TLMS 42

Chapter 42

“Keeping Lady Alice’s aura concentrated in one place is dangerous.”

After staring at the crystal ball for a long time, Madame Marcela said this in a dignified voice, according to reports.

“The energy that dominates the Plenigan mansion is extremely strong. It is powerful enough to influence the fate of the descendants. However, over time, as it accumulated in a single place, its direction of power became distorted.”

“So the messages meant for those who truly needed warnings and those who didn’t became mixed together. In order to reveal this fact, Lady Alice’s spirit appeared in physical form.”

“Then what should we do?”

“We need to open Lady Alice’s sealed room and disperse the energy throughout various parts of the mansion.”

“But Lady Alice left a will,” Helen said with a slightly troubled expression.

“She said that nothing inside that room should ever be touched or thrown away. That’s why, even across generations, we’ve kept it exactly as it was.”

“That does not mean the items inside must be removed,” Madame Marcela shook her head, still maintaining her authoritative expression.

“Simply opening the door more frequently, ventilating the room, and having people enter it occasionally to disperse the energy should be enough.”

And so, the head maid, Mrs. Pierce, called me—an attendant in charge of the second floor of the east wing—and ordered me to clean Lady Alice’s room.

“Ellie, as you heard, you must not touch anything inside that room. Even if something looks useless, you must not throw away even a scrap of paper.”

Then Mrs. Pierce used a key she had received from the butler Randall and opened the door to Lady Alice’s room.

“It’s been so long since this was opened.”

Although there was a long-standing tradition like that will, the room had not been completely sealed forever after Lady Alice’s death. It was said that the door had been opened every few years to air it out and check its condition.

I carefully followed Mrs. Pierce inside. It might have been just my imagination, but even though it was broad daylight, the room felt dim and gloomy compared to the others. Even with the curtains fully opened, it still felt that way.

Inside were a bed, wardrobe, drawers, and a table—furniture that must have belonged to Lady Alice when she was alive. At a glance, they looked outdated, something from a past era: elegant in a traditional sense, but frankly old-fashioned.

Because the room had been closed for so long, it smelled musty, and parts of the wallpaper were stained with mold.

There was some dust on the furniture, but thankfully it wasn’t as bad as Amy had worried—there were no signs of rats or anything like that, so I felt a bit relieved.

“As I said before, do not touch anything inside. There’s nothing major to clean, so it won’t take long. Don’t dawdle—finish cleaning and report back to me immediately.”

After giving her instructions, Mrs. Pierce left to attend to other matters, so I opened the windows wide and began cleaning.

Since I wasn’t allowed to throw anything away, the work mostly consisted of dusting and wiping surfaces with a cloth. The hardest part was shaking out the bedding.

The day before, Amy and Carol had panicked when they heard I’d be cleaning Lady Alice’s room, saying things like, “A ghost might appear.” For those who believed in ghosts, a long-closed, dark room might indeed feel unsettling.

But I didn’t care about ghosts, so I was simply glad the job was easier than expected. Thinking that way, I was lucky to be assigned to the second floor of the east wing—other maids might have refused to come near this room at all.

Aside from large furniture, there were not many small decorative items in the room. There weren’t even many books, but that wasn’t surprising. In Lady Alice’s time, it was said that women were not even allowed to learn to read. Even so, Lady Alice, as a model of the Plenigan women, had learned to read but was said never to have written anything.

On top of a drawer sat a sewing box. When I opened it, it contained thread spools, pins, a thimble, scissors, and fabric, neatly arranged as if waiting for a new owner. It was clean, but clearly very old.

‘From the Plenigan perspective, this would be the most suitable item for a woman.’

I smiled bitterly and closed the sewing box lid again.

While wiping dust from the drawer, something strange caught my eye.

The drawer beneath the sewing box was divided into twelve small compartments arranged in a 3×4 grid. A larger three-tier wardrobe stood separately beside the closet for bigger items.

All the furniture in the room had painted designs on the front—trees with birds perched on them, gardens in full bloom. These were not professionally painted artworks, but decorative patterns meant for practical embellishment.

By modern standards, they were quite tacky, but in the past, painting furniture like this had been fashionable. In older mansions, it wasn’t unusual to find pieces like this. Even in the Whittington estate, a few were still stored in the warehouse.

However, the design on this particular drawer was incomprehensible. It clearly had a painting, but unlike the others with recognizable trees, birds, or flowers, this one looked like a chaotic, grotesque form—as if someone had scribbled all over it.

But when I looked closer, I quickly realized why it seemed so strange. The outlines of the painting were broken in unnatural places.

‘The drawers are not in their original positions—they’re all mixed up.’

There were twelve drawers of equal size, but they were all placed in the wrong slots. Naturally, this scrambled the image on the front.

Out of curiosity, I pulled one drawer open. It was empty. I checked the others as well—also empty.

Given Lady Alice’s will, it was unlikely that any descendant had cleared them out. Lady Alice herself must have organized them before her death. Since the drawers didn’t even have locks, she probably never stored anything valuable inside.

I checked the larger three-tier drawer next to the wardrobe as well. It was empty too. Unlike the others, its painting was intact, meaning the drawers were in their correct positions.

The two-compartment drawer beneath the dressing table was locked. Perhaps it contained valuables. According to Amy, there were rumors that some jewelry belonging to Lady Alice was hidden in this room.

“The master probably wanted to keep expensive jewelry in a bank vault. But if the will is violated, Lady Alice’s ghost would curse us immediately! So even though it’s a waste, they can’t take it out.”

For that same reason, theft was not a concern. The room was usually locked, and even when opened for cleaning, most servants avoided coming near it.

I wasn’t interested in hidden jewelry. I was more curious about the scrambled painting on the drawer.

As an experiment, I rearranged a few drawers according to what I thought might be the correct positions. When I matched the top section correctly, the image of a tree with lush leaves appeared. It wasn’t random scribbling—it was a proper painting, just mixed up.

After memorizing the positions carefully, I reassembled all twelve drawers into what I believed was the correct order. The completed image showed two rabbits under a large tree with green leaves.

It looked like an ordinary painting. Nothing about it suggested any hidden meaning or connection to The Punished Alice. I examined it carefully but found nothing unusual.

I felt slightly disappointed. I had expected it might be something Lady Alice painted herself, or perhaps connected to the mansion’s mysteries.

But it was too ordinary. It didn’t seem to contain any message. Just a decorative design from an old-fashioned furniture trend.

‘Then why were the drawers scrambled in the first place?’

I considered leaving them properly arranged, but in the end, I put them back in the scrambled order. Since I had memorized it, it wasn’t difficult.

If I left it properly arranged, it might look nicer—but the servants of the Plenigan estate, who believed in ghosts and curses, would likely accuse me of doing something unnecessary. As a mere maid, I could even be dismissed for violating the long-standing will.

‘But who scrambled these drawers in the first place?’

A thought crossed my mind, but I quickly answered it myself. It must have been Lady Alice herself. The descendants would never have dared to interfere.

‘Was Lady Alice a careless person? Did she just randomly misplace the drawers?’

There were people like that in the Whittington estate—servants who, while organizing drawers, accidentally placed them incorrectly or failed to push them in properly.

But even a careless person wouldn’t mismatch a clearly visible image like this. And if it were truly carelessness, it wouldn’t be only this one piece of furniture affected.

‘Then was it done intentionally? Why would she do that?’

I considered various possibilities but couldn’t find an answer.

‘Maybe it just looked aesthetically pleasing to her.’

That was my final conclusion. Lady Alice had left behind several paintings, so she likely had artistic talent.

Last year, I had visited an art gallery with my grandfather. There were paintings completely unlike portraits, landscapes, or still lifes. I couldn’t understand what they depicted—canvases splashed with paint, shapes like circles and squares, and what looked like random lines.

“They say there are painters like this nowadays,” my grandfather had said. “Young artists, apparently.”

The gallery owner had explained that artists see things differently from us—that they consider such works artistic, ahead of their time.

My grandfather had clearly not liked it.

“If that’s art, even I could paint ten of them right now. If this becomes popular, every drawing room in noble houses will give me a headache.”

But since then, I hadn’t seen such paintings in drawing rooms, so perhaps they hadn’t become popular after all.

Maybe Lady Alice had also been ahead of her time artistically. Perhaps she rearranged the drawers for that reason.

Thinking that, I shrugged.

‘Well, it has nothing to do with me anyway.’