I WAS DRIVING BACK TO MY OFFICE TO OPEN PANDORA’S ENVELOPE when I saw Annie’s car parked outside Grumpy Al’s place. I decided to kill two birds with one stone and pulled over, parking right behind Annie. I took the folder with me so she could check it out. Once inside, I found her hiding away in one of the booths, waiting for her lunch.
“Kensington.”
“Saussure, I called you a million times. What have you been doing?”
“Stealing evidence. The usual. You?” I placed the folder against the window and took a seat in front of Annie.
“Dismembering bodies.”
“Hopefully dead ones?”
“Most of the time.” Her meal arrived and I ordered the same for myself.
“Anything interesting in them?”
“An overused kidney with stones the size of marshmallows. Your turn.”
I handed her the folder containing the article and she started to read it. Meanwhile, I reached into my raincoat pocket to take the envelope out. What I found instead were the three letters I had stored away days ago before leaving for Truthful Willy’s home. I left them on the table and searched for the envelope I had stolen.
“Maybe they murdered her and that’s why the family...What’s that?”
She reached for the recently dug up letters as I finally found the one from the lawyer’s office hiding inside my jacket. Each of us opened the letter that was of our personal interest.
I broke the red seal carefully and the four sides of the envelope unfolded in front of me. This letter was ancient. Every part of it was handmade. The open wrapping resting on my lunch table, staring at me with its four sharp edges, meant that the content I longed to read was within my reach.
A doubt of an ethical nature assaulted me. If this letter was strictly directed to whoever survived Hugh Hurlingthon, why should I violate this expressed desire? If it was from the hand of Lord Frederick himself to anyone but his own son, then maybe it was knowledge best left unknown. There were too many dark corners in this family’s history, despite Lord Hugh’s openness. And as I had been learning for almost a week, most of this friendly confidence extended out to me at Hugh Hurlingthon’s own command was due to the fact that all the vaults had been carefully locked before he could even acknowledge it. He was blinded by his father’s unconditional care and constant worry, up to the point of Lord Frederick addressing a letter to a complete stranger. Little did this man know his poor son was condemned. Little did I know I could be the foreign recipient of a letter sent through time.
Somehow, this paper bomb had placed me in the strange position of standing at the edge of shattering a life to pieces. This wasn’t the first time I had flirted with the rugged cliff of unrevealed truth. But it was certainly the first time this courtship could end with the kiss of death. And wasn’t exactly that what Lord Hurlingthon was looking for? Maybe by feasting on the letter’s content I could put together the pieces of a broken death. Perhaps there was nothing of value trapped inside a sheet of paper folded twice and never once unfolded. I was still unsure about how much this letter mattered for the job I was hired to do.
In reality, now that I had stolen it, there was no turning back. I couldn’t glue it back together and return it to Elliott Sanders. I could not give it to Marlon. He was a snitch and would tell Lord Hurlingthon about my indiscretion.
“I’ve got a love letter from ‘Ady’ to ‘My Dearest’. You?” Annie broke the spell of my philosophical rant.
“I don’t know yet.”
“You haven’t read it yet? Don’t be such a wimp.”
“Thanks, Kensington. You’re as smooth as sandpaper.”
“And you are as deadly as a snot ball.”
“Bite me.”
“No thanks, salmonella doesn’t taste good. Do you want me to do it?”
She stretched her arm above the table and over the food to reach for Lord Frederick’s letter, but I caught her by the wrist and stopped the motion.
“No...It’s a letter from Hugh’s father…to be opened after the death of his son. The lawyer that handles the family’s affairs had it and I stole it from him.”
Annie retrieved her arm and watched me from across the table. I remained immobile, contemplating the past, the present and the future, all wrapped up almost two centuries ago.
“Look, Richard, I know you’re questioning your duty to Lord Hurlingthon. And if it is in his best interest for you to read this letter. But there’s little else you can do now. It’s either finding out what that man was hiding from his son or marching right now to Lord Hurlingthon’s door and tell him his mother didn’t die during childbirth. You don’t have many options left.”
She was partially right. I still had to visit Death’s humble abode, according to the shaman girl. And if worst came to worst, I could always keep a secret.
I approached the thin layer of paper for the first time and removed it from its distressed case. I carefully unfolded it, feeling its physical lightness mixed with the conceptual heaviness that was drenching through my fingers.
The first thing I looked at was the signature at the bottom. Yes, it was from Frederick Hurlingthon himself. The date was appropriate to the time the records said he died. A well-trimmed calligraphy, executed with a now pale ink, delivered a message I needed to know. The initial police-like hunch I had the first time I saw the letter in the attorney’s office had been right. The investigation had now taken a 180º turn, facing me once more with the decision of informing Lord Hurlingthon right away about the discovery or following its trail to see where it led.
“Well? Is it a confession?” Annie was at the edge of her seat, about to snatch the letter from my hands to devour it with her eyes.
“Yes, it’s a confession.”
“I knew it. Did he kill her?”
“No, he didn’t.”
I read the short letter repeatedly, reassuring the knowledge I had just released from its prison of two centuries.
“What does he confess, then?”
“The crime of having a big heart.” Annie gawked at me with wide expectant eyes. “Hugh is not his biological son. Lord Frederick wanted to keep this a secret out of fear of his own relatives, who might have stripped Hugh from his fortune and tossed him out.”
“There’s hardly any danger now. They must all be dead.”
“‘Make no mistake about this. He might not be my own flesh and blood but Hugh is, for all intent and purposes, my son. That was my decision years ago, and I will see it through.’”
He certainly did.
A heart-wrenching mood squashed us from above and we could barely look at each other, little less stop contemplating the message from the grave. Words were not enough to express the sense of injustice invading us. Hugh Hurlingthon had been leading a never-ending life of lies. He was no lord. All the concepts and notions he had about his family had been completely distorted. It might have seemed as if the mist cast over his origins was created by his father for his own good but, nevertheless, this over-lived man needed to know the truth.
It was then I saw my purpose coming full circle. This was what I was hired to do. To light up a fire in the middle of the fog.
Still in silence, Annie returned to her meal. Mine had come and it was getting cold, but my stomach was twisted like a pretzel after all the reading activity. Something that bothered me was Lord Frederick’s need to communicate this to someone other than his son. If he didn’t want the secret out, why write a letter in the first place? Why did he want the truth to pass over his son and reach the next of kin?
I decided to take one of the letters from the past that I had accidentally brought with me. There were two left. Like Annie’s, this one was also a love letter from Ady to My Dearest. They were romantic letters from Lady Adora to her husband, praising his kind heart and worshiping him for changing her dull, oppressing life forever. She was no lady either. From what I could manage to piece together, Adora had entered this marriage with an out of wedlock child.
No…wait a min
ute. Hugh hadn’t been born yet. The gardenias’ painting in the guesthouse. Adora was already living at the mansion when she was pregnant. Did Lord Frederick marry her while she was expecting? According to the marriage certificate, that was impossible. Adora cheated on Frederick and got pregnant. That’s how it had happened.
Annie was focusing on her plate without eating. She held a fork with the right hand and turned it nonstop. I had seen her like that before. It was how Annie looked when she came up with a theory. Deer in headlights body position. Head perched like a bull ready to charge. Claws clasping whatever was at hand and fumes coming out of her ears. An entirely new mythological creature.
“What is it, Kensington?”
She came out of her sudden catalepsy attack and used her human tweezers to grab the forgotten folder about Lady Adora’s death. She removed the newspaper clipping from its case and inspected it. Then, she turned the sheet over and read the back of the article. Like any newspaper, it was written on both sides. It contained information not related to the case.
“Where is the rest?”
“What are you talking about?” I had read the article over and over again. “That’s all there is. It ends on that page.” I took it from her hands and read the final sentences. “There’s a closing paragraph. They send their condolences to the family. It ends here.”
“I don’t mean that. Look at the top right corner.”
A staple was attached to that corner. And when I touched it with my thumb from the front and my index finger from the back, I understood Annie’s interest on the reverse side of the clipping. I imitated her and flipped the paper to examine it. There was another small triangular piece of paper between the complete article and the folded metal legs of the staple. Some other sheet, also from a newspaper and possibly from the same time according to the matching coloring, had been torn.
Another news article had been saved along with this one. Centuries later, when staple guns became of everyday use, someone had stapled them together. And maybe they were both hidden in the back cover of the scrapbook. Years later, quite possibly, someone else (or the same person) tore one clipping out and left the other safely stored in the secret compartment. But why not toss both? Why leave evidence behind?
“You’ll have to sort through all the files they gave you. See if any of it fits.”
No, I didn’t think I had it. It wasn’t in my office. That information was gone. I had a better choice that could also give me some room for a little more prodding.
“Do you know where Death hangs out?”
“Besides my cutting table?”
“The obituaries section. I’ll go to the library and check the newspaper archives. I’ll see what else I can find on Adora and the rest of the family.”
Obviously, this case was about what I didn’t have. That missing paper clipping wasn’t too distant in time from the one already in my possession. Anything I could find about the Hurlingthons from that period that I hadn’t already read could be a possibility, right? And it had to be big news. Someone had tried to destroy the evidence.
“And the obituaries? Why do you need to read them?”
I didn’t want to admit to Annie that I was taking the advice of a four-foot-tall druid.
“You know, to check the date...To find out if the family made a big announcement about it or not. What loving words her husband had used to–uhm...You know, to get a feel of it. You know...”
Annie nodded, although she was not completely convinced. I scarfed down my now frozen lunch, and she ordered coffee when the waitress came to retrieve the dirty dishes. We agreed that the following morning I would pick her up and go to the Hurlingthon manor. And as she gave the old man a medical examination, I would break into the guesthouse. But Annie made a smart remark. I had no idea how to pick a lock. My entire plan consisted of smashing a window or something. However, I had seen the reaction of the help: no one was used to receiving visitors. If Marlon, who was already aware of my desire to search the house, found anything broken, he would know it was me.
I needed the only person who could open a lock without leaving a trace. Nasty Joe. He was known for picking locks, his nose, and other unholy body parts. I had used him before. He was a spare, greasy stick. Quite a disgusting fellow. And Annie hated his guts. Every time he was around, he had tried to make a move on her. Or to...you know...pick at something. And Annie has never been a Sleeping Beauty. She could throw a punch better than me. Nobody in the force wanted to mess with her. I could understand her. She was the only woman in her field. Not that she had been a princess when Kara lived, but now she was the only one left.
We were both alone.
Our coffee arrived and it was the best part of this meeting: dark, warm, and delicious. Nothing could ruin my romance with caffeine, not even Annie moving her cup aside to reach for the last pending letter. It was probably another love message, like the other two.
From a brownish envelope, Annie removed a piece of paper thicker than the other two. Tossing the wrapping to the side, she spread out the paper sheet to start reading. A smaller paper, also carefully folded, fell from the inside of the letter to the table. Annie took it and extended it. As she remained a couple of seconds focusing on the smaller sheet, I could see her eyeballs going fast from left to right.
“Uh–Richard?”
“Yeah?”
“When you go to the library, you may want to check the murder cases from that period of time.”
“Annie, we already established it’s an unlikely possibility that Frederick killed his wife.”
Annie turned the paper over and allowed me to read the message.
‘I’m sorry I killed you. It was not my intention. I failed to foresee the full extent of my actions. Please, treat him like your own.
Ady’
XI