At one moment, Anna Smith was sleeping restlessly. Fragments of dreams chased each other through her mind, poking and prodding her almost to wakefulness, so unlike her usual peaceful, dreamless sleep. Images chased her, events and memories from earlier in the day.
The handsome face of the Turk, briefly glimpsed from the crack in the door where she stood with Gwen and O'Brien, all craning their necks for a glimpse at the new visitor as he strolled past them with Thomas.
"He doesn't look Turkish at all," Gwen said.
No, he didn't, this Turkish gentleman. Although Anna couldn't have said what her image of a Turk might be, she had vague memories of pictures from a battered copy of 1,011 Arabian Nights that had sat on a shelf in her mother's cottage when she was a child. She would have pictured him spilling out of outlandish costumes, a turban perched on his head with a giant ruby flashing from its center, his cruelly thin-lipped mouth lurid and leering as he grabbed at a scantily clad slave girl. He certainly didn't look like that, this Mr. Pamuk. Even spattered with mud from head to toe from riding, he was a devastating beauty of a man.
But there was something wrong about the sight of the elegant Pamuk this time, something off kilter. What was it? Her mind tried to grasp onto the wrongness, dragging her to the surface of sleep. She could almost hear the snorting sounds of Gwen's snoring before the dream reached out and pulled her under again.
"Well, he doesn't look like Englishman I've ever met, worse luck," Anna sighed in response. "I think he's gorgeous."
It was all still the same as what had actually happened several hours before, a copy of the brief, giggling, irreverent scene. But there was more to come. She knew it. Now, it was as if an undercurrent ran beneath every careless word, every moment that had been so lively in mischievous in real life, as if they'd all been drifting on a stream of impending menace towards a destination none of them even suspected, hidden and deadly.
Anna held her breath, waiting, knowing that something else would happen next, something besides Mr. Carson's heavy feet and growling demand if there was some crisis of which he was unaware.
And then it did.
Mr. Pamuk turned his head and looked at her. Anna stood transfixed. That hadn't happened during the waking version. His dark eyes held hers, a tiny smile playing about the corners of his full mouth, both attractive and repellent. Anna struggled to stand still, to keep breathing calmly in and out. On either side, Daisy and O'Brien were silent. That was another difference from this moment in waking life. The three women had giggled and nudged each other, each clearly hoping that the handsome Turkish gentleman would happen to turn and catch her eye. But now, it was happening, and now, it was frightening.
It's a dream, Anna repeated to herself again and again. Only a dream. Nothing more. This was a lucid dream; Anna understood it then. Her Cornish grandmother had always told her about such dreams, when the dreamer knew that she walked through a scene of imagination and fantasy. Anna had always wanted one, and never more so than in the past few months. She knew exactly why. Anna dreamed about snatched happy moments sometimes, reliving a word or a glance exchanged with John Bates. She'd always wanted to know she was dreaming so that she could embellish those moments with fantasy, with the sort of responses from him that he had never given her in waking life. Instead, their exchanges were always as brief and casual and meaningless in her dreams as they'd been in reality. She'd always wanted to control them when she was dreaming so that they happened the way she wished they had.
What Anna hadn't understood, what she only realized now, was that a lucid dream could still be outside of her control—and that nothing would feel more frightening.
Mr. Pamuk turned his head all the way towards her. The long afternoon sunlight streaming through a window reflected off his dark hair. The strange, small smile still curved his lips. He began to walk towards her.
No. No… Anna tried desperately to move, but her feet seemed nailed to the floor. Daisy and O'Brien stood like statues, as if they'd ceased to be real, flesh-and-blood people at all.
He came closer, each step as graceful as a panther.
"Please, oh please," whispered Anna, forcing the words through her lips. "Don't…"
He stretched out a hand to her. Anna's gaze fell to his arm, which was bloodless and white. Her breath was starting to come in short, shallow gasps. She tried to pull her own arms back, but without her volition, she was lifting them slightly to meet his.
He stretched out his hand to hers. The fingers were stiff and icy, as no living flesh could be. Yet he was standing, and moving, and his smile was still the same.
"No!" cried Anna. And finally, she could move, her legs kicking, her arms flailing, dragging her up to the surface, gasping like a drowned woman breaking water at the last possible moment.
Then she was blinking at the familiar ceiling of the maid's bedroom, staring at a crack in the plaster. All a dream, only a dream. The relief washed over her like a cold wave smacking her in the face on the beach at Brighton when she had gone there as a child with her mother.
Six o clock, Anna thought for the first scrap of a moment, but it seems so much earlier, she was used to waking at the break of dawn from Daisy's voice at the door, or in the winter, long before. Ah, just once, I'd like to wake up natural. But it doesn't matter, all that counts is that now I know it was a dream. Nothing but a dream-
Before she could draw her next breath, a hand clamped down over her mouth.
Robbers! was her first swift thought. Thousands of pounds worth of silver plate, only the most important pieces stored in the safe by Carson. Lady Grantham's jewelry, the thick ropes of pearls, an emerald and diamond necklace, ruby rings, sapphire bracelets. Rare paintings hung on the walls all over the manor. So many costly items to steal. The back door was almost never locked. And this was surely how a thief would manage it, silencing the servants first. Maybe he had an accomplice, Thomas, I'll bet!
But even the thought of robbers was better than that other fear, lurking beneath the surface, that Mr. Pamuk had followed her, that he had found her, that her dream had brought him to life in death.
What a strange thought. Mr. Pamuk's alive, all right, so why would I think about his death?
Her eyes blinked open, and Anna saw, not the unfamiliar vicious features of a thief, or the dead-white features of the dream-Pamuk, but Lady Mary's frightened face.
"Shh!" her mistress hissed in a trembling whisper.
There was no time to think, and no way to make a sound without waking Gwen. Anna could tell that the other maid was sleeping more lightly after all the kicking she herself had been doing, and it wouldn't take much more to wake her. Mary was gesturing frantically, then already turning and tiptoeing swiftly out of the room. Anna slipped out of bed as quietly as she could, following her. Gwen made a snuffling noise and then relaxed, her arms spreading across the bedspace.
They stopped in the dark corridor outside the servants' rooms, and Mary turned to look at her maid. Her face was utterly white, her black brows shocking slashes of darkness against her cheeks, bleached of all color.
"What is it?" Anna whispered urgently. "What's happened?"
Mary's lips were trembling so hard that she could barely speak, even in a whisper. "I—I can't explain it all right now, I can't! But—please, you've got to help me! Anna, you're the only one who can. I can't tell anyone else—"
"Tell anyone else what?" Anna whispered back.
Mary shook her head and bit her lip, her eyes darting from side to side. She seemed to be struggling to gather her courage.
"There's a man," she said. "He's…"
"What-who?" stammered Anna. "A man? Who? Where? I don't understand-"
"The Turkish diplomat. Mr. Pamuk." Mary took a deep, deep breath, and Anna knew, with a trace of the second sight of her Cornish grandmother, the dim shape of some terrible thing, that what Mary was about to say might shatter all their lives. "And he's dead."
For a blessed moment, what Mary had said still not seem quite real. "What?" Anna asked stupidly.
"He's dead," Mary said in a rush. "I think he's dead. No, I'm sure he's dead."
"But how? Why?" Anna somehow managed to gasp.
"We were together and …" Mary's words trailed off.
For a moment, there was only the sound of her ragged breathing. She glanced up at Anna, her gaze fearful, her dark eyes enormous and terrified as an animal caught in a trap.
"He's dead," Mary repeated in a thread of a voice.
"In your room," said Anna. She understood now, all right.
They simply stared at each other for a moment, a strange moment in that time and place and world when even a servant and an earl's daughter might be no more than two women, one desperate and frightened and unable to beg the other for help.
Not with her voice, at least. But Mary's enormous dark eyes pled silently with all the desperate words she could not say. She was clearly as helpless as any child, as little capable of dealing with the situation as a baby, but Anna's own mind seemed to be working unnaturally fast. For the moment, at least, she could not judge, could not condemn, and could not slide easily into shock. So instead, she thought.
"We've got to get him back to his own bed," said Anna.
"How? It's in the bachelor's corridor, miles from my room."
"Could we manage him between us?"
Mary shook her head. "He weighs a ton. I can't shift him at all. We'll need at least one other. What about Bates?"
Anna's mind was still moving with that awful clarity and speed, and she knew she should hold onto the ability as long as possible. "He couldn't lift him. William can't keep a secret and Thomas wouldn't try to. And there's no point in asking Mr. Carson. He'd pass out from the shock."
"Well, we've got to do something."
"What about your sisters?"
Even before Mary shook her head firmly, Anna knew what a doomed suggestion that was. "Sybil's too young. And Edith would use it against me for the rest of my life and beyond."
"Then who else has as much to lose as you, if it ever gets out?"
"Not Papa," cried Mary. "Please don't say Papa. I couldn't bear the way he'd look at me. "
And suddenly, Anna knew. "No, not his lordship."
If possible, Mary's face lost what little color remained.
Anna nodded. "Your lady mother."
"Mama! No, no. If she knew…" Mary's voice was like a hopeless prayer that she already knew would not be answered.
If she knew. When her ladyship knows, more like. Because there's no other way, thought Anna.
For the first time, the reality of it all began to steal into Anna's mind, and she could not stop it. The entire situation was impossible at the moment, a lurid scene from a penny dreadful novel with a villain lurking just outside the door in a black cloak and top hat, twirling his mustache.
But the second someone else knew, it would all be real.
For just a moment, Anna did hesitate. What would happen once Lady Cora knew? What an explosive scandal it would be if anyone else ever found out, and how could they possibly keep this a secret? And above all, what Mary had been doing with this man in her room when he died? The questions pressed in on her mind thick and fast.
Mary laid her hand on Anna's shoulder, the fingers cold and rigid. "Help me, Anna, please. Please," she said in a fast, low voice. "You're my only hope." The vulnerability that so few people ever saw shone in her huge dark eyes. Mary always seemed invincibly strong. Only Anna knew, as no-one else on earth really knew, that the earl's eldest daughter was perilously weak.
"You know I'll always help you, my lady," was all that Anna could say.
"All right. Yes, yes. Let me think. We'll go and wake her. We've got to. But what will I say? She'll ask how it happened."
How on earth did it happen? wondered Anna. But this wasn't the time to wonder or speculate. The slightest noise could be enough to wake O'Brien, at the very least. The woman's door was only a few yards from where they stood. She spent her every waking moment sniffing out every bit of information in the house, and as if weighed down by the sordid secrets of others, the lady's maid slept lightly as a result. She might very well be standing behind the door right now, listening intently, gathering every whispered word.
"We've got to find your lady mother," said Anna.
"You're right," said Mary. "We can't waste a moment." But she still looked so helpless, like a tall lanky child unexpectedly caught at some mischief that ought to have been harmless but had turned deadly, her hair hanging in her face, her shoulders shaking.
"Come on, then," said Anna.
Mary reached for her hand, and Anna took the stiff fingers in her palm. Together, they stole down the corridor.
The journey seemed to go on forever in the dim hall, the sound of her own breathing shockingly loud, fear darting through her that someone would hear their footsteps and wake up, come out into the hall, and ask what was going on, perhaps that Thomas or William would be walking about for whatever reason. During that short walk that seemed as if it would never end, Mary only spoke once.
"I don't understand," she said, helplessly, pitiably.
Anna looked at her mistress and understood that Mary was confessing her lack of understanding just once, because she must, and she could not let those words fall in front of her mother, where she must be as strong as possible. Not that Anna herself understood, either.
But then…
What was there to understand?
That was the first suspicion that Anna had. Beneath her shock at the death, the sinking feeling at what Lady Mary had apparently done, the confusion over why she could have done it, the dread of what was coming next when they would be forced to tell her mother, questions stirred. They threatened to bob to the surface, for all that now was not the time to ask them.
How could this radiantly healthy young man have suddenly died?
How did any of it make sense?
What had really happened?
And why?
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If you've seen Downton Abbey, you remember Mr. Pamuk.
Even if the TV was on in the background while you chased toddlers around the house, gave your cat a flea bath, or tried to separate warring family members at Christmas dinner, you couldn't help seeing the character that Theo James created. And you definitely remember that moment in the second episode of the first season, at the meet at Downton, when Lady Mary first saw him.
We all remember that he dropped dead in Mary's bed, and that she, Anna, and Cora were barely able to keep the scandal from instantly breaking over their heads. In 1912, this was an event that, as Mary correctly informs us, could have caused a scandal that would live on long after all of the currently living Crawleys was dead—if it ever got out. As it happened, the story never exploded into public consciousness in exactly the way that Mary and Cora had feared, but it seeped through the events of the next several seasons like a bloodstain that refused to dry up. The secret of Pamuk's death affected so many things. In the words of the Downton Abbey Wiki, "Mary's relationships with her mother Cora, her sister Edith, her aunt Rosamund, her grandmother Violet, the servants, her lack of invitations to parties in London during "The Season," her fiancée Sir Richard, and most importantly, her cousin, love interest, and Downton Abbey heir, Matthew Crawley. Pamuk's death also affects Bates' relationship with Lord Grantham, with his estranged wife Vera." I would add that if Matthew had married Mary earlier, then two things might have been radically different. He never would have gotten involved with Lavinia Swire, who would probably have lived as a result (she wouldn't have been at Downton Abbey to catch the 1919 flu, and her heart wouldn't have been broken.) Because Matthew wouldn't have been Mr. Swire's heir, Robert's stupid business decisions that caused all their money to be lost would have played out in a way that showed the natural consequences of making that kind of mistake. But before we start thinking that maybe something positive could have come out of it after all, there's another thing to remember. If Mary and Matthew had married at an earlier point, then George would have been born earlier too, so Matthew wouldn't have been on the road at this exact moment and wouldn't have been in that accident. In fact, you could really say that everything about the series after Kemal Pamuk's death was set in motion by that event.
And yet there's a major paradox here. The exact way that Pamuk's died doesn't seem to be important at all, considering how it's presented in the show. The specifics are brushed under the rug and quickly dismissed. We don't see whatever it was that happened to him; we only know what others tell us. In fact, we really only get two specific pieces of information about how or why Pamuk died. We know that he's dead. We know that Dr. Clarkson said he died of a heart attack. And that's it. It's all second and third hand information, and there is very little of it. This is odd, considering that his mysterious death was like a stone thrown into a pond, the ripples from which would affect Mary's life forever after (and in some ways, the lives of all the Crawleys and most other characters in the series.)
Basically, all we know is an extremely short version of the obvious answer to the mystery of Pamuk's death. But the question remains: is it a true answer? We know what we were told. But can we accept this information at face value?
I think that there is every reason for us to not do this. If we want to learn more, if we have any interest in exploring the question further, then I don't think we can or should accept the obvious when it comes to the curious case of Mr. Pamuk. There are too many clues in canon that much more might be going on here, and that the question of what actually happened is more than worth digging into. By the time we've sifted all the information, we'll see a very different theory about what really happened to Mr. Pamuk, and why. And that's what this story is all about.
I can't reveal at this point exactly what these key clues and elements are, because they form the argument for why Pamuk might have been murdered. But we will go through them before the end of this story. There is also a factor which I think is necessary to make this more than a fun but fictional fan theory: Julian Fellowes left the door open in his own words and notes on the subject of Pamuk's fate. This is a crucial factor that we'll explore later on. We'll examine all the hints, sift through all the clues, and shove all the facts under a microscope. We will find that the answer is both completely supported and completely unexpected. There are many canon-based reasons to believe that Pamuk may not have died of a heart attack, but instead, was murdered. And I think that once you know what these reasons are, there's a good chance you'll agree with me. Because when it comes to the mysterious death of Mr. Pamuk, a lot doesn't add up.
In the next chapter, we—and Anna- will start to learn why. The story will be told in the format that we've seen here- half fiction, and half nonfiction essay. We will take this journey with Anna as she tells the story. Through her eyes and her thoughts, and also through some analysis, we will explore the curious case of Mr. Pamuk. We'll answer the haunting and unresolved questions.
How did he really die?
Who killed him?
And more than anything else, as Anna wondered, why?
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Thanks so much for reading this chapter! This is literally the first piece of DA fanfic I've ever posted, but I've been writing in the Potter fandom for a LONG time. So if you need a good long D/G fic to read while we're all locked down under quarantine (as of 3/18/20, anyway,) I have a lot of them. Check out Draco's Dangerous Dilemma—it's the one I'm updating right now. It's long but complete, with 20 chapters left to go. I THINK that FFN will let me post a link to a fic hosted here… I guess I'll find out… anyway, it's at s/5964672/1/Draco-s-Dangerous-Dilemma, or just search for Draco's Dangerous Dilemma. More coming soon!