~*~
“Lord Hurlingthon, my name is Dr. Kensington. With your permission, I’ll be performing a routine examination to make sure everything on the medical record provided by your current physician is accurate,” Annie explained after Lord Hurlingthon had received us in his bedchambers. She was far more composed than myself upon the first sight of my boss. I guess his appearance was not so distant from the bodies Annie dealt with.
“You get a lot of demented people requesting your services, Mr. Saussure?” Lord Hurlingthon asked me in his decomposing voice, after agreeing to the procedure.
“Well...I’m afraid so, s-Lord Hurlingthon.” However, in the category of talking corpses, he had been my first. “I’m sorry for this inconvenience. But as you can understand, this will only make the case stronger.”
“I understand. You have lasted longer than any of the others. I appreciate your composure.”
His gracious politeness made my heart warmer, despite the coldness his body exuded. How was I ever going to tell that poor man that the father he had longed to please was not his father? Where was I going to find the courage to let him know he did share the first year of his life with his mother?
“I will be needing someone from your household to remain here with us, Lord Hurlingthon, as an eyewitness to the examination. Mr. Saussure informed me that Mr. Marlon is a man of your complete trust. If you could ask him to stay...”
Marlon was instructed to officiate as a witness and as any good gundog, he stayed by his master’s feet. Annie explained to the men that she would fill out a form with all the results from the tests. Then, she and Marlon would be signing the medical record. This ridiculous formalism was Annie’s way of helping me.
“Lord Hurlingthon, if you don’t mind, I would like to revisit the pictures I saw a couple of days ago.” Hugh agreed and Marlon reacted immediately.
“I’m afraid that’s impossible, Lord Hurlingthon. I have to stay here with you. Mr. Saussure won’t have anyone to escort him.”
“That’s fine, Marlon. I won’t get lost. Two hallways to the left, then three to the right. Correct?” I saw Annie reaching for her briefcase to get the medical worksheet and I hastened to aid her. “Let me help you with that, Dr. Kensington.”
I snatched the papers myself, right after stealing a scalpel from the black leather case where she stored them. I had seen it before, but I had no idea why she wanted her cutting devices outside the autopsy table. That was Annie, I guess. Always ready to cut the world open.
As I left the bedroom with Marlon’s eyes burning the back of my neck, I heard Annie saying to Lord Hurlingthon: “If at any time you get tired, say so and I’ll stop immediately.” To which she received the piteous answer, “It’s alright child. I wish I could be that breakable. It would make everything much easier.”
I rushed downstairs and out of the main house.
I entered the guesthouse and rested my body against the closed door behind me. While I tried to normalize my breath, the Hurlingthons stared at me from their frame, holding themselves with aristocratic composure. They all had kind eyes filled with love, which had been obviously added by the artist. A wicked bond existed between that man and that woman. A dark cloud, pregnant with dangerous ideas, was forming inside Adora’s head. And judging by the baby’s age, it had been raining for a while. I tiptoed to the middle of the room and looked around, feeling the burden of being an outsider. The decoration was different from the last time I had looked into the house. Now, everything was covered with white linens. Was Marlon on to something? Maybe Lucy had ratted me out.
It was truly a ghost house. I was waiting for Adora’s spirit to appear at any moment. Actually, that would’ve come in handy. I’d have asked her a thing or two.
The family picture was immense. It was simply impossible for me to take it down by myself. I decided to place the sofa in front of the frame and then lay the cushions between the wall and the furniture. After doing it, I took a chair and placed it next to the frame. With the scalpel I had borrowed from Annie, my intention was to cut the wire on the back of the painting and let the cushions soften the landing. Once done, there would be no turning back. Pretty soon Marlon would figure it out and he’d be breathing down my neck. I’d be needing a scarf since everything coming from that man was gelid.
But my master plan didn’t work, as apparently the wire was too thick and the scalpel couldn’t cut it. I needed tweezers or something of the sort.
I removed the white sheet from the desk and started to open the drawers, trying to find anything that could have been left there. Every single one of them was empty. When I opened the sixth drawer, on the lower right, I could not believe how stupid I had been. I should have asked Nasty Joe to help me. Now, that was lost money. The only option left was going back to the main house to see if Annie had anything else that might be of use. Or, in my car. Maybe I could find a couple of tools in the trunk.
I tried to close the last desk drawer but it got stuck, so I knelt down to push it from the front. That’s when I saw it. A little piece of green satin ribbon, coming out two inches from the back left corner. I removed the drawer and placed it over the desktop. A knock on the surface and the hollow sound confirmed my suspicion: it was a false bottom. I pulled the ribbon up and it lifted a thin wooden panel, allowing me to introduce my fingers underneath to retrieve it completely.
Again, the wax seal with the imprinted H. And this time there were two of them like red eyes staring back at me, waiting to be opened. I was starting to believe the H stood for Haunted.
I took the envelopes. They weren’t as heavy as the one I had stolen the day before. There was no point in choosing, so I randomly took the top one and broke the seal. It was Adora’s death certificate with the date the newspaper cited. This was the real certificate and, as part of the process of hiding it from his son, quite possibly Lord Frederick had stored it away. Maybe he didn’t burn it because, after all, it was a legal document. And for some sickening reason, Frederick was determined to store everything for posterity as if he had known his son would need it. I had become Lord Hurlingthon’s next of kin.
I had no time to wonder if it was a fake document or not. I’d take it to Truthful Willy later. Any luck, and the next envelope would be a letter explaining what had happened for Adora to attack her husband. Or a news article, as this family seemed so fond of the printed media. Fingers crossed and hope he dies.
The second H was cracked open, and the four points anticipated me that the content wasn’t something from a journal. It was not an article piece. No letter either. It was Lord Frederick Hurlingthon’s death certificate. It was dated the same day, month and year stated in the original obituary published by the newspaper. Frederick had died that day. A doctor had certified it with his signature at the bottom of a rectangular piece of paper.
Adora hadn’t tried to kill Frederick. She had succeeded. And someone had taken Lord Frederick’s identity. There were no photos on the papers in those days, so no one could have known. The help was hushed or fired, who knows. Still, the woman’s mental balance was fragile and she ended up believing her husband was haunting her. The letter made more sense now that the man signing it wasn’t Hugh’s father. But was he Hugh’s biological father?
I took the death certificates and stored them away in my pocket. I had to rearrange everything. I stuck the false bottom back in, and then pushed the drawer in its place. I covered the desk with the sheet, and placed the chair in front of it, where it belonged. I moved the cushions and the sofa back to where they came from. Everything neatly covered by the impeccable white linens. And the scalpel, I should not forget about the scalpel.
Before opening the door to leave, I cast a look around trying to find anything out of place.
The Hurlingthons still stared at me from their frame. That was the reason those paintings were stored away in that forgotten and locked house. The fake Frederick didn’t want the real one watching his every step. After all, I had been right. It was a
ghost house.
I peeped through the curtains and saw no one outside. I removed the tape from the lock and closed the door behind me, feeling the envelopes resting against my chest. I had to get Annie and do what Irupé had instructed me to do long before my detour into the guest house. But I had been so eager to mock her that I had put my shoes on first.
I had to go to Death’s headquarters.
XIII