Chapter 3 - The Blue Angel
The fire destroyed half the archive, but not the questions Margaret had left behind.
Your mother left proof in the nursery.
Behind the blue angel.
The east wing remained locked, and Victoria doubled the mansion’s security. She claimed the fire had been caused by old wiring, though the fire chief privately told Adrian that the blaze had started in three different places.
Someone had intended to destroy the archive.
Someone had also intended to trap us inside it.
Adrian wanted to contact the police.
I stopped him.
“We don’t know which officers your family controls.”
“My family doesn’t control the police.”
“Your mother had firefighters on the property less than six minutes after the alarm.”
“It’s a large estate. We have an emergency response contract.”
“And Margaret disappeared without passing a single camera?”
Adrian looked toward the burned corridor.
“You think my mother took her?”
“I think Margaret knew enough to frighten someone.”
That evening, Adrian gave me a map of the mansion.
The east wing had three entrances. Two were guarded. The third was an old servants’ staircase concealed behind the chapel.
We waited until midnight.
The gala preparation had filled the house with florists, caterers, electricians, and temporary staff. In the confusion, no one noticed us entering the private chapel.
Adrian moved aside a carved wooden panel behind the altar.
A narrow staircase descended into darkness.
“You’ve used this before,” I whispered.
“As a child.”
“With your brother?”
He did not answer.
The staircase ended beside a locked iron door.
My brass key fit.
Beyond it, the east wing smelled of dust and sealed air. White sheets covered the furniture. Portraits had been removed from the walls, leaving pale rectangles behind.
At the end of the corridor stood the nursery.
The door was blackened from the fire decades earlier.
Inside, two small beds sat beneath the windows.
Not one.
Two.
Adrian touched the headboard of the first bed.
A carved letter A was visible beneath the dust.
The second bed was carved with the letter N.
“Do you remember that name?” I asked.
Adrian closed his eyes.
“Nathan.”
The word seemed to escape him rather than come from him.
He staggered backward.
“I remember someone calling for Nathan.”
“Who?”
“My father.”
We searched the room.
The walls were decorated with faded clouds, golden stars, and painted angels. Most had been damaged by smoke.
Above the fireplace, one angel wore a blue robe.
I pressed its painted hand.
Nothing happened.
Adrian examined the frame and found a small indentation shaped like the brass key.
When I inserted it, part of the wall released.
Inside was a metal box.
The box contained medical records, two silver identification bracelets, a cassette tape, and a letter addressed to me.
Elena,
If you are reading this, then I failed to keep you far enough away.
I once believed the truth could protect people.
At Ashford Manor, the truth is what gets people killed.
Victoria gave birth to twin sons. Adrian was healthy. Nathan was born with a heart defect. Charles refused to accept that the weaker child might die, because an old Ashford trust transferred a portion of the estate to charity if the firstborn son did not survive.
Victoria became desperate.
She found a physician willing to alter records, switch identities, and perform an illegal procedure.
But the procedure did not happen as planned.
One child died.
One survived.
And someone changed the bracelets before Victoria returned to the nursery.
I saw who did it.
I hid the evidence because Charles threatened you.
Do not trust the child who calls himself Adrian.
Do not trust Victoria.
Most of all, do not trust me.
The letter ended without a signature.
My hands shook.
“Your mother wrote this?” Adrian asked.
“It looks like her handwriting.”
“But why would she say not to trust herself?”
I turned over the second identification bracelet.
One was engraved Adrian Charles Ashford.
The other was engraved Nathan James Ashford.
A dark stain marked the clasp of Nathan’s bracelet.
Adrian picked up the cassette tape.
There was an old recorder in the cabinet.
We inserted the tape and pressed play.
Static filled the nursery.
Then my mother’s voice emerged.
“July seventeenth, 1997. I am recording this because Charles has threatened to kill my daughter if I speak.”
A man shouted in the background.
My mother continued.
“The infant they buried was not Nathan.”
Adrian stopped breathing.
“Victoria believes Adrian survived. She is wrong.”
The tape crackled.
A door slammed.
Then another woman spoke.
“You should never have come into this room, Clara.”
Victoria’s voice.
A struggle followed.
My mother cried out.
The recording ended.
Adrian stood beside the two beds, staring at the bracelet in his hand.
“If Nathan survived,” he said, “then I’m Nathan.”
“Or someone wanted my mother to believe that.”
A floorboard creaked in the corridor.
We turned.
The nursery door slammed shut.
The lock clicked from outside.
Then liquid began flowing beneath the door.
The smell reached us immediately.
Gasoline.
Adrian ran toward the window, but iron shutters dropped over the glass.
A match scratched in the hallway.
May you like
Someone whispered through the door.
“Clara should have burned this room twenty-two years ago.”
