chin with hair follicles that constitute an ill-formed beard —
“It could be an indicator that maybe your son decided to run away,” Jack says after there is a brief pause.
Angela spoke up: “No, Greggy would never be one to do that.”
“ — Oh, I certainly don’t hope he would!” she then says, looking towards Howard with a face full of worry, then looks down towards the ground in a state of hopelessness. Jack then inquired Howard in particular, what his instincts were telling him about the question, to which he told Jack he didn’t know the little boy to get lonely for his father when he wasn’t around. Jack then jotted something down hastily on his notepad.
“Okay. Well then, why don’t we go over the events of the last day you saw Gregory before he went missing,” says Jack. “That way, we can try to retrace the steps that he took to understand when and why he may have gone missing.”
“So, from the beginning,” Jack says as Angela once again looks at Howard for some kind of reassurance.
“Every morning on Monday, Tuesday, then again on Friday and Saturday, beginning at 8 o’clock in the morning, I walk Gregory to the local church where they teach him about the importance of living a life of virtue and that sort of thing. That is about a nineteen to twenty-one-minute walk from our property, and Gregory would most usually return home on his own around twenty-past-12 o’clock. And on the day he went missing, it was a Saturday, so I walked him to church — “ says Howard.
“And?” Jack interjects, anticipating what he is about to say. Howard turns his head to look at Angela for a brief second — “And he came back home at about twenty-past-12 o’clock as usual,” Howard then finishes.
“Oh, alright then,” Jack says in relief — “continue…”
Angela then explains how, as the day progressed, she had “Greggy” do a number of menial tasks on the farm before initiating lunch, like getting him to feed the hens and, afterward, clear out the dung in the pig pen. Both the chicken coop and pig pen happened to be close to one another, she explained — “and then, when he said he was finished, I decided to take him to a lone tree we have on the farm,” Howard begins explaining. “It’s a very special tree to us, as I’m sure you can imagine; we like to call her Bessie.” — Angela, as well as everybody else sitting around the table, looked in his direction, waiting for the next dramatic clue he could give them: “So, anyhoo, we once had a swing hanging from one of Bessie’s branches, you know? And-and so, at that point, I decided to have a moment of fun with my nephew by grabbing him, picking him up, and getting him to sit atop my shoulders so he would be able to reach the tree’s branches — “ Howard looks directly at Jack, who nods to show his comprehension. Jack is also holding his pencil as if it is on the verge of writing something down.
“And then, a few moments go by, and we were laughing and having a bloody ol’ time, and the next moment, Gregory’s gone!” A noticeable shift occurs in the mood where they are sitting from one of nondescript-ness to being one of unanticipated dread of loss of life. “We forgot to mention — “ Angela chimes in after Howard, “Howard has a way of doing things and then completely running a blank in his memory afterward — “
“And unfortunately, one of these times was directly after the boy went missing…” Jack then says in just a number of words — “Exactly right!” Angela says in an excitedly matter-of-fact voice.
Jack appears to become completely lost in contemplation. “And you said this was before or after you sat down for lunch?” he asks.
“Usually, we sit down to eat pretty late to eat lunch,” says Angela. “I don’t think that Saturday was any different.” — Howard begins to nod in response to her answer. “In exchange, Greggy can go to bed early if he’s not feeling it that evening,” Howard says.
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