A Simple Country Tragedy

by Blythe Baker

He shrugged. “As I said, my emotions in this matter little. I don’t care how you feel about it. It is a job, and I will see it through to the end.”

  My mind raced. Who could have been feeding Sidney information?

  “Though I haven’t needed my informants very much,” he said, wandering over toward the window and peering outside. “It was rather convenient that the house next door to yours was available. Well, it was available when I ensured the tenant had been removed permanently.”

  I didn’t need to ask any further questions about that. He made his meaning perfectly clear.

  “I had not expected you to be so easy to woo, though, Mrs. Lightholder…” Sidney said, making his way back over to me. He reached out, laying a hand tenderly against my cheek.

  I pulled my head out of his hands, snapping my neck back so fast it caused a kink in the muscle, sending shooting pains down my spine.

  Sidney’s face hardened. “Whether or not you want to admit it, Helen, you and I certainly have had our moments over these last few months. Which was perfect for me, and was exactly what I needed. You were easy to mold, sharing your heart when all I had to do was give you a smile and an ear to listen. I imagined you might have been starved for affection after Roger’s death, but to easily fall into the arms of another man?”

  “I never did any such thing,” I cried, my cheeks flaring red. “There was always something off about you in my mind. There were things you never told me, things that any ordinary person would have happily shared. Family, history, childhood, memories of youth…any and all of those things were absent from our conversations. For some time, I just thought you were being modest, or perhaps someone had terribly hurt you, and like me, you wanted to get away.”

  He laughed. “Those things didn’t matter enough to you. You still allowed me into your home, and trusted me. You wanted something to work out with us, you cannot deny it. I saw the flush of your cheeks, and the way you stared at me when we were alone. You were falling in love with me, and – ”

  “Stop it!” I cried, my heart beating so hard against my ribs it hurt. Sweat beaded on my back, and my hands were clammy and swollen. “No, I never loved you. Something always stopped me. And now I realize that it was my good sense, my intuition telling me to avoid you.”

  Sidney chuckled again, folding his arms. “Well, it doesn’t matter, does it? Because my plan worked. I got what I wanted.”

  “Why didn’t you just kill me and take the letters?” I asked. “Make it look like an accident, seeing as how you seem to have no trouble with that.”

  “Oh, I’d considered it,” Sidney said, leaning back against his desk as casually as if we were swapping gardening tips or discussing the weather. “But I wanted to find some things out first. Namely, if you’d already sent the letters off to London. If you had, then my chasing you down had been an utter waste of time. I knew that would take time, and careful building of trust over these weeks and months. And as I said, my plan worked, because I’ve learned everything that I needed to. You knew nothing about the codes, or the letters. You knew so little that you hung those war-changing codes proudly on your wall, as if they were nothing more than a keepsake, completely unaware of the power you possessed. That night, when you showed the shadow box to Irene, Nathanial and I…Oh, Helen…you’d finally made my job too easy. You’d practically done it for me. You may as well have handed them to me that very night.”

  It was all starting to make sense. “You’d broken in several times before…” I said. “But were never able to find the letters. I’d hidden them away. I hadn’t wanted to look at them myself. I had them stashed away far back in the attic. Seeing them had been – ”

  Why am I explaining myself to him?

  “You should have left them in the box,” Sidney said. “Had you, then perhaps you could have lived a little longer…at least until my patience decided to give way and I ended up killing you anyway.”

  “Why do you have to kill me?” I asked. “It isn’t as if I knew what the code inside the letters said.”

  Sidney’s laughter was harsh against my ears. “You expect me to believe that?” he asked. He picked up the letters and shook them in the air between us. “Roger was clever. He didn’t hide the code in all of them, but only in one letter. The very last letter he’d ever sent to you while he was still alive. That letter was the key. It took me days, going through each and every one, until I realized…it was just the one. There may have been clues sprinkled throughout the others, but by the time he wrote you that last letter, he knew I was on to him, that I knew he had figured out the secret, and decided to take precautions in case he died.”

  I thought back to the night with Patrick and Lily Gordon, hearing Patrick’s side of the story. He said that Roger had run into his office, terrified, saying he’d figured something out, he’d found the spy.

  And the spy he’d found happened to be the one standing right in front of me, someone I had once considered a friend.

  “All that was left was for me to find an opening to get the letters from you,” Sidney said. “And once I did that, I could dispose of you. But in order to do so, I needed to find a distraction for you, something to keep you off my trail.”

  A chill ran down my spine. Sidney’s tendrils sunk deeper and deeper with every secret he revealed. It became harder to breathe.

  “I wanted to keep you busy, so naturally I had to find a way to do just that. You’ve seemed so fascinated by all these murders around the village over the last few months, so I thought it best to provide you with an opportunity to solve yet another one while I finalized my own plans on how to get in, steal the letters, and then find a way to take care of you in the process.”

  I stared up at him. “You…it was you.”

  Sidney smirked, folding his arms. “I imagine you were wondering why I hadn’t mentioned anything to you about Wilson Baxter’s death,” he said. “Seeing how we spoke so openly about the other murders in the village.”

  “You killed him…” I said, and my stomach revolted. The images of the body that Sam Graves had portrayed to me ran through my mind, making bile rise in the back of my throat.

  “I did,” Sidney said. “And I suppose it was all for naught, since every time I had planned to try and kill you, you somehow managed to run off and do something else…”

  “You’ve tried to kill me already?” I asked. “How? When?”

  “It wouldn’t do you much good for me to tell you now, would it?” he asked. “Come now, Helen. You know very well I can’t spill all my secrets to you…”

  He walked over to his fireplace, and grabbed a log from the stack lying beside it. He set the letters down, picked up a box of matches, and pulled one free.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, glancing from him to the letters, to the log now resting in the fireplace.

  “I thought that might be obvious,” he said, striking a match. It bloomed into life, a bright speck in the otherwise shadowed room. “This code key should have died with Roger. Now I can ensure that it really does. And my job will be done. Oh, at least, it will be after you are gone, too. Then I can return home. Finally.”

  He tucked the burning match beneath the log. Wadding up some newspapers from beside his desk, he set them around the log. Lighting two more matches, he caught the newspaper on fire. Its flames slowly began lapping up against the log, just waiting to catch.

  He then picked up the letters again, and slowly turned his head around to me, smiling.

  “Don’t worry…” he said. “I’ll read them to you once again as I burn them, so you can always remember how much Roger loved you…and how futile that love for you really was, in the end.”

  13

  Sidney did just as he said he would. He began to read the letters that Roger had written to me, the special ones I’d set aside in that box. He read them with such tenderness, with such a gentle voice, the fire slowly spreading across the log, crackling as the flames consumed the wood.

  I didn’t want to give S
idney the satisfaction of bringing tears to my eyes. I looked down at my lap, my hair veiling my eyes, and pinched my lips together so they wouldn’t tremble.

  This was the most acute form of torture that I could have experienced. Hearing Roger’s words read back to me by the man who had killed him was twisted, disgusting, and vile. It was wrong. Something so personal and intimate, between a man and the words he had written for his wife.

  And with each letter he finished…he tossed them into the flames, where I could only sit and stare helplessly as the flames licked across the pages, devouring his words before my very eyes.

  “…I hope you know that my love for you is as constant as the sun, as solid as the earth, and as vast as the galaxies. There is nothing in this world that could make me forget that. It is as strong as steel, as – ”

  I couldn’t take it. A small, audible sob escaped me, and I regretted it at once.

  “Oh, dear…is this too much for you?” Sidney asked. “I thought this might cheer your heart to hear your husband’s words one last time. Besides, you’ll be together with him soon enough. Isn’t that great to hear?”

  How could he talk about something so morbid so easily?

  I didn’t answer him. I just hung my head, not trusting myself to look up at him, terrified that I might crumble into a thousand pieces.

  “Very well…” he said. “Then let’s get this over with.”

  My head snapped up at precisely the moment that he threw all the rest of the letters into the fire, all at once.

  “No…” I whispered.

  “It had to be done,” Sidney said, staring into the flames.

  I have to get out of here…I thought.

  I gave the straps behind me one final tug…and was stunned when my right hand slipped free.

  I grasped onto the leather cord that slowly unraveled itself from around my wrist.

  My left hand was still tightly pinned to the chair.

  I carefully watched Sidney, who seemed to be relishing the moment as he watched one of his goals being fulfilled. He didn’t see as I shifted my right hand behind my back, inching it toward the cords tied around my left wrist.

  “I know you will never understand, Helen,” Sidney said, glancing over at me. I froze, pinning my right hand to my back. “But I am doing this for the good of the world.”

  “That seems rather dramatic, doesn’t it?” I asked, hoping to keep him busy long enough to be able to free myself.

  “Perhaps…” he said, his gaze returning to the fire. The last traces of the letters were being swallowed up by the flames. “And yet…this is a moment that I have waited for, for quite some time…”

  I managed to secure my fingers around the cord on my left arm, tugging on it as quietly and stiffly as I could, not wanting to alert him to what I was doing.

  “Now…how should I do this?” he asked, getting to his feet as the last of the paper curled up on itself, charring, and turning to smoke. “You have been a good friend to me. Taken care of me over the last few months. Kept me company. I should not like to make this death painful for you.”

  All the blood drained from my face. I tried to keep my eyes on him as he walked away from the fireplace.

  Tugging on the cord, I felt it loosen ever so slightly. My heart leapt. If I could just keep pulling –

  Sidney was behind me now, and so I moved my arm back to where it had been tied, hoping he wouldn’t look back at me.

  “I could use some simple medicine to poison you,” he said. “It would be utterly painless…as if you were falling asleep, slipping into a dreamless night. I could carry you back to your house, tuck you into your bed…and come morning, everyone would simply think that you died in your sleep.”

  “No,” I said. “I prefer to remain alive, thank you.”

  “Don’t we all?” he asked. “Very well, then what about a gunshot to the head? It would be instantaneous. I imagine you wouldn’t feel a thing.”

  My stomach twisted, and the bile returned. “N – no,” I said. “I would really like to just – ”

  “Yes, yes,” Sidney said. “I understand. All right, well…I have one other option, but it’s my least favorite. It would be – ”

  I tuned him out. He was standing down the hall, perhaps in a washroom or the like.

  I used the chance to tug and pull as hard as I could at the cord around my wrist, and to my elation, it gave.

  I was suddenly free.

  Just as I was about to stand up and charge for the door, Sidney reappeared in the kitchen.

  “I have these pills. Cyanide. I can’t say it will be pleasant, exactly, but it’s the same stuff soldiers have been using for some time now. They would have it in the form of a false tooth, and would chomp down on it if they were captured, so it would kill them almost instantly – ”

  As he approached me, my heart thundered in my chest. I knew I only had one chance, and that one chance might not even be enough.

  He stepped in front of me, and I took that chance.

  I launched myself out of the chair. With one motion, I brought my right hand around, curled into a fist, and it collided with the side of Sidney’s jaw. He stumbled backwards, clutching at his face.

  I had intended only to throw him off balance with the blow, giving me a chance to slip past him. Instead, I watched in surprise as his backwards stumble turned into a fall as his feet must have tangled beneath him. His hands clawed at empty air, finding nothing to catch hold of as he fell backward.

  I winced at the sharp thud that sounded as his skull collided with the edge of the stone fireplace behind him. I expected him to roll over and climb back to his feet. Yet, rather than fleeing, something held me in place as though my feet were glued to the floor.

  I stood there staring down on him until it gradually dawned on me that his eyes gazing upward were not fixed on me towering over him. No, they were gazing sightlessly toward the ceiling. A puddle of red stickiness began to form beneath his head, quickly growing until it ran across the floor. Still, no part of him twitched or moved.

  I knelt beside the body. With trembling hands, I reached out and pressed my fingers to Sidney’s throat.

  There was no pulse.

  I’d killed him. I’d killed a man with my own two hands. It may have been in self-defense and partially an accident, but I knew that I would never be the same again after today.

  He was going to kill me though, wasn’t he? The pills he’d been holding in his hands lay some distance away on the floor, having flown out of his grasp when he tried to stop me.

  The danger was over now, wasn’t it?

  It took me some time to gather myself enough to try and stand again. My knees were incredibly weak, and I wasn’t sure they’d be able to hold my weight.

  I staggered away from Sidney’s body and struggled to get down the stairs, nearly tripping and falling, grasping the handrail as if my very life depended on it.

  Drawing in shaky breaths, I grasped the railing, trying not to think about what had happened.

  Guilt wracked me. Sidney’s death was something that I could never take back. I had killed him…and I knew that would haunt me for the rest of my life.

  And something else that was troubling?

  I wasn’t even sure I knew his real name.

  He wasn’t Sidney Mason, I told myself over and over as I stumbled toward the back door. Sidney Mason never existed. The man that you fought with was a complete stranger. A dangerous stranger, and someone who was going to kill you had you not stepped in and defended yourself.

  It didn’t matter, though. Devastated as I was, I could think of nothing else besides how suddenly he had gone from living to dead.

  I tore out of the back door, letting it bang against the outside wall. It wouldn’t matter now, anyways. The occupant inside wasn’t alive to care whether or not the doors would be locked that night.

  I somehow dragged myself over to the gate between our yards, yanked it open, and made my way inside.

  Nu
mbness was all I could feel. My blood pumped through my veins, and somewhere, far in the back of my mind, I knew I should be shattering into thousands of pieces, likely to never be put back together.

  I found myself strangely calm now, however, as I unlocked the back door to my own home. The danger of being discovered had passed. And I had finally learned the truth.

  I closed the door behind myself, shutting out the world outside.

  There was one thing that was certain. I was going to have to tell someone what happened here. And there were very few who I could trust in the first place.

  That left me with only one option. I had to get the information to the one person I knew who could help me out of this mess, and protect me from whatever consequences I might have to face.

  He was not going to be pleased with me for having acted alone.

  I walked to the washroom, where I washed my hands, scrubbing so hard with the soap bar that my hands quickly turned raw. The blood had never touched me, yet I imagined it tainted my skin.

  I shuddered. It was going to be a long time before I was able to look myself in the eye again.

  14

  “So…Sidney Mason was not the man he seemed to be,” Inspector Graves said, pacing back and forth in front of the window.

  His dark eyebrows had knit themselves together in one, angry line. His jaw clenched and his hands clasped so tightly behind his back the knuckles had turned white, he’d listened to my tale of what had occurred at Sidney’s home such a short time ago.

  I realized as soon as I sat down in his office that there was a great deal of what Sidney told me that I could not share with the Inspector, because it had to do with my husband, and the military in general. I wasn’t sure how much I was even supposed to know – likely none of it – but Sidney thought I was going to die with the knowledge, along with the letters he’d so carelessly thrown into the fireplace.

  Sam glanced over at me. It had been some time since I’d spoken. My throat was hoarse from all the talking I’d done, and I was none too keen to relive the horrible memory again.