Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 151, Nos. 1 & 2. Whole Nos. 916 & 917, January/February 2018

The moon had come up, and a pallid beam filtered through the sidelight by the front door. The shaft washed out the golden circles of the sconces and cast a garish streak of yellow on the edge of the Benares brass umbrella stand before alighting on the tessellated floor where Hazel had fallen seventy years ago.

Determined to escape the oppressive miasma that permeated the house, I went out the front door and locked it behind me. Then, still breathing slowly, I walked down the flagstoned pathway. The pain was gradually subsidizing, and I stopped for a moment to look up at the moon. Its pale face was creased into a crooked, ironical smile, and as I stood there, quietly staring upwards, the ache in my chest ceased. I suddenly realized that I was still clutching the envelope. I opened my handbag, slipped it inside, and firmly closed the clasp. My mother’s secret would remain with me.

With my spirit finally calmed, I walked out onto the street and was warmed by the friendly blaze of Christmas lights from the adjacent homes. I took my cell phone from my handbag and called for a cab. Then I turned my back on Craigdarroch and waited for my taxi to arrive. Aunt Maud had shaken my peace of mind with her strange legacy, but I was beginning to realize that she had also delivered a release.

My charming but flagrantly unfaithful husband had only once allowed his liaisons to jeopardize our marriage. Our Hazel had been a neighbouring divorcée who used our children’s friendship as an excuse to book an adjoining campsite for three consecutive years when we took our annual holiday. She had smiled sweetly and pretended to be my friend, while all the time continuing a torrid liaison with my husband. I had struggled with feelings of guilt ever since I had given way to an impulse borne of rage and jealousy and pushed her into the turbulent waters of the Sydenham River, but now I felt a kind of absolution. My act was somehow predetermined and beyond my control.

Maud had been right when she had said that blood will tell. I was her living proof. I was my mother’s daughter, in all her strengths and weaknesses — and my mother’s ghosts from Christmas past had finally laid my own ghosts to rest.