After a thoughtful pause, Sun Li nodded. “Yes, quite possible. Allergies are rarely congenital. It has to do with exposure, and how a body reacts.”
“Well, then.” Vera looked to Orville. “That should settle it.”
“Thomas Springfield, I’m bringing you in on suspicion of murdering Edward Springfield, your twin brother. The circumstantial evidence is more than enough to put you in a holding cell.” Orville grabbed Thomas by one arm, and the rat struggled for half a second before realizing just how futile a physical resistance would be.
He preferred other methods anyway. He yelled, “I want an attorney! Get Fallow here, he’s the family lawyer!”
“I am here, sir,” Mr. Fallow said. He stepped forward, looking dignified and calm, a welcome counterpoint to the general nervousness of the crowd.
“You’re my lawyer! Stop this yokel from shackling me and dragging me to a cell.”
Mr. Fallow looked at Thomas for a long moment, then removed his glasses, which he polished slowly. Not until he put them back on his nose did he reply, “I am sorry, sir. I regret that I must recuse myself. For as you say, I am the attorney for the Springfield family, and it seems there may be a conflict of interest at play, considering the facts and the accusation, and the differing accounts between Mrs. Springfield and yourself…and indeed, your actual identity.”
Orville nodded to Mr. Fallow, satisfied that there would be no last-minute legal shenanigans. He gripped Thomas’s paws hard as he adjusted the cuffs on the enraged rat. “You’ll find our cells are quite decent,” he said. “Move along. The sooner I get you to the station, the sooner you can get out of the cuffs.”
“And behind bars!” Thomas huffed.
“Yes, that is the general concept of jail,” Orville agreed, his tone mild now that he had a suspect in custody.
The crowd watched in silence as Orville hauled Thomas off toward the police station.
“Oh, my,” Dorothy said, breaking the spell. She nearly sagged as her knees wobbled in relief. “He’s finally gone. I can go home.”
“I’ll walk you up the steps,” Vera told her, offering a paw to help her walk more steadily. “You must be very keen to get inside.”
“Oh, yes. And no! After weeks of that imposter lurking in the rooms, it’ll need a good cleaning. And possibly a smudging.”
Looking around at all the concerned faces, Vera said, “I expect that if you ask around for sage, your neighbors will pile more on your front porch than you’ll know what to do with.”
The walk was made shorter by Mr. Fallow, who paced on the other side of Dorothy and held his elbow out to offer an escort.
“What led you to the conclusion that the brothers were twins?” Mr. Fallow asked Vera.
“To tell the truth, I lucked into the actual evidence. But I think that subconsciously, I must have known that it was the only possible explanation.” She remembered the day that she’d walked to the shore of Mirror Lake, and saw the rat who was fishing from the pier, and how he’d waved to her, with his upside-down reflection mimicking the move. “It was a wild idea—a secret twin that managed to erase his existence until his moment of revenge. But consider the facts: Dorothy insisted her husband was dead, and yet we all saw a figure that looked exactly like her husband. It was either magic, or twins. And I don’t believe in magic! It’s impossible.”
“And once we have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth,” Mr. Fallow quoted. “Wise words.”
“Luckily,” Vera said, “I needed to be nonpartisan in my volunteering for this election, so voter registrations it was. And part of that process is retiring deceased voters’ names. I searched for Adora’s information, which included some birth records of her children. It was the one place Thomas never thought of, or he surely would have destroyed the records.”
“Just like the yearbooks that he took care of at Professor Heidegger’s!” Mr. Fallow shook his head. “What a remarkable capacity for evil he had. Just think if he’d used his intelligence for a more noble purpose.”
They walked up the path to the Springfield house. Vera remembered the exact scene from the day when she and Mr. Fallow had run up to find Dorothy standing on this lawn, with the mirror image of Edward Springfield across from her. How long ago that seemed, and yet it had been only a couple of weeks!
Inside the large house, Dorothy walked around, lighting lamps and candles. She examined each room with a sharp, careful glance.
“Dusty, dusty, dusty,” she said, clucking her displeasure. “I’ve never let this house go for so long without a cleaning.”
Vera looked around, seeing a bit of disarray, but not much worse. Thomas might be a murderer, but he wasn’t messy. “It’s not so bad,” she ventured to say.
“Oh, you’re trying to cheer me. But I know that scoundrel didn’t care for this place properly…not like a real Springfield would. Look!” She pointed to the table by the window, where the silver lily lamp stood, with its mismatched shade. “That lamp had a different shade, a pretty glass one with lots of little green bits. Now there’s just a cheap linen shade from the spare room! Thomas must have broken the lampshade and hid his foul deed. Just like all his other foul deeds! Oh, I loved that lamp.”
Vera bit her tongue, deciding to keep Lefty’s name to herself…after all, the damage was done. No sense in dragging up the raccoon’s clumsy error. Especially since his witnessing of the peanut butter sandwich provided the final clue to prove Thomas a fraud!
“I’m just so glad this is over,” Dorothy said with a sigh.
Vera nodded, but then noticed the bare spot on the foyer floor, an ugly reminder of what had happened in this house. Even with Thomas in jail, was the ordeal over? Could it ever be truly over?
Chapter 18
