WARDROBES...are darkly surprising places

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>.