Chapter 11 - What Lies Behind the Glass
Clara rushed to the far wall of the tower room, where a massive, gold-gilded Victorian mirror hung above a disused marble fireplace. The mirror was eight feet tall, its glass dark and speckled with age spots, its frame carved with intricate figures of weeping angels.
"Daniel, help me!" Clara called out.
Daniel stood up from the bed and hurried to her side. Together, they gripped the heavy wooden frame of the mirror, pulling it away from the stone wall. The iron hinges behind the frame groaned loudly as the mirror swung open like a secret door, revealing a dark, hidden recess carved directly into the four-foot-thick stone wall of the tower.
Inside the dark recess sat a small, fireproof steel strongbox with a mechanical combination dial.
"The date," Daniel whispered, his mind racing through decades of family history. "He said the key was behind the mirror... the combination must be a date."
"Your mother’s birthday," Clara suggested instantly. "Eleanor’s birthday."
Daniel’s fingers flew to the steel dial. "October 14th, 1962. 10-14-62."
He spun the dial three times to the left, stopped at 10, turned right to 14, and back to 62.
CLICK.
The heavy steel latch disengaged with a solid, metallic pop. Daniel pulled the door of the strongbox open.
Inside lay two items: a heavy leather journal bound in faded black calfskin, and a sealed glass vial containing a dark, amber liquid labeled in precise, handwritten script: Extract of Belladonna & Digitalis - Formula 4B.
Daniel picked up the journal, flipping it open to the final entries written in his father's sharp, elegant cursive, dated just three weeks before his "stroke."
Clara leaned over his shoulder, her green eyes scanning the lines of text:
May 4th — I have discovered the truth. Victoria has been altering my evening cardiac drops. The symptoms mirror Eleanor’s final weeks in 1998 precisely. I have secured the original formula she used on Eleanor from her private cabinet in the old cellar. If anything happens to me, this journal and vial must be delivered to the Lord Prosecutor in London. She knows I suspect her. I fear my time is short...
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Daniel closed the journal with a deafening thud that echoed through the tower chamber. He held the book in one hand and the amber glass vial in the other—the physical, undeniable proof of two decades of murder and slow poisoning.
"It's over," Daniel said, his voice dropping into a register of terrifying finality. "We have her."
