Love Sequestered

Love Sequestered

By Jay Seate

Lisa ran her palm over the smooth lacquered surface of the antique vanity. She’d found the beautiful relic at an estate sale near Carmel. She opened each drawer, one after the other. The aroma from its wood was like inhaling the past. Underneath the lining in the top left drawer, she found a piece of paper withered with age, yellowed enough to be the Magna Carta. She carefully removed it. It wasn’t a document, but a letter.

“This must have been here forever,” Lisa breathed. Her intent was to replace the ancient drawer liners, but that would wait until after she studied this hidden missive. She had wondered who might have owned such a wonderful piece of workmanship. Maybe the letter would tell her.

Delicately handling the single page as if it might dissolve in her hands, she read:

My Darling Estelle,

You are the shining star that entered my life with such a blinding light that I am forever changed. When I was in shadow, you lit my way. You are my salvation and my love.

Always remember, my sweet, in spite of your rebuffs and admonitions, gentle winds will lead me to you like a wave that caresses the shore. I will convince you of the joy we can share in an embrace. The glow of my affection will burn brightly because my love is eternal.

The vine that intertwines the long familiar stone. The kiss as tender as the velvet touch of a breeze. These are images I savor and my heart beats quicker with the knowledge that I will soon possess you.

Without your knowledge or permission, I have decided to act within the next few days. I will come for you after I am done with the Baron.

Soon, my love. Soon.

A

“Wow,” Lisa said with enthusiasm. “A mystery.” This was more than she had bargained for. She looked at her reflection in the vanity’s mirror and tried to imagine the woman to whom these fanciful, yet forceful words had been written. Had the intentions of the letter’s author been carried out? Did the Baron get done in? Did “A” come for Estelle? Why would she leave such an incriminating letter if things had worked out the way “A” obviously wanted them to?

“She wouldn’t have left the letter,” Lisa fantasized. Something had gone wrong she felt certain.

Retiring for the evening, Lisa knew that the mystery of Estelle and “A” and the beautiful, lacquered vanity would be worming its way through her dreams.

***

Lisa awoke before sunrise. She looked at the vanity through the dim light of the approaching dawn. There was something special about it besides its concealment of the love letter. Unable to go back to sleep, she got out of bed and turned on her computer. She ran a search on recent estate sales, finding the one where she’d made the purchase. She typed in the address and came up with the homeowner’s name. Taking that surname, she ran several tracking screens but came up with dead-ends until she cross-referenced that search with variations of crime prompts and police case files.

And there it was in the San Francisco Chronicle—a story about multiple homicides in Vallejo on September 10, 1910. Lisa blinked at the screen. Today was the morning of September 10, 2020—one hundred and ten years to the day the event occurred.

Her eyes scanned through the article, mesmerized by what it revealed. According to a police report, a female friend of a Mr. Andrew McPhee had discovered his carriage in front of the Baron Reginald Quartermaine residence. She entered the residence to investigate and found three deceased persons in the Quartermaine bedroom—a trilogy of death in what was presumed to be the aftermath of a love triangle.

The young McPhee had been killed by a small caliber derringer believed to be owned by the Baron’s wife. Mrs. Quartermaine had been slain with a large caliber revolver apparently fired by her husband. The Baron had died of gunshot wounds sustained earlier from an unknown weapon. The Baron’s bloody trail had led from outside the house, up the stairs, and into his wife’s room.

The authorities theorize Quartermaine had been shot and left for dead at an unknown location, but had made his way home on foot only to find his wife with Mr. McPhee. Police were unsure as to the order of events, but they hypothesized that Mrs. Quartermaine was shot by the Baron for her indiscretion, and McPhee was caught in the crossfire between husband and wife. The article went on to speculate on the relationship between not only Mrs. Quartermaine and McPhee, but also between McPhee and the woman who discovered the bodies.

Lisa knew this wasn’t exactly the way it had gone down. The police report was just the cork in the neck of a bottle. The proof of that was in the sequestered letter. She would wager poor Estelle hadn’t the chance to destroy the letter before a not quite dead Baron arrived on the scene.

There was certainly more to the story than what the authorities knew. Had Estelle and Andrew truly been in love or merely in lust? And who amongst the threesome had suffered the misery of being deprived of love? A worm of unease gnawed at Lisa. She even wondered if Andrew had another woman and had pursued Estelle for more than just amorous adventure—for her money, perhaps. Was the letter just pretty words for the purpose of exploitation—a set-up gone horribly wrong?

She suddenly and shockingly understood the blemish that had been filled and disguised as best as possible in the vanity’s surface. It was a spot that had contained a spent bullet—the one that had completed the trilogy of death and unfulfilled aspirations.

Lisa parked herself on the stool in front of her new acquisition. Maybe, somehow, Estelle could reveal the truth to her. It might not be as impossible as she would have thought a day ago. For at this moment, as a dim shaft of light crept across the vanity’s surface and gave a silky texture to the air, a ghostly shape resolved itself into a naked woman seated next to her. Lisa rubbed her eyes in disbelief. She picked up the scent of something sweet—perfume. And something else—the nonspecific, coppery smell of blood and sex.

The pale form held a fountain pen. She was writing a letter, quite possibly her last living act. Lisa was fascinated rather than horrified. “Estelle,” she breathed.

What had finding the yellowed letter released? The truth, perhaps? Maybe whatever force had created this apparition would allow Lisa to read what was being written. And there was the anticipation of what might happen next.

Lisa looked at the ghostly hands moving next to her. What she saw created first confusion, but was soon followed by a secret knowledge that made her pulse quicken.

My Darling Estelle,

You are the shining star that entered my life with such a blinding light that I am forever changed….