Art reached for the glasses on the cardboard box that acted as his bedside table. Then he got up and started searching for some clothes to the sound of the short but insistent bursts from his doorbell.
He finally found his pants on a chair and donned them. "Coming!"
The bell's mono-tone melody gained percussive support from someone rapping their knuckles on the door.
A glance at his wristwatch revealed that it was shortly after 8 a.m. "One moment!" Yesterday's t-shirt and sweater were in a heap on the floor, and he started to put them on.
"Mr. Sharpe." The vocals completed the Saturday wakeup performance, adding to the apparent urgency of the acoustic mayhem. It was a woman's voice.
No time for socks.
He opened the door. "Yes?"
Mrs. Knooch stood before him. "Good morning." Her wide-open eyes scrutinized Art from her wigged turtle head. Her stare made him feel uncomfortably aware that he hadn't washed yet.
"Mrs. Knooch... good morning?" He couldn't help but formulate his greeting as a question.
She nodded. "Come, you've got to see this." Without waiting for his reply, she turned away and made for the stairs leading down.
For a moment, he just stared at her receding back.
What the hell?
Then he realized that she had actually ordered him to follow. He shrugged and went after her. The cold of the tiles greeted his bare feet, and a fragrance of mothballs tickled his nose.
The woman had a head start on him, and he hurried to keep up, so they nearly collided as she suddenly came to a stop some steps above ground level.
"Look at this!" she said.
He looked and failed to recognize anything of interest. The brown cork pinboard was unchanged, the walls a palish green just like yesterday, and the two doors leading off the landing were closed.
Then he noted her arm pointing at the floor, her accusatory finger trembling slightly.
There, on the gray tiles, was an egg. Its shell was broken, sitting in a puddle of egg white. A smear of yellow yolk lent the picture some color.
"Er..." Art was racking his mind for something appropriate to say.
"I have no idea who did that..." The pitch of Mrs. Knooch's voice rose in a wail. "... or why they didn't clean it up." At the word 'they', the hand that had pinpointed the offensive egg went upwards, gesturing towards the apartments above them.
"Yeah..." The image before him made Art realize that he was hungry. But he was sure Mrs. Knooch didn't want to hear about that. "I don't know either."
She shook her head. "I don't say nothing." Her voice was now hushed, and she fixed him with a watery-blue-eyed stare, "but Mr. Pathan from the third floor... he does a lot of cooking. Foreign cooking, if you know what I mean."
Art shrugged, wondering if Knooch suffered from bouts of xenophobia. Rashid Pathan, the taxi driving Pakistani, didn't strike him as a person who would drop eggs and leave them, he seemed like a way too friendly, caring, and cheerful person.
"Maybe someone lost it, and they didn't realize it." Not wanting to dwell on her suspicions, he tried to move the conversation back to the yolky matter at hand. "Whatever. I'll clean that up. I'll have to sweep the stairs anyway."
"Ah." Mrs. Knooch nodded slowly, the corners of her mouth inching upwards.
Should he tell her that he wanted to have breakfast before tackling his mission? He decided against it. "I'll do it right away."
YOU ARE READING
The Egg at Dumstreet
Mystery / Thriller[Completed] A U.S. expatriate is cast into a rainy, foggy corner of Europe. He went there on the pretense to work on his research, but he actually wanted to put as many miles as possible between himself and his ex. The university he works for has fo...
