“Your Grace,” the butler opened the door with a look of surprise across his aged featured. “I didn’t – we did not know you would be visiting. I regret to inform you that the master is currently not present. But you are more than welcome to wait for him in the drawing room, though I am afraid we are unsure as to when he will return. If you would like to leave a word for him, we would gladly –”
“No need,” Godric stated, stepping past him and walking into the house. “I only need to retrieve something quickly and I will no longer be a problem of yours.”
As he stepped further into the house, the butler tried to run after him, saying that his uncle would be upset to find out he had come and left in his absence. However, Godric had already known Luther would not be home, which was why he had come over in the first place.
“My word,” the housekeeper gasped as she nearly ran into him, her eyes wide with shock, “Y-Your Grace! What a wonderful surprise! Oh – did they not tell you that the master was away from home at the moment?”
“They did,” Godric nodded, trying to be as patient as possible. “But as I said earlier, I only wish to collect a document that I had given him to sign for one of our business ventures. He insisted that he hold onto it so that he could study it closely for any weaknesses in the terms and clauses – you know how meticulous he is. But I must turn it in soon and I need to go through it once more before I do that.”
The housekeeper glanced at the butler and faced him with an uncomfortable expression. “I am sorry to hear that, Your Grace. It is truly unfortunate, but due to the master’s absence, I'm afraid –”
“I do not intend to leave this estate without that document,” the duke cut her off calmly. “It is one thing to have come here without seeing him, but to also return empty handed? That would render my entire visit pointless. It would only take me a few minutes to fetch it. Do not fret.
He continued to walk down the familiar hallway, turning left down the corridor that led to Luther’s study, ignoring the pleas of the staff that followed him. Soon, the study came into view and he slipped inside, locking the door behind him.
Godric exhaled deeply and glanced around aimlessly, wondering where he should begin.
After a moment of deliberation, he began on his right, rifling through the cabinet that contained many old documents and important papers he had often seen his uncle store there. After a few minutes of searching, he found nothing suspicious and he moved to the table that carried a silver platter that bore Luther’s wines and spirits.
It had a drawer beneath and he rifled through it feverishly, hoping for a sign of what it is he sought after. When he noticed nothing more than some cigars and a letter opener, he finally moved to Luther’s desk.
Luther was by no means a tidy person, but he kept his study organized because he feared he would lose things quite often if he did not have some semblance of order. And as such, everything had its place.
Godric kept that in mind as he rifled through envelops and folders stacked atop the desk. Moments later, he moved to the drawers on each side of the desk, starting with the ones on his left. Once the search does not bring anything note worthy, he angled his body in the other direction, pulling out the drawers rapidly on the right side.
There were only three of them and he pulled the first and second in quick succession, finding nothing of consequence before he moved to the third.
But before he could put his hand into the third drawer to rifle through it, he paused with a frown.
Slowly, he closed the last drawer, then pulled the second one out again. Then he pushed that in and took a good look at the first one for a few seconds before opening the second on again, having confirmed his suspicions.
There was a false bottom that had been set up to hide something within the drawer, likely beneath the panel of wood that made up the ‘fake bottom’.
To anyone else, it would have seemed as though nothing was out of the ordinary. But Godric realized almost immediately that the second drawer seemed to have a shallower depth compared to the other two drawers.
He tapped against the ‘bottom’ and immediately got a sense of the hollowness on the other side. With a letter opener he retrieved from the desk, he managed to prop the panel open and discovered a lot of... letters.
Countless envelopes were bound together into separate bundles, all of them hidden behind the panel in such a way that would never give away what lay beneath.
Quickly, he picked out a bundle and began to open up some of the letters. Almost immediately, he recognized his uncle’s handwriting, while a few more letters contained handwriting that was unfamiliar. Godric read through the earliest and discovered that his uncle had been enquiring about a person – a man, seemingly – and their ability to handle a certain task discreetly.
After a while, the letters turned into a correspondence between Anthony Brown and Luther, with Anthony promising whole heartedly that he could deliver on what was discussed.
It was unclear what their objective was, but the mere consideration of Anthony Brown being the one who killed Godric’s parents had his stomach sinking.
The next letter form Luther contained details of Godric’s childhood home, how the back door had a faulty latch not many had noticed since Luther himself had only discovered it by accident. Then his uncle went on to describe the physical appearances of Godric and his father, specifying that only the two of them were to be dispatched.
That information sent Godric’s mind racing back to that unfortunate night, when the killer had raised his knife to strike him, but his mother had shielded him with her body.
“Just as a thought. Her death was merely an accident. Simply... collateral damage,” Godric choked out, suddenly overcome with rage as his fingers clenched around the letter in his grasp.
When his mind cleared once more, he attempted to flatten the letter once more and returned it to its envelope. He had gone though a majority of the small bundles and they basically confirmed what he had feared to be true.
Just like Anthony had eventually confessed after Godric gave him more money – Luther had orchestrated his parent’s deaths. And after he had killed them, he raised Godric to seek revenge, filling his head with nothing but rage and guilt for surviving, pushing him to desire nothing more than his parent’s killers beg for mercy before he ended the culprit’s life.
Only that when Godric was old enough to pursue the revenge, he had been raised to find the killer responsible, his uncle had pointed him in the wrong direction, away from himself.
“He must have thought me a fool, all those years. He must have laughed behind my back, proud of the fact that he had rendered me into nothing more than a puppet he could control,” Godric mumbled, unravelling the last bundle.
