Free THE RIDDLE OF RAMSEY HALLS by Pippa Hart

CHAPTER 1
    The light was
bouncing off his head. I could see it from where I was standing on
the top floor of the house. He was mad and his bald skin was
turning pink. As per usual he was shouting at him, yelling at the
top of his lungs that he had been insolent and broken something. It
was the usual rigmarole.
    But when I
looked to Adam, his blue eyes wide and staring, he didn’t look
scared once. Rather he seemed resigned to his fate of being the bad
boy of the house. When his father was finished shouting, the little
boy walked up the steps, his little feet patting against the
mahogany. It was a long way up to where I was standing and he
pouted all the way.
    “Why are you
always hiding up here?” he asked as he reached the top, his little
lungs wheezing as he spoke.
    “Because I hate
your father as much as you do,”
    “Hmmm….” the
little boy nodded with his wise eyes staring down over the
bannister. “Won’t you suppose you’ll ever come downstairs?”
    “I don’t think
so,” was all I said and I followed his gaze.
    Adam’s father,
the corpulent Sir Thomas Collins was ordering his servants about.
So far he had reduced one to tears and made the others scurry
away.
    “Don’t you want
to run away from here?” I placed a hand on the little boy’s
back.
    “More than
anything,”
    “Why don’t you
then?”
    “Because where
can I go? I’m too young to work or even buy a train ticket,” he
sighed and slumped to the floor.
    “And when is
your birthday?”
    “May
19 th . I’ll be six then,”
    “Ah…. Still
rather too young,” I frowned.
    There was a
long pause between us as we listened to the frantic voices
downstairs. Sir Collins was a wretched beast who never treated his
family with the love they deserved, but he treated the staff in the
house worse. There were rumours of course, dreadful ones of things
he did after dark. But little Adam didn’t speak of them, not
yet.
    “If you join me
you could be free from this house you know?” I nudged him in the
ribs.
    “No thank you,”
was his terse reply. “I want to be a doctor when I grow up, or a
surgeon. I can’t do that if I die,”
    “But you’ll be
young forever,” I tried to reason. “Wouldn’t that be such a
wonderful thing?”
    The little boy
shrugged and looked into space.
    “I’ve been sent
to bed without supper again,” he looked up at me, his bottom lip on
the brink pf quivering.
    “I’ll see what
I can do,” and I stepped back into the shadows.
    From a distance
I could see him wander back down the stairs. His little head was
bobbing up and down as he walked, his blonde hair flopping back and
forth. I knew the boy had great things destined for him, but I
couldn’t help but want him for myself. He could be my son and I his
mother. We’d walk through the halls hand in hand with smiles on our
faces. We could dance in the ballroom with laughter never having to
end, and we could love each other until the end of time with no
such thing as aging to tear us apart.

CHAPTER 2
    “There’s no
such person as Mildred,” Sir Collins dismissed his wife’s words as
he pushed a piece of steak into his mouth.
    “But Adam says
there is,”
    “That boy has
an overactive imagination. He needs to get out of this house more,
needs some fresh air that’s all,”
    “But with the
flu pandemic….” Lady Collins bowed her head over her plate. “I just
don’t want him to get sick like…..,”
    From where he
was sitting, her husband may have thought she was fiddling with her
napkin. What he didn’t know was that out of sight she had fished
her hand into the secret pocket of her dress. Pulling out the
golden keepsake, she flipped open the locket and looked at the wisp
of hair that was hidden within.
    “Mathilda….”
she whispered into her lap.
    “What was
that?” her husband didn’t look up from his plate.
    “Nothing at
all,” she snapped it closed and put it back in its place. “I’ll
speak to him tomorrow,”
    ~
    The sun,
although