4th April, 1890 — Higgs Residence, Hampstead
Eloquence Higgs / Bragi Holm

It was always odd to be back home in the middle of the year, when Ravenclaw Tower was as much home as any could be. Plucked out of the routine of classes for just a few days was always disorienting, though naturally he was pleased to see the rest of the family - and their parents were delighted to have everyone home at once.

He was sure their minds would soon change on that matter, when the squabbling started. Morris had already managed to nearly upend the room Quentin and Nelson shared while they were gone: all the stuff they had left behind during the year was in the wrong places. He expected Morris was snickering somewhere about it, but he hadn’t found him yet to give him a decisive kick.

He’d actually been hoping to go walking out on the Heath, or at least practice his beating in the private walled garden they had, but it had been raining all morning and he wasn’t that desperate yet. Instead, he scuffed his way down the stairs, looking for Morris or for something to do, whichever he found first.

Instead, the first life form he found was Eloquence (the better twin of the pair, Nelson usually thought, but particularly at this moment) so he drifted in through her door - she was the only girl, she had her own of course - a great deal more quietly than he had been on the stairs, not sure whether she’d noticed him. She looked... involved... in something.

He sidled in a little further until she noticed him at last, and offered her a small wave in greeting, before flopping facedown on the end of his older sister’s bed, while no one else was here to mock him for it.

---

The following 1 user Likes Nelson Higgs's post:1 user Likes Nelson Higgs's post
   Bragi Holm

---

Eloquence was quite immune to the would-be distracting white noise of the rain as it pittered and pattered and downright trundled down on the rooftops, lending a certain auxiliary cosiness to Eloquence's bedroom. Although she was a lady now, and had been for a few years, there was still a delicate girlishness about her boudoir, with her latest fine dress proudly on display by the wardrobe, potted pansies flourishing on the windowsill, and a great deal of books and parchments open on her writing desk. It was a little messier than usual today, for she was busy with something.

Only her younger brother was allowed to distract her (a bit), his very existence reminding her with a warm feeling that he was home and accessible, her little friend once again — despite resolutely insisting upon growing upwards, year after year. His face was a little less boyish this year too, though it was currently obscured by her rosy bed cover.

"Nel, you'll never believe this", she breathed, brandishing a handful of parchments at the back of his head. "I have figured it out — there was a murder in this house."

The following 1 user Likes Eloquence Higgs's post:1 user Likes Eloquence Higgs's post
   Elias Grimstone

---

Comfortable as he was sprawled headfirst onto the bed, Nelson eventually rolled and lifted his head, puppy-like, to peer at Eloquence. She seemed very excited - not unnaturally, for her - but whatever she had been doing buried in all those papers, he had not been expecting those words.

At first his eyes narrowed with a dark look, as if to remark well there will be when I get my hands on Morris, but then Loq’s excitement washed over him as well, and he sat up properly, with widened eyes. At school he carried a slate and chalk with him most everywhere, or failing that was reliant on pen and parchment, but here at home he didn’t bother lunging over to his sister’s desk for some paper yet, when his family often knew his expressions well enough to read them. His look now was a cheerful surprise. Really?! It meant. When?

---

  

---

She had his attention, because of course she did.

"Not yesterday or anything, don't worry", she reassured him, then straightened up. "1821. No, 1822. It's all in this diary", Eloquence brandished the parchments again, which were strung loosely together to create a loose, homemade journal.

"These, little brother, are the writings of one Mr Belflor, a footman in this household back in the twenties. These diary pages were found in an old cookbook from the library — it still had our address in it, so the librarian posted it to us, and, well, it's mine now. For snooping", she added playfully. "(He doesn't mind, he's long gone.)"

Eloquence leafed delicately through the pages. "Anyway, he writes of the strange death of a kitchen boy. It wasn't much of a scandal at the time because... he was "only" a kitchen boy", she frowned slightly. "But he was found under most mysterious circumstances. There lay a heavy candlestick next to his poor body. The candlestick was stained... with blood."

  

---

Nelson fixed her with a put out look at the very first answer she gave him, but then relaxed as she spelled out the story she had stumbled upon. A murder almost seventy years ago!

His eyebrows lurched higher and higher as she explained how she had found this out, leaping up to lean over her shoulder to better catch some glimpse of the diary pages she’d been looking through.

A candlestick! Nelson thought, tilting his head to the side, thrilled by the violence as practically any teenage boy would be. His foremost question, however, was possibly even visible in the excitement in his eyes, although he shuffled forwards for a scrap piece of parchment to scribble it out just the same, waving it in Eloquence’s face. And did they find out who did it? What if it hadn’t been solved? Maybe answers were somewhere in the house!

---

  

---

Eloquence folded her hands on the makeshift journal in her lap and shook her head gravely at Nelson's written query. "I actually don't know... yet. One would have to return to the library and leaf through old newspaper clippings. I do have a theory..." she confessed slowly, but didn't want to say too much. Not until she had proof.

"But I can't be sure. Look", she explained her uncertainty by leafing towards the end of the strung-together stack of parchments. "Mr Belflor has written a journal entry for every single week of 1822. Every single week. Except two." She showed Nelson the top-right corners of two pages in a row; October the 19th followed by November the 2nd. "I think he's torn out two weeks from his journal."

  

---

For a moment, he was put out that Loq hadn’t already gone back to do that - it seemed too intriguing a mystery for her not to, and she would be his first point of call for any mysteries to begin with!

But she couldn’t have had the papers very long, so perhaps Nelson was being unduly impatient, here. And his sister was not lacking in theories, because of course she wasn’t! Eloquence could always be counted upon for a solid theory.

He leant over her shoulder even more closely, inspecting the pages for their dates. Missing journal entries. Aha. He shook her shoulder in excited approval, and then stepped back, a grin brimming on his face.

Probably best not to get too excited, he told himself, supposing the first explanation for the torn out pages were that either the footman or someone else whom they implicated had destroyed the pages. But... there was still a chance that Belflor had thought of that possibility, and instead hidden the evidentiary pages somewhere for safekeeping.

If he had, and if the cookbook was anything to go by - well it would almost certainly be somewhere in this house.

Nelson tapped his foot and inclined his head meaningfully at the door. Fancy a treasure hunt? His eyes said.

---

  

---

Nel was eager to get going, and Eloquence giggled, getting promptly to her feet. Though something gave her pause — "we must be careful not to go snooping around in the servants' quarters", she reminded him (and herself) pointedly. She believed her younger brother was mature enough to keep such courtesies, but she recalled being his age and sometimes prizing a good fun mystery over respect.

Having said that, Loq was thinking of an actual murder as a good fun mystery, so... perhaps she also needed to remind herself to dial it back a bit.

"So we'll need a plan of action", she said decisively as they headed out of her bedroom, failing to dial anything back a bit. "What sort of places would a footman use as a hiding place... where does a footman go..."

  

---

Eloquence managed to temper his excitement for just a second, forcing him to give a sensible, sensitive nod at the advice about not snooping around the servants’ quarters. His first instinct might have been to go nosy around the servant’s bedrooms or the kitchen itself, but she was right. Besides, Belfor might have been even more cautious than that.

Still, he grinned behind Loq’s back as she jumped up quite as keenly as he had, and then fashioned his face into something more serious and thoughtful for her benefit as he considered where to start, looking left and right down the hallway. The house couldn’t have changed all that much since those days - redecorated, maybe - but nowhere was leaping to Nelson’s mind as obvious hiding-place-for-a-footman’s-things. Maybe they needed a new point of view.

He put up a hand to beckon his sister after him, and then carefully pulled open the doorway that led to one of the servants’ back staircases. He looked at her with wide eyes in case she protested, trying to put forth the innocent idea that a staircase wasn’t anywhere so private it was snooping. And probably no one would be around in the time it took them to go up and down them - at the very least, it might put them in a footman’s mindset, going about his day.

---

  

---

Eloquence slowed down hesitantly as Nelson led her towards where she knew the servants' quarters were located, for hadn't she just told him it would be insensitive to go snooping around in there? But thankfully, he didn't beeline for any doors or private areas. They would be sticking to corridors, which was actually quite clever — a footman would likely share his bedroom with a colleague, so he would have nowhere to himself. Better to find some quick, dark nook or cranny in one of these hallways.

But, like her brother, Loq could find no such nook, and no such cranny. She stood thoughtfully, one hand on her hip, tapping her lips with a finger. "Oh", she realised, raising that pensive finger to Nelson; "I just thought — there is one very important thing we know about the footman. He kept a journal; he was a writer. So perhaps we should look in places attractive to the types of people who like to read and write!"

  

---

His sister didn’t resist, but the searching hadn’t paid off yet. Nelson had been tapping wall panels, just in the hopes there was something marvellously secret and hidden, the sort of clever clue that might show up in a Conan Doyle story. Funnily enough, his mind hadn’t wandered off that subject when Loq made the bookish connection she did.

He cocked his head at her, and raised an eyebrow, making a gesture of directions, sure that she knew the first place that had popped to mind. After all, Loq was a writer by nature - writer and storyteller, in the most fun fashion - and Nelson, particularly since the Vow incident had forced him into silence, had always been fond of book-learning and quiet rooms.

If the hand-gestured directions didn’t do it, Nelson thought the look in his eyes might. So...the library?

---

  

---

Eloquence could often correctly surmise what her brother was trying to say, but she could also be guilty of projecting her own musings onto him. So perhaps she alone thought of the library, or perhaps they both thought of it at the same moment, but Loq absolutely believed the latter, and she sealed it with a knowing nod.

But she hesitated a moment. For now that she thought about it, she could not imagine a point at which a footman would have easy access to the family library. It had been Nelson's idea to look near the servant's quarters first, and Eloquence now believed his instinct had been correct. "The servants don't have a library... but I think there's a big set of bookshelves around here..." she doubled back along the hallway, "... somewhere..." turned a corner, and — ah! There it was. At the end of the hallway, near the entrance to the kitchen, stood a tall set of bookshelves packed with a shambles of cookbooks, novels, and other random texts.

OOC: Feel free to find stuff or not find stuff; I have things in mind, but we can totally play it as we go too. :D

  

---

The good thing about being with any of his siblings was that, by and large, they were used to him and knew what had happened, didn’t hang about staring and expecting him to speak. It just - made things easier.

What was not especially easy was where to begin at this set of bookshelves. The other journal pages had been in a cookbook, so Nelson shrugged and pull one off the shelf, flipping through it and scanning pages here and there, supposing his sister needed no encouragement to do the same.

This could take a... while, he realised, and as he flicked through cookbooks he considered if any spells might be of use in discovering them. It was hard to summon things if you didn’t know where they were coming from - or if they existed at all. Hm. Looking up from where he’d been crouching, he propped the cookbook up to display a page on soufflés and give it a thumbs up, if only because this was making him hungry. That said, Nelson also quirked an eyebrow as he mouthed found anything?

---

  

---

Loq glanced up hopefully when Nelson alerted her, for she wasn't finding anything either — but all he had to show for his efforts was a recipe for soufflé. She began to tut in annoyance, but regarded the soufflé ingredients and suddenly felt peckish. In conclusion, she raised an eyebrow in approval.

Then back to the task at hand.

When returning her current book to the shelf, she put it in the wrong place, and it slipped along with three other tomes — but she trusted the reflexes of her Quidditch-playing brother to catch them. And in the meantime, she narrowed her eyes at what the fallen books had just revealed. A small hole in the wall — it looked like someone had removed a brick. And in that hole...

She peered closer. Was that a folded up piece of paper?

Eloquence raised her hand, but hesitated. It was disgusting in there, thick with dust and cobwebs and dead flies. Not everything was dead, though. There was a spider in there, a big fat spider clinging to the paper, and it was very much alive.

  

---

Eloquence’s clumsiness caught Nelson’s attention just as he had returned to riffling through books; and he stuck out a foot to try and scoop them all up before they made too big a thump. The worst thing to happen here - worse than not finding anything, almost - was that someone else would come to butt in on the mystery-adventure-puzzle, be it one of the household staff come to judge or one of his brothers to steal the credit. He nearly frowned at the thought.

Nelson stuck the handful of books in a messy pile: none of them looked so interesting as the hole in the wall. He knocked her arm with his elbow, the beginnings of a beam on his face as he peered in from beside her, impatience getting to the best of him. This could be it. What was she waiting for?

It did look a little mouldering in there, but Nelson - he was the brother here; he wasn’t squeamish about spiders - reached in and prodded at the big fat spider until it climbed onto his palm. Its legs were furry. Carefully, he withdrew his hand from the hole and - teasingly - swung the spider-hand towards his sister’s face, having to see if it would make her squeal.

---

  

---

Eloquence continued to pull a most unladylike face at the spidered paper, but her hands were raised thoughtfully as if she were considering going in there... she hated gross things, but it was all in the interest of solving a mystery...

But thankfully, Nelson got there first, and she stood back obligingly, breathing a sigh of relief. But he did not shake the spider back into the wall, or squish it, or prod it out of the way. Instead, he welcomed it onto his hand and then... came at her with it.

Loq pursed her lips tight, staring down her nose at the big spindly arachnid. "Nel, don't! You are in such trouble! Fine, I'm not going to share this with you", with a deep breath, she plunged her hand into the web-infested hole, grabbed the folded piece of parchment, and ran off down the corridor, skirts dancing around her ankles.

Such was the intensity of her curiosity, even as she ran Eloquence could not help but unfold the piece of paper — which transpired to be two pieces of paper. The two weeks from 1822, torn out from the footman's journal. And as she glimpsed the scrawlings written on them, she came to a halt, her gaze frozen upon the words.

  

---