4141.222 · August 10, 1821 AD
The Room at the Corridor's End
Victoria thinks she's sleeping. The household thinks she's resting. Instead, Madelyn takes a key William pressed into her hand five days ago and slips into the one room nobody is supposed to enter. The east wing feels colder than the rest of the house. The door at its end has been maintained whilst everything else gathered dust. Inside waits evidence of what happened at midnight. And Madelyn is not the only one who knows this room exists.
Madelyn climbs stairs with exhaustion requiring no artifice. Behind her, Victoria watches from the drawing room. She's told Madelyn to sleep. Kindness and calculation in equal measure—Victoria needs time alone to think, to observe, to pursue whatever questions Madelyn's behaviour planted.
The east wing corridor stretches colder, stiller. Gas lamps unlit. The Blue Room door—heavy oak, darker than others, brass handle gleaming with polish the rest lacks. Someone maintained this door even as the wing was abandoned.
The key turns smoothly. Inside: deep azure wallpaper absorbing light. William's collection watches from glass cabinets—Egyptian hieroglyphs, jade dragons, obsidian gods. Payment, he'd called them during the confession. Not gifts. Payment for services rendered.
But it's not the collection that arrests her. It's what's changed since she was last here months ago. The room's condition tells a story. Mrs Holloway heard voices at midnight. An argument. A thud.
The evidence waits in shadows and spills and stains.
Madelyn is cataloguing what the constable must never see when the doorknob rattles. Someone testing the lock from outside. She freezes.
Footsteps retreat. She exhales.
She's about to leave when something pushes against her key from the corridor side.
