The second article was much of the same. It appeared to be a very short follow up to the original story. They hadn’t found any suspects and as the bones were likely in the grave for a long time, they were shelving the investigation. It also noted that the bones were to be buried in the town cemetery following Christian rites.
“That proves it then. It is definitely Eve’s grave out there. She’s the unknown woman,” Charlie concluded.
“What makes you so certain? There is nothing in the article that says anything about Eve. Besides it being a teenager and female, what else is there?”
“She had a snapped neck.”
“So? We don’t know how Eve was killed. She could have been poisoned or suffocated. She could even have been shot or stabbed to death. None of those would cause a snapped neck.”
“I know Eve died of a snapped neck because that’s how she died in my dream,” Charlie tried to recall the details of her nightmare. She thought about it for a few moments before continuing. “There was a man. He went up to her, put his hands on the side of her head and snapped it. Just like that, she was gone.”
“I’m no scientist, but it wouldn’t be easy to snap someone’s neck. It would take a lot of strength to be able to do that like you’re saying.”
“There was a lot of strength behind it. I know, I felt it. In my dream, I was her. I felt the hands over her ears and I felt the way he squeezed her head so that he had a tight enough grip. Just before I woke up I felt her neck break apart.”
“Are you serious? You never told me how graphic your nightmares were. No wonder we sleep with the light on now.”
“Poor Eve. No wonder she hasn’t crossed over. First she was killed by some guy and then her body was just dumped. I wonder if her family knew what had happened to her?”
“They knew enough to know that she was murdered. I doubt they would have known about her body being found. Her immediate family would have all been long gone by 1913.”
“I wonder how they knew she had been murdered if they didn’t have a body? Wouldn’t it be just as plausible to think she had run off or purely disappeared?”
“Maybe they did know about her body then. Maybe they were the ones who buried her,” Blair offered.
“The poor girl, whatever happened. Imagine burying your own child in an anonymous, shallow grave. You don’t think they had something to do with the murder too, do you? You have to admit it’s a bit strange.”
“Things were done differently two hundred years ago. They were the celebrities of the time. I would suspect they would have done anything to protect their family name. It would also tie in to their mental state later on. They could have been so racked with guilt they couldn’t function properly.”
“The other daughters would have known about it too though. They would have had to stay quiet about what their parents had done to their sister. Anything’s a possibility, I guess,” she sighed, resigning herself to the fact that anybody could have been a suspect. She recalled a television program she had seen a few months earlier on the Crime and Investigation network. It had stated that most murders are carried out by someone the victim knew. Not a nice thought. It certainly makes you look at your loved ones differently.
“I guess we’ll have to keep our minds open, everyone’s a suspect. You ready to go?”
Charlie nodded and they slowly walked back to the car, thanking Brenda on the way out. She gave them a smile and wished them a good afternoon. Blair decided she was way too perky to be a librarian, she would have been better suited to being a presenter on the home shopping network. She would easily be able to sell hundreds of steam mops a day. She seemed out of place in a quiet and deserted library.
Arriving home, they saw Cate’s car parked in the driveway. She was in the living room doing her ironing when they walked through the front door. She rushed over to meet them after taking one look at Charlie.
“What happened? You look terrible. You’re as white as a sheet,” Cate exclaimed. Blair helped her into the living room, Cate still fussing over her.
“I’m okay. I just had a bit of a weird experience.”
“She’s actually looking better than she was before. When it first happened, she didn’t have an ounce of colour in her,” Blair interrupted.
“Tell me what happened,” Cate demanded.
“We went to the cemetery to try and find Eve’s grave. I found one and I had a bit of an episode. I’m okay though. Blair looked after me and we went to the library to check on the grave. I’m fine, really.”
“This ‘episode’, should I be worried about it happening again? Could it happen to Rahni? She’s upstairs playing, should I let her out of my sight?”
“Don’t worry Cate, I’m sure it’s just a one off event. Plus, I survived. If it happens again, we know what to do now. Blair knows how to get me out of it.”
“That’s reassuring. I can’t tell you how creepy it was here today with just Rahni and I. I kept looking over my shoulder. Poor Rahni. I didn’t want her to go upstairs because then I’d be alone down here. I think she suspects her mother has gone off the deep end. Can I get you anything?”
“I’m fine. I’m just really tired. I think I’ll take it easy this afternoon and just watch television, if that’s okay with you?”
“Of course it is. Blair, you keep a close eye on her. She’s the only sister I’ve got.”
The remainder of the day was spent watching the television together. All three of them sat through a movie and endless sitcom repeats before finally retiring to bed.
Charlie felt particularly uneasy about going to bed that night. She dreaded having another nightmare, yet she was exhausted from the day’s events. Eventually she let herself fall asleep, too tired to fight it any longer.
* * *
There had been no nightmares during the night. Just a peaceful sleep washed over Sage Manor. The alarm clock awoke Blair and Charlie from a deep sleep at a respectable eight a.m. They quickly showered and dressed before having breakfast. They had offered to stay home with Cate but she was one step ahead of them and had arranged a play date for Rahni. Anything was better than staying in the house, she had said. So now, they were heading back into town. Their destination was the County Courthouse and their goal to see what records they held on local births and deaths.
The Courthouse could easily have been passed by if you didn’t know what you were looking for. It blended in with all the other converted residential houses in the street. It had green walls both on the inside and out, a shade the same colour as an almost dead leaf. The only distinguishable feature it possessed were metal bars secured over every window. They weren’t sure whether they were there to keep people in or out of the building.
Charlie and Blair opened the door and a small bell tinkled to life overhead to announce their arrival. It only took a short moment for a woman to greet them behind the counter. Her demeanour could only be described as curt, she obviously hadn’t taken deportment lessons in the last fifty years.
“What do you want?” She demanded.
Charlie thought for a moment and decided to take the overtly polite route. “Hello. We were wondering if you hold any records on births and deaths in the area? Or any other type of historical records?”
“There’s a museum in the back. There’s also a computer that has some things on it.”
“May we go through to the museum?”
The woman nodded and pointed a finger down a hallway before disappearing again. They quickly left the counter and hurried down the corridor. At the end was a large room they assumed was the ‘museum’. Had they been expecting something bigger than one room with a few display cabinets, they would have been severely disappointed.
They wandered around the cabinets. In one display were a few rusty tools that could barely be recognised. The plaque told them they were unearthed when the new church was being constructed and believed to date back to the mid nineteenth century.
The other cabinets were much along the same
lines. A few old relics that had been discovered underground throughout the years. The collection was mainly made up of objects they couldn’t just throw away but didn’t actually have a use for either. They looked like they accumulated in the courthouse until they had enough to form a museum of sorts. There was nothing that would tell them anything about Sage Manor and its previous occupants.
“Charlie, come and have a look at this,” Blair beckoned. He was standing in front of a photograph that was part of a cluster of black and white pictures. Charlie joined him and scanned her eyes across the photo. It was of a dozen young couples. The women were all wearing white dresses and smiling sweetly. The men were standing just behind them in black suits, their hair parted neatly down the middle. The board resting at their feet declared that they were attending a Debutant ball.
“They’re beautiful dresses. I wonder how old this is?” Charlie said.
“I didn’t call you over to admire the dresses. Check out the name,” he pointed to the row of names printed underneath the photograph. Charlie read through the first line and saw what Blair had seen. The name printed was Violet Reign.
“She’s this one. Good looking, wasn’t she?” Blair pointed to the young woman standing three spaces from the left. She looked to be about seventeen years old with long dark hair. Her dress would rival any bride’s today. Charlie kept looking through the names before she found what she’d hoped to find. On the other side of the photo was another of the Reign family, Violet’s younger sister Eve.
“Blair, that’s Eve. I can’t believe we found her.” They stared into the picture. Eve was shorter than her sister and didn’t bear the same dark hair. Her dress was simpler too, like they didn’t have as much time to prepare for her debut. She was smiling a beaming grin that was reflected in her eyes with a sparkle. Her blonde hair was falling over her shoulders in a wave. If Violet was good looking, Eve was outright beautiful.
“It says here that her male partner was a guy named Ethan Lester. They make a cute couple,” Blair noted, reading through the names again.
“The only daughter missing is Joanna. She’s definitely not there. She must have made her debut earlier.”
“She was the older one, right? I would put Violet at about sixteen or seventeen, which might make Joanna a bit too old to debut. She might have debuted in England before they left.”
“It also makes Eve a little too young. I wonder why they let her debut to society at such a young age,” Charlie pondered aloud.
“It’s the country, maybe there wasn’t going to be another ball for a few years.”
“Let’s see if they’re on the computer.”
Charlie walked over and sat in front of the computer monitor. On the screen was a field for a name or date of birth. She typed in ‘Eve Reign’. There were no matches. Next, she typed in ‘Ethan Lester’. There were two matches, a birth certificate and a death certificate. She clicked into the birth certificate first.
Ethan John Lester was born in London in 1781 to his proud parents Mary and Jonathon. His father’s occupation was listed as a Sergeant in the Royal Navy. She went back to the previous screen and clicked into the death certificate. Ethan John Lester died in 1847 from pneumonia. He was still living in Pickerton and died in the local hospital.
“Ethan was robbing the cradle, he must have been about ten years older than Eve,” Blair commented from over her shoulder.
“It’s possible he was just a family friend. I can’t imagine little Eve having a boyfriend at that age to take her to the ball.”
“True. Violet’s date looks closer to her in age, so she might have had a suitor. Eve, on the other hand, would have been too young for her family to allow a man to pursue her.”
“Remember that for when we have kids, okay?” Charlie joked. She moved the screen back to the search boxes and stood. “I don’t think there’s anything else here for us, shall we get out of here?”
Blair nodded. They walked back through the corridor and went to thank the woman at the counter but she wasn’t there. Instead, they went straight through and opened the door before heading back to the car.
They checked on the time, it was almost one o’clock. They decided to pick up some lunch. They ate in one of the parks that adjoined the main street. It was a beautiful day with the sun warming them but not beating down too heavily. Next on their list of things to get done that day was to visit the hardware store. They picked up some supplies before heading home.
Cate and Rahni were still out on their play date so they set about their work in the attic after changing into the oldest clothes they owned. They knew they were going to get filthy dirty, at least they wouldn’t be ruining their clothes in the process. Charlie started sweeping while Blair worked on removing all the cobwebs. They worked there for the remainder of the afternoon, cleaning and ridding the room of decades of dust. The chest was still sitting in the middle of the room, they left it there and worked around it. Only moving it when absolutely necessary.
They were packing up when Cate and Rahni arrived home with some Chinese take-out for dinner. They were relieved to have the attic job done, they had put it off for as long as they could. Now, as their backs and shoulders ached, they could finally tick it off their list.
After dinner that evening, and after Rahni had been put to bed, they finally had the chance to update Cate about their day.
“We found a picture of Eve in the courthouse,” Charlie started.
“What does she look like?” Cate asked.
“Long blonde hair. She was at a Debutante ball. The picture was of all the girls being debuted to society.”
“How sweet.”
“We’ve been theorising all afternoon about how a young woman like that could possibly be murdered only a few years later,” Blair interrupted.
“What did you come up with?”
“Well, so far we think the parents might have had something to do with it. Their actions afterwards are a bit suspicious. They might have been trying to protect the good family name or something.”
“It was something Hope Baker said that kind of got us thinking,” Charlie added. “She said Eve caused a stir in the family. Then, when we found her grave unmarked it didn’t make sense. It was widely known in the family that Eve was murdered. How did they know without having a body?”
“Well, if someone went missing you could pretty much assume that they’d been killed,” Cate said sceptically.
“How could you assume that? She could have just gone missing or run away. I feel like I know her through my dreams which, granted, isn’t much. But, from what I do know about Eve, she was a bit ahead of her times. In the best case scenario, she could have fallen in love and tried to run away with her lover. The Lord and Lady find out and are scandalised. They do what any people threatened would do and eliminate the threat.”
Cate didn’t like what she was hearing. “Parents wouldn’t just kill their daughter because she had a boyfriend. They would lock her up and throw away the key. You have to remember, we are speaking about another era. Parents could control their children much more than they can these days. They would have forbid the relationship, she would have cried and sulked, and then they all would have gotten over it.”
“Unless Eve was a rebel and wouldn’t accept it. They might have caught her with him and gone into a rage. They could have accidentally killed her and buried her body in a shallow grave on the outskirts of Pickerton.”
“I think we should keep an open mind to any possibility,” Blair interjected, noticing the conversation was starting to get heated. He didn’t want a repeat of the dinner conversation from earlier in the week. “As a bit of a side note, her date was about ten years older than her. We think he was probably just a friend of the family, though. No scandal there.”
“What did he look like?” Cate asked, grateful of the slight change in subject.
Charlie felt more qualified to answer the question rather than Blair. “He was fairly good looking. He had dark hair and
a cute smile. He was probably a nice guy, taking the time out to attend a teenager’s ball. The Reigns must have trusted him to accompany their daughter for the night.”
The lights in the house suddenly went out, leaving the place in complete darkness. There had been no warning, not even a dimming of the lights beforehand.
“I’ll go and check the electricity box,” Blair volunteered. He stood and felt his way around the walls, only tripping a few times on Rahni’s toys left out on the floor. He hit his knee on the end table before finally reaching the front door.
Outside was slightly clearer with rays of moonlight casting a glowing white light in the sky. It gave him enough sight to be able to find the electricity box and peer inside. From what he could see, everything appeared normal. The safety switch was still in the ‘on’ position. He flicked it a few times and walked around to the front of the house again. The lights were back on, he sighed with relief before returning back to the box to secure it closed.
He hurried back inside, he found it creepy being outside alone. Cate and Charlie were still seated in the living room.
“Did something trip the safety switch?” Cate asked.
“I don’t think so. All I did was flick the switch a few times. It might be a good idea to get an electrician out to check on your wiring. It’s not the first time the lights have acted funny lately.”
“I will do. The last thing we need is the wiring going out. It would be a huge job to fix it. All this excitement has made me tired. I think I’ll go to bed. Thanks for fixing the lights, Blair.” Cate left the room as they said ‘goodnight’. They could hear her footsteps ascending the steps a few moments later.
“I think I’ll do the same. You ready for bed?” Charlie asked.
“Am I ever. It seems like it’s been a long day.”
“I agree. This cleaning lark is not good for the body.”
“Let’s do something else next summer. A cruise around Greece sounds like much more fun,” Blair took Charlie’s hand in his and they walked up the stairs together.
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