Eleanora…
"Eleanora…"
"Eleanora!"
Eleanora woke up with a jolt.
"Uggghhh; can't anyone get a little sleep around here?" she said. "What the hell's the problem now?"
The one who had risked life and limb to wake her up was the gardener. He was crying.
"Finny? What's wrong? What happened?"
He sniffed and pointed downstairs.
"S-Something's happened; we don't know what to do…"
"What?" She suddenly felt cold. "Has there been another murder?"
"Y-Yes…"
She didn't remember much after that. Just brief flashes of what had happened. Now she had her night robe…Now she was downstairs…Now she was upstairs…Now she was in the hall…
"The hell you wake me up? Why didn't you wake up the butl…"
She opened the door that Finny had pointed to and stopped short. She realized why they couldn't have woken the butler.
The butler was dead.
Mey-Rin was crying. Tanaka was sniffling a bit. Even Bardroy looked tragic. Eleanora slowly entered the room, which reeked horribly of blood.
"What—" she said. "What—"
She collapsed by the butler's side.
"He's not—Is he?—He can't be—He's not allowed to be—"
She picked up his gloved hand; it was limp. She tried feeling for a pulse and couldn't find one.
Finny sniffled a couple more times.
"Lady," he said, "what are we going to do?"
"Tomorrow and the days afterward, things might be a bit…up in the air…"
For the oddest of reasons, Eleanora was remembering the butler's words last night.
"Tomorrow, you're going to be in charge…"
"Eleanora?"
"Please take care of everyone in this mansion, particularly the young Master… I leave everything in your capable hands."
"He knew," she thought. "The damn bastard knew all the time. He knew he was going to die. He knew and he dumped all of his responsibilities on me. The damn bastard. He knew."
Eleanora couldn't hold back a sniff herself. She looked up at Tanaka:
"What are we going to do?"
Tanaka made three very small, sad "ho"s.
"Fat lot of help that is," she thought and then sighed. Well, the butler—dead though he was— had given her her orders, and orders she would follow. She slowly rose up and controlled herself.
"All of you, go wake up everyone," she said. "Tanaka, please wake up the young Master. Lead everyone here, and nobody touch anything."
"But…shouldn't we move…him?"
"We will," she said, looking down at the butler's lifeless face. "We'll move him as soon as everyone sees. They deserve to know what happened…what he looks like…and everything." They stood there for a moment, hesitating. "Well? Hop to it!"
They nodded and dashed out, leaving her alone with the corpse.
Again she knelt by his body and brushed a strand of hair away from his face. His eyes didn't even look at her. They were looking upwards. Well, that didn't necessarily matter, as he wasn't really seeing much of anything anymore.
Would anyone hire a widow? She knew that divorcees never stood a chance of getting a job, but maybe someone would take pity on a widow. Thank goodness they hadn't had children. No one in their right mind would hire a single woman with children to support. But either way…
"Bastard," she sighed. "You bastard."
She knelt over him and a teardrop fell on his cheek.