Endless Nights | Downton Abbey

𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚙𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝟹

1913

IF YOU HAD ASKED LOUISE WHAT SHE SAW HERSELF DOING THAT NIGHT, she would have answered something regarding a new book she was reading, or a puzzle she was gifted on her birthday that she wanted to finish. But she could not have imagined that her night would consist of devising a plan of how to carry the dead body of their guest from her eldest sister's room to the other side of the house.

She was trying to write the ending for one of the new stories she was supposed to give her editor, but her mind was not cooperating with her. She was getting frustrated, she always prided herself for being a very creative person and having the ability of writing a story in a short time, but in this particular one, the ending she had envisioned left her with a bad taste. So when her door was opened in the middle of the night and a scared Mary entered her room, she didn't notice.

She was crossing a sentence in her manuscript when she felt a hand in her mouth, she instantly thought that someone had come in the house and was going to kidnap her, she tried to scream but only muffled sounds came.

"Don't panic, it's me." She was surprised and relieved to hear her sister's voice. She didn't think that anyone was awake anymore, she had always been the last one to fall asleep.

"What is wrong? Isn't it a bit late for you to be awake?" She asked in a playful tone, but one look at her sister's teary eyes, and she knew something wrong must have happened.

"He is dead." Mary simply stated. Alarms started to sound in her mind, theories of every man in the house that could be possibly dead started to form in her head. She thought about her father and Mr. Carson, but she calmed herself for a moment and thought. Her sister was in disarray, clearly in shock, her plait messy, and her lips swollen, and she knew that the poor soul that has lost its life that night in her house was the gentleman her sister couldn't take her eyes off for the whole day, Mr. Pamuk.

"What do you need me to do?." She said while standing up from her desk and ushering her sister to her bedroom door.

Mary stopped her before exiting the room and hugged her for what felt like an eternity and said, "I need help moving the body." Louise's childhood ended that night.

When she arrived in her sister's room, she found Anna and her mother already there. She thought that calling Anna for help was a sensible decision, and well, her mother would be better help than her father.

"Oh Christ, he is really dead. Do you know what it was?" That question was directed to her sister. "Could have been a heart attack-no, he was so young. Maybe a stroke, that can happen to anyone of us, I read that in a medical journal. Or it could have been a ruptured vein in the brain, or-"

"Stop it please!". Her sister shouted at her to stop her rambling, Louise always rambled when she was nervous. But who could have blamed her, she had never seen a dead body before, and she had never been tasked with moving one to the other side of the house.

"Sorry. Alright, we can't lose more time." She looked at the clock in her sister room and gathered that the servants were going to wake up soon. "People are going to start waking up. Mama you took this side and Anna help me here, Mary please help us here." After a moment of panic, she started to get them to end this nightmare.

They took the body and got out of her sister's room, and went to the corridor. They were already in his room when someone dropped him a bit, she couldn't have told you who it was, she was in a place of mind where details were blurry.