The Word Cloud

This blog is the final part of the story that started with 'The Storm" followed by 'The Build" , 'The Artists" , "The Surveyor" and "The Wall".

Mike purposefully made himself a good breakfast. It felt the right thing to do. He knew it would calm him and he definitely wanted to be in full control of his senses now that the three boxes were indoors and on the lounge floor. The boxes looked identical but didn’t all weigh the same. There was nothing to indicate that one should be opened before another so he simply picked up the top box, put it on the table and removed the lid.

It seemed to be mainly full of papers. Before going through them he looked into each of the other boxes, and established that most of the contents were papers of one sort or another but there were some small tins and other odds and ends. He didn’t know what to expect but what he saw disappointed him, nothing really interesting caught his eye. He went into the kitchen, poured another coffee and went back to the lounge to start going through the boxes in detail.

It was nearly time for lunch by the time he had finished. He was totally puzzled by the contents, couldn’t see much point to any of them. It was interesting to glance at the headlines on some of the newspapers and to find some coins, but baby photographs left him bemused. What was going on here? Why hide all this stuff away in a walled up cavity?

Losing a certain amount of interest, Mike put everything back into the boxes and decided he would look at them again over the weekend when he had two completely free days. He then remembered the kitchen knife that he had wrapped in a tea towel and placed on the sideboard.

He unwrapped the knife and held it in the cloth, he somehow felt he shouldn’t get his fingerprints on it. It seemed to have been well used. The handle was scratched, the blade was showing signs of rust and the tip of the blade was rather stained. Wrapping up the knife once more, Mike put it to one side. Not much of interest there, but why was it hidden under the stairs?

Having seen the old floor plans in the solicitor’s office, he was able to link the area under the stairs, that had been pencilled as cloaks, with the hooks that he had seen screwed into the board at the top of cavity, so no mystery attached to that. It was just the boxes and the knife that weren’t making any sense.

On Saturday morning armed once more with his torch, Mike re-examined the space under the stairs just to ensure that he hadn’t missed anything. Builders were due on the Monday to carry out repairs on the house and this would be his last opportunity to check.

Back in the lounge he started on the photographs. Sepia coloured faces stared back at him, some looking stern, others with a hint of a smile but all rather formal. They were mainly family groups, or at least he assumed they were families, and several were pictures of a baby. As so often happens with photographs, when they are current there doesn’t seem to be any need to write explanations, only in later years does it become important and that was the problem with most of the photographs that Mike was studying. Only the pictures showing a baby carried any information and those were said to be of a baby Alice aged at various times, from three weeks to three months old. The only date shown was nineteen twenty-two.

Turning next to the pile of newspapers, Mike quickly became distracted. The headlines and some of the articles were of historical interest, referring to the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun on the fourth of November nineteen twenty-two. There was also reference to the general election held on the fifteenth of November in that same year that was won by Andrew Bonar Law. Several hours were spent looking at these news items and at one point Mike had almost forgotten that he was actually trying to solve a mystery.

The papers in the boxes seemed to relate to the same year, nineteen twenty-two, but why? The name Alice then began to register. Wasn’t that the name of one of the parties on his house deeds? Yes, of course it was, Mike almost shouted to himself. He recalled that that was the name of the first owner of this property, but was it the same Alice? He felt he was perhaps getting somewhere at last. Now armed with that possible lead, he looked again at the other contents of the boxes. Yes, he was right, the coins, including George V pennies, were dated in that same year.

It slowly dawned on him that he had discovered a time capsule. True, it was only in cardboard boxes but nevertheless that is what he had unearthed. That would account for it being sealed up as well, although it did seem to be rather an elaborate way to hide things. Mike realised that he was now confronted with a dilemma. What should he do with all this stuff? He had no real interest in keeping it available, after all he didn’t know these people and there wasn’t anything of any significant intrinsic value.

He was about to put the boxes back under the stairs when, once again, he thought of the knife. His feelings about the knife made him uneasy, somehow it seemed so strange for it to have been hidden away. So many questions still remained, in fact there were more loose ends now than when he had started poking about at the hole in the wall.

With the builders coming in a couple of day’s time he felt under a certain amount of pressure. He was tempted to put everything back as he had found it, let the builders mend the wall and then get on with his life, on the other hand he knew that he would always be teased by the mystery surrounding the cavity and its contents. He decided there and then to let the builders go ahead with the repairs. He would keep the boxes available for a while and go through them one more time over the next few days. As for the knife he wanted to think about that for a while longer, so he put it in his bureau drawer, still wrapped in the cloth.

As a former police officer, although now retired, Mike had a strongly developed sense of civic duty and something about the knife kept nagging at him. He had never worked as a detective, his years were spent in keeping law and order and his diligence had resulted in him being promoted to the level of Superintendent. Naturally, during his career he had developed a network of useful contacts and he still kept in touch with many of his former colleagues at social occasions.

Regarding the knife, he had very little information to go on but it occurred to him that the staining on the blade could perhaps be human blood. He had always been very cautious about leaping to conclusions and now that he was not in the force anymore the last thing he wanted to do was to let his pals think that he was over-reacting in a trivial matter. The issue was, as he saw it, that he might be withholding information that linked to a criminal activity. There was one friend, a fellow Superintendent, with whom he decided to share his dilemma and arrive at a course of action. Mike slept on his decision and on the Monday morning before the workmen arrived he phoned his friend.

Several months had passed after that phone call when one morning Mike received a call from a Detective Police Inspector confirming that traces of human blood had been detected on the blade of the knife. Mike’s initial phone call to his police friend had eventually led to the knife being handed over to the authorities, and now here was news that Mike was hoping he would never receive. It was completely out of his hands by now but in a way he felt satisfied that his hunch about the knife was well founded.

He heard no more about this incident except an unofficial remark passed by his Superintendent friend. Apparently, enquiries were being made about the successive owners of Mike’s house and also in connection with the deeds of the property and any planning applications that might have been submitted.

Conjecture about the knife was all that he had available to him now.  Was Alice who appeared in the photographs the same Alice who was named years ago in the deeds of the property? Although he was a sole owner of a house now, he had always wondered about such a large house as his not being registered in joint ownership when it was originally built. He was curious too about the circumstances that had enabled Alice to build such a large property. Was it possible that she had benefited from a large inheritance? Had she built the wall under the staircase or had the Robbins? Mr. & Mrs. Robbins had only been names on legal documents when Mike purchased the house from them, they had never met.

Wanting closure on the whole affair, Mike had put the time capsule boxes up in the loft. Maybe one day they would once more see the light of day. Maybe one day he’d receive a follow-up call from the police.