Auntie Grell
Prologue: The Kingsley House
Grell Sutcliffe was waiting for the lady of the manor to climb into her bed, for that was when she would finally be able to collect the cinematic record. She sat on a tree branch, watching through the bedroom window as the Lady's servant helped her unpin her hair and took the candlestick away to the hall. Once the room was dim and the Lady was pulling her covers closer, the reaper moved. The Lady took a drink of some kind to her mouth, Grell getting closer as she died. It was not uncommon for these types of tragic accidents to occur, many people had died from confusing one shelf item for another and accidentally ingesting something toxic. This was just another collection and Grell was sure it would not be memorable once she had read the file, but she had been mistaken.
In the doorway, the servant stood still, her hand over her mouth. The Lady had brewed her own tea and was now dead, so the servant felt guilty for not having stopped the untimely demise of her mistress. She carried her one year old daughter in her arms, the child pointing in the direction of the bed post closest to the window.
"Who?" The girl asked, pointing. "Mama, who woman?"
Grell paused to look back at the two in the doorway, seeing a girl pointing straight at her and staring. She figured that child was likely close to death, if she could see a reaper, but did not think about the matter once she had climbed back out the window and left. Children of servants were pitiful and were not attended as much as noble children, so Grell was used to collecting their records. She did not dwell on the poor children and their short lives, she did her job and moved on. So it barely registered in her mind that a child had seen her, it was probably a sign that child was nearing the end of her life and likely would be dead in a few days. If she happened to land the assignment, she might not even recognize the child. She did not care about the cinematic records she collected or their sources. She simply put the latest collection in the library and departed for her next collection.
It was merely a week later that Grell was back at that manor to collect another record. This time it was the stable boy, who had a habit of sneaking into the kitchen and hiding a treat or two in his pockets. He, too, had mixed up two items and fallen dead to the effects of a poison. She waited for him to slink all the way to the ground before approaching him to extract his record. As she was reviewing his record, she heard a tapping on the window above her. She looked up when it did not cease, noticing a little girl pressed against the glass and looking down at her. Grell recognized her and waved, turning around immediately after to finish her job and disappear. She simply told herself to try and remember the name of the manor since it seemed the household was falling victim to the mistake of storing rat poison in the same cupboard as the flour. She practically expected them to all drop dead within the month. She laughed a little to herself as she wondered if the rest of the house would notice any reapers because she assumed they were all very close to their ends.
Since she kept so busy, she had forgotten about the manor after a month. So, she did not know that she had been incorrect about the residents all being near their demise. The Baron who owned the manor had fired most of his staff and demanded that his new staff keep the food and the toxins far from each other, not wanting his four year old son to perish as his mother had.
Baron Kingsley kept his wife's personal servant, her husband, and their one year old daughter but had fired everyone else. The trio had names he could not pronounce, as they were foreign and his Spanish-born wife had given them the equivalent in her native language, as she was had been their mistress since her fourteenth birthday. He had not bothered with their names until his wife's passing, when he had decided to keep them around for the sake of his son. His late wife's assistant had also been his son's nurse, and he determined it was best to keep her. Her name was Azucena, as given by his wife, and he had changed it to Lily. Her husband was a man known as Lobo, so he was renamed Wolf. Their daughter was named in their native tongue, his wife giving her the Spanish equivalents so her name was Lavanda Manzanilla. His wife had given them a surname since they had one that could not be translated, choosing Hierbabuena. Hierbabuena was peppermint, so Baron Kingsley changed their surname to Peppermint.
The Peppermint family continued to serve the Baron, and went with him to a different home he owned. He had decided he could not bear the rooms his wife had last walked and that his son would do better in a new landscape. The house also had servants already working in it, which meant he did not have to worry about staff appointments just yet. The house Grell Sutcliffe had associated with Lady Kingsley was left empty, and there were no more deaths in the Baron's staff or family in the time before the reaper inevitably forgot about the Lady, the stable boy, and the girl that saw her twice.