The chairs murderer
- Mark van Vuuren 2016
I was sitting at my desk when the
call came through. It was the nice lady from dispatch. She sat on the 4th
floor.
Are you sitting down? she
asked, which I found rather ironic. My silence indicated the affirmative and then
she said something that pulled the chair out from under me.
Another murder? I cursed
under my breath.
I stood up from the desk chair,
got into the chair-on-wheels and sped to the crime scene. The scene was untouched.
The corpse, a blonde, was tied to a chaise longue, and had been strangled. The
murderer had left his signature; each victim wore blue lipstick.
After a while, various other
chairs-on-wheels came to the scene carrying various crime-scene professionals,
while the bed-on-wheels took the body to the morgue. I sat in the kitchen,
wondering what the common link was to the previous murders.
In each case the victim, female,
had been tied to a chair in the living room, then strangled. No pattern was
evident. Each chair murder (as I came to know them) was different: An armchair,
a Barcelona chair, a Chesterfield
chair, and a club chair.
I returned to the chair-on-wheels
and headed to my office chair via the chair at the pub, expecting the forensics
boys to update me in a few days. I had time to sit back and think about the
case.
*
The next day saw me sitting in
the latest victim’s lounge. It contained three dining-room chairs, a leather
easy chair, and the chaise, each with a side table.
I sat in each chair, speaking to
phantoms in the other chairs, getting a feel for where the killer, or killers,
sat. The killer, or killers, may have sat here, or here, speaking to one
another, their heads turning to face each other and the victim.
After a few rounds of musical
chairs I called it a day and headed to a restaurant chair.
*
The next morning I was summoned
to my boss’ office, aka the big ass in the seat of power.
Grab a chair, he
instructed.
In attendance was the vice-chair
of vice, and the head of forensics. On his desk was a newspaper, the headlines
shouting out the murder, and the editorial accusing us of sitting on our hands.
We weren’t going to take this sitting down.
It was my case, and I was in the
hot seat. Fortunately, the forensics boys had come up with some leads, and it
was my job to pursue these.
Fingerprints on tumblers found in
the kitchen and on bottles in the drinks cabinet identified two suspects,
Harold Ostium[i] and
Charles Fenestram.[ii] The
process had begun.
Harold Ostium was a dentist,
married. His day was spent sitting, looking into infected mouths. People would
come to his office, sit and wait in the waiting-room chair then sit and wait in
his torture chair, then wait again as the chair-on-wheels drove them home.
Charles Fenestram, also married, and the victim, single, shared Ostium’s
torture chair.
It was in this opportunity spent
waiting for the torture chair that Fenestram met the victim. Fenestram was a
pilot, and after his turn on the torture chair he took the chair-on-wheels to
the airport, then the chair-on-wings back to his home town, comforted by the
new friendship he had struck up with the victim. That night, from the chair
alongside his phone, he called her chair, the one alongside her phone.
The three got on famously, and
socialised at the victim’s apartment. Ostium seemed an open-and-shut enquiry,
and Fenestram sufficiently transparent. Foul play was indeed the intent and modus
operandi of the three, but it was not murder.
*
Unable to sleep that night,
disappointed with the leads, I reflected on what was known. The evidence, the
leads, the patterns. I stacked everything I knew in different orders and
relooked at it through a whisky tumbler. No progress. Worry is like a rocking
chair, it gives you something to do but it doesn’t get you anywhere.[iii]
*
The next day I headed back to the
crime-scene. I went to each room and stood, thinking. Then sat, thinking, for it
is known that people who work sitting down get paid more than people who work
standing up.[iv]
The early morning light gave me
my first clue: The thick carpet pile showed the chairs had been moved around.
The leather easy chair had been pushed to be directly opposite the chaise – a confrontational
arrangement. The chaise, untouched, had not been moved.
I sat in the leather easy chair,
kicked off my shoes, loosened my tie, kicked out the footrest, and stared at
the chaise, waiting for inspiration. They say there is something much better
than sitting on an empty chair, and that is to watch it and to let it inspire you to think deeply.[v]
After a while, I felt my right arm reaching out to my old friend solace-on-the-rocks,
but there was no side-table. The carpet showed the marks where it had been. I
looked on the left side of the chair, and there it was: Aha! The first real
clue.
Suppose the murderer sat here, I
mulled, looking at her directly; judging her, tied, in her witness chair. Suppose
the chaise, as a functional item, was the murderer’s choice of seat. The chaise
as a choice of furniture was odd – it is neither a conventional chair nor a
couch. One neither sits nor lies on it, but rather maintains an askance pose.
It looks comfortable, but this is not the truth, as one later finds out, given
the choice of a truly comfortable chair. It does add culture to a setting, and
it was the centre piece within the lounge, but nothing in the room complimented
it. These four observations, if accurate, might provide the platform on which
the motive rested.
I recalled the easy chairs from
my youth. The first was covered in brown cloth, with a shift stick on the right
side. One pulled the shift stick while leaning back and the footrest came out,
and the back tilted, well, backwards. As kids, we would spend days opening and
closing the footrest, and, if one was too boisterous, the entire chair would
fall over backwards, so we competed to see who could up-end the chair.
This brown easy chair was
replaced under warranty, upgraded to black leather. The salesman said it wasn’t
new but that it was pre-owned, which to our young minds meant almost new, but
definitely not second-hand.
It stood in the lounge like a
monolith. It was heavier than the previous one, taller, more of a wingback
style. This one had no shift stick, so one pressed on the arms, and kicked ones
legs out, and arched into the back, all this to get the footrest out. Not to be
outdone, we both sat on the chair and tried to open the footrest, violently.
Once achieved, the next challenge was to up-end the chair.
Finally, up-end it did, with a
crash! Then silence. We all stood still, dumbstruck: Mom, surprised we could
up-end the monolith; me, wondering how Mom was going to blame him, and he, the
curious sibling, staring at the treasure that came from under the dislodged cushion:
a handful of coins, a gemclip, some buttons, and a gold pen.
*
I was flying by the seat of my
pants, but I had a hunch. I asked the forensics boys to head back to the
apartment, to which they agreed, but were hesitant to perform my specific
request: You must be off your rocker!
Two days later, I headed to the
boss’ office, and as I knocked, felt optimistic yet apprehensive.
Pull up a pew, he instructed.
He looked at me, waiting. I
decided to play this out, keep him on the edge of his seat. Bring your chair
closer, I invited.
I explained that the coins in the
seat did not belong to Ostium or Fenestram, but a fingerprint match identified
a third suspect: Mr Hyacintho Sella,[vi]
an upholsterer with a history of violence, who was left-handed.
Authority is like a chair, it
needs legs to stand up.
Bring him in, he
instructed. Let’s have a sit-down.
*
The court case came, and went, as
did the headlines. It was late when the phone rang. My boss called from his
chair next to a glass of whisky, to my chair, also next to a glass of whisky.
Sella. Where is he now? he
enquired laconically.
He’s in a special chair. It’s
a short wait. I replied, simply.
What kind of chair is that?
One that runs on electricity,
at midnight. It’s now 23h58 and counting …
- end -
