There wasn’t much in the final drawer besides a few more personal items. A collection of cigars rolled over a photo of two young boys. William recognised the younger of the two – the smiling face of Robert Thomas, no older than two at most. But there was an older boy – no,man, likely in his early thirties. Turning the photo over, William read the names.
Archibald and Robert Thomas, 1914.
This was Robert’s brother who died in service during World War One. The man who William’s Archie could be linked back to.
Another piece of the puzzle piece waiting to be clicked into place.
“This was their motivation,” William said, holding up the picture. “Robert’s parents had already lost someone they loved, to war and didn’t want it happening again. Along the way they came up with the idea of saving others from the same fate of their Archie. They helped an entire village evade unnecessary pain.”
“Hard to hate them for it,” Edward groaned. “Although, we’re missing something.”
He was right. But it wasn’t hard to hate them for what they did. “Do you think Teddy found out, and they killed him because of it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I think that’s one answer we’ll never get.”
They were close. So close that William could practically taste the sweetness of this exposé. He was prepared to find out, no matter what.
William closed the drawer, ready to move on when it burst open again. The wood hit his shin, sparking pain down to his ankle. Clearly, hearing William’s yelp was exactly what Edward needed to perk up. “Areyouokay?”
He hadn’t opened the draw himself… something else had. And from the prickling across his back, he got the impression they both weren’t alone in the room anymore. Maybe they never had been.
“I’m fine,” he said, reaching his hand back into the draw, seeing if there was something else he was meant to find. “I think I’ve been shown something else that’s important.”
Edward didn’t question it, only listened.
William’s fingers grazed the smooth edge of a box. As he drew it out, something hollow rattled inside of it. Tilting his head, he saw that, much like the photos on the wall, the box had a brass plaque nailed into the lid. He scratched at the rust with his nail until the name was clear.
“It’s a small box of some kind. Maybe something that belonged to Robert because it has his name engraved on it,” William said, turning it over to catch the dull light.
“What’s inside of it?”
William shook it, the sound reminiscent of paintbrushes rolling around. There was only one way to find out. Laying the box atop the blanket of dismissal letters, William pried it open.
What waited inside, laid out amongst red-silk cushioning, was not paint brushes as he first expected.
William stumbled back, hand clamped over his mouth to stop the scream from escaping. Although his eyes were fixed on the horror inside the box, William was well aware of the bent-necked figure watching from the shadowed corner of the room – expectant to what he’d just uncovered.
“Bones,” William gasped. “It’s bones.”
“Whose?”
William looked at the plaque, reading the name again until the truth unravelled everything he’d come to believe up until that point. “I think these are Robert Thomas’s bones.”
Some secrets were hidden in shadows, kept from the light. Others, the more damning secrets, were buried, but unlike Robert Thomas as they first thought, he wasneverburied in the back garden of Hanbury Manor. And it turned out that his remains had been cleaned and preserved, placed in a box and hidden at the back of a draw like a dirty secret.
This change in detail unearthed more questions.
If Robert’s bones were kept in a chest, concealed away with all the other dark past, thenwhowas buried beneath the gravestone?
William spun on the window, slapping the lid closed and turning his attention to the view beyond Hanbury Manor. He clawed at the dust and grime coating the glass, leaving finger marks until he could see outside.
The gravesite lay in the distance. William’s breath caught in his throat as his eyes rested upon a man standing beside it.
He’d seen this man before, a face etched in oil paints but also the face of the man behind him. Teddy Jones, Edward’s lost great-uncle, leaned against the gravestone.
Hisgravestone.
If what William believed was true, Teddy was wrongly buried and hidden beneath another name. Concealed in a place no one would have the thought to look.
