moriendi dies | {clue event five}

Indigo had slept peacefully that night. For the first time in a long time, he hadn’t felt like the odd man out. It was a good feeling, not being wallpaper. But his newfound sense of self had come crashing down after he’d come down to the breakfast table.

Malcom Nox.

Dead.

Indigo had deflated, looking morose.

No more Malcolm. No more competition. Unless there was a will…

Indigo shook his head. It was selfish to think about it like that. Poor Adrien. He deserved better than this. If any of the staff had known, he was the next of kin he would have been informed right away as the next of kin. Instead, the rest of them learned first, leaving him to shoulder the weight of their gazes.

Then the other shoe had dropped.

As he had suspected, the accident was murder. What kind of accident could Malcolm have gotten to in the house? But the neck? Someone had a grudge. Indigo looked away for a moment, then relented and took a step towards Adrien and placed an awkward hand on his shoulder.

The other boy tensed for a moment, but relaxed right after. He removed his hand after a moment and started to pace. Clearly, there was a killer among them. Malcolm’s security was top notch, and nobody could have broken in. The staff had been sent home at the usual time.

No, it was one of the interns.

Logic dictated that it was likely someone who was worried about being sent home. But that was assuming that the killer was operating logically. To so brutally murder a man in a house full of people said that they were acting off of emotion. Perhaps there was no plan at all. Perhaps someone had snapped.

He needed to establish a motive. His mind was working overtime, but with there was something he was missing. Just like when he and Adrien had been rifling through the filing cabinet.

And then it hit him. Wondering who killed Malcolm was the wrong question. What they needed to be thinking about was whether or not the murderer had any other grudges to settle. It would be some time before the peacekeepers could be contacted what with the power out.

Indigo stared at his feet and felt the color leave his cheeks. Eleven of the interns were potential witnesses. Anyone of them could poke holes in an alibi once the keepers started asking questions. If this murder had truly been a spur of the moment thing, there was a good chance that nobody was safe.

And if that was true…

He’d need to find a pattern in the next few murders. Sure, he wouldn’t be able to save everyone, but if he could figure this out the way he’d figured out all of Malcolm’s challenges, there was a chance that some of them might survive long enough for the authorities to arrive.

Honestly, the best thing they could do was stay seated around the table until the keepers got there. But Fiora had a point. It was an old saying that the murderer returned to the scene of the crime, which gave him more than a little cause to stare at her. But it was best to keep an eye on whoever else followed. He doubted whoever it was could resist seeing other people’s reactions to their handiwork.

Perhaps there would be some clue that they could find, some hint that would point them in the right direction. Indigo already had his suspects. It was never too early to think far ahead, and he was almost eighty percent certain he’d already narrowed it down to four. Obviously, while Malcolm had never intended it, Indigo’s genius would come in handy for solving this mystery.

Then Indigo’s train of thought hit the brakes.

There was Adrien to consider. His relationship with Malcolm aside, how would he feel about the rest of them traipsing along to investigate his father’s corpse? Then again, he’d probably needed some kind of closure. Indigo straightened his bow-tie and silently fell in step with Fiora.

Sometimes, words weren’t needed.

The passion moved through Adam’s body like a stranger, a tide of ecstatic energy, a hunger.

The way he hurled that kitchen knife at Malcolm Nox’s wall was unrecognizable even by himself—it was reckless and posed a great danger to his future as an intern here. The thought that he, himself, had been his own foil, had been his own downfall, was strangely humorous to him. Adam laughed, and then sank his fist into another blank wall.

The knuckles, now bloodied, bit through the yellowing wallpaper and burned with a fire of regret. He himself burned in this fire of regret.

A stick of nicotine eased him and as did the night air. No matter how rotten he thought of Malcolm Nox, Adam couldn’t coerce himself to think the same for his mansion. The structure was assiduously built, with strong, timber spines to hold the stones and the bricks up, dark-wood floorboards that never once creaked, ornate tapestry and furniture, and bejeweled mirrors that, from time to time, glowed with spectral reflections. If the prize for the winner was this mansion, Adam would be pleased.

Softly, he ran a hand up the contours of the opened window in his room. Beyond the window’s edge was an asleep world colored in dark hues; the grey waters of the district’s mucky canals threatened to devour the clear, untainted navy of the night sky. He stared at the clouds and navy overhead, leaning his head against the window frame, the cigarette in hand. The stick’s orange tip sizzled before exploding into white ghosts of smoke, sent adrift into the night.

Near dawn, Adam managed to calm himself down.

He had exorcised his guilt and his fears into the night that was now fading—and now, it was time for rest. But, the moment his wreath of brown curls fell on the pillow, a knock rang aloud. That knock, hollow and bone-chilling, reverberated on itself as Adam stumbled out of his room into an asphyxiating darkness. There was a familiar tang of panic in the air, the scent of chaos sharp in his nostrils, the cacophony of troubled noises and voices loud in his ears.

Something is wrong, he immediately recognized.

Shadows rushed in and out of the breakfast room, almost kaleidoscopic in nature. “Hey, what’s going on?” He asked breathlessly with a small growl, nose crinkled. The news hit him like a train. He felt their impact on his ribs, bending the bones like a tense bowstring, breaking them.

After moments of silence, he softly gasped out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding.

“He’s dead, Mr. Taupe,” Carol repeated, her words chorusing with the hollow reverberation of the knock before that had yet to halt. A cold wind rustled through the room from the forlorn windows, but Adam wasn’t sure if it was the wind that caused the hairs on the back of his neck to rise.

“He’s dead, Mr. Taupe,” and it could had been Adam's fault. The knife he’d hurled at Malcolm could had missed its intended mark by a few inches and plunge itself somewhere fatal, its tip embedded in the bulging apple of his throat.

“He’s dead,” Adam repeated, testing if speaking the words out loud made them sound less incorrect and more factual. The words sounded as incorrect, and as shocking, as the first time he’d heard them. The cacophony of sounds rose, rising in a steadfast crescendo. “Where’s—” he gasped, again, “where’s Beryl?” His eyes whirled around the room, and glimpsed at the distraught faces splattered around its perimeters. Adrien’s features were distraught, as well as Fiora’s, along with Indigo’s.

       None of them had expected this.

“All these fucking months and it had to end like this—with blood, a dead man, and a murderer. We might as well get a coffin that fits thirteen bodies and bury ourselves too.” The laughter from his lips was rotten, as wrong as this whole ordeal.

       “I am going after Beryl.”