TLMS 12

Chapter 12

The day before, it had rained in torrents.

The rain had started around the time I was serving dinner to the Flanigan family in the west wing instead of Carol. Before long, it turned into a violent downpour that continued relentlessly until dawn.

However, by the time morning arrived, the weather was perfectly clear, as though it had never rained at all. Not a single cloud remained in the sky. The servants who rose early moved busily about, preparing for the day ahead.

Edward, who oversaw the affairs of the Flanigan household, was an industrious man. He hated laziness and always woke earlier than anyone else, starting his day by walking throughout the mansion and scolding servants about one thing or another.

This morning seemed no different from any other.

Edward was on the first floor of the west wing, giving instructions to the butler, Randall, when a piercing scream suddenly rang out from outside.

Startled, Edward immediately rushed out. Several servants, including Randall, followed after him.

One of the maids was pointing toward the pond and screaming.

It was the large pond located between the east wing and the west wing, the one I mentioned earlier.

“A person! Someone has fallen in!”

Edward and the others turned toward where the maid was pointing.

Near the edge of the pond, on the side closest to the west wing, something white floated on the water like a bundle of cloth.

The maid who had discovered it first was apparently too frightened to approach and check what it was. She could only stand there screaming.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Edward ran toward it. Randall and the others followed close behind.

Splash. Splash.

Edward jumped straight into the pond.

The pond was about as deep as a person’s height. It could not be called extremely deep, but anyone unable to swim could certainly drown in it. Fortunately, the “bundle of cloth” was floating near the edge, where the water was still relatively shallow. Tall aquatic plants also grew sparsely in the area.

Edward was a capable swimmer, and as he later told the police, he had acted without thinking because he had a strange feeling that something was wrong.

When Edward reached the floating figure first, he cried out in horror.

“Anne!”

Only then did everyone realize that the person in the water was Miss Anne.

Edward turned toward the servants, who still stood frozen in shock at the shore.

“A doctor! Hurry and get a doctor!”

One servant ran to fetch the family physician who lived nearby.

Old Dr. Jensen had been eating breakfast. When he heard the news, he spat out the piece of bread in his mouth and rushed over. By the time he arrived, Edward and several servants had already managed to pull Anne from the pond.

But it was too late.

There was hardly any need for Dr. Jensen to examine her.

Anne was already dead.

Whether it was an accident or suicide, any death that was not considered a natural death required a police investigation. This time, even the influence of the Flanigan family could not make the matter disappear by claiming illness, as had happened in Aileen’s case.

The investigation eventually revealed several facts.

(Of course, a junior maid like me could not personally review the police findings concerning the death of the master’s daughter. What I learned came through other servants who had easier access to such information.)

The autopsy confirmed that Anne had drowned.

As for the exact time of death, it would have been nice if it could be narrowed down to a precise hour, as happens in detective novels. Unfortunately, reality was not so convenient. The estimated time of death was simply sometime between the previous night and early that morning.

Anyone could have guessed that much.

It was confirmed through the testimony of Rosemary, the maid responsible for the west wing, that Anne had still been alive around eleven o’clock the previous night.

“Around eleven, I brought a water pitcher to Miss Anne’s room.”

According to Rosemary, she had been cleaning up the kitchen attached to the west wing when Edward called her over and instructed her to bring a water pitcher to Anne’s room once she had finished.

“He said Miss Anne had drunk a great deal of alcohol and would probably wake up thirsty during the night.”

I had only seen Anne stagger away carrying a bottle of liquor around the end of dinner. However, according to the other maids, she continued drinking even after changing locations.

Her family tried to stop her, but naturally it did no good at all.

Fed up with her drunken behavior, the rest of the family retired to their rooms early. Edward was the only one who remained behind to look after her.

For someone drinking for the first time, she had an impressive tolerance. Even so, because it was her first time, she became intoxicated rather quickly.

Before long, Anne could barely support herself. In the end, Edward had to help her upstairs to her room on the fourth floor of the west wing.

Still uneasy, Edward later sought out Rosemary and instructed her to bring Anne some water before he himself went to bed.

After finishing the kitchen cleanup, Rosemary carried the water pitcher to Anne’s room.

“Miss, I’ve brought the water.”

She knocked on the door as she spoke.

Anne usually stayed awake late, but she had been heavily intoxicated that night. Rosemary felt awkward because Anne might already be asleep.

Anne sometimes forgot to lock her door before sleeping.

With that in mind, Rosemary tried turning the doorknob.

This time, however, the door was definitely locked from the inside.

She knocked again.

“Miss, are you asleep?”

“Leave it… outside the door. The water…”

Fortunately, a faint slurred voice came from inside.

“I’ll… get it later.”

So Rosemary left the tray and pitcher outside the door and departed without disturbing the exhausted Anne any further.

The next morning, the water pitcher was found exactly where she had left it.

Therefore, Anne was certainly alive at that point.

The question was: how had she ended up dead in the pond?

There were no signs whatsoever that anyone had entered Anne’s room.

The investigation confirmed Rosemary’s testimony that the door had indeed been locked from the inside.

These days there are locks that engage automatically, but every door in the mansion required a key to be inserted and turned manually, whether locking or unlocking it from inside or outside.

In other words, nobody could have entered Anne’s room from the hallway without possessing her key.

And Anne’s key was found in the pocket of the nightgown she was wearing when her body was recovered.

Considering the heavy rain and the fact that her body had been submerged in water, it was remarkably fortunate that the key had not slipped out of the shallow pocket and been washed away.

When the police entered her room during the investigation, the door was still locked, so they used that very key to unlock it.

As already mentioned, there were no signs of intrusion. The room was neat and orderly, exactly as one would expect from a room cleaned daily by maids.

The bedcovers and pillow were disturbed, but that was hardly unusual. Anne had presumably slept there during the night.

The most striking detail was that the window stood wide open.

Because the rainstorm had been so severe, some rainwater had blown into the room.

At this point, it is necessary to explain the structure of the mansion’s windows.

Both the east wing and the west wing contained bedrooms on the second, third, and fourth floors.

Nowadays, since the family mainly lived in the west wing, most of the bedrooms in the east wing stood empty.

As I mentioned before, the east and west wings faced one another across the large pond and were constructed as mirror images of each other.

In truth, the pond did not make the site particularly suitable for construction.

According to what I had heard, although the Flanigan family was now the most influential and prestigious family in the area, several generations ago they had been so poor that they survived only by peddling goods from place to place.

When they finally earned enough money to build a house, an ancestor of the family—who was quite superstitious—consulted a famous fortune teller in search of land that would bring prosperity to the family.

The fortune teller selected the very location where the Flanigan estate now stood.

According to the fortune teller, the Flanigan family was blessed by a tree spirit and therefore needed the energy of water in order to flourish.

Whether the fortune teller truly possessed remarkable abilities or merely got lucky, nobody could say.

After purchasing the pond and the surrounding land and constructing what is now the east wing, the Flanigan family genuinely prospered.

At that time, there was only one building, so it was called the main house rather than the east wing.

As the family grew wealthier and larger, they built the west wing on the opposite side of the pond in exactly the same design.

This decision was also supposedly made after consulting the fortune teller.

The two buildings, he claimed, needed to remain identical like twins in order to fully receive the energy of water.

The second, third, and fourth floors, where most of the bedrooms were located, featured decorative windows facing the pond.

Naturally, both wings had the same design.

The windows were enormous, extending almost from floor to ceiling. They looked less like windows and more like glass doors.

Outside each window was a fairly spacious balcony.

These balconies connected pairs of adjacent rooms, allowing people to move between neighboring rooms via the balcony.

All the pond-facing rooms on the second, third, and fourth floors were built this way.

Although some rooms on the second and third floors of the east wing were currently undergoing repairs and lacked balconies.

Naturally, this raised an obvious question:

“Even if Anne’s door was locked, couldn’t someone have entered through the neighboring room and crossed the balcony into her room?”

However, the room connected to Anne’s balcony belonged to her younger sister, Jane.

Jane had gone to her room long before Anne retired for the night and did not come out until after Anne’s body had been discovered.

Quite naturally, Jane stated that she had never gone into Anne’s room and that no one else had entered Anne’s room through her room either.

In any case, the police were not seriously considering the possibility that an intruder had attacked Anne.

An accidental death seemed far more likely.

Anne had been heavily intoxicated the night before.

She might have awakened with a headache, stepped out onto the balcony for fresh air, and accidentally fallen over the edge.

Suicide was also considered a possibility.

If someone deliberately hurled themselves from the balcony, it would be easier for their body to end up in the pond than if they had merely slipped and fallen.

Another possibility was that Anne had left her room voluntarily and walked to the pond before throwing herself in.

However, several details made this theory difficult to accept.

First, there was the matter of the open window.

If she intended to leave the room and commit suicide outside, there was no reason to leave the window open while rain was blowing into the room.

Furthermore, someone planning suicide would not seem likely to carefully lock their bedroom door behind them.

Had Anne been meticulous by nature, one might argue that she locked it out of habit.

But Anne was not particularly meticulous. She sometimes forgot to lock her bedroom door altogether.

Another strange detail was that Anne had been found barefoot.

If she had left the west wing and walked outside to kill herself, she should have been wearing shoes.

Of course, it was possible she had been too distraught to think about footwear.

The police investigated every possibility.

Ultimately, they ruled out the theory that Anne had walked outside and thrown herself into the pond.

The injuries on her body were consistent with a fall from a considerable height.

In the end, whether it was suicide or an accident, the conclusion was the same:

Anne had fallen from the balcony of her own room.