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THE EDGE OF NIGHTFALL:

PART ONE:

Tony Stewart’s

THE NIGHT OF THE DARKNESS (abridged):

BLOG VERSION

EPISODE 6

CHAPTER FOUR     

Upon obtaining Joseph’s signature on the formal contract to commence employment at Johnson’s Import and Export the now happy interviewer departed the orphanage where the interview had taken place.

Joseph, however, despite seemingly requesting the contractual temporary release clause was himself in total confusion as to what his mind and tongue had done on his behalf.   The thought had come from nowhere, yet for a reason he couldn’t understand he felt what they had done had been done for a reason … but at the moment it was a reason he was not privy to.  He just hoped that his thought processor knew what it was doing, because at the moment he had no clue whatsoever.

Joseph’s awoken memory that had arisen just prior to his accepting the position he had been offered at Johnson’s had transported him back to the year he had begun his education.   He, like every single orphan that had passed through Farm-Vale over the years, attended classes at Grimshaw’s Private School which was located five hundred yards away from the orphanage.   By co-incidence, Grmshaws’ was established the same year as Farm-Vale, both grand old buildings, former residences of two nobleman, Lord Harvey Grimshaw and his brother Morphett; brothers who had co-owned the nearby village … and who had both died the previous year under very auspicious circumstances

The men had both been widowers for many years and were known by their respective staff to occasionally visit each others house with the intent of enjoying a night of total inebriation.   This ritual was carried out as the mood took them and the decision was often not made until one or the other would suddenly turn up at the other’s front door and would last as long as they could still pour a drink and raise the glass to their lips.

Due to the impetuousness of the visits the staff of both brothers were as often as not unaware the visits had taken place until the next day when, in one household, one of them would arrive home in a slightly disheveled state, sometimes not for two days, while in the other house the staff would find not one, but two Grimshaws emerging from a bedroom somewhere in the house at various times of the day.

This situation would most likely have not occurred should any of the staff have remained in the house overnight, but the brothers had both insisted that all staff vacated the main house once the evening meal had been completed and the kitchen cleaned.   Both brothers had had built a smaller, ten bedroom building around a hundred yards from the main house to be used to house the servants.    Close enough to cause no inconvenience to the staff in performing their duties, but situated behind conveniently placed high-set hedges which blocked off the view of the front entrance to the main house which meant the staff rarely, if ever, saw any late evening visitors arriving at the house.

When neither brother returned to their respective houses for two days their respective staff had thought nothing about the situation believing each of their masters to be at their brother’s house.   Their binges were known to occasionally run for two days on end, and once to the early morning of a third day.   On that occasion the brother that made his way home was found sound asleep curled up on the welcome mat that stood at the entrance to the front door, the man presumed to have been too drunk to have been capable of using his key to let himself in.   His staff managed to get him to his bedroom and he was not seen again until he arose at midday on the fourth day.

However that had been a most irregular occurrence and two days was seen as the benchmark for concern by the staff of both houses.   In the case at hand it was on the morning of the third day, when the respective masters failed to come down for breakfast, and a subtle check of the individual brother’s bedrooms failed to show any signs of being slept in, that the servants of both households became concerned for their master’s welfare and each house sent a member of staff to the other house to discreetly ensure all was right.

Coincidentally, the two members were despatched at the exact same moment and ended up meeting in the middle of the road that linked one household to the other.   A quick discussion by the two men quickly realised something very well could be wrong, and a thorough search of both houses was conducted simultaneously.

Within fifteen minutes the staff at Lord Grimshaw’s house discovered the locked study which by now had a strange smell emerging from within it.   The key could not be located, the room had no window or other entrance, and the staff knocked several times with no response from within the room.   A decision was made by Lord Grimshaw’s butler as the senior servant.   The order was given, the door was forced open … and the bodies discovered.

The two men had been found inside the room burnt to death, their charred bodies only recognisable by the family crest, it’s engraving still visible on the somewhat melted signet rings that they both wore.

However, it was not for some hours; not until after the police had arrived and were in the middle of questioning them; not until after the shock of their gruesome find had been pacified by several large glasses of their master’s best scotch that the staff noticed for the first time – outside of some still smouldering embers in the carpet where the bodies had lain – the room itself had barely had a scorch mark to be seen.

It was as if the brothers had been killed elsewhere – then locked inside the room.   And that may very well have been the case if not for one small problem … the key was still in the lock on the inside of the room.

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