I Am the Silent Witness

I Am the Silent Witness

The old Victorian house on Pictor Street stood as a sentinel of mysteries, its gabled roofs sagging with the weight of countless secrets whispered through the years. Ivy clung to its weathered walls, which seemed to thrum softly in the moonlight, as if the very structure was alive and breathing through its cracked façade. In the attic, a solitary skylight—a dusty pane of glass—captured the widow’s imagination, earning the affectionate title of her “window to the stars.” Each night, as she gazed upward, she felt the cosmos beckoning her to uncover the stories hidden within the shadows of her home.

Every night, after the grandfather clock in the hall wheezed past midnight, she’d climb the creaking stairs to the attic. Her ritual was precise: a match struck against the iron bed frame, a flicker of flame, and then the letters. Dozens of them, all marked with the same looping script. Forgive me. I had no choice. They’re watching. The paper blackened and curled like dying moths, their ashes scattering over the floorboards. She’d kneel there afterward, her silk nightgown pooling around her, staring at the smoke as if it might spell out absolution.

But absolution never came. Only the stains on her sleeves: rust-brown crescents under her nails, smudges on her cuffs that even her gardenia-scented soap couldn’t scrub away.

The others in the house were boarded up after the men in uniforms came asking about the courier. “A routine inquiry,” they’d said, but their eyes lingered on the fresh scratches in the hardwood and the displaced rug in the parlor. The widow charmed them with tea and trembling smiles. “Poor boy,” she sighed, dabbing nonexistent tears. “He delivered my husband’s post occasionally. But after the mayor’s accident…” She trailed off, her voice breaking on the word.

Accident. That’s what the papers called it too. Mayor Charles Mitchell, 54, dies in tragic fall from his office balcony. Grieving widow inherits estate. They didn’t mention the boot prints on the balcony railing, too large to belong to a man of his stature. They were also unaware of the locket she’d pried from the courier’s cold dead hand: a silver heart engraved with A.M., its chain snapped clean in two.

She hid it under the loose floorboard by the hearth, alongside a single ledger page stamped with the mayor’s seal. $250,000. Offshore account #4492-771. She would trace the numbers each night, her lips moving soundlessly. Stupid boy. You should’ve taken the money.

###

The journalist arrived on a Tuesday, his knock too confident for so early an hour. “Matt Roberts,” he announced, flashing a press badge already smudged with ink. “Daily Sentinel. I’m doing a piece on the mayor’s legacy.”

Her smile was a blade. “How lovely. Do come in.”

She led him to the parlor, its velvet curtains drawn tight. He noted the dust on the mantel, the faint outline of where a portrait once hung. “You’ve redecorated?”

“Grief requires change,” she said, pouring bourbon into two cut-crystal glasses.

He accepted the glass from her and swirled his drink, his gaze sharp behind his wire-rimmed spectacles. “They’re saying the courier was carrying evidence. Proof the mayor was embezzling.”

A log crackled in the fireplace. Her thumb grazed the rim of her own drink—left, then right—a nervous tic she’d mastered during her husband’s political campaigns. “Conspiracy theories surely sell papers, don’t they?”

“They also get people killed.”

The silence stretched, brittle. Somewhere in the walls, a mouse scrabbled. Then she laughed, low and honeyed. “More bourbon, Mr. Roberts?”

He drank deeply, his eyes lingering on the hollow of her throat. Men never looked down. Not at the rug’s uneven edge, not at the floorboard’s telltale gap.

###

That night, she didn’t burn letters. She paced, her shadow a frantic puppet on the walls. “He knows,” she muttered to the empty room. “He knows.”

Downstairs, the grandfather clock groaned. One. Two. Three. At 3:17 a.m., she pried up the floorboard. The locket glinted in her palm, its chain slithering like a silver snake. “I’m sorry,” she whispered (To the courier? To herself?) before tucking it into her dressing gown.

She slipped into the garden, the moon bleaching her hair to bone. The hydrangeas here were overgrown, their blooms sickly sweet. She knelt by the oldest bush, the one with roots that bulged like knuckles, and dug.

The shovel’s thunk echoed. She had buried the courier here weeks ago, her nightgown streaked with mud, her breaths ragged clouds in the cold. This’ll be the last time, she’d vowed. But the ledger page still haunted her, and now the journalist’s questions festered like a wound.

She dropped the locket into the hole, then hesitated. A twig snapped. She froze, her head snapping toward the noise.

Matt Roberts stood at the opposite end of the garden, his camera raised.

Click.

###

The storm broke at dawn. Thunder shook the chandelier, its crystals trembling like guilty souls. The widow sat at her vanity, powdering the bruises she’d painted under her eyes. “A robbery,” she rehearsed to the mirror. “He broke in. I…I had no choice.”

When Mr. Roberts returned the following evening, she greeted him in a lace-trimmed peignoir, her lips stained wine-dark. “I found something,” she purred, leading him to the parlor. “A letter from my husband. I think it’s what you’ve been looking for.”

He bent to examine the forged page, his nape pale and vulnerable.

She struck fast… a fireplace poker swung like a bat. He crumpled, his camera clattering across the floor.

“You shouldn’t have come back,” she hissed, looming over him.

He spat blood, grinning. “Too late. The photo’s already uploaded.”

Rage contorted her face. She lunged for the poker, but he rolled, grabbing the camera. Click. Click. Click. The flash blinded her. They grappled, a tangle of silk and fury, until her hand closed on the desk drawer.

The pearl-handled gun gleamed in the parlor’s light.

Bang.

###

The detective arrived at noon, his trench coat dripping rain. “Amelia Mitchell?” He flashed a badge, his knuckles scarred, his gaze flint. “We need to talk about Matt Roberts.”

The widow clutched her robe, a consummate performer. “A robbery. Poor man tried to save me.”

The detective said nothing. He circled the parlor, noting the overturned chair, the shattered camera, the rug’s dark stain. Then he paused at the window.

“Odd place for a security camera,” he remarked.

The widow blanched. “A what?”

The detective tapped the glass, his nail clicking against my lens. “Motion-activated, night vision, audio recording. Installed after the mayor’s death, I’d guess. To monitor you.” He smiled, thin and sharp. “He didn’t trust you, did he?”

The widow’s composure shattered. “Charles… knew?”

“Oh, he knew.” The detective pried open my casing, extracting the memory card. “And now, so do we.”

###

They led her out in handcuffs, the locket dangling from the detective’s gloved hand. The widow stared at me as they passed, her eyes wide with betrayal. You saw everything, her look said.

Yes. Yes, I had.

I watched the rain wash the garden clean, the hydrangeas bowing under the weight of it. In the attic, the last letter’s ashes stirred in the draft.

Click.

My red light blinked once, twice, thrice, and then went dark.