Surprise in the Wardrobe
By ©M.C. Gardner
Adults say that Genevieve is a mischievous little
girl, as they ignore the secrets of an inquisitive young girl in the making.
Nosy as nature has made her, she wants to learn everything about their new home
where they moved at the beginning of last month.
She had
attentively combed the ground floor and now she is into the first floor. Knee
socks at the ankle, fresh stains on her bespoke blue dress from the raspberry
bushes and hair ribbon at an angle, she is checking the pieces of furniture the
previous owners had left behind.
She is
mostly attracted by a grand and ornate triple door mahogany wardrobe. She had
planned to tackle it the previous day, but her grandmamma called her for
luncheon. In her family, she is referred to as ‘that nosy and feisty child’, who
likes to annoy the adults, her five sisters and the heir, who is, admittedly,
an ugly looking specimen, lacking the personality of his siblings.
Unintimidated and super eager, Genevieve is face to face with the
wardrobe. She checks its three doors. They are locked. No problem, mechanically
inclined, Genevieve has a skeleton key that she bought from her cousin Elgin,
who is a very greedy boy. He had stolen it from the gardener and sold it to
Genevieve for a small bag of pistachio nuts.
In goes
the key.
In the
kitchen, grandmamma is supervising the cherry preserves. Their kitchen maid is
a clumsy young lass still in training and unaccomplished after a year.
‘Ah!’ A deep piercing scream, the level
of the decibels of a cannon blast, shakes the Victorian kitchen, disturbs the
alignment of the jars on the oak table and rattles the open windows. The sky
goes a lead colour as the park ravens nesting in the oak trees take off.
‘What is happening?’ asks grandmamma
assertively. The kitchen maid drops the jar with cherry preserve all over the
kitchen floor, and burst into tears.
‘Genevieve! Where are you? I said and I say
it again, the sooner she goes to school, the better for everyone!’
The scream
intensifies and grandmamma and kitchen maid are going up the grand stairway,
two steps at a time. There they bump into the gardener, muddy boots and a
geranium flowerpot in hand.
The three
of them reach the open door from where the decibels keep erupting.
‘There you are, Genevieve. Stop screaming
and pull up your socks!’ Grandmamma
checks Genevieve’s appearance and finds her intact.
Genevieve’s screaming is making the Murano chandelier rotate
anticlockwise. The young girl is pointing to the wardrobe.
‘How did you manage to open the door?’
Genevieve
is gasping and points to the door of the wardrobe which is slightly ajar.
Grandmamma
opens it widely. Several corpses, in various degrees of decay, slide from the
bowels of the furniture on the well-polished oak boards.
Next door
neighbour, Mrs Gregson, the newly retired superintendent’s mother-in-law, is
having elevenses with Mrs Barnard, and for the time being, one of her best
friends.
‘What’s going on with the new neighbours?
It sounds like a matter of life and death!’
utters Mrs Gregson and both ladies rush to find out what they can. They open the
wrought iron gate and run up the path towards the front door. They do not
bother to ring the bell as the front door is wide open. Like hounds, they
follow the screams and climb up the stairs.
They enter
the room. A little girl is screaming with her eyes shut, an elderly woman is
also screaming red face like a volcano in full eruption and a young lass is
shedding tears the size of freshly harvested peas. A middle age man covered in
mud looks stunned and is squashing the geraniums from a flower pot tight at his
chest. Mrs Gregson, who has been blessed with full comprehensive initiative,
takes a look and identifies the cause of the distress as being in front of the
wardrobe.
‘Oh, here they are! My son-in-law, the former superintendent and his team had been looking
for them for over 15 years. The case remains unsolved and it is still open. It
made the front page of all the broad sheets and the tabloids at the time. A
whole family wiped out, except the youngest son, a child of three at the time,
who was found with a key round his neck and who kept repeating the word
<sardines>.
