BLOODY INNOCENCE

"Mrs. Swan you are being charged with murder of Matilda Swan, your niece, daughter of James Swan, you are under arrest, do you have anything to say in this regard?"

Mr. Watson sternly asked the woman who still had an imperious countenance, even when she was being charged of a cold blooded murder.

The clinging followed by the clicking sound of a pair of cold handcuffs, encircling the fair and slender hands of Mrs. Swan, gave Mr. Watson a fleeting but evident sense of pleasure, as they were the cold and bloody hands of a murderess. 

He relished the disgusted look on Mrs. Swan's face, the astounded look of the workers who had just realized that their owner's morose disposition and peevish retorts in the past week, were mere attempts to conceal her guilt, her deeds. Her daughters however had a passive look on their face, they expressed no surprise nor let out any gasps or sobs of displeasure at their mother's action and its consequences that followed. They were not worried, not scared, not surprised. Their faces displayed no emotions and their eyes did not speak either. People might often misread this passivity as innocence but the innocence they showed was lynchian.

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It had only been two weeks since Mrs. Swan was widowed and left in charge of two beautiful daughters, whose countenance and pleasing physiognomy screamed innocence. However, the expected death of Mr. Swan who merely departed, compelled by old age was followed by the discovery of a blood stained cadaver in the living room of the Swan residency- the maid- a most unnatural and abnormal death-a poor young girl's death-the degree of brutality corroborated with the degree of vengeance and level of vindication. It was startling and horrific to think of such a brutality in the very walls of the elegant mansion that boarded only women now- beautiful and innocent creatures who were now unsafe and in peril, with a murderer on the loose, probably among the help or less likely but perhaps among them. The probability of outsiders committing the crime was ruled out by detective Mr. Watson who arrived immediately on the crime scene. Ruling out possibilities left him to suspect the inmates of the house with no motive to commit such wickedness . Matilda, who even when drenched in blood and deprived of life, had something piquant about her, she was a four-and-twenty year old girl, innocent, pretty and now dead. Mr. Watson went on to ask the whereabouts of the victim to the mother and daughters but left them in peace to mourn their own father who most recently demised and paid no much heed to their grief-stricken words. However he made up for his inertia and inattentiveness in interrogation,  and examined the crime scene meticulously devoted to finding a clue. Soon something caught his eye, a golden hand chain, very thin and light indeed, but thick enough for the name ‘MATILDA’ to be legibly etched. To the naked eye it was simply ‘Matilda’ but Mr. Watson’s trained eye, it was Matilda and something more, perhaps a last name, but it was scratched away and now too late to decipher. But Mr. Watson knew better than to discard a clue no matter how little it seemed , especially when it was maybe the only clue that the killer had failed to conceal, the only key to get justice done.

_

'‘James Swan’ , the estate goes to late Mr. Swan’s brother James Swan, who is away for business. " answered in a muffled voice the cook who was a short stout woman who was scared and panic stricken by the events of the day.

"Does he often come to the Swan residency?"

'‘Oh sir, not that I know of" replied the gardener dutifully,  genuinely willing to assist.

"Have you ever seen Richards' brother?" asked Mr. Watson in the hope of getting a satisfactory answer this time

"it has been precisely 24 years… God forbid it but chances are there he might be even dead...You know he fought in war ’

'‘Oh I see’'

_

Mr. Watson sipped his coffee nonchalantly even though he had a mystery to solve and murderer to catch. He looked at the bracelet and touched it with the same delicacy with which it was made. In the process he pondered over the cause that prompted this unskilled and slovenly scratching. That's when he deciphered the first letter and with the aid of an instrument that emitted lighted letter by letter he deciphered the 'unbreakable code' -S-W-A-N

‘Matilda Swan!!! Of course!’

_

Mrs. Swan without a trace of guilt or regret spoke with utmost confidence in her deeds and in her words

….

‘I admit it, I could not have sat here idle when Matilda and her wretched father swept me and my daughters away from our estate...into the street? Homeless? Vagabonds ?

Was that to be our fate ? Getting our place back was out of my hands’ but having my revenge was easy!

So I unleashed my wrath for the injustice and cruelty that my father- in- law did to my poor girls

I would have gotten away if it weren’t for you, detective’ 

‘ You would be free now if you hadn’t killed Mr. James Swan’s daughter, you treated your niece as a servant who had to be at the beck and call of all your whims! You feared that Mr. James Swan would turn you out of your estate when he found out what you did of his only daughter whom he assigned to you when he went in war!’

'And who did not return for 24 years'

'Because he trusted you with his daughter!'

‘ I don’t regret any of my deeds Mr. Watson, I did it for my beautiful innocent daughters!’ 

‘Yes, but you spilled innocent blood ’

_

‘Mama! Father is dead !

stated Ms. Swan callously as she entered the kitchen. Mrs. Swan froze in her tracks, beads of sweat gathered at her knitted brows and rolled down her pale face.

"The time has come" nodded the mother before attending her dead husband in the other room. The daughters moved stealthily into their father's room, no cries followed no screams followed- a tearless adieu.

_

24 YEARS AGO in a stormy night Mr. James Swan, too shattered by the bereavement of his beloved wife, bade adieu to his brother Richard and wife. He expressed his desire to leave the country and so he did but not before leaving what remained of his marriage- a neonate, a girl child -Matilda Swan