by Lani Lenore
Jefferson had separated the household, gathering all the involved parties into the parlor and shutting everyone else out. He was left with the owner of this house, William Ellington, a tall, fair–haired man who was graying suitably. Unlike the others, he refused to sit, instead propping up against the mantle. This man Ellington was wealthy and influential–not the sort of man you disturb in the middle of the night–but at this moment, Jefferson did not care. He was here; it was done.
There was a younger man who sat relaxed in a chair. He was Todd Ellington, the nephew of William. He seemed to be a calm and reasonable sort, but Jefferson could tell by the clenching of his fists and the continuous jerking movement of his foot that he was very anxious indeed. Something was amiss with that one.
A nice–looking blonde woman said stiffly on the sofa, gazing at the floor. She was Anne Wright, a live–in nanny. Her hands were joined together in front of her, but they did not move, tightly clamped. There was no doubt that she looked frazzled. There were bruises and she looked tired. She only stared downward. She was either deep in thought or deep in a trance. It was impossible to tell.
Huddled against the far end of the sofa was a girl much younger than the rest, but she sat as quietly as they did. Her name was Olivia Ellington, daughter to William, cousin to Todd, and charge of Anne. She looked only at her nurse. No one else.
After the constable had observed them, and with Blanchard standing behind him, he spoke. The fire crackled, expelling the cold.
“Now that we’re all calm and dressed, let’s see if I have this right.” He turned his attention to Anne. “You claim that these two gentlemen were plotting to kill a Mrs. Agatha Ellington by methodically poisoning her, and that once you found out and confronted them with this–tonight in fact–they tried to kill you as well. You said they were also going to murder this girl Olivia, since she was in your company. They stripped you both and tried to strangle you–hence the bruising on your throat–but you escaped and ran for help. Is that correct?”
Anne did not look at him.
“Yes,” she answered softly.
The copper then gave his attention to the two men.
“The both of you claim that this woman was caught acting in a very inappropriate way toward this young lady who is a patient in her care. You say that she made up the whole story of the poisoning and attempted murder in order to hide her own crimes? Is that correct?”
“Certainly correct,” Todd said without hesitation.
The officers turned their gazes toward William, who stood with shaking fingers to his head.
“Yes,” he finally agreed.
A short chuckle escaped the mouth of the senior officer.
“Now, everyone in this room certainly knows that not both of those stories can be correct. I’m not the one who’ll have to make the decision, but let me tell you that it would go much better for all of you if someone would like to tell the truth.”
The fire popped as it munched hungrily on the logs, but no one in the room said a word. They all remained as they had been, none of them looking at each other. Even Olivia had turned to look at the floor. Very well then; if this was how things were going to be…
“Would anyone like to tell me about what happened in the hall downstairs? Or is that a completely unrelated matter?”
Still, there was no response from any of them. In former years, he might have gotten angry at how they only sat there as if nothing was happening, but these days, he expected little more than that behavior. As a final resort, he moved toward the only one in the room who had not said anything the whole while: the young one named Olivia.
Jefferson moved to the girl and knelt down in front of her. He struggled to keep his voice soft, but it was certainly a task.
“Since you’re the only one who hasn’t said anything, I can only assume that you are trying to protect someone in this room. Or, maybe you’re afraid of someone in this room.”
Gradually, Olivia looked up at him.
“We can go into another room if there’s something you’d like to tell me.”
He gave her a warm look so that she might feel comfortable enough to talk.
“No,” the girl said suddenly. “It’s alright.” The girl opened her mouth, preparing to tell her story, and the officer smiled to himself.
Finally, Jefferson thought. Now we are getting somewhere.
7
Anne could hear it coming before it happened. Olivia had opened her mouth. As soon as she opened it, the truth of what really happened would come spilling out, but the story would sound like madness. No one would believe her. Then the girl would be sent away, and Anne would still be in trouble either way the cards were played.
But there was still a chance, wasn’t there? There was still something she could do, at least to save the girl.
Olivia parted her lips. “It was the Ra–”
“It was the toys and mice. They did it,” Anne said hastily.
Every face in the room turned toward the voice that had spoken up in Olivia’s stead. The woman on the other end of the settee sat, unmoving after her peculiar outburst.
Jefferson looked at her, quite unsure if he’d heard her correctly. “What?”
“The toys are alive,” Anne said, more strongly. “I saw them with my own eyes.”
She looked at him steadily, wearing a look of insistence. She knew they wouldn’t buy it, and she also knew that making herself seem insane would erase her credibility for every other claim she’d made tonight, but through this, Olivia would be saved. The girl would understand. She would know to keep silent.
The constable shook his head. The woman could not have actually believed this. She was just trying to throw them off the subject.
“Don’t play with us, miss…” he warned, but she interrupted.
“It’s true,” she exclaimed, standing. “You have to believe me. Just ask Olivia. Ask her!”
The policemen looked toward the younger girl, and Olivia tried again, but Anne broke back in before the girl had the chance to speak. She had no intention of letting her be involved in this.
“The toys and mice are fighting a war. I know; I was there. I saw what happened. That is why the mouse blood is on the floor and why the presents are ruined. I was shrunken like a tiny mouse and I saw them fighting.”
Anne looked toward Blanchard, who stood quietly near the wall, observing it all with wide eyes.
“You believe me, don’t you?” she asked, pleading. He did not have time to even consider a response for this woman which he, no doubt, believed he had rescued. Jefferson had heard enough of this farce.
“This is not a game, miss,” Jefferson warned, standing away from Olivia.
“No, it’s not a game!”
The woman stomped her foot into the floor angrily, but shortly after, when she had their silent focus, she calmed once again.
“It was the toys,” Anne insisted with the firmest, most honest face she’d ever put forth. “They did it.”
She told them the entire story from start to finish, sparing nothing except for Olivia’s involvement so that the girl would have nothing to agree with later. She spoke of the Jester puppet and the toy council. She told them of Brooke and his brothers. She told them of the Rat King and his evil. She told them of the nutcracker, of his deep depression and of her love for him. She spoke of how she had finally escaped. They all listened, each growing more confused by the moment as she raved on. After they had heard everything, Franklin Jefferson stood still and unmoved. Slowly, he tilted his head to the side.
“Get everyone out of this madhouse,” he told the young officer behind him. His voice was very calm. “No one touches anything, not even his own belongings.”
Chapter Forty: My Fair Lady
1
The fire never escaped the Rat King’s ballroom. It only burned on the pale tile until there was nothing left to devour, leaving only the large skeleton of a mutated rat and two pairs of iron clamps used for cracking nuts. Neithe
r were ever discovered.
Every resident of the Ellington house–guests and servants included–were ushered out, not even allowed to take their personal items. Grouchy investigators then combed over the house, searching every room starting with the stage for this play: Olivia’s, room on the third floor.
Their findings were atrocious.
Olivia’s room was a mess. The floor was stained with blood and there were many toys lying about. An abundance of dead mice and crushed toys were found beneath the bed. They found no clothes on the floor that might have been ripped off by Todd and William, as per the woman’s story. In fact, they found no garments of Anne’s at all until they found a grey dress stuffed beneath a large vase in the second floor hallway. It made little sense, but this finding discredited Anne’s words, giving more weight to Todd and William’s story.
The hall was just as much of a mess as Olivia’s room, and in their search, they found yet another room that was destroyed. It was the toy room kept by the other Ellington children. The dollhouse in the center of the room had collapsed, and they had found the broken clock tower in Olivia’s room. Once again, there were crushed toys lying about, but no evidence of mice in this area. Why had this room been ruined? Why, because it was a toy room, of course. It had to be destroyed in order to fit Anne’s story. Had Anne done it, or had someone known of her beliefs and staged it as if she had done this?
A rancid smell had led them into one of the guest rooms occupied by Clark and Janette Ellington, and within their armoire on the top shelf, they found a rather large oriental doll of cloth with a large pile of rotten food spilling out of its ripped stomach. There were candles lit on the shelf as if someone had been there recently, and there was quite a collection of religious symbols. They began to develop a theory at this point.
Perhaps the woman named Anne truly was insane. Could she have stripped in the hall and run about the rooms naked, playing with dolls in various places as if they were alive, destroying certain places to make it seem as though there had been a war between mice and toys? There were still problems with that. She could not have easily reached the armoire shelf in order to set all these things, and how could she have done it without light? Yet if she’d had light, how could she not have woken the sleeping guests? What about the mice? There was evidence of hundreds and she could not have supplied them all, even if she’d claimed to have released them in the house herself. There were so many holes, and they would admit, it did appear as if the gluttonous toy had eaten the food…
A search of Anne’s room had turned up nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing seemed out of place there, which also seemed odd to them.
They moved then to the next matter–the poisoning of Agatha Ellington. They searched the room Todd had been staying in, searching through his luggage to find, stored cleverly in a side pocket, a small vial of clear liquid. It was colorless and odorless; perhaps tasteless as well? It could have easily been water. They would have to test it later.
Assuming that it was poison, and if someone had not planted it in the young man’s bag, this would have been enough to lead him to the gallows. On top of that evidence, a search of William’s office revealed several burnt papers–a few of which could be read in tiny portions. Some even presented Todd’s name. There was one letter buried in a stack of others, unburned and giving enough hints in its wording to verify what Anne had said. William, with Todd’s help, had been poisoning his wife. The letter also spoke of an arrangement for Todd to take Olivia ‘after it was done’. This brought new things to light.
Even after all that, the most shocking thing was the body of the famous toymaker, Euan Ellington, which was found headless upon his bed. His body was tied with such an intricate web of tiny strings that the investigators could hardly get into the room without disturbing them. It was impossible to get near the body without removing several. The strings stretched out all over the room, wrapping around every part of the man so that it would have been impossible for him to move. Who could have done this? Who could have been smart enough to devise this, had the time it took to tie all these tiny strings? Why not simply use a bigger rope? Most of all, who could have been tiny enough to run all the strings without tangling themselves in? It would have been impossible. The investigators would admit that, at a glance, they would have to agree that only someone the size of a doll could have done this, but they were men of sense, and there had to be a different reason.
Euan’s head had been removed by a straight edge, something small and sharp, for there was evidence that the neck had been raggedly sawed. The head was finally found stuffed down in a shaft, wedged in between the third and second floor. It had been carved out, and resting against the skull, stuck in blood, they found mouse hair.
When questioned, William did not know his brother was dead and seemed genuinely concerned by the gruesome manner. Todd blamed it on Anne. Anne blamed it on the toys. Olivia had only cried. It was all very difficult. Very difficult indeed.
Anne’s story about the toys and mice might have seemed realistic if such a thing were possible. Certainly the officers could not believe it, but a part of them wanted to, simply because it would free both Anne and Olivia from horrible crimes that they could not have committed. Anne seemed to be the only one with no direct connection to Euan and no true reason to kill him, but she also seemed the most probable suspect. Perhaps it was an obsession with toys that had led her to kill a man who created them–so that there would be no more living toys. This was possible, though the crime was so gruesome that they did not imagine a woman could have done it. Such violence and care was a man’s game.
Then there was Olivia. What was her role–victim or suspect? The girl had been so quiet about everything, only saying things of no consequence whenever she spoke at all. There was something about her, and it was told to them by several servants that Olivia was the one with the toy obsession. She had been claiming for years that the toys spoke to her. She was sixteen years old, yet she acted as a child. This did not sit well with the investigators. It only complicated things more.
Why were all the pieces so scattered? Was it possible that Olivia had done everything and Anne had cleverly devised a way to cover up for the girl? Certainly, that was also possible. Olivia was the strange one, though harmless, and no one had reported anything but very polite and upstanding behavior on behalf of Anne–though a couple of servants hesitantly divulged suspicions of an affair with William. It was very clear that both men deserved severe punishment, but something did not fit on Anne and Olivia’s side of things.
Did the investigators have no hearts? Olivia was only a girl, younger on the inside than out. Was it wrong of Anne to want to give that girl a second chance? A chance to grow up? If the woman was willing to sacrifice everything to protect the girl, perhaps they should let her.
After all their searching had left several things still unexplained, this was the outcome:
The liquid in the vial was found to be a very sophisticated poison that had never been seen before, perhaps developed by the young Todd Ellington himself. The young man was found guilty of being an accomplice to attempted murder. Todd was sentenced to death, and his poison was sent to his former university for study.
William Ellington was, by evidence of the letters, charged with conspiring to murder his wife, but in order to get this rich, influential man squarely, they linked Euan’s murder to him in all ways possible. Something had to be released to the public, and they could not leave such a gruesome death unsolved. William was found guilty, and he too was sentenced to death.
The nurse, Anne Wright, was charged with inappropriate outbursts and conduct, and was blamed for all the damage to the house. Yes; they believed she had done it, but prison was not the place for a woman like her. They prosecutors were kind. A nice room was reserved for her at Bedlam. Under the asylum’s very special care, the world would be safe from her outbursts and strange ideas.
When people spoke of her after that, they shook their heads.
> Poor, poor Anne. She should have kept her desires harnessed. She should have accepted her place in the world and remained as a church mouse. Then none of this would have happened.
2
One month later…
From within the carriage, Olivia looked back at the house that she had spent her entire life in, seeing it loom now over the hushed street like some dark secret. She had spent every birthday here; every Christmas. Now she would have no more. She was leaving here, and she was never coming back.
The men were still loading the carts with furniture and luggage while Olivia and her siblings sat quietly inside the carriage with their mother. Things had been different since her uncle’s murder–since her father and Todd had been convicted. The life seemed to have drained from everyone. Even her mother, who had gradually been recovering from her illness over the past month, didn’t seem to fully understand what had happened to her family. But Olivia knew. Olivia knew exactly what had happened.
Anne was not with her anymore. She was just gone. Olivia knew where the woman was, but at the same time she did not. For the first time, Olivia could actually say she missed Anne being there, guiding her days. The girl might have been different and a bit odd, but she was not beyond comprehension. She understood that Anne had taken her place in punishment. She thanked the woman silently every day for saving her from that fate she would never know.
Everything had been terrible, truly awful–with all that had happened to her within the toy world–but after everything, Olivia had learned something important. She knew she did not want to live in that other world anymore. There was a barrier between them now, separating what was real from what was not real. She wanted what was real. She wanted to be in the same world as her brothers and sister; the same as her mother. Olivia was ready to grow up.