Capturing Her Castle
Dead, sunken eyes bulged luminously from his protruding skull beneath a stretched sheet of blotchy, pallid skin. His lip leaked a fresh stream of blood from an angled cut. A lone shard of glass that had been separated from its mirror was propped up against a wall from across the room. Leaning over the corpse, I gazed into the shard as a drop of blood from one jagged corner travelled across my reflection. My bagged eyes told that I hadn’t slept for a week. A recent outbreak of tuberculosis had brought about many victims from the working class. Sunken eyes, ashen skin and a mouth full of blood were the disease’s symptoms. With gloved hands, I turned the corpse’s head to face me. Underneath my gloves, his skin slipped out
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It spilled light even when it stood slightly ajar. I found Lady Aquitaine placidly lounging on a gilded chair, her hair loose and glistening from the lattice windows that were bright gold from the sunset.
“Good Evening Ma’am, when was the last time you had engaged with the deceased man?” I queried, my small voice soaking up the walls of this place.
“He had a nice treacle pudding when he came over for tea.”
“Why do you have lots of common, street loaves?” My question sounded too perturbed for it to be comfortable.
“Why, the deceased man would always mail us loaves of vulgar street bread to demonstrate his loathing for my husband. Hardly anyone in parliament stood up to the corpse’s proposed reforms.”
“What did you do with those loaves, if you knew that it had chalk in it?” I divulged, feeling my voice rising.
“Goodness! Do they?” I could tell that Lady Aquitaine was no criminal mastermind.
“Don’t fool with me ma’am, you smothered his face in chalk and cut his lip, didn’t you? Such poor attempts at hiding the true nature of his death.”
“Are you insinuating that I murdered him?!” she cried in fake horror.
“The sugar in his pudding must’ve come from somewhere and guess what the street sellers put in their sugar: arsenic. You poisoned my uncle didn’t you?!