May, 1887

Elizabeth Hatton was just nineteen years old when she threw herself off the roof of her family home. The maid, dusting in the library below, was the same age.

Elizabeth screamed as she fell as if, in midair, she’d reconsidered jumping and realized her mistake. The maid heard the scream, and then the awful sound as Elizabeth hit the flagstones of the terrace. Within a minute she was at Elizabeth’s side, gently holding her hand and trying to comfort her with soft meaningless words.

She knew Elizabeth would be dead very soon; everything about her seemed broken. Head and neck, legs and arms, were all at impossible angles, and a bit of jagged bone was visible coming through her mangled calf. A pool of blood spread rapidly across the carefully cut stones under her head. Elizabeth gasped several times for breath, but seemed unable to make the air penetrate all the way to her chest. Her eyes were locked on the maid’s when she made a last feeble attempt to breathe, then her pupils expanded rapidly and she went completely still.

As she reached out to close the dead eyes, the maid thought what a stupid, stupid, waste. Until this moment, she had thought Elizabeth Hatton the most fortunate of creatures. “Wouldn’t I have known what to do with such a life,” she thought. Elizabeth had sparkled with it: pretty, clever, beloved by her family, she seemed to have everything. She had never known want, never had to work. She could do what she wanted, go where she wanted, she had access to books and art and music. And she had thrown it all away because of a young man who was, in the maid’s opinion, dull, shallow, spoiled, and stupid. All his wealth, position, and good looks could not disguise his worthlessness.

Elizabeth’s last cry had been heard in the far corners of the house and now others began to emerge through the doors of the library onto the terrace. The first to arrive was Edmund. His sister’s scream brought him running at full speed out of the house, but he came to an abrupt stop when he saw the horrible scene. He collapsed to his knees beside Elizabeth’s body, moving his hands over her as if there might be something he could do, though he knew there was not. He hardly noticed the maid until she reached out and gently placed his dead sister’s hand in his.

He looked up, directly into the eyes of the maid. In the four years she had lived in the house, this was the first time he had ever met her gaze. His grey eyes were filled with fear and a wild grief.

Looking back, the maid could not help but note how much he looked like his sister lying dead between them. To think that on this day, of all days, the brother and sister had each, for the first time, really looked at her. Had they noticed that she was, like them, a human being?

She rose to leave as others from the household arrived. Edmund touched her arm to hold her back.

“Wait,” he said. “Did she say anything?”

The maid shook her head.

“May we speak later?” he asked.

She nodded.

As she went back into the house she couldn’t help thinking that there would be a mess of blood and brains to clean up.