Elizabeth: Part XI

(Story begins here.)

Anton decided to press on, to find what he thought was going to be the truth. If he managed to find it, it would be great, and if he died trying, at least there were no regrets. It wasn't the case that Anton wanted to be a martyr of some sort; the manor itself was sufficiently obscure that even he didn't know anything about it until the trustees contacted him and informed him that he was the new master. In fact, the whole affair sounded so suspiciously strange that at first blush, he didn't want to accept the position. But after being persuaded again and again, he relented, and now the whole Elizabeth affair was starting to stare him down like a decision made wrong.

He wanted to right that decision. It was a matter of principle.

If the housekeeper (or family for that matter) had anything to do with it, he wanted justice to be served. Years of declaring homicides as suicides was morally reprehensible no matter how he looked at it. He blamed himself a little for his need for having a morally upright attitude to things, but in his heart he knew that doing the right thing was always the right way to proceed, no matter how costly it may end up. Besides, at this point, it was still his life on the line, and if he succeeded, he would have won back something that was priceless. There was nothing else that could beat that, no matter how one tried.

Anton looked at the desk clock and realised that he had already used up an hour of time making his decision. Lunch was coming up soon, and there was a high chance that Mr Higgins would drop by the study to summon him for his meal in the dining room. This meant that there was also a good chance of the housekeeper realising what it was that he was doing and therefore get all suspicious and might even potentially bring forward whatever nefarious programme he had due to the perception of a running out of time. That was clearly a situation that Anton didn't want happen. An idea suddenly dawned upon him---to use another book as a cover. He walked over to the religion section of the library and selected a beautifully bound version of the King James' Edition of the Holy Bible and laid it atop the empire desk and sat back down on the high-backed chair. He opened up the bible to somewhere near the centre pages, and opened up the journal, placing the latter immediately below the former so as to be covered easily by the much thicker book in front of it.

His primitive cover set up, Anton proceeded to read the journal.

(Story continues here.)