The moonlight was all but playing the wind like a flute. It was a beautiful tune. That evening breeze was sweeping through the garden like a great ship with its sails set, being pushed along by Zephyr to its destination. This night was nearly a day, for it was dark to the point that the light of the three-quarters moon pleased the eye with a landscape of pale life thriving at the whim of soil and water. The garden was most beautiful when it had no color. The gardener, a war veteran, was so traumatized by now that he only saw beauty in these colorless things. He had seen mostly red as far back as he could remember, for the war took up a great deal of space in his memory. Not many things could replace it. Red was violence, the color of death and failure and loss, and he would have none of it. It physically stung his eyes to simply glance upon his garden on a clear day, but he loved it so.
He wanted to sing right now. In his uncomfortable wooden chair, his calloused hands on his thin knees, he wanted to sing because Diana was providing him a tune. What a waste it would be if it passed him without words! What tune was this, he wondered. He had learned it as a child growing up in town. It was popular. The young boys would sing it when they left together to camp in the wilderness with their fathers, and when they would hunt for their food as young adults, in groups of only each other. They were generally clueless, but they learned. It was that song, but he could not place a name to it, or words. This was probably due to the fact that the song had not actually been vocalized, but had existed there nonetheless.
The middle-aged man yielded a look of confusion when he realized indeed that this tune now had a voice, a beautiful and fragile voice, one that sounded as though it were being sung clearly through a wall of water, setting ablaze his nostalgia. This most certainly was not the wind or the light of the moon. He stood up and walked off of his small porch, and turned to look at the huge mansion, the home of his employer, the windowed Madame DeCharbré, along with her three children, the young lawyer son Ansel, the married-into-wealth-but-widowed daughter Janette, and the youngest who took care of her mother all day while the other two were gone, the thirteen-year-old Darlene. All of the lights were off, and that precious breeze mentioned before was now distorting the driveway by pulling up clouds of dirt, which mingled in a confused fashion with the moonlight. Everything was ghastly and alive now.
Even the garden around him seemed more to grow from the strewn body pieces of Orpheus. He checked once more this back image of the house, and it was so much like a painting that the shadows of the trees in the stream of moving air against the stone wall were incredibly unsettling. Still, though, the singing (growing ever louder, more perceptible by the physical ear) persisted and haunted the gardener. He wandered now through the garden, over the backyard lawn, and around the side of the mansion. Alas, there was a light, though dim, visible in a window upstairs. The light danced against the light of the moon, which alerted the gardener that it might have been a candle. He had seldom been into the house, but its inhabitants were never awake at this late hour. The gardener did not even know why he was awake now, but it was a fact nonetheless.
The light in the window seemed harmless, but the worst idea entered his mind. What if there was a burglar? Or perhaps a murderer who would kill the heir and heiresses to the family fortune, hoping his efforts might reward him with a heavy amount of money? The gardener could only take blame if this would happen, for he had witnessed someone else in the house, but had not stopped them. This, of course, was hypothetical. Instead of wait, he ran up to the backdoor, where the haunting sound grew even more realistic. He fished through one of the very large pockets in his stained suspenders and pulled out a small ring of keys, and flipped through them as if they were cards, taking a gamble in the dark at which one might open the door. Fortune gracefully favored him as the door clicked and the gardener very slowly opened it.
Inside the house, the music was echoing throughout the halls and along the staircase as though loudspeakers were set at every corner to magnify it. How could the family not awaken at such an anomaly? He thought for a moment that he might need a candle out of the kitchen drawer, but thought against it was the moon was lighting the house nicely. But still, the orthodox option would have been to light a candle, so he searched through the drawers in the kitchen (into which he had walked from the backyard), and, running his hands carefully though the contents shoved to the back, where he could not see, he found a long, white tapestry candle, and set it on the table. Again, the gardener shoved his hands into his pockets to find a box of matches.
The flame danced happily as the gardener wandered through the first story, searching for the long staircase that would take him up to the second. He had seldom traveled thus far into the house. When he finally found the staircase, the loud droning stopped abruptly, and a sense of danger shot up the gardener’s spine. In urgent haste, he dashed up the stairs, and his candle flickered and went out. However, this was no such time, or situation, to worry about a bit of light. His eyes took a moment to adjust, and he only just caught himself upon trying to climb a step that was not there when he reached the top of the staircase. The room down the hallway; that’s where the light was. The door was cracked, perhaps by accident, and the light was dancing through the casement.
The gardener would normally have been frightened, as all of the other doors were closed. This room, as far as he knew, was only a spare, sometimes used by the maid, widows, or young missus to sew. He peeped through, and saw a small form there, but the image was not too clear, and in an attempt to just slightly push the door open a bit more, the gardener flung it all the way open. The sight that met him did not register until he was able to mentally describe it, piece by piece.
The young daughter, Darlene, was impaled upon the needle of the spinning wheel, and a stream of blood was steadily flowing from the chest wound. She was laying over it, quite dead, her long, brown hair flowing over the sides of her head, covering her face from view. Beside her, weeping and not daring to look, was the poor maid, Tessa, a small woman of Asian descent. Her face was twisted and torn between confusing, terror, sorrow, and disgust. The gardener could not bear to look at the scene after only a few seconds, and found a terrible shrieking to be issuing from his own lips.
The authorities took down both the stories of the gardener and of Tessa, discrediting the music both seemed to have heard and followed. Tessa had appeared only moments before the gardener, and the music had stopped as soon as she had opened the door. She could not describe it, and the gardener felt he could to some extent. He told the authorities that it was like youthful wanderings, but they only waited for him to say what might have been more believable.
The family itself did not weep, for their spirits were so traumatized by the event that they simply could not yet find their tears. For several days, they did not go near the sewing room, but left it up to Tessa to mend their clothing. The widows had lost their interest to sew, and very quickly so. Ansel busied himself day and few hours at night (while he was still awake) working himself with such stress that his thick, black hair began growing lighter at his temples, and he walked about the house with a heavier slouch. Tessa thought to bring this to his attention, and perhaps console him, but he would surely not accept it. He barely spoke with the mistress and Janette, and would not give a second glance to the help.
Janette, however, did not busy herself so much anymore. She instead helped Tessa with her chores (as she had done before, but now more than before), and made sure to stay engaged in conversation. Tessa sympathized with her efforts to defer her true feelings, but soon became so annoyed that she enjoyed spending time at the sewing machine, in the room where no one else entered, safe away from the troubles of Janette’s lack of a social life. She suffered the bloody stains all over the machine to not suffer what was waiting to chat with her outside of those walls. She was shocked when, one day, her door opened. However, she was eased to find Marcus, the gardener, in the doorway.
“You heard it, too?” he asked softly, stepping in and closing the door. The family did not need to hear this conversation. “The music, that music that reminded you of the past?”
“They did not believe us,” Tessa said softly, and diverted her attention to the sewing machine. “I tried to tell them, and agreed with how you said it, but they did not believe me. They looked at me with eyes that…accused me of something, I know what. I’m innocent, Marcus.” Tears were in her eyes when she looked back up at him.
“I know,” he replied, sitting on the ground. “I know, dear, but they won’t believe it until they know what happened. How could a teenage girl simply throw herself upon the needle there?” He was staring at it with such intensity, and could not clear the image of Darlene’s dead body hanging from it.
“Do not say it,” Tessa hissed, then gave a slight yelp. Her finger had pulled a splinter from the machine. “What is this? Oh, Marcus, we both have work to do. I think you should leave now. We cannot dwell on what has happened; we cannot afford to. The family must take care of that, even if they are not. Perhaps their tears will catch up with them in time.”
Marcus left obediently, but Tessa knew that he was somewhat angry for not being able to discus what had happened. Indeed, the maid wanted to talk, but if she and the gardener started conversing about the crime behind the backs of others, and word got out about the few social minutes they spent discussing, then it might have been believed that they were actually two people to be suspicious of. After all, who in these days had not heard of a maid and a gardener conspiring to kill off the family which they served? It would have been a great plot for, as far as anybody knew, there were no other living heirs to the fortune besides those which currently lived in the house.
Tessa only left the sewing room in the evening at dinner time, and returned to it when she awoke in the morning, after having a small breakfast of toast and eggs. During dinner, the family was brought together, an event which carried the odd effect of silence. They would not speak with each other for any reason. They rudely reached across the table to retrieve those items they favored for their meal. Tessa was thankful for the silence. After dinner, Tessa would take the dishes and silverware to the sink, wash them, and retire for the night.
Nine days after the accident, Tessa, asleep in her bedroom, began dreaming. She was dreaming a most wonderful dream, of the days when she had first arrived with her family. She was still young, and thought her new home was the most wonderful place in the world. Her parents were the workers of Chez DeCharbré, and when she was not helping with the chores, she was playing with the youngest daughter, Darlene, who was barely eight now. At one point, Darlene had decided to play alone, and Tessa instead went to her parents, who were busy working. The widow was not yet a widow. Monsieur DeCharbré had been a kind old man, one of the greatest. He was a wise businessman, but an even wiser parent, and in his personality he made up for that which the missus lacked. She had always been a rather cold woman, but somehow, the master loved her. At the point in this dream of history where the master had his heart-attack in the garden, Tessa awoke.
A thin stream of light was upon her face from her doorway, which was slowly opening. Before Tessa’s heart jumped out of her throat, she recognized the form of Marcus standing there, holding a candle, a look of deep worry on his face.
“Marcus!” she hissed, but he held a finger to his lips, indicating that she keep quiet. She peered at him through the candlelight, and then heard it. It was the music again, playing softly in the hallway. “Come in,” she said quietly. At first, he shook his head. He wanted desperately to find where it was coming from, but Tessa insisted that Marcus enter the room. With a sigh directed accidentally to his candle, causing it to flicker merrily, Marcus entered the room and quietly closed the door behind him. He sat down beside Tessa’s bed.
“So this is it,” he said softly. “What do we do? I came before, listening to the music, and it filled my heart with the pain of memories, but it stopped so suddenly.”
“It stopped when I walked in,” Tessa said softly. “I heard it and followed it, thinking that one of the children had gotten up and began playing some kind of odd instrument. I tracked it to the sewing room, and I will not relate once more to anybody what I saw when I opened the door. There was a candle light, as you may remember when you found me, but it was already lit by the young one. I fear going back now.”
“Did you hear her talking?” Marcus asked, after a few seconds of silence. “Did you hear Darlene talking to herself?”
“What?” Tessa closed her eyes and thought back. “Ah, Marcus, I ran so quickly, I could only hear my own footsteps, and then the screams from my own lips when I found her. I heard no talking, only the sounds of natural terror.”
“Janette,” Marcus hissed, his eyes wide. “She is there now, Tessa. She is speaking violent nonsense with herself, and she sounds terribly angry.” He let out another deep sigh. “Ah, this has the marks of distress and crime all over it, but somehow I think the guilty one is invisible; mental, maybe? Come, let us listen.”
Tessa could find no objection other than the fact that they could be caught again for a crime they did not commit, and this time they could be convicted. However, Marcus persisted, and Tessa obeyed out of pure curiosity of this event. Leaving the door slightly ajar, the existing help members tip-toed down the hallway, toward the door beneath which the light of a candle was flickering gently. There was Janette’s voice on the other side, just as Marcus had said. Tessa very carefully pressed her ear against the wood, and Marcus did the same.
“It was so quiet after!” Janette was crying. “You disappeared and we missed you so! How do you return to us? Quiet, sad, and simply standing? What is this of you? How have you so changed? Oh dear me, how we have missed you! Your presence still wanders, I believe. No, not your presence, but you! I love you so much, can you not answer me? Embrace? No, but why? Only to have you disappear? Well, if disappear you will, then suffer I will one last embrace. Father, I have so wondered where you went, you have no—”
Her speaking ended just there. Marcus and Tessa listened closely to the odd sounds of gasping, and backed away slowly. Tessa shook her head and began crying, but Marcus put his hand over her mouth to hold in her screams of horror. Down the hall, there was another light, just at the top of the staircase. Tessa and Marcus both froze, and they quickly advanced to see who their other visitor was. The light went out, and as they approached, the terrible face of a sleep-ridden Madame DeCharbré entered into their own candlelight.
“Where is my daughter?” she shouted. Every wrinkle on her face was carved deeper, and her whole frame was shaking violently with anger. “Is she in that room, dead by your hand upon my spinning wheel, just as you have eliminated the younger?”
Tessa could not hold in her words. “Do you not hear that music, Madame?” she cried. Marcus closed his eyes.
“You too, Marcus?” the widow asked softly. “Why, you both are crazy. I’ll have you two committed, I will! I swear upon my husband’s grave that you will both spend the rest of your lives among others like yourselves, you murderers!” She shoved the both of them out of the way, knocking their candle to the ground. Its unsteady light disappeared, and the widow tossed open the door, then froze. Tessa and Marcus did not move. They were too frightened to. The music stopped, once more, as soon as the door was thrown ajar. The candlelight was brightly flickering, and Madame DeCharbré had her sickly hands over her quivering lips. “My God,” she said softly. Her face contorted itself and she looked as though she was someplace between nausea, anger, and death. “You fiends, I’ll kill you myself!” She wanted to lunge at them, but instead fell to her knees, her face in her hands, weeping loudly. Ansel came rushing out of his room, a robe placed crookedly over his shoulders, showing that he had rushed out as fast as he could. He stepped into the doorway of the lit room and gasped, vomited, and collapsed against the wall, and reached over to comfort his mother.
Marcus watched the coroner follow a few men with Janette’s cloaked body on a plank out of the house. They placed the body into an Hirondelle, and then themselves took a separate coach, and they all departed. The authorities remained for a few hours, and Madame DeCharbré did not stop accusing the help, for the many hours since the authorities had arrived, of the death of her children. Marcus gave his story, and was completely honest, but tried this time to leave out the odd music. When asked about it, he did not lie. He told them it was there, but reminded them that they did not believe him last time, and there was simply no use in repeating himself. After all was said and done, the authorities reviewed that Tessa was found before with Darlene’s body, and arrested her for the murder of both children. Ansel could not overturn this decision yet, but stopped Marcus’ arrest by giving the authorities proof just enough to keep him on the grounds. Ansel conveyed later that he knew both of them were innocent, but the decision to take Tessa was too quickly made and he could not change that. It would be decided in court.
Madame DeCharbré insisted many times that Marcus be placed under arrest, but Ansel was always victorious in fighting off her suggestions, as the man of the house and the legal heir to the DeCharbré fortune. To this, the widow shrieked several arguments that a son should not be so disobedient of his mother’s wishes. However, she went ignored. Instead, a guard was left for the mansion, to make sure Marcus tried nothing. Marcus further distanced himself by requesting of Ansel to go to town for a few days for new gardening supplies, money for which was provided by Ansel.
The tools did not need replacing, however. Marcus had known the master of the mansion for a few days before his death, and though the man had died of a heart attack, he was as strong as an ox, not one to have any heart problems. He was not a doctor, but he thought over what the authorities would have thought. Something about it, the fact that it would have been the perfect plan, to eliminate the heirs to the fortune and take the money as the reward, made him suspicious. Sure, it would take killing all of the heirs to have the money, but while Monsieur DeCharbré was alive, it would only have been a matter of killing him and having the money leftover after all the children moved out. The widow would be able to squander it until her death, and the children would be left nothing.
Everyone had noted that, after the master’s death, the widow had increased her spending. Paintings were hung, new clothes were worn, and the house had undergone several small renovations. It was doubtless that she was now more financially fortunate, especially when Ansel and Janette were away. After they had returned, the freedom somewhat disappeared, but lingered for some time still. If she were to somehow kill the children, she could be free to spend once more. How did she know where Janette would be? She must have been the murderer. For these thoughts, Marcus had forgotten about the music.
When he was taken into town, he immediately visited the apothecary. The man was small, balding, and wore large spectacles, but he was happy nonetheless.
“Can I help you, sir?” he squeaked with a smile. “Ah, you’re the DeCharbré gardener, yes? I remember you, when the master was having heart problems. I stayed for a few days, and you had only just moved onto the grounds.”
“Yes, of course,” Marcus said. “I remember you. How are you, old friend?”
“Frightened,” he said, “at the news that I have heard regarding the household. It seems you’ve lost the two daughters, and the maid, the Asian girl, taken to prison?”
“For a bit,” Marcus said softly, nodding, staring at the ground, “just until she has been proven innocent. But let us go back in words, just a little bit, please? You said the master was having heart problems?”
“Yes,” the apothecary said, nodding, or at least trying to. His head actually moved in several different directions. “Yes, he was heaving severe heart pains and I thought to myself, ‘Why, this man is in perfect health! I wonder what this could be.’ Though it is unusual, however, and somewhat unlikely, I decided it was an effect of the war. You served, right? I was a medic, I was. Ah, but Monsieur DeCharbré, he was high up there, as I remember. He was a force to be reckoned with. Loved by his allies, feared by his enemies, and not just in the war, but everywhere. Still, he was human. He was susceptible to the dangers of trauma like the rest and the best of us. I studied him for a bit, and tried treating him, and was very annoyed that my treatments did not help. The mistress was devastated, for she grew even colder than before, I think. She sublimated her sorrow with fancy things, and I knew it was unhealthy, but she did not follow my advice of counseling.”
This was quite a fool of an apothecary. “Did she come to you before?” the gardener asked innocently. “Surely, for with his pains he would not travel.”
“She did come before,” the apothecary replied, “but it was before his pains began. She said she was looking for a good pesticide, visiting on the gardener’s behalf. Ah, but here you are. She must not have let the former go, then, or have you crept off, you little devil?”
“Nothing of the sort,” Marcus replied with a smile. “Ansel pardoned me. I’ve actually come here looking for gardening supplies. Do you know where I could find them?”
He returned home the next day with the gardening supplies he’d promised he’d return with, as well as the knowledge of how to make a great pesticide, the same pesticide which Madame DeCharbré was supposed to have made. However, this pesticide was never introduced to him, the later gardener, and now Marcus knew something was out of place. He did not make the poison, but instead approached the hateful widow. “The apothecary was he who treated the master in his time of need, may he rest in peace. The man said you knew how to make a very effective pesticide, and I thought I might use the recipe for the garden.”
“There is still a bit left from before,” the widow said softly. “Stay here and I will retrieve it for you.” She got up and left the room silently. Marcus remained still, and felt incredibly uncomfortable standing in this room, or anywhere in this house, so still with only the widow, as Ansel had retired for the afternoon. She appeared once more in the room with Marcus noticing, but he expressed no such fear that he felt upon seeing her and the shock it had on him.
“Before?” he wondered aloud. “You had some of this poison, but did not tell me? I am your gardener, Madame, and I should like to know when I can keep the garden beautiful. I would have liked to have known about this earlier.”
“The Asian man used some of it,” she said, regarding a clear flask of brown liquid in her hands. She had a sinister twinkle in her eyes. “I did not think we would need it again.”
She placed it on the table, and Marcus took it and quickly left the room, refusing to exchange any more words with this woman. In his room in the garden, he examined the brown fluid very carefully. It should have been green, as the apothecary had said, and it should have smelled sweet. The scent of this awful liquid made Marcus’ stomach turn, and he had to quickly replace the cap in order to keep his insides from flipping out through his mouth. The sides of the flask were stained with the stuff, and it clung like dry syrup to the inside of the flask. He put his pesticide on a shelf for safe-keeping, because pests simply would not avoid a garden, especially one as maintained as that of the DeCharbré mansion.
The awful brown liquid, however, he did not put away. He left this on his table so he could attempt to examine it later, perhaps when he had lost his sense of smell completely. For now, it was long past the evening hour, and he needed desperately to sleep. He had lost a great amount of rest during the trips to and from town, and did not sleep while there. He lay down in his small bed and closed his eyes, only to have them open again a short time later, when the moon had moved only a fraction in the sky.
It was that sound again.
He was smacked suddenly with the pains of leaving home for the war, how sad everyone was in his small town at losing all their young men. He had been working on his grandfather’s farm when became part of the war effort. He closed his eyes for a moment. When he left, he was just about the age of—
Ansel!
He did not know what finally alerted him to the pattern, and also scolded himself for not noticing it before. He spared no time for lighting a candle. The moonlight was bright again tonight, as it had been when Janette committed suicide, as it had been when Darlene committed suicide. He could not allow Ansel to end the same way. However, in the darkness that consumed the inside of the house, he tumbled over the rug and knocked things over. The widow would awaken, but there was no longer a care for this. He felt around anxiously for the bottom of the staircase, and when he found it, he discovered that there was indeed someone before him.
Marcus fished through his pockets, looking for his matches, and lit one. The figure was silhouetted, but nothing more. He was able to make out near his feet the shape of a short candle, and lit it with the quickly-burning match. The flame of it reached his fingers and when he dropped it, it went out, but had caught the wick just in time. The candle flicked for a moment, then the flame grew, and the widow was clear now.
She had her back turned, and was frozen, with a candle empty of flame in her hand. There was a faint sniffling sound, and Marcus turned her toward him. Her body obliged, and he was shocked to see her face clear of wrinkles. She looked somehow incredibly young, and her eyes were open, leaking tears. She frowned, and somehow her eyes seemed clearer than normal. They actually had a color now, as before they always just seemed gray. Now, there were as blue as the summer day sky.
“Madame?” he asked softly, but she was not looking at him. She was looking straight ahead, just past his head as she was a few steps higher than he. She was still asleep.
He did not consider this for a moment longer, but only rushed past her. At the top of the staircase, down the hall, the light of a candle reached out beneath the door of the sewing room. Marcus dropped his candle and sped down the hallway as quickly as he could. The terrible music persisted as Marcus threw open the door.
There, standing just before the sewing wheel, were two men. One of them was Ansel, almost completely nude, having left his room in the same trance that his mother had left hers. His body was accentuated by the shadows cast by that wickedly happy flame on the windowsill. The other man, however, was the figure of Monsieur DeCharbré, as Marcus had last seen him alive. He stood tall and proud, facing his son. His form was not pale, sunken, or otherwise ghastly. He looked up and recognized Marcus right away, but did not react in any other way besides offering a smile. He put out his hand, and Ansel took it, and this ghoul that represented the late master cast his child upon the sewing wheel, and the needle pierced the chest of the last heir to the DeCharbré fortune.
The music stopped abruptly, and the late master simply was no longer there. His figure did not fade out or leave through the wall as the popular apparition. He was simply gone, as soon as the music had ended. Behind Marcus was the appalled shriek of the widow and a sharp pain met Marcus’ back. He fell to the ground, and quickly pulled himself over to see what had happened. Madame DeCharbré was holding the poker of the fireplace in one hand, and her lit candle in another.
“Rot in Hell, you bastard of a murderer!” she cursed, and pulled the poker back for another blow, apparently not realizing that she could have simply stabbed him and let him die instantly. As the poker came down, Marcus grabbed it and yanked it from her grip.
“How do you condemn me, my mistress the hypocrite!” he hissed, waving the poker around threateningly in both hands. “You cannot say you are so innocent besides your frosty heart! You killed your husband, and I know it! That is why he was here. He wanted to punish you!”
“You lie!” she cried out. “Go to Hell!” She fell to the ground, and the candle rolled from her hand. It stopped at a pile of small quilted objects that Tessa had made in her spare time. “Do not speak to me! Die, or let me die! Yes, kill me and receive your just reward! Not my money, but a lifetime of shame and imprisonment, rotting away for the insects!”
The smell of smoke reached Marcus’ nostrils, and he saw the quilted objects catch flame, but he did nothing about it. He was not yet finished. “You killed him so you could take his money. You loved your children, but when were you going to finish them off? After all, you were too old. The young one, Darlene, she was sure to get the money. You could have killed them all with the poison, you wretch! Why didn’t you?”
“I raised them for me,” she cried quietly, and the roaring of the flames nearby began overpowering her voice. “They were my children, not his. They shared no drop of his heart. Only his blood went into their being, and they would then be mine for the teaching. I could teach them how to be wise, how to survive in prosperity. He could boast no such thing!”
“He could boast happiness!” Marcus was now crying himself. “There was no simple trauma involved. You tipped the sewing wheel, didn’t you? That is why this room is so special to him, why he brings them here!”
She was still, and he could barely hear her voice. She had turned away from him. “I was sewing,” she said softly. “He came in from several hours of work with an uncanny desire for me, and I tried to ignore him. He kissed my hands, my arms, my shoulders, my neck, and my cheeks. He took the utmost care to kiss my lips. Suddenly, something changed. I wanted him, too. But everything was ready. I only needed the poison to get beneath his skin. I stood up with him and he began removing my dress, and he positioned him correctly for the act, and then made it look like an accident when his hand swept across the needle. He recoiled for a moment, and when he wanted me more, I told him I had more sewing to do, and asked that he leave for a while. That night, I promised, he could have me. That night never came for him, but he indeed slept without having me.”
“Yet he now has your children,” Marcus said. “He has his children!”
There was no other choice now. Marcus had no other option. He brought the poker up above his head and impaled her. “I’ll not die together with such a miserable anomaly of nature.” He thought over his words for a moment, and smiled, for he would not leave this room tonight.
Parts of the wall still stood, and some furniture. The area was not dry enough for the fire to catch the surrounding perimeter. It simply stopped. Three bodies were died in the ashes; two had burned to death, and the third, though burned, had been impaled by the needle of the sewing machine which, despite a few burns, was still in on piece. Tessa was taken to this place, having been proved innocent. Marcus was later declared to be the murderer, as Ansel had still died without Tessa’s aid. Tessa suffered the accusatory glances of people in town, where she moved to find another job. When she found on the site of the mansion that the sewing machine was still all together, she immediately requested that she keep it for herself. She did, after all, have some right to it as the maid. It was a case that needed no argument, and it was given to her without question.
She found another maid job with a small family, but did not work for them for too long a period. She loved the family she worked for. However, before her first week was over, her body was found impaled upon the needle of the sewing wheel she had taken from the ashes, and the young ones of the household would wonder for a few months whatever had happened to the pretty little girl that lived in the maid’s bedroom.
