Chapter 3 - Poison in the Wine
Viral Headline: Panic in the Mansion! The Maid’s Child Falls Critically Ill, And The Evidence Points To Someone In The Bed!Eleanor quickly hid the bloody key inside her vanity drawer, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. Who did the blood belong to? And what did this key open? She realized with a sickening certainty that she was married to a stranger.
The next morning, the mansion was shaken by a piercing scream from the servants' quarters.
Eleanor rushed down the narrow, dimly lit stone stairwells that led to the basement rooms. She found Clara cradling her youngest son, Toby. The boy was convulsing, his skin a deathly, pale shade of blue, white foam flecking at the corners of his lips.
"Help! Please, someone help him!" Clara shrieked, her voice raw with agony.
"Get the doctor! Now!" Eleanor ordered the surrounding staff, who stood frozen in fear.
Julian’s mother, Lady Beatrice Whitmore, chose that exact moment to glide into the basement. A cold, severe woman wrapped in heavy furs, she looked down her nose at the chaotic scene. "What is this ungodly racket? Eleanor, why are you down here with the help? Let the child perish in peace; it's likely just the filth they are accustomed to."
"Shut up, Mother!" Eleanor snapped, shocking everyone in the room, including Beatrice.
The family doctor arrived an hour later. After examining the boy and pumping his stomach, the doctor emerged with a grave expression. He held up a small glass vial containing a murky residue.
"This wasn't an illness, Lady Whitmore," the doctor whispered to Eleanor and Julian, who had finally joined them. "The child has ingested a heavy dose of arsenic. It was mixed into something sweet. If he had eaten any more, he would be dead."
"Arsenic?" Eleanor choked out. She immediately turned her gaze to Julian, whose expression was completely blank, an unreadable mask of stone. "Who would do this?"
"Clearly, the maid is negligent," Lady Beatrice interjected smoothly. "She probably used rat poison carelessly in her quarters. This is exactly why we don't allow their kind to breed inside the estate."
That night, suspicion hung over the mansion like a toxic fog. Eleanor couldn't shake the feeling that Toby wasn't the intended target, or perhaps, he was targeted to force Clara to flee the estate.
Unable to rest, Eleanor decided to investigate Julian’s private study while he was out dining with city officials. Armed with the bloody key she had stolen from his coat, she slipped into the dark room.
She searched behind the oil paintings, under the heavy mahogany desk, and behind the rows of leather-bound books. Finally, beneath the heavy Persian rug, she found it—a concealed iron floor safe.
With shaking fingers, she inserted the bloody key into the lock. It turned with a heavy, satisfying click.
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She opened the safe, expecting to find the brass lockbox Clara had mentioned. Instead, she found a stack of medical reports from a private, high-security sanatorium on the outskirts of the city.
The Chapter 3 Hook: Eleanor flipped open the top medical file. Glued to the inner page was a recent photograph of a man with severe burn scars covering half his face, strapped to a psychiatric bed. The name on the chart read: Patient X - Real Identity: Arthur Vance. Clara’s husband wasn't dead. He was alive, hidden away, and being tortured in a madhouse owned by her husband.
