“What do you mean you’ve done it before?” called down Stella from the chimney. The girl couldn’t believe what she was hearing. That was exactly how Soot had told her he had been killed.
“You might as well know it was me who made my baby brother, your uncle Herbert, disappear all those years ago,” said Aunt Alberta from the fireplace of the dining room.
“Of course!” said Stella, almost to herself. What happened to the baby had remained a mystery for over three decades.
“When he was born I knew he would inherit Saxby Hall, and not me,” explained Aunt Alberta. “I hated him for it! Much as I hated your father. So in the dead of night I crept into his nursery and smuggled him out of the house.”
“How could you do such a thing?” demanded the girl.
“Remarkably easily,” replied Alberta. “I took him down to the river, put him in a wooden box and set him afloat. I thought the river would swallow him up. But ten years later, there he was on the doorstep of Saxby Hall dressed as a—”
“CHIMNEY SWEEP!” exclaimed Stella. Soot – she had to mean Soot!
“That’s right.” Alberta was completely taken aback that the little girl had said this. “How on earth did you know that?”
“Because the ghost of a chimney sweep haunted this house.”
“Ghosts aren’t real, you stupid little child!”
“Yes they are! That’s who has been helping me.”
“You are completely delusional!” After everything, still the woman refused to believe. Soot had been right – grown-ups’ minds were too closed to believe in anything other than the here and now.
As much as Stella wanted to continue her escape, she was intrigued to know the full story. “How did you know the chimney sweep was your baby brother?”
“Because he was the image of my other brother Chester, your father. Shorter and skinnier all right, the little urchin had grown up in a workhouse living on scraps of food – but he was the absolute spit of Chester. And this revolting stinking little urchin kept on saying he felt like he had been to Saxby Hall before. It was only a matter of time until the rest of the family worked out who he was too. So I waited until he had crawled up the chimney to clean it, and then I lit the fire below.”
“You are a monster!”
“The best part of it was I let one of the servants take the blame.”
Soot is really my uncle! thought the girl. This was explosive news. “That boy is the rightful heir to Saxby Hall!” she exclaimed.
“He was a child. He died many years ago now. Just another little chimney sweep that no one mourned.”
Stella thought for a moment. “My mother, my father, my uncle… How many more people are you going to murder?”
“Just one,” replied Aunt Alberta. “You!”