“MR. SAUSSURE, PLEASE COME IN.”
I didn’t think I would ever get used to his decrepit presence. And that voice…filled with the moldy hope of someday dying. Heartbreaking.
I removed my hat and entered the bedroom. The morbid ambiance brought by those attempting to cut a deal with death was still there, as it had been three days before. There was an eternal mist that surrounded him, never completely leaving his personal space, never lifting from his eyes. I must confess I cringed at the thought of taking that mist with me by mistake.
“Lord Hurlingthon.” I bowed slightly. “I’m here to officially accept your offer and to request permission to look at the paintings you mentioned in our previous meeting.”
“You work fast, Mr. Saussure. Are you done checking my story?”
“Well, sir...uh, Lord Hurlingthon, you’ll understand I have to set the story in context so I can follow the trail of actions that might have led you to this…situation.”
“It is all right, I understand. Nothing I haven’t endured before. You have my permission. Marlon, please guide Mr. Saussure through the usual path. The studio, the drawing room…”
“Yes, Lord Hurlingthon. I understand,” Marlon answered in his stuck-up manner. Where the hell had he picked up such a nasty personality? Even Hugh Hurlingthon was nicer than him.
“Thank you, Lord Hurlingthon.”
“Will I see you later, Mr. Saussure?”
“No, sir. I have to get immediately to my office. There are facts to be checked.”
“You’re welcome to have lunch with me.”
“I’m honored, milord, but time is of the essence.”
I bowed once more, this time realizing he probably couldn’t see me, and exited the room. I would’ve never eaten with that ghost of a man even if my life depended on it. I chuckled at the irony, which made Marlon look down at me from his high horse. He was so high I could actually see into his nostrils.
“Well, Mr. Marlon. I’m all yours,” I said with a phony grin, almost enjoying how revolting the thought of spending time with me was to this cardboard figure.
“Good God,” he muttered under his breath, but not low enough for me to miss the remark.
This was a chess game. Both of us were coldly calculating our movements. Every millimeter was carefully planned by these two players who pretended to be gentlemen. But there was nothing gentlemanly about this wordless battle.
“This way, please.”
I sauntered through the halls, making my pace as slow and confident as possible. Marlon was at the edge of anger in his phlegmatic manner, which meant rolling his eyes and never looking directly at me. Not even a glimpse, just to show me he did not have to acknowledge my presence. His pride was as stiff as his joints, old bastard.
The drawing room was first. Enormous paintings of Hugh, Greta and Emily ruled the space. Greta was an olive-skinned woman, more on the round side of things, but beautiful. Her wide copper eyes gave her an exotic look. She was nothing compared with Lady Adora’s classic beauty, of course.
Emily inherited her father’s translucent skin and her mother’s eyes. Her baby hair would have curled up in brownish ringlets, always looking short. She was a good mixture of her parents. In all the paintings, Emily was wearing a pale blue dress. It was a different dress each time but, evidently, blue was her favorite color.
The images didn’t have a signature in sight. Not even at the back. Probably the frame had covered all the information, and the only way to get the painter’s name would be ripping the canvas away from the frame. It wasn’t a viable option with Marlon watching every finger I moved.
Then, the studio. In there, I found the paintings from Hugh’s youth and childhood. He was a good looking fellow. Tall, wide shoulders and a strong jaw. His eyes used to be blue, like his father’s. The shadow of the man forever sitting in the next room was now sadder than before. Hugh Hurlingthon used to have a life. This life had died, but his heart wouldn’t stop beating. I was actually starting to understand him. The sense of loneliness coming from the still takes of his past was overwhelming.
Numerous paintings of Lady Adora in her garden were also there. Standing, sitting, smelling the gardenias, you name it. Not even one from the time she was pregnant. I guess she posed only once while expecting. The question was…why was it in a house no one used? Another man was next to her in one or two portraits, the same man who later appeared next to Hugh as a child and as a young man.
We visited one more room, mostly containing paintings of groups of people, probably aunts and cousins. No more paintings of the gardenias, not without Adora anyway...wait a minute...
“Marlon, I need the keys to the guesthouse.”
“I’m sorry, sir. Those keys are lost. No one can enter there.”
“The house is immaculate. How did it stay that way?”
“I guess the windows and all the other entries work perfectly, sir.”
I ran downstairs without waiting for the valet and exited the house. Out of breath, I entered my car. How could I have missed that? And twice? I was so worried about catching this man in a lie that I had overlooked the facts right in front of my nose showing me the way.
I rushed to my office. I needed to check it. But it wasn’t there, I knew it. And something like that should’ve been mentioned. I stumbled on every pile of paper I had organized, just to get to the scrapbook. I opened it and looked for that news clipping to read it once more.
Then again.
Then again.
It wasn’t there. Someone had lied to Hugh Hurlingthon. But not who I thought.
The phone rang and I reached it, still holding the scrapbook. I would not let go of that piece of evidence, even if my hands were cut off.
“Hello?”
“Saussure.”
“Kensington.”
“He should be dead.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
I started to browse through the scrapbook. Maybe I could find something else that would help me, something out of place. I let Annie babble away about how strange it was that he had survived all the attacks, and I concentrated on the book covers. The inside on the back cover looked less worn-out than the front cover. It was also thicker. This cover had an extra layer of paper.
I opened every single drawer in my desk, trying to find that letter opener I knew someone had given me years before as a present, when I decided to start a private practice. Finally, inside the fifth desk drawer, under a pile of papers, envelopes, and old stamps, a shiny blade peered back at me.
“Hold on, Annie.”
I put the receiver down. I grabbed the paper knife and used it on an outer corner of the back cover. I placed the tip of the blade between the hard cover and the black paper covering it, only to find what I already knew was there. A double flap. Someone had glued on top of the original back cover a rectangular sheet of paper in the same color.
I picked up the receiver again and held it between my head and my shoulder, leaving my hands free to handle the letter opener and the book. Annie hadn’t heard me, so she kept on talking about Lord Hurlingthon.
“…Overall, I haven’t found anything that strikes me as strange. I mean, if we left the age and the recoveries from the attacks aside, the records seem perfectly legal. No patch-ups. No retyping. I couldn’t find any of the normal signs I usually see in forged records.”
I carefully detached the back paper from the book. And there it was. A yellowish newspaper clipping folded in half, torn in some parts of the folding line. The ink was slowly fading away, leaving some blank spots here and there. But thanks to the extra packaging, it had been preserved better than other articles also extracted from journals.
“The language is appropriate according to the time and medical advances of each period…”
“Mmm…” I tried to stay in the conversation with Annie, but I was reading the article at the same time.
“And so are the procedures utilized to heal him or alleviate his pain…”
&
nbsp; “Right.”
“Only one thing, though...”
“What’s that?”
“The mother died giving birth to Hugh Hurlingthon. But in the files it only says that. There are no specifics, except for the narrow hips. No details on her death. There’s too little information, especially compared to how detailed the rest is. I know it was two centuries ago, but still...”
“Do you know why it is like that, Annie?”
“Why?”
I was holding in my hands the answer and the abnormality I had been searching for the past days, which would lead me to something juicier: the newspaper clipping about Lady Adora’s death.
“Because she didn’t die giving birth to her son.”
That was why in the news on Hugh Hurlingthon’s birth it didn’t say anything about his mother’s death. Because it did not happen that way.
The article hidden inside the back cover was dated a year after the baby was born. She had fallen off the swing and broken her neck, leaving a one-year-old baby and a young, brokenhearted widower behind. And of course, this tragic event made headlines. The despicable thirst for morbid facts and details was already alive and kicking two hundred years ago.
That is also why there was a painting of Lady Adora with a baby. Her baby and her husband. Maybe this tragic and unexpected way of departing was also the reason most of her paintings were locked away where no one could see them. But how can someone fall off that swing? I saw it. It wasn’t too high. Yes, you would get bruised if you fell off that rectangular piece of marble, but a broken neck?
“How do you know? Are you guessing again, Saussure? Because, after that ‘I need a scientist’ speech you gave me…”
I had forgotten I was having a conversation with Annie.
“I’m reading about it right now. She fell off a swing in her garden and broke her neck.”
“After having the baby? Was she the biological mother?”
“Yes. But I don’t know why someone would want to hide this fact.”
“Pain? Grief?”
Not good enough. Even after remembering the old man’s words about his father never recovering from his wife’s death, it was not strong as a theory. And how would this connect to his bizarre condition? I told Annie that when we visit the mansion, so she could do a medical examination on Lord Hurlingthon, I needed her to take a look at the crime scene as well. Of course she said no. With Annie, a negative answer is almost as natural and primitive as a reflex.
“You should take a family doctor. I don’t feel comfortable around bodies that breathe. I deal with corpses.”
“This one is dead, trust me.”
After a brief pause and a little more begging, she agreed to go.
“So, this Lord Hurlingthon person doesn’t know about this?”
“Not to my knowledge. I don’t believe so.”
“Are you going to let him know?”
“No…Not yet. I’m not sure where this might lead. Or, if it actually carries some real weight in the investigation.”
“Saussure, is that compassion I hear in your voice? Are you starting to believe him?”
The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I didn’t know what was more frightening: that I was detaching from my objectivity to get lost inside a maze of otherworldly nightmares, or the actual possibility that I had been dealing with a being of fantastic characteristics.
“Because, you know, Saussure, if you believed his story, it could actually help.”
I just wanted to tell Annie to shut up. But I needed her, so I had to be on my best behavior.
“Really? Why?”
“Same reason you want me in that crime scene that must be faded away for good now: to get the feel of it. Someone who believes this sort of thing can indeed happen will understand it better, because he would be looking at the facts from the inside.”
Annie was right. Listening to her had actually paid off.
“Kensington, you’re a genius. I’ve got to go.”
“What? Where?”
“I gotta go see about a shaman.”
VIII