MargenThe detective questioned, one by one, all of us who were in the house that night. The butler, the cook, the niece in debt, the nervous business partner. Solid alibis, stories that fitted. He was about to close the case as an accident.
"Someone's missing," he said, and pointed at the cage in the corner.
They brought the parrot into the room. The bird shook out its feathers, tilted its head and, in the exact voice of the dead woman, repeated the last thing it had heard its owner shout before the gunshot.
It said my name.
And I, who had planned the perfect crime for a year, had not counted on her having time to call out to me.