He cackled silently - more in the shoulders, less in the mouth - at her reaction to the spider, but stopped when she actually had something parchment-like in her hands to bargain with! He blew the spider away right off his palm, leaving it to find itself a new crevice for a fresh web, and jogged after his elder sister in indignation.

She came to a stop eventually, engrossed in the papers. He prodded her gently in the back, wishing he were more than an inch taller than her so he could read better over her shoulder, but mouthing at her repeatedly until she next looked at him. WHO? He had to know who had murdered the kitchen boy as desperately as she did, sure that this must be the footman’s diary, and even surer she had found something. He widened his eyes quizzically: Does it say?

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OOC: Oops I missed this and let it die... and just before the murder reveal too! XDD

Eloquence stared at the torn journal entries, transfixed, then turned slowly to regard her brother, who gazed at her with curiosity that demanded to be satisfied. She was done squealing at spiders and giggling over unexpected hiding places; what she clutched in her hand now was serious business.

"It was he — the footman." She stood beside Nelson so they could share in the reading; Loq's dark eyes darted from left to right as she deciphered the footman's handwriting; which was much messier here than it had been in the rest of the journal.

"It seems he had quite the eventful fortnight... he writes of a secret, look here... and a kitchen boy who discovered his secret... the boy walking in on the footman and the lady of the house being — gosh, oh dear..." She couldn't read that surely, but she already had, and it was seared into her mind, which for all its murder mysteries was quite innocent of what the footman and the lady had been up to.

Fingers now pressed to her lips, eyes still wide, she looked to the second piece of parchment once more, concluding in a hushed voice: "the kitchen boy attempted to blackmail him... so the footman... the footman shut him up."

Nelson Higgs / Elias Grimstone

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   Nelson Higgs

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Nelson squished in beside her to get a good look at the sheaves of parchment, almost breathless with excitement as she read out the details as they unravelled. Squinting along at the hard-to-read handwriting, he pulled a disgusted face at the footman’s sordid secret, as Eloquence faltered for a moment.

The footman had done it to shut him up. He stepped back a pace in the revelation of it, his imagination repainting the picture of the bloodied candlestick and the body they’d learned of in this new light. And to think this had happened in their house!

(He would never admit it, but it did seem like fodder for nightmares, waking up in the middle of the night to find the shadow of the footman looming over him with a candlestick in hand like a beater’s bat.)

He nudged his sister thoughtfully in the arm to say huh, you’re not a bad detective, glancing at the missing paper again and wondering what had happened to Mr. Belflor the footman after disposing of his blackmailer. He tapped the footman’s name on the paper to ask it. If the incriminating page had stayed hidden for so long, had he weaseled his way out of the circumstances, and gotten away without being apprehended?

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Eloquence took the nudge as a gentle return to the present day; a reminder that they were safe in the here and now. It had happened eighty years ago, the murderer and the mistress and all others connected would be long gone. There was a guilty thrill about unraveling the tale, together with her favourite playmate, but it was still real, it had still happened, and suddenly Loq felt a desire to wrap this thing up.

She watched as Nelson tapped the footman's name thoughtfully, and allowed herself an expression equivalent to a shrug. "Who's to say what happened to him... I don't even know how one would find out. Perhaps we could show this at the library... or even the police station..." the idea made her feel a bit shivery. "Or maybe just..." she lowered the parchment a little guiltily. "Maybe we should talk it through over some hot cocoa in the kitchens."

  

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There were definitely threads they could unravel, if they liked, but who knew whether they would find anything else out about the murderer - maybe it was best just to let his imagination do the rest.

And what was better for the imagination than hot cocoa, anyway? Nelson gave his sister a lopsided grin and nodded, deciding that was a day’s mystery well solved and that they deserved that reward.

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