I wanted to watch Harley Quinn and Miss Fisher so this got preferential treatment...sue me. By the way to anyone in Australia can you let me know about the Crypt of Tears is it good? God I love Essie Davis...BTW Lucy is going to be more complex if I pull this off, so bare with me ok! I got her! Just give it a few chapters. For all those who are new here hi! Hope you enjoy the story! This chapter didn't sit right with me but I'm putting it out there.
I didn't do this last chapter so I'm so sorry! macy10495, Summer Nickels, Lunanight19, cowseatgrass, JcL107, Lau01, GrimReaper-444, SugrSkulzAndCurlz, thanks for the faves and follows! I appreciate it. And if you followed or favorited this and I didn't get a notification thank you!
Alicia, thanks for the favorite and follow! Also I feel like you called me out man! Guys Alicia is taking the money now! Whose got money on the fiance!? Lmao you get to meet him this chapter! I see why you can hate mysteries then lol doubts and intrigues will be a thing with this story...or I hope it will be. I'm learning how to write a mystery.
Guest, I hope you came back and I hope you loved it!
Tiernank, I love the support! Thank you! I hope I create a enjoyable story!
Action!
Magnus's Point of View
Magnus sat down at his desk and sat at his typewriter. Lucy prefered to write by hand. He however, loved the sounds and clicks of his typewriter. The thought of Lucy made his chest hurt. He sat at his typewriter and wrote the first few things that came to mind. He had made up his mind he wasn't going to let the public slander his beloved Lucy. The newspapers had already began to write lewd things about her. And he was not going to stand for it. He wrote with abandon now and would edit it later...
While a not inconsiderable share of my work has been devoted to the study of murder, I have never stooped to the narration of a mystery story. I consider the conventional mystery story an excess of sound and fury, signifying a barbaric need for violence and revenge in that timid horde known as the reading public. The literature of murder investigation bores me profoundly. Yet I am bound to tell this story, out of a deep emotional involvement in the case of Lucy Heartfilia. I offer the narrative, not so much as a detective novel but as a love story.
I wish I were its hero. I fancy myself a pensive figure drawn, without conscious will, into a love that was born of violence and destined for tragedy. My proportions are, if anything, too heroic. While I measure three inches above six feet, the magnificence of my skeleton is hidden by the weight of my flesh.. At certain times in history, flesh was considered a sign of good disposition, but we live in a tiresome era wherein exercise is held sacred and heroes are always slender.
Magnus thought of Laxus's muscular form, even her friend Natsu's body. Those were the kind of heroes Lucy was attracted too. He shook his head. Even Vincent was characterized as a hero.
So I have learned, at the age of fifty-two, to accept this burden with the same philosophical calm with which I endure such indecencies as hot weather and war news. But it will not be possible to write of myself heroically in these chapters wherein Laxus Dreyar will move this story. I have long learned to uphold my ego in a world that also contains the Duke Vincent Sawarr, but the young lightning mage is a more potent man. Laxus was a hard metal coin who impresses his own definite stamp upon those who seek to mould him.
He is definite but not simple. His complexities trouble him. Contemptuous of luxury, he is also appears to be charmed by it. He resents my collection of glass and porcelain, and my library, but envies the culture which has developed a appreciation of it. Why else would he dress the way he did? His remarking upon my preference for men who are less than hundred percent exposed his own sensitivity I think. Reared in a world that honors only hundred percents, he has learned in maturity what I knew as a miserable, obese adolescent, that the lame, the halt, and the blind have more malice in their souls. Cherishing secret hurt, they probe for pains and weaknesses of others. And probing is the secret of finding. Through telescopic lenses I discerned in Laxus the weakness that normal eyesight might never discover.
I am not jealous of Laxus's character but perhaps his body. He has all the makings of a hero in that regard. My own failings, obesity, astigmatism, the softness of pale flesh, can find no such heroic qualities. For an hour after he had gone, I sat upon the sofa, listless, toying with my envy. That hour exhausted me. I turned for solace to Lucy's epitaph. Rhythms failed, words eluded me. Laxus had observed that I wrote smoothly but said nothing. I have sometimes suspected this flaw in my talent, but have never faced myself with the admission of failure. This morning I saw myself as a fat, fussy, and useless male of middle age and doubtful charm. By all that is logical I should have despised Laxus Dreyar. I could not. For all of his rough edges, he was the man I should have been, the hero of the story...
Laxus's Point of View
Lucy's Aunt Susan was a famous actress she sung in musicals and acted in movies, but was bigger on Braodway. She was Jude Heartfilia's kid sister. She was a widow. She was married to Horace Q. Treadwell for 15 years. The news of Lucy's death had brought her hastily from her summer place on Serene Cliff to a mausoleum on upper Fifth Avenue. One servant, a grim Finn, had accompanied her. It was Helga who opened the door for Laxus and led him through a maze of dark canals into a vast uncarpeted chamber in which every piece of furniture, every picture and ornament, wore a shroud of pale, striped linen. This was Laxus's first visit to a private home on Fifth Avenue. As he waited he paced the long room, accosting and retreating from his lean, dark-clad image in a full-length gold-framed mirror. His thoughts dwelt upon the meeting with the bereaved bridegroom. Lucy was to have married Vincent on the following Thursday.
According to the intel that he got from Natsu, that was why Jude had paid Phantom Lord. The marriage was suppose to go off but no bride makes that sort of difficult. So he had paid Phantom Lord to save the arrangement. Before Lucy had runaway a year ago they had passed their blood tests and answered the questions on the application for a marriage license.
Laxus knew these facts thoroughly. Vincent had been disarmingly frank with the police sergeant who asked the first questions. Folded in Laxus's coat pocket was a carbon record of the lovers' last meeting. They had met recently after her father paid Phantom Lord to destroy Fairy Tail.
Laxus shook his head he needed to get his thoughts in order.
Lucy had been feeling frustrated by life. She was feeling guilty about what she dubbed as the Phantom Lord incident. She had decided and left a note to go to the countryside. Natsu had said that her mom used to go to this cabin. It made her feel closer to her mother. Lucy had rented it out many times before. But as far as he knew she was considering going but hadn't made a decision. Natsu said she was feeling pressured. Whatever that meant. She wanted a place to think through some things.
Well she had made a decision. She had left a note it was in her hand writing, to go. On Friday, she had decided to leave everyone in town. She needed four or five days of loneliness as they letter stated. That was Saturday. She hadn't been able to get in touch with her team. SO she left a note. She had promised to let them all know when she was leaving and this was her way of doing it and not to worry. Vincent backed this up as well. He said he had called and asked her to meet him to discuss certain things. These certain things included putting the marriage back on. Vincent said he had been talking to Lucy all week about it. His marriage to her would save his family from the poor house. Lucy had been against it, but was slowly crumbling underneath the pressure. She was determined to not leave Fairy Tail. She had been asked to be given time to think about things. She needed space everyone hounding her now that they had found her was stressful. Also, if they were to get married it would be radically different than what Vincent had in mind. This reasoning satisfied Vincent. It never occurred to him that she might have other plans. Nor did he question her farewell dinner with Magnus. She had arranged, or so she told Vincent, to leave Magnus's house in time to catch the ten-twenty train.
At five o'clock on Saturday afternoon, he went into her house. She gave Virgo a few final instructions, powdered her nose, reddened her lips, and locked up. They stopped for martinis at the Tropicale, a bar. Lucy had told of her plans for the week. She was not certain as to the hour of her return, but she did not want Vincent to meet her at the train. The trip to and from Tio was not too far. She planned the following Wednesday as the day of her return and promised to telephone him immediately upon her arrival her answer.
As Laxus pondered these facts, his eyes on the checkerboard of light and dark woods set into Mrs. Treadwell's floor, he became aware that his restlessness was the subject of nervous scrutiny. The long mirror framed his first impression of Vincent Sawarr. Against the shrouded furniture, Vincent was like a brightly lithographed figure on the gaudy motion picture poster decorating the sombre granite of an ancient opera house. The dark suit chosen for this day of mourning could not dull his vivid grandeur. Male energy shone in his tanned skin, gleamed from his clear gray eyes, swelled powerful biceps. Laxus was puzzled by an almost overwhelming sense of familiarity. Vincent spoke with the voice of a stranger but with lips whose smile seemed as familiar as Laxus's own reflection. All through the interview and in several later meetings, Laxus sought vainly to recall some earlier association.
They chose chairs at opposite ends of the long room. Vincent had offered, Laxus accepted, a cigarette. Opressed by Fifth Avenue magnificence, he had barely the courage to ask for an ashtray. And this a man who had faced dark guilds.
Vincent held his dignity while being questioned. As his gentle Southern voice repeated the details of that tragic farewell.
"So I put her in the taxi and gave the driver Lydecker's address. Lucy said, 'Good-bye until Wednesday'. The next morning the police came to tell me her teammates had found her body in the apartment. I wouldn't believe it. Lucy was in the country. That's what she'd told me, and Lucy had not lied to me before. Ask any of her friends, Lucy never lied!"
"We found the taxi-driver and checked with him," Laxus informed him. "As soon as they'd turned the corner, she said that he was not to go to Mr. Lydecker's address, but to take her to train station. She'd telephoned Mr. Lydecker earlier in the afternoon to break the dinner date. Have you any idea why she should have lied to you?"
Cigarette smoke curled in flawless circles from Vincent's flawless lips. "I don't like to believe she lied to me. Why should she tell me she was dining with Magnus if she wasn't?"
"She lied about dining with Mr. Lydecker, and second when she exactly left."
"I can't believe it. We were always so honest with each other."
Laxus accepted the statement without comment. "We've interviewed the porters on duty Saturday night at the train station and a couple remember her face. The only porter who swears to a definite recollection of Lucy on this particular night also asked if he'd have his picture in the newspapers. So we strike a dead-end there."
"Why?" Vincent sighed. "Why should she have done such a ridiculous thing?"
"If we knew, we might have a reasonable clue. Now as to your alibi . . ."
Vincent groaned.
"I won't make you go through it again. I've got the details. You had dinner at the Myrtle Cafeteria on Forty-Second Street, you walked to Fifth Avenue, took a cab to a 146th Street, bought a seat for the concert . . ."
Vincent looked down. No one saw him there and it made his alibi flimsy.
"That's the only reasonable alibi anyone's given for anything so far. You walked home after the concert, eh? Quite a distance."
"The poor man's exercise." Shelby grinned feebly.
Laxus dropped the alibi, and with one of those characteristic swift thrusts, asked: "Why didn't you get married before this? Why did the engagement last so long?"
Vincent cleared his throat.
"It's not that simple. She didn't want to get married. It was arranged. She admitted that of all the suitors her father brought forth I was the most tolerable. Can you believe that? Tolerable. But she didn't want to get married. She wanted to make a name of herself. Wanted to be a modern woman. Make her own money and not rely on a man. She also said she wanted to marry out of love. She didn't love me. She liked assertive men... We would have lived in decent harmony where we didn't bother one another and that's all she thought of my company. When she ran away my family lost the estate. Our family name was dwindling. I had a job and was working trying to pay back some of my family's debts. By the time I got back in contact with her a few weeks ago...I had been working for Rose, Rowe and Sanders a year." He hesitated, the color of his cheeks brightened to the tones of an overripe peach. "I learned of her successs...not that I resented her success in joining Fairy Tail. She was so clever that I awed and respected her. And I wanted her to make as much as she could for herself; believe that, Mr. Dreyar. But it's hard on a man's pride knowing a woman you were suppose to take care of can do better than you ever could.. But it was always meant to be that way. I would never get to touch the Heartfilia business that was for our son. Her father made sure of that. It would have been Lucy running the entire show. I was taught later in life because of that to think of women . . . differently."
"And what made you decide to ask her to marry you again after she left you?"
Vincent brightened. "I've had a little success myself in the time she's been away."
"But she would always be holding a better job. What made you change your mind?"
"There wasn't so much discrepancy. My salary, if not munificent, is respectable. And I felt that I'm advancing. Besides, I'd been catching up with my debts. A man doesn't like to get married, you know, while he owes money."
"Except to the woman he's marrying," a shrill voice added.
In the mirror's gilt frame Laxus saw the reflection of an advancing figure. She was small, robed in deepest mourning and carrying under her right arm a Pomeranian whose auburn coat matched her own bright hair. As she paused in the door with the marble statues and bronze figurines behind her, the gold frame giving margins to the portrait. Laxus had seen her briefly at the inquest and had thought her young to be Lucy's aunt. Now he saw that she was well over fifty. The rigid perfection of her face was almost artificial, as if flesh-pink velvet were drawn over an iron frame.
Vincent leaped. "Darling! You remarkable creature! How you've recovered! How can you be so beautiful, darling, when you've gone through such intolerable agonies?" He led her to the room's most important chair.
Laxus raised his eyebrow. This guy has got to be kidding? This guy was something.
"I hope you find the fiend"—she addressed Laxus but gave attention to her chiffon. "I hope you find him and scrouge his eyes out and drive hot nails through his body and boil him in oil." Her vehemence spent, she tossed Laxus her most enchanting smile.
"Comfortable, darling?" Vincent inquired. "How about your fan? Would you like a cool drink?"
Had the dog's affection begun to bore her, she might have dismissed it with the same pretty indifference. To Laxus she said: "Has Vincent told you the story of his romantic courtship? I hope he's not left out of any of the thrilling episodes."
"Now, darling, what would Lucy have said if she could hear you?"
"She'd say I was a jealous bitch. And she'd be right. Except that I'm not jealous. I wouldn't have you on a gold platter, darling." She said in contradicting sultry tone.
"You musn't mind Auntie Sue, Mr. Dreyar. She's prejudiced because I'm poor."
"Isn't he cute?" cooed Auntie Sue, petting the dog.
"I never asked Lucy for money" Vincent might have been taking an oath at an altar. "If she were here, she'd swear it, too. I never asked. She knew I was having a hard time and insisted, simply upon lending it to me. She always made money so easily, she said. Taking on quests and what not! She said she couldn't watch me go flat on my back!"
"She worked like a dog!" cried Lucy's aunt. "She might have felt too guilty to say anything else." She laughed.
The Pomeranian sniffed. Aunt Sue pressed its small nose to her cheek, then settled it upon her lap. Having achieved this enviable position, the Pomeranian looked upon the men smugly.
"It's good you bring up money, 'cause Mrs. Treadwell, every month for the past year money has been taken from your account and the same amount was put into Vincent's."
Auntie Sue stiffened. "Well it's my money I suppose I can do with it what I want." Laxus raised an eyebrow.
"Do you know, Mrs. Treadwell, if your niece had any—" Laxus produced the word uneasily "—enemies?"
"Enemies!" The good lady shrieked. "Everyone adored her. Didn't everyone adore her, Vincent? She had more friends than money."
Laxus rolled his eyes the woman wasn't that charming then again he never really gave her the chance.
"That," Shelby added gravely, "was one of the finest things about her."
"Anyone who had troubles came to her," Aunt Sue declaimed, quite in the manner of the immortal Bernhardt. "Your guildmates kept her up all night! She would tell me. That Levy would go to her, so would that drunk- Cana was her name. Everyone went Lucy if they had a problem."
"I warned her more than once. It's when you put yourself out for people that you find yourself in trouble. Don't you think that's true, ?"
"I don't know. I've probably not put myself out for enough people." The posturing offended him; he had become curt. This was a strange world for him. His annoyance failed to check the lady's histrionic aspirations. "'The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft buried with their bones,'" she misquoted, and giggling lightly, added, "although her poor bones aren't buried yet. But we must be truthful, even about the dead. It wasn't money principally with Lucy, it was people, if you know what I mean. She was always running around, doing favors, wasting her time and strength on people she scarcely knew. Remember that model, Vincent, the girl with the fancy name? This was before she ran away. Lucy got me to give her my leopard coat. It wasn't half worn out either. I could have got another winter out of it and spared my mink. Don't you remember, Vincent?"
Vincent had become infatuated with a bronze Diana who had been threatening for years to leap, with dog and stag, from her pedestal.
Auntie Sue continued naughtily: "And Vincent's current job! Do you know how he got it, Mr. Dreyar? Lucy helped him get it before she ran away!"
Vincent turned defiantly from Diana. "What's that to be ashamed of? Lucy saw that I was wasting a certain gift or flair, and with her usual generosity . . ."
"Generosity wasn't the half of it," Auntie Sue interrupted.
"She spoke to Mr. Rowe about me and a few months later, when there was a vacancy, he called me in. You can't say I've been ungrateful"—he forgave Mrs. Treadwell with his gentle smile.
"It was she, not I, who suggested that you forget it."
"Mustn't be vicious, dear. You'll be giving Mr. Dreyar a lot of misleading ideas." With the tenderness of a nurse Vincent rearranged Auntie Sue's cushions, smiling and treating her malice like some secret malady.
The scene took on a theatric quality. Laxus saw Vincent through the woman's eyes, clothed in the charm he had donned, like a bright domino, for the woman's pleasure. The ripe color, the chiseled features, the clear, long-lashed eyes had been created, his manner said, for her particular enjoyment. Through it all Laxus felt that this was not a new exhibition. He had seen it somewhere before. So irritated by faltering memory that he had to strain harshness from his voice, he told them he was through with them for the day, and rose to go.
Vincent rose, too. "I'll go out for a bit of air. If you think you can get along without me for a while."
"Of course, darling. It's been wicked of me to take up so much of your time." Vincent's feeble sarcasm had softened the lady. White, faded, ruby-tipped hands rested on his dark sleeve. "I'll never forget how kind you've been."
Vincent forgave magnanimously. He put himself at her disposal as if he were already Lucy's husband, the man of the family whose duty it was to serve a sorrowing woman in this hour of grief.
Like a penitent mistress returning to her lover, she cooed at Vincent. "With all your faults, you've got manners, darling. That's more than most men have nowadays. I'm sorry I've been so bad-tempered."
He kissed her forehead.
As they left the house, Vincent turned to Laxus. "Don't take Mrs. Treadwell too seriously. Her bark is worse than her bite. It's only that she'd disapproved of my marrying her niece, and now she's got to stand by her opinions."
"What she disapproved of," Laxus observed, "was Lucy marrying you."
Vincent smiled ruefully. "We ought all to be a little more decent now, oughtn't we? After all! Probably Auntie Sue is sorry she hurt poor Lucy by constantly criticizing me in the past before she ran away, and now she's too proud to say so. That's why she had to take it out on me this morning."
They stood in the burning sunlight. Both were anxious to get away, yet both hesitated. The scene was unfinished, Laxus had not learned enough, Vincent had not told all he wanted Laxus to know.
When, after a brief pause devoted to a final struggle with his limping memory, Laxus cleared his throat, Vincent started as if he had been roused from the remoteness of a dream. Both smiled mechanically.
"Tell me," Laxus commanded, "where have I seen you before?"
Vincent couldn't imagine. "I've been around. Parties and all that. One sees people at bars and restaurants. Sometimes a stranger's face is more familiar than your best friend's."
Laxus shook his head. "Cocktail bars aren't in my line."
"You'll remember when you're thinking of something else. That's how it always is." Vincent offered his hand. Laxus took it. They hesitated while the sun smote their uncovered heads.
"I hope you don't think I'm completely a heel, Mr. Dreyar," Vincent said ruefully. "I never liked borrowing from women."
Laxus didn't say anything. He took out another cigar, his coat billowing behind him as he left the Duke.