Dear Sunday friends, thank you for the lovely comments and speculations. We are not out of the woods yet, literally. I hope you like the discovery in this chapter. Disclaimer: I don't own some of the description of the wood. It's from Wikipedia. Happy reading!


Chapter Fourteen

Elizabeth felt a gust of chilled air swirling around her. She couldn't hold onto the young man's warm hand. She was blown away, out of the room, then the house. Outside, the moon shone brightly. The magnificent house of Pemberley stood eerie silent. Not a single room was lit with candles. Elizabeth was about to rush back to the house and her room when the church bell began to ring. She was going to ignore it, but it was so loud and so close by, she was afraid if she didn't go and stop it, people inside the house would be all woken up.

She had an urge to keep the silence of the night. So she stumbled towards the sound of the bell. Her legs and body hurt, and her progress was slow. But after turning a corner, behind some tall bushes, what Elizabeth saw was not a church but a confessional that looked nothing like the normal one found in catholic churches. The wooden structure was curved with some foreign-looking goddesses and stood lonely in the woods. The sound of a bell rang loud from inside it.

Elizabeth couldn't see anyone on the penitent side. Confused, she entered the minister's side of the confessional through a door. The bell toll stopped once she was inside.

"Who am I speaking with?" A voice came asking on the other side of the latticed opening. It sounded all prime and proper, like everything you would imagine in a lady's speech. Elizabeth thought she had heard it before in her dream at the reunion party. The woman who reminded Elizabeth of Bingley. Strange! Elizabeth swore that the penitent side of the confessional was empty earlier.

"That is Mrs. Bingley," A voice whispered to Elizabeth's ears, startling her. She was sure it wasn't Lady Anne. Perhaps it was a ghost friend of hers.

"Mr. Darcy? Master Fitzwilliam?" Mrs. Bingley said through the opening.

Elizabeth cleared her throat. "It's Miss Zeath," she answered. "The gentlemen aren't around. Do you want me to deliver a message?"

"Oh, it's you." Mrs. Bingley sounded different now, and her tone was much colder.

Elizabeth took in a deep breath before speaking again. "Yes, Master Fitzwilliam isn't in the house, and Mr. Darcy... isn't available at the moment. If you want, I could help you deliver a message?" She didn't understand why she avoided telling Mrs. Bingley the whereabouts of the father and son. She just felt it was the right thing to do. Elizabeth also hoped that Mrs. Bingley received the hint that she wasn't interested in having a conversation with her. She wanted to return to the warmth of the house.

"No, no. I spoke to Collins today, and he said something about you; said you were digging into Lady Anne's murder to find who killed her." There was a noise in the background after she had said this. Elizabeth couldn't hear what the person was saying, but Mrs. Bingley was now speaking back to the person. Judging by her now muffled voice, Elizabeth suspected that the gentlewoman had a handkerchief covering her mouth while she talked to the person behind her.

"Yes. I was here for something else, but Mr. Darcy would like me to stay behind and help...help with the murder investigation. We believe Lady Anne was poisoned by someone during the reunion party three years ago." Again, she wasn't sure why she told Mrs. Bingley so much. Elizabeth seemed unable to control her thoughts.

"I see...Collins also said you claimed you could see the ghost of Lady Anne?" Elizabeth didn't know if Mrs. Bingley was mocking her or curious.

"I am a psychic."

Mrs. Bingley scoffed. "That's ridiculous! So that means Collins is right; you are a witch. That's what you all call yourself, a psychic, with some supposed special gift from who, God? But we all know what you really are. And how dare you bring a confessional with foreign goddesses on it here? You must be a pagan, if not a witch!" Her voice pitched higher and higher.

Elizabeth cleared her throat just because she didn't know what to say to that. She could tell that Mrs. Bingley wanted a reply. Something she could use to berate Elizabeth more, but Elizabeth didn't plan on giving her that satisfaction. So, she kept quiet instead.

"Are you there?" Mrs. Bingley yelled.

"I'll tell Mr. Darcy and Master Fitzwilliam you didn't have a message for them, Mrs. Bingley."

"Nonsense. You will answer me…" Mrs. Bingley sneered. But a DONG sounded after that.

"Mrs. Bingley? Are you still there?" Elizabeth looked through the opening, but the angry penitent seemed no longer there. "Great, she ran away from me."

Baffled by the encounter, Elizabeth walked out of the confessional and into the woods. The gusty wind had died down. But suddenly, young shoots of deep green colour with a shiny coat sprung out from the ground one after another, surrounding Elizabeth. They matured into medium-sized trees with short, thick trunks within seconds. The leaves that shot out of the branches had an opposite decussate arrangement. They were short-stalked and oval-shaped. The flowers were small with a pale green colour and a funnel shape. They bloomed immediately and gave out a foul smell.

Elizabeth dashed frantically away from the encroaching trees and the putrid scent. Gasping for air, she felt elated on reaching the house. But she was no longer in Pemberley. How strange! She had never been to this house. She marched inside anyway, hoping to find a safe room to hide. Surely, the trees wouldn't sprout out inside the house.

She avoided the first floor and ran upstairs through the servants' stairs. She found herself jumping with utmost stealth into a room and immediately shutting it quietly. Even with her heart racing ten times faster, thumping in her ears and bones, closing the door behind her softly made her feel a tiny—very tiny bit safe.

She quickly scanned the reasonably large and unsurprisingly neat room. It was not the guest bed chamber of Pemberley she stayed.

"Search it!" A voice startled Elizabeth. It was not Lady Anne's.

She came to this room for refuge, and yet she was asked to search it. Elizabeth pondered for a moment. She then decided to do as she was told. She always trusted the ghosts she communicated with and their friends. 'Where do I search first?' She said to herself.

The desk. Elizabeth's instincts pushed her there first. The lamp, to the books, neatly placed one atop the other—just three of them. Elizabeth almost convinced herself that it might be a futile effort for a moment.

However..., this was for a just cause, right? For Lady Anne. For other victims out there who had been murdered and never gotten the justice they deserved. Lady Anne's case made her think of all the murderers who had gotten away with all the evil they had done. The innocent people killed, like Lady Anne, had their life taken from them. Death wasn't the thief here, and Death hadn't called Lady Anne. She was the one kicked to the abyss by a wicked person with a dark heart.

Elizabeth turned to look at the room again. Her gaze stopped on the sleek brown door leading to the dressing room. She took quick but cautious steps towards it, glancing back at the main bedroom door and then at the entrance to the dressing room. With one bold grip, she grabbed the knob and yanked it open.

Sparkling, that's the word.

'Mmm... there's obviously nothing here,' Elizabeth convinced herself. But, she moved inside the room anyway, raising the wash basin, pulling the curtains, and holding up the pitcher —which would seem pretty unnecessary to anyone at the time.

She looked to a wardrobe whose keys were dangling in the keyhole. The dangling, being the only movement in the room, asides her thumping heart. She rubbed her palms quickly on her dress, her left hand pushing the door and her right hand turning the keys to the right.

Click. Click. The doors open slowly with a gentle creak. Elizabeth saw the neatly folded and carefully hung clothes and ran her fingers through them, turning them left and right.

Anyone would have thought of opting out of the search there and then.

Elizabeth locked the wardrobe and walked quickly to the bedroom door but stopped abruptly in her tracks with a tired sigh. She found her grip on the door and turned to look at the bedroom. She brushed through her dampened hair and put her hands on her hips. The bedroom was so neat and practically scanty, like there would be nothing to search for.

Elizabeth walked to the bed and ran her hand into the grey duvet, trying not to unfold it. She then went on her knees, her warm cheeks meeting the cold floor. She scanned beneath the bed. All she saw was the pretty white wall on the other side. There was nothing.

The bedside table was her next target. She pulled out the drawer and saw only hymn books and a comb. Elizabeth was half dissuaded and half persuaded to continue looking. 'Why did Lady Anne's ghost-friend want her to search here?'

She sat on the cold floor, her elbows on her knees, tired. She looked around again. Elizabeth silently wished Lady Anne would appear or give her directions on where to check. Soon, she stood again, a little more motivated now that she thought for a second about Lady Anne.

'Someone's coming?' Elizabeth's mouth gaped open, as she heard footsteps approaching the room.

One, Two. One two, one-two. It sounded like it wasn't one person approaching but two.

Elizabeth sprinted to the hinge side of the door. At least, that was the only place she thought to hide at that very moment. But, before she could start contemplating what to say if anyone entered the room, the footsteps had died down.

She let out a relieved sigh.

'You know what? This bedroom is probably not the place to check.' Elizabeth whispered to herself again. Or she was trying to communicate with the ghost friend.

She waited a few seconds in silence to hear if there were any approaching footsteps again.

None.

She grabbed the handle and was prepared to leave the room. At that point which seemed like some moment of truth, she turned sharply to look at the room. Her eyes hit the bookcase at the farthest right end of the room. How could she not have checked that? She chastised herself.

Even if she didn't find anything, she wouldn't have been able to forgive herself for not looking if she had left the room already.

She trotted to the bookcase a bit loudly this time. 'You want to keep it quiet!' she told herself.

Placing her left palm atop the bookcase, one of its doors creaked open by itself, scaring Elizabeth a little. She pulled it out further, only to have a tiny rush of dust, and the smell of old dirty paper hit her on the nose.

Elizabeth coughed and waved the dust away while the other hand covered her mouth. After a few moments, she opened both doors of the bookcase and searched the books. She flipped through every book's pages and looked through the back of the bookcase, but nothing was out of place until she accidentally knocked over a book on the bottom level. The book hit the shelf with a hollow sound.

Ah! There was a secret compartment. Elizabeth removed all the books on that level and pressed her hands around the wood.

Pop!

Finally, a panel popped open, and she found stacks of paper and some old letters.

Elizabeth ran through the dusty papers, but she knew all too well it would be a dangerous hunt if she went through everything while being a trespasser in someone else's room.

Quickly, she took the papers and separated the letters, all of which she wrapped in a muslin cloth she found in the dressing room. With the same gentle creaking noise with which the bookcase opened, Elizabeth shut it back.

Elizabeth stood to her feet and walked quickly to the door, feeling quite fulfilled and happy. She glanced at the whole bedroom, trying to ensure nothing was out of place.

She clicked the door shut in seconds and rushed back down the stairs, package in hand. She decided to escape through the back of the house, to avoid another encounter with the fast-growing trees. She tip-toed around the servant quarters, luckily not encountering anyone. Finally, she reached the door at the back of the house that led outside. She gripped the knob, twisted it and pushed open the door; only for the back of house to become her guest room in Pemberley!

She was stunned and tried to look back inside the house but it seemed she was back in Pemberley.

Bewildered, she stepped into the guest room anyway. Like a child who managed to hide from an angry neighbour, in the comfort of her mother's house, after being naughty, Elizabeth felt the utmost relief once she shut her door behind her. She fell back down on her bouncy bed with a thump. Lying like a starfish, she heaved a sigh.

Elizabeth smiled at the white ceiling for a few moments and sat quickly back up. She unwrapped the package, took out the contents, and hated the smell. She spread the paper out across her bed, ignoring the stain of dust they had made on the bedsheet.

Inaudible words flew slowly from Elizabeth's lips as she read the contents of each letter one by one. Some intrigued her, some brought confused wrinkles to her temples, and some would make her chuckle. Many words in the letters had blurred due to the time they had been hidden away. However, they seemed to be the correspondence of several people. Elizabeth looked through them again to see which one she had not yet read.

A small yellow paper peeped from beneath the paper dump on her bed. She pulled it out. Elizabeth blew the dust off it and found that it was a bundle.

'Hmm, how is it that I didn't see this before?' She murmured, untying the thread around it. Inside the yellow bundle were two letters. She unfolded the first one and read the content to herself. This time, a shocking gasp escaped her lungs.

Elizabeth read on, her eyes moving from left to right to left to right. An even more disquieting expression was plastered on her face, and she unfolded the second one like it was a sequel of some sort.

'He had an affair with Mrs. Bingley?' Elizabeth frowned. 'Well, that is one thing I didn't see coming.' She sighed as a lot of questions popped into her head. She picked both letters, raised them side by side, and compared them.

"It all seems to be true," Lady Anne, who had been in the room and reading the letters over Elizabeth's shoulders all the while, replied.

Elizabeth looked up in shock. Not in the wonder of seeing Lady Anne appear to her again—Lady Anne's sudden appearance was something Elizabeth had gotten used to now—but in the shock of what she had just discovered.

"Oh my..."

"It really is true, Elizabeth. She is not in my good books now. Despite her origin, I gave her a chance; tried to be nice to her. But see, she is not a good woman..." She paused and walked away from Elizabeth.

"I'm shocked," were the only two words that finally found their way to Elizabeth's mouth.

Lady Anne said, "Well, that's no surprise here."

She moved closer to Elizabeth's bed again, and Elizabeth's eyes did not drift off the former's for a second.

"They both had an affair." She continued, with Elizabeth paying close attention to her words. Lady Anne's voice remained calm, nonetheless.

"And he's their son?" Elizabeth wondered.

Lady Anne nodded in affirmation.

Elizabeth didn't know what to say, and if she was to be very, very honest at that point, everything she had come to find out tired her. Elizabeth doubted her mind was even prepared for any of what was yet to come. She closed her eyes, trying to calm her mind. But suddenly, she felt the room jolted. Or was her body shaking?

When Elizabeth blinked open her eyes, she was in her room still. But Lady Anne was no longer there. Jane was beside her. She wept and smiled at the same time when she saw Elizabeth was awake. "Bless the Lord, Lizzy. You are awake!" Elizabeth looked confused, she tried to sit up, but Jane gently pushed her back to the bed. "Please lay down. You're still weak." Elizabeth was staring straight at Jane, lost and confused. Dozens of images flashed through Elizabeth's eyes - a confessional, the quick-growing trees, the unfamiliar house, the bedroom with the bookcase and the paper. She remembered that the letters were crucial in solving Lady Anne's murder but couldn't recall what she had read. She had so many questions running around her head that it hurt.

"Elizabeth, are you okay?"

"No, yes. I had a dream."

"Oh, just a dream, don't worry about it," Jane said. "I am going to call the doctor to check on you."