I have taken a few sections out to fit the word count, apologies if this causes confusion. Please let me know what you think and if this is a suitable continuation from the prologue (or whether I need to contact it further).
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Journal of E. J. Smythe. Vol.19
Monday 11:01 pm - 06 Jan
I am beginning a new volume in my journal and let me not beat around the bush, I have two very good reasons for doing so: Firstly, because something of such note has happened I feel should not have been crammed into the last half-dozen pages of my last volume; secondly it is this volume that lead to my discovery and I feel that has some providence. I will explain.
Since I first had money and means of my own I aspired to write my journal in a befitting medium. This tome's particular style and quality came to my attention after the Gerton deal which secured both our original, now vacated, office and this property but before the MacRabe deal which made my late partner and I a successful going concern. They are produced, not in Italy as you might expect, but by a Ukrainian firm claiming Italian descent and a long lineage of quality writing materials. These particular journals are state of the art, even almost a quarter of a century later, with dynamic and checked ink-page pairing which is both satisfying, in my own foresight, and practical. Of course, I purchased them at a considerable discount by suggesting that I had evidence that clearly debunked the manufacturers’ claim to a heritage in their craft. Merely claimed of course, I had not expended the effort to do so, nor would I. In any case either I was correct or they themselves had their own doubts because they were all too happy to provide me with the journals, at ‘cost’ so they claimed, provided I order as many as I needed and did not darken their doorstep again. I'm paraphrasing of course, but I placed an order large enough to last me a lifetime and so far my forecast is holding out well as I am less than halfway through my stock.
Where providence is concerned I must tell the coincidental story of my uncle's first brush with death. I was nearing my twenty-first birthday at the time, my cousin was twenty-five and around twenty-eight weeks pregnant. My uncle, her father, had been traveling by service and was just alighting at his office. The driver, however, was new* and failed to alert my uncle to a cyclist who had ignored the city laws and mounted the pavement to get around the parked car rather than take his chances in the traffic to the right. The cyclist was alerted, however, by the holla of a pedestrian and swerved, clipping my uncle who fell between the car and the curb, striking his head.
So, there I was, not only cousin Toni’s next closest relative but the only one remotely geographically available to comfort her while her father teetered on the brink. Of course the old man was also my closest living relative but his mentoring had hardened my heart sufficiently for me to be the rock my cousin needed. I have no idea if she saw through me or not but she was gracious and told me she was grateful and sorry to be a trouble and that it was the baby crying as much as her (an allusion to hormones one assumes). Anyway, it is all in that first volume now sitting on my far left.
When Edward finally arrived, and the doctors had pronounced my uncle ‘out of danger’, I left the hospital in need of distraction. This was provided by the mundane task I have alluded to above: The arrival of my new journals. With foresight I had already planned to store them in my downstairs office with all my other stationery then bring them up here to the study when in use, to be filed on the shelf here above and to my left should I ever decide to peruse them once more at my leisure. Lost in thought I unpacked all four boxes onto the shelves as planned, filling two and most of a third. To fill the third shelf I placed some garish item I had been given, a novelty bust or some such faux object d’art, which I had planned to put at the start and replace with a movable book end. This might seem a tedious detail, and it is, but it explains why I made my discovery tonight, as I finally emptied that top shelf and not on the night I have just retold, when I filled it. As I removed this volume from the shelf I saw behind it an arrow, faintly scratched into the varnish pointing at, of all things, a finger hole.
Now, I cannot tell you what had possessed me to pick up this volume now, with space still in the last. I suppose I have been working in the office for a number of days straight in preparation for tomorrow and it has been there, in solitary, waiting to be taken and the shelf to be clear. As you know I am not given to distraction but these journals have been my one labour of love over the years and the urge to begin a new one was too strong to resist any longer. There. There is no other reason; simply impatience. But this hole... it wanted to be discovered and I believe it's intention was that I discover it on, or shortly after that evening when I returned from the hospital. As I have told you, I did not. I was distracted and unobservant and it remained undiscovered.
But of course, I am teasing, the hole was not the thing itself. It was of course to open a compartment in which there was hidden a letter. And it is that very letter that has spurred me to begin a fresh volume and discuss its contents at length.
I will confess now, lest my tone give it away, that this letter on first reading left me ambivalent in the most unanticipated way and now, on a second reading my ambivalence changed in a shockingly polarised, nay, egregious way. On the whole I was amused and intrigued but I am now also insulted and outraged. There I have said it. My previous assertion that there was more than a joke here may be false, just wishful thinking, and now I give full account and explain myself and my current disagreeable state.
The letter was old, and by all indications it had been placed shortly before I unpacked the books, therefore shortly after the shelves themselves had been completed. Perhaps the compartment had been constructed with the shelves themselves, and not latterly as a modification by the concealer of the letter. Whilst I find this likely the assumption drives me to speculate fruitlessly on the culprit. But more of that later, let me continue autobiographically to give up everything I know for sure before I begin committing conjecture and suspicion to the page.
Let us return to the office. There I am, this volume set to one side, the small section of wood that was the door to the compartment to the other and in my hands the letter. In itself it is somewhat plain but in the context of this century it's very self-spoke volumes. There was no envelope, the thick, off-white paper had been folded in the fashion of ages past although the whole affair was much larger than one imagines it would be if being transported by horse messenger with dozens of others. It was sealed with, of all things, wax. Red beeswax indeed, stamped with a blank sealing cylinder. There was no address, no ‘To’ but after only a few moments I opened it. You know by now, unless you are starting on this volume and have never met me, I do not act on impulse. In hindsight, I have justified this rashness as follows: The letter was concealed in my office, had been for some time and there was an indication of its hiding place; it was meant to be found, by me and I should not delay in opening it. At the time I had not reached the conclusions above about the timing of its concealment but I assume this would not have lessened my haste.
Of course, I know what they say about hindsight and despite my own high opinion of my prudent and analytical personality I know it was raw curiosity that drove me to open the letter and not take a moment to properly document its condition. I did preserve the seal with little damage and hold the paper in such a way as to prevent my fingers wiping out the culprit’s fingerprints, should they be any. When I found that it was a letter I left the wood and the journal where they were and made for my chair. Then, thinking otherwise, I replaced the wood and brought the other two items here where they have been with me since.
Once here, comfortable, thoughtful and with a whiskey to hand, I began reading. With every word my curiosity grew as, ever so steadily, did my anger.
The letter is written as advice to me on the future course of my life, clearly intended to be read by my young self, most likely on the night of my uncle's accident or shortly after. What is initially infuriating and disturbing is the assertion it makes that he was already dead. It does not mention how, clearly a cheap trick to lure in those who do not require proof that something is true like those of a cold reading medium, but it is clear the writer believed him dead and offers me their condolences. It then continues to give advice the like I have never received and in such a condescending manner that I paused several times considering to stop and discarded the thing. What held me I almost dare not admit, and in matter of fact I would not were this not my journal. This wretched letter held me because the hand is very nearly my own, as is the tone. Someone who knows, or knew me well wrote this in my style…
Firstly, the initial assertion is that my uncle was already dead and that he had died accidentally without hope of being saved. Written as if it had just happened I can only assume from the tone that it was written after my uncle's accident and the writer assumed him dead at the scene. The rest of the letter is so well composed that I must also assume that the body of this letter was composed ahead of time and it merely required my uncle's demise for the writer to insert the circumstances at the beginning and write the rest from their draft.
Secondly, the letter then goes on to document my uncle's effect on my life, since the death of my father. It is sympathetically written, as to one bereaved, but is most clear in its condemnation of my uncle as a role model. This is difficult read as the author has clearly sat down to commit this to the page not hours after he believes the man in question has been pronounced dead. It continues, having clearly chosen to maintain its underlying disrespectful tone, to further condemn his actions to the point of implying his character may have lead to his demise in some half-baked karmic argument. I shall not justify its accusations with a response here suffice it to say my uncle was a businessman, a successful one at that, who succeeded with the objective of providing for his family, myself included.
Finally, the letter changes tone to one which I am sure the author assumed was an agreeable and fatherly. It seeks to guide me, or at least my younger self to be a ‘better person’, whatever that really means, and use the skills and resources now at my disposal to build better, more altruistic businesses than the ones that dominate the present. To further their argument they quote the business model of the Cadbury family (no further comment needed there I think) and speak of ‘driving only one car a day, living in one house a day, eating one meal a day’ as if I were an ill-educated simpleton who had never heard of Muhammad Ali, née Clay. Needless to say, I am not moved by this argument. I am quite sure it is a great attraction for those who have amassed fortunes and wish their legacy to be one of benevolence. Or perhaps it is a convenient side-line to people who enjoy surfeit and gain pleasure from giving to strangers. Perhaps I will feel that in future but I am honest enough to say such a thing for me would be a pretence. I am also realistic and wholeheartedly believe most so-called-altruists have made their money off the backs of others, as I have and are either wilfully ignorant of the fact or assuaging some guilt or other. Or both. No doubt there are some who truly believe but I'd wager most of those have a thin vein of political idealism in them and their means transforms them, mainly in the eyes of others. Ah, the irony of the idealist whose efforts merely grease the wheels of the publicity machine.
There, a pleasant digression into the foibles of the 'worthy’. Let me return to my ire.
In conclusion, this letter with its three clear strands converges on one theme; change and be better for nothing good lies on this path. Well I must disagree. This life has been a selfish one, true, but it has provided me with great rewards. Whilst I have been frugal and shunned the ostentatiousness of my contemporaries, and even the modest comforts of my late business partner, my personal profits have been vast. More so they sit, physically, in the vaults of banks or the holdings of companies rather than the ephemeral worth of possessions and chattels. Unlike my salaried brother-in-law, who works almost hand-to-mouth, the income from my investments quietly pays my expenses leaving me free to work and increase them. Quietly, not silently, for therein lies the secret to frugal living. Any bill, any service, even taxes creep up on the unwary. Every action that can be taken to reduce them, now or in future, must be taken.
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Journal entry continues...
Tuesday 3:06 am - 07 Jan
Having just reread my entry so far, I can see that the letter agitated me far more than I had realised. My restudying of the letter, and the path on which it has lead me in the last three hours or so, has left me in a somewhat more pensive state. I have spent the last half-hour composing myself so better to tell the continuation of this night's tale.
As I read and reread the letter elements of it drew my attention; elements I missed before or even ridiculed in my analysis above. They were clues and, if I might say so without sounding superstitious, impossible ones at that. Do not misunderstand me, I do not mean they were impossible to solve. In my opinion they should have been impossible to write.
These clues led me to the library, and to a specific floorboard secured by a distinctive, unpolished brass screw. Once I had found a screwdriver in the servants’ cupboards I removed the floorboard to find another letter, outwardly identical to the first. It now sits on my desk, unopened. Waiting.
I have very little time, certainly not enough repeat the details of this night's bizarre escapade. It is now nearly four in the morning and I have barely two hours to wash, dress and prepare myself for a day of work with no sleep and a greater than usual amount of scotch. I believe it would better if I take a short time to complete this entry as well. Please excuse my brevity, I am sure you will understand.
There were four final clues in the letter. They were phrases that were distinct from the context of the letter itself and which provided four answers giving me what you might call coordinates in my own home. They comprised of a book title, a quote by ‘Mohammed Ali’, a reference to a woman I knew in my youth and an odd description of the painter Turner. These all come together when one stands my library, forming the four points of a cross, the centre of which, where the lines intersect, was the location of the second letter. Simple enough if one is set to solving puzzles.
The problem that vexes me is that those clues could not have been solved on the night I believe this letter was intended to be found. Only one of those points was filled by the object in question, a locked cupboard containing my early journals and my thoughts on the young woman in the clue. Neither the book mentioned not the book of quotations which referred to Mohammed Ali had been unpacked at that point and I had not discovered that the quote itself was in that book until I idly flicked through it many years later. The Turner was a gift I received less than a year ago.
Either these letters are recent and the product of someone who has access to my house along with a twisted sense of humour or... The alternative is absurd and I shall not entertain it whilst there is work to be done. On my return, and only then, shall I open it and decide whether I continue this nonsense.
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