Elizabeth: Part VII

(Story begins here.)

``So, you mentioned that all the previous masters of the manor had asked you about the apparition. What happened to each of them?'' Anton asked as he observed the housekeeper's reaction. There was a sudden dark cloud that seemed to pass through the housekeeper's eyes, followed by the unmistakeable demonstration of fear from the sudden constriction of the pupil made obvious by the greenish iris. The housekeeper looked away and cleared his throat before trying to continue.

``They... they all met different ends. Some had hung themselves at various parts of the house---I will not tell you where, Master Anton, forgive me---while others had ended up throwing themselves off their horses in all manners, breaking their necks or heads as they did so. Foul play was never suspected. All official investigations always turned up ruling the deaths by either suicide or by misadventure. There were no obvious signs of the apparition being the cause, but somehow I suspected that it was the only reason why each of these men met their dooms the way they did since there was no other common linkage among them other than the fact that they could trace their lineage back to the ancestor in which the trust managing this manor was founded upon in one form or the other.''

``No foul play whatsoever? Not even the chance of the newer master trying to off the previous one or the trustees having some kind of conspiracy?'' Anton asked in disbelief.

``Not that I know of, not that the official investigations showed,'' the housekeeper answered quickly and earnestly.

``How long did they live between first seeing the apparition and their... untimely demise?''

``It varies,'' Mr Higgins replied, looking visibly shaken now. ``Some were gone within a week, others took as long as six to eight months before they... they perished. I'm sorry Master Anton, I have served many of these men before as their housekeeper the way I am serving you now, and each time I bring up the memories on them I am forced to revisit the trauma of finding their motionless bodies in their various broken ways, and... it had been too much. I had wanted to quit a long time ago, but there were no others who would dare to be the housekeeper here. The trustees pay me handsomely to be here, which explains why I am still here despite it all, but the sheer rememberance of the past has at times caused me no small amount of discomfort. Please forgive me, Master Anton as I take my leave. Already I think I have spoken too much.''

Mr Higgins stood up against Anton's half-hearted protestations, gave a small bow, before backing himself out of the dining room and back into the kitchen where his wife was.

Anton sat at the table and dug into the remainder of his food in silence, his mind cranking through what he had heard and experienced. He had no doubt as to what he had witnessed the night before, but having the same circumstance appearing over the past fifty or even more years was bordering more on the suspicious than the supernatural, considering that the stories that were told to each master was, according to the housekeeper, seemingly tailor-made for each person, something that was wholly inconsistent with many of the hauntings that he had known.

Apart from the house, and the lineage, the only other commonality among all of the previous masters was that their housekeepers were of the Higgins family. That the housekeeper was still willing to be present as merely a housekeeper was already very suspicious, the high pay notwithstanding. Why, if the pay were that good, would it not be better of the housekeeper were appointed by the trustees to be the official master of the manor instead of having so many men sent to their doom?

The more he ate and thought about the issue, the more absurd it started to sound in his head. There was plenty of opportunity for the housekeeper to exact mischief, though it was not clear what the motives may be. Anton couldn't be bothered with solving this apparent mystery on his hands, but the prospect of being the next dead master of the manor was much less appealling than expending effort to figure out just what was going on. With that in mind, Anton decided to spend his time researching on the history of the manor after breakfast.

(Story continues here.)