Chương 2
Arthur’s fingers twitched.
The chapel broke apart.
Someone shouted for an ambulance. Someone else shouted that one had already been called, though no one had called yet. A bench scraped across stone. A man near the aisle lifted his phone and Celeste ordered him to put it away. Two guests began arguing over whether Arthur should be moved.
Nora took out her own phone.
Malcolm seized her forearm.
“Don’t.”
His grip was not violent. That made it worse. His fingers pressed with measured force, like a man closing a file drawer.
Nora stared at his hand.
He released her.
She dialed emergency services and gave the estate address. Her voice steadied when the dispatcher asked questions. Yes, the patient was breathing. No, she did not know how long he had been inside the casket. Yes, the chapel doors would be unlocked. No, they would not move him unless necessary.
Julian loosened Arthur’s collar. Nora told him not to pull Arthur upright. Julian looked as though he might tell her she was a household employee and not a doctor, but instead he nodded and slid his hand beneath his father’s wrist.
Celeste stood at the foot of the casket.
“What have you done?” Julian asked her.
“Nothing.”
“You told her to close it.”
“I was trying to prevent a spectacle.”
“He’s breathing.”
“I can see that.”
Malcolm stepped between them. “This is not the moment.”
Julian laughed once, sharply. “You’ve been saying that my whole life.”
The sound disturbed Arthur. His mouth opened. No voice came out, only a shallow exhalation.
Nora leaned close enough to smell something medicinal beneath the linen and flowers. Not embalming chemicals. Something bitter and sweet, like the crushed sleep tablets her mother had once dissolved in applesauce after surgery.
Arthur’s eyes opened a fraction.
They did not find Julian. They moved slowly toward Nora’s white apron.
His cracked lips shaped a word.
She lowered her ear.
“Case.”
The leather document case.
Nora turned toward the casket’s side.
It was gone.
The silver handle reflected the empty place where it had rested.
She looked across the chapel. Guests crowded the aisle, blocking one another while pretending not to stare. A man in a black overcoat had opened the front doors to wait for the ambulance. The organist stood against the wall, holding both hands over her mouth. Malcolm was speaking quietly to Celeste.
The photograph remained in Nora’s hand.
She folded it once without thinking, then stopped, appalled at herself. A white crease cut through the sky above Arthur’s head.
Sirens sounded beyond the chapel walls.
Arthur’s eyes closed.
Nora slid the photograph into the front of her apron.
The paramedics arrived with a stretcher and equipment that made the chapel suddenly too narrow. They took over without ceremony. One asked everyone to move back. Another cut open Arthur’s white shirt. Adhesive pads were pressed to his chest. Numbers were called out. Oxygen hissed through a mask.
Nora stood near the altar with her hands clenched around nothing.
A sheriff’s deputy came in behind the medical team, young and wind-reddened, with snowmelt on his boots despite the dry afternoon. He looked at the casket, looked at Arthur, then looked again at the casket.
“Who found him?”
Every face turned toward Nora.
Celeste answered first.
“Our household assistant opened the casket during the service.”
The deputy’s gaze dropped to the brass tool on the floor.
Nora bent to pick it up.
“Leave that where it is, ma’am.”
Her hand stopped.
The paramedics lifted Arthur onto the stretcher. His arm slipped toward the edge until Julian tucked it beneath the blanket. Julian tried to follow them, but one of the medics blocked him long enough to ask about medications, existing conditions, allergies.
Celeste provided the answers.
Her voice was precise. Stroke history. Hypertension. Mild kidney disease. No known allergies. Recent confusion. Prescribed sedatives for nighttime agitation.
The medic glanced at her. “Who prescribed those?”
“Dr. Baird.”
Malcolm said, “I’ll contact him.”
“No,” Julian said.
His voice had dropped so low that only the people nearest him heard. “You’re not contacting anybody.”
Malcolm’s face settled into patience. “Julian, your father needs his physician.”
“My father needed a physician before someone put him in a coffin.”
Celeste flinched.
The stretcher wheels clattered over the chapel threshold. Julian went with them, one hand holding the back door of the ambulance until a paramedic made him let go.
Nora watched him climb inside.
Before the doors closed, he looked back at her.
There was no gratitude in his expression. There was confusion, accusation, and a frightened dependence he seemed to resent already.
The ambulance pulled away through the estate’s circular drive.
Silence returned unevenly.
The deputy asked everyone to remain in the chapel until additional officers arrived. A few guests objected. One said he had a ferry reservation. Another said his wife was diabetic, as though the deputy had created her condition. The organist began crying quietly against the wall.
Celeste sat in the first bench.
Without the casket between them, she seemed smaller. Not weak, exactly. She folded her gloved hands in her lap and stared at the white altar flowers.
Malcolm remained standing.
Nora could feel the photograph against her stomach.
She thought of telling the deputy.
Instead, she looked at Malcolm’s suit.
There was dust on his right cuff, pale and fine, the same color as the lining inside the hidden compartment.
He noticed her looking and lowered his arm.
Two hours later, Nora sat in the estate’s laundry office with a detective named Mara Singh while the memorial guests were interviewed in the drawing room. The detective had removed her coat and folded it over a chair. Damp curls had escaped from the knot at the back of her head.
She did not begin with Arthur.
May you like
She asked Nora how long she had worked at the estate, who supervised her, whether she lived on the property, and why she had carried a tool into a memorial service.
“I carry it most days.”
