TALES FROM MORTIFER HOUSE - Part Ten - Breaking The Code - Secrets and Lies

 

Eleanor waited a week or so for Angus to return to Mortifer and disappear again. She then extracted the coded journal from the study and went to the drawing room to try and decipher it. Things had been so quiet in the house since she had issued her threat that she almost believed she had frightened the spirits into submission.. Almost. Also it seemed her powers of reading peoples fates was thankfully fading, she felt now that had been the entity's way of getting her initial attention. She couldn't explain any of it or even begin to understand either. It was all so bizarre and beyond anything she'd ever come across it bewildered her on a daily basis. 

It took so much concentration to try and work the code out and read the faded writing that Eleanor ended up with quite the headache but she spent hours pouring over the journal to the point that her family wondered where she was half the time. Every chance she got she would do a bit more, even if it was only a few words. They soon knew to remind her that they needed feeding but she found herself obsessed without regret, wanting to understand the background that her husband had come from until she realised the secrets within were such that they could destroy the very fabric of their foundation. 

The very first part she translated revealed so much. Charles wrote : 

September 7th.  

Tonight I had a shock most dreadful. I came home admittedly after a long absence that included much drinking and yes, a few willing women of the tavern I frequented. I returned home to find that Emma had appointed a new housekeeper. But that new housekeeper was Elizabeth Arden. I feigned that I did not recognise her but I of course did. She did not look me in the eye for fear of giving something away. How she ended up here in the position of housekeeper I have no idea, but she is clearly devious. 

How can I tell Emma that the person she has appointed has an agenda to destroy everything within Mortifer? She cannot and will not destroy my family, my life at home which is so separate to all I have outside these walls. I will remove her one way or the other no matter how indispensable Emma feels she is. I care deeply about what happens within our home and Emma deserves to be protected from her bitter revenge. 

Love is a strange thing, how quickly it turns and sours and I have learnt that actually, love is not necessarily exciting and passionate and not necessarily what you thought it was, but is this too late a realisation? 

 September 9th. 

Well it did not take Elizabeth long to reveal her true colours. Already she has taken me aside and threatened to reveal all to my wife unless I allow her to move into the house and remove Emma and the children. She says that I owe her that much.  I told her she cannot threaten me but this afternoon she came to the house with the twins. Her son absolutely resembles Angus I do not know how this escapes Emma but somehow, some way, she has not yet made the connection. To think I declared to love this woman over dear sweet Emma confounds me. For some reason, and I do not know why, I cannot give my love to Emma. 

September 12th.

Elizabeth has already made herself indispensable within the household and Emma has welcomed James and Sarah into the nursery to play with Angus and Jane.  She and Emma laugh together more like friends than that of a professional nature. 

 Every single day Elizabeth threatens to expose me so I allow her to become more and more integrated in our household. Then I look at her and she has a hold over me I cannot explain. I am torn, she was my first love and those children are mine also. She was betrothed and then married to another so was never free to be with me.

September 14th.

I returned from a trip to see my business associates and Elizabeth met me on the drive way. She is demanding I tell Emma everything or she will ruin me. 

She continued her threats and I ignored her, but then she said she would take our children's lives  if I didn't confess everything to Emma and let her be the mistress of Mortifer House. She let slip that her husband has abandoned her for another.

At this point Eleanor paused. She honestly considered would she continue reading this highly personal account 0f people gone before her and would it actually help the unrest within Mortifer? But she knew she could not stop. 

September 30th.

The house is in turmoil, Emma is very, very sick and in so much pain. Elizabeth has dropped all threats to care for my wife, making her soup, mopping her brow and ensuring her bedlinen is changed regularly to keep her comfortable. I am so very afraid I will lose my wife. The wife that has stood by me through everything, despite my misdemeanours. The wife who I care so deeply for.

Elizabeth is running the house, feeding the children and caring for Emma's every need, she has been incredible and I honestly don't know what we would do without her help. It is good to see that she has put her needs aside even if it is only temporary.

October 2nd.

Emma took a turn for the worse in the night. I ran down to the doctors house and then sat and held her hand praying she would still be there in the morning. She is deathly pale and shallow of breath. She hasn't opened her eyes in two days. Elizabeth has had to feed her water from a spoon which is only partially successful. 

The doctor can find no cause for her malaise and we can only continue to keep her comfortable and pray that she recovers. 

The sound of birds distracted Eleanor one day, she realised with horror that she had been up all night and dawn was breaking. She was exhausted.  She knew, obviously, that Emma must have recovered. After all she had died of old age while she herself had been living here. She frowned and wondered what had happened to Charles, there had never been any word of him in all the time she had known Angus. He was older than Emma, surely he must be dead by now? 

She yawned and stretched, her shoulders were stiff from bending over the journal, she would allow herself just a few minutes on the sofa until the girls awoke. 

Shortly after the girls came down and found her sound asleep. Grace covered her with a blanket and quietly led Alice off to get breakfast in the kitchen. 

When she awoke she was acutely aware that Angus was due back that day. She washed, dressed saw that the children were catered for and then went back to the journal. She was like a dog with a bone, unable to leave it alone. 

Just a few more entries...

October 8th.

Emma made it through and seems a little better. She is so fragile and pale though. Once she is strong enough I will send her to a sanatorium, it is the very least I can do. Elizabeth is tireless in her quest to help, doing every task possible about the house she retires to bed only once everyone else is settled and is up way before the rest of the house. 

October 10th.

The twins are now sick. I do not know what ails them but they are weak and listless and vomiting hourly just like Emma was when first she got sick. I am keeping Alice and Grace well away from them - I have sent them to their sister Flora and her husband James Arnold for now.

Elizabeth and I managed between us to make temporary beds for them in with Emma this makes it easier for Elizabeth to care for them as well. I have two women in my life who are the perfect mothers to my children, I do not know of many who could claim this, albeit a somewhat strange set up all in all. 

October 13th.

I was woken this morning by Elizabeth's scream piercing the house. I rushed to her side, Emma was sitting up bewildered still weak and unable to move. Elizabeth was cradling James's lifeless body and Sarah was barely breathing, they died within a few minutes of each other. 

I can barely write this passage such are the thoughts in my head. 

Here there was a big patch of smudged ink and Eleanor felt tears form as she thought of Charles writing this alone in his grief. Despite everything, she sympathised with this man although he was little more than a fool in her eyes.

The house will be in a period of mourning and I shall arrange for Emma to go to the sanatorium despite her protests. I need her to get better and I can comfort Elizabeth without raising suspicion. Angus and Jane will reside at our good friends house until we can come to terms with the sad loss of the twins. 

 October 16th.

Emma was taken to the Bathhurst Sanatorium this morning, just for a few weeks. 

The twins funerals have been arranged, Elizabeth sits and keeps vigil over them often falling asleep by them where we have laid them out in the drawing room surrounded by flowers. The mirrors are covered, the clocks stopped and I have hung a laurel wreath at the door. 

Elizabeth is grief stricken as am I but at least we are able to comfort one another without suspicion being raised.  She has asked nothing of me but that I deal with the arrangements and a request that they might be placed in the Mortifer tomb in the grounds of the chapel. This I am more reluctant to do and it may take some explaining to Emma upon her return.  For now however, I have made this available and ready. 

October 18th.

The funeral was today. The coffins looked so tiny in the horse drawn hearse on the short journey to the chapel. A few eyebrows were raised I am sure, that a housekeepers children should have such a grand send off.  A few more were probably raised sky high at their interment in the Mortifer tomb. But I defended this decision saying that it was the least we could do given they had died under the roof of  a Mortifer home. The tomb is far superior than any servant could ever afford. Emma's absence was noted but understood under the circumstances amongst those who turned out across the town in their droves to watch the carriage make the final journey. 

Eleanor felt emotionally drained. There really wasn't much time before Angus was due to return. Her head pounding, partially from lack of sleep, she shut the journal and took the paper she had been writing the translation on, carefully folding it. She would need to return the journal to the study and place the translated version of events in the wooden trunk beside her bed along with everything else she had found. 

Once the journal had been placed back in it's secret drawer and the translation papers put safely in the trunk Eleanor sat on her bed and wondered what, if anything, Angus knew about his half brother and sister. Her eyelids grew heavy and she lay down to try and get some respite from this headache that refused to budge. Within a few minutes she slipped into a fitful sleep, the events of the journal played out in her dreams, almost as if she were there. 

She awoke with a start and as she rubbed sleep from her eyes and sat up she realised it was growing dark and she was ravenously hungry. She was acutely aware that she had let her parental responsibilities slip badly. Grace was very self sufficient but she had had little contact with her mother in recent days making Eleanor feel instantly guilty. 

She would go and find the girls and check if they needed anything. As she swung her legs off the bed, skirt rustling as she did so, she could hear laughter and then low voices. Angus was home and chatting to Grace and Alice in the room below. 

She would use the headache as a reason for her absence she thought, as she crossed the room to her dressing table. She really needed to make herself presentable for Angus.  As she brushed her hair and studied her reflection, just for a fleeting moment she thought she saw a shadowy figure in the mirror behind her.  A woman dressed completely in black, in what looked like mourning clothes. She swung round immediately, hairbrush in hand but there was nothing there. She looked back. Again nothing. A trick of the light maybe? 

But she knew that she wasn't really convinced and began bracing herself mentally for further activity. She was strong, but she didn't know just how much longer her nerves could cope with this. 

Sarah Russell 2022