“Italy.”
“I beg your pardon, Brother?”
It was only seeing Cecilia’s bewildered expression that he realized that he had misheard her question.
“I meant to say that she seems to be doing quite well.”
“Is that all, Brother?”
“Yes.” As he turned to go he remembered, “Oh! And, er, Italy.”
* * *
Anthony collapsed on his bed and stared at the ceiling. The afternoon sunshine was occasionally dimming as the thick clouds meandered through the sky like hefty sheep.
He pulled out the key string that he wore around his neck. It had two keys on it now. One for his study, and one that mother had given him shortly before she died.
He turned it around between his fingers. After the horrid ordeal with Colin in August, Anthony turned his bedroom upside-down and inside out looking for this very key. It turned out he had carelessly left it in the pocket of one of his coats.
It was far too small to fit any door, so Anthony determined that it had to be for mother’s correspondence box, which likely contained the papers and letters thatColinwas looking for.
She must have been planning to reveal all before her death, but never got the chance to. I put the key in my pocket but forgot all about it when she died just a few hours later.
The trouble was that Anthony had organized the entire household to search the house from top to bottom, even helping Fletcher pry open some floorboards. But the mysterious papers and letters continued to elude them.
Mrs. Oakley put forth the supposition that perhaps his mother had actually burned the letters before she had died. However, if that were the case, then why would she bother giving him the key at all?
No, it’s somewhere here. I must find it. I can’t let any documents fall into the wrong hands.
True, at this moment, Colin was probably counting down the days to his trial. But Anthony didn’t want to leave anything to chance. So the sooner he could secure the correspondence box, the better.
Perhaps sensing his pain, Herbert and Archimedes—whom Meredith left behind because she believed there was no better place for a cat than an estate—joined him on the bed. The former being so bold as to crawl onto his chest, while the latter planted himself by the pillows.
“I shall have to testify against him, you know,” he said to the oblivious, purring ball of fur on his chest. “I will need to somehow speak about the unspeakable things he did to us all. And worse, I shall have to do so with the aim of getting him locked up indefinitely.”
Neither of the cats seemed to think there was any problem at all with what he had just said. They seemed perfectly at peace with it, which was far more than could be said for Anthony.
“It’s not that I don’t have anything to say to him. I do. In fact, quite a lot of it happens to comprise of choice words and their variations. In fact, just that image of him heartlessly aiming his pistol at Meredith makes my blood—”
He caught himself as he noticed that Herbert had stopped purring and was now regarding him with wide eyes.
So Anthony reassured him with ear scratches, “Don’t you worry, Bertie, I shan’t go down the same road thathedid. On my life, Iwill prove to be a better son, and a far better brother. And I shall do so in therightway. Isn’t that right, Bertie, old boy?”
Delighted with the ear scratches—and quite possibly his owner’s promise—Herbert had resumed his purring.
“And I’ll tell you another thing, even though I know that you have probably caught onto it by now—after all, you have always struck me as quite intelligent for a cat—but in spite of Kenneth’s claims that he has grown bored and weary of the quietness that comes with the estate lifestyle, we’ve been seeing quite a lot of him these days, haven’t we?”
The purring carried on.
“That’s right. But don’t you worry about him either, Bertie. He and I have already gone over the events in great detail numerous times, both with and without the aid of alcohol. As harrowing and agonizing as all of this has been, it would appear that it has strengthened my bond with Kenneth as opposed to driving us apart. I suppose we could call that a silver lining of sorts, right?”
The purring was briefly interrupted as Herbert yawned wide. Searching for a more meaningful response or input, Anthony strained to turn his head to see what Archimedes was up to.
“By the way, Archie, a letter from Meredith came in today. Would you like me to read it to you? Yes? My apologies, Bert, but you shall have to get off of my chest now.”
He sat upright and extracted Meredith’s letter from his right pocket while Herbert stretched his legs and back before plopping down next to Archimedes. As he read through it once more, the hole in his heart reminded him that he had lost not just one, but two best friends by the end of last August.
He decided that now would be a good time to let his mind wander again. So he closed his eyes and transported himself back to that fateful day.
