Dead By Now : A Murder Mystery [COMPLETED]

Chapter Two: Then

I

She should have been with her husband the night he was killed. In their bedroom, sleeping with him. Or at least that's what the people were saying, although that was not the only thing they were saying.

The people of the town had made The Wife the prime suspect in the murder investigation of her husband.

He had five of his old best friends paying him a visit that day but he was yet to meet any of them. He had retired to bed earlier that evening before any of his friends could arrive. Because, as his wife would later be heard saying, "He had said he wasn't feeling well and wanted to be alone." So alone apparently that he did not even want his wife with him in their bedroom. That, she said, was the reason she was sleeping in a different room that unfortunate night. Although, she added, that wasn't the first or only time he had made her sleep in a different room.

Oblivious to everything that was happening outside his room, Elwood was, most likely, sound asleep around the time his killer struck.

At first, it appeared to Evelyn Hill, their maid, as an ordinary morning. She knocked on his door with his coffee in one of her hands. But when after a few knocks there was no reply she tried to enter the room anyway. She couldn't though, because the room was locked from the inside. After a few moments, all the people that were present in the house the previous night gathered around the door to the bedroom of Mr. Adams, the unfortunate man who, as all those present were about to discover, had been murdered in his sleep the previous night.

In the beginning, it was quite the town mystery. Who murdered him wasn't really the question of the hour at first, however, instead how could it have been possible for a person to get murdered in a room that was locked from the inside? Where did the murderer come from and where did they go? was the question keeping the people of the town up at night.

It could have easily been a suicide. That was the only explanation that made sense, at any rate. But the suicide theory did not last very long. The death was soon confirmed to be a murder when the police found a syringe hidden underneath the cupboard in the room. Although what confirmed his death a murder wasn't the fact that they found a syringe that could have been used to inject poison into him. It was already assumed to be a suicide, even though everyone who knew Elwood believed it to be impossible that he could have killed himself, "He had everything a person could ask for in a lifetime," everyone would say, and a syringe possibly filled with poison only gave weight to the theory that Mr. Adams had killed himself. What confirmed his death as murder was the fact that the fingerprints found on the syringe weren't his. Whose it were, however, was still a mystery.

II

What would be going inside the mind of a Wife attending the wedding of her late husband's mistress? Why would she be attending the wedding in the first place? you may ask.

Ophelia Adams, the wife, was more or less the only person, besides the couple involved, aware of the affair. So, naturally, her presence at the wedding didn't really gather much attention. It would have been natural, however, for anyone aware of the affair to expect Ophelia to not attend the wedding and hate Layla's guts.

Layla Rhodes was barely 22 when she began an affair with, a man almost double her age, Elwood Adams. She belonged to a respected and wealthy family and certainly, a scandal involving her and a man as old as Elwood would have irreparably ruined her reputation. Thus, naturally, she was scared out of her wits when one day, Ophelia caught her trying to sneak out after a rendezvous with Elwood.

Ophelia had every reason to hate Layla but still, for some reason, when she found herself alone with her at her wedding that evening, the words she spoke to her were something like, "I will always be thankful to you for what you have done for me."

They looked more like friends than enemies in the moment.

Besides this little talk with Layla, Ophelia did not really talk with anyone else that evening, for there was something else her mind was completely engrossed with. Something very disturbing had occurred that morning, that she had not been able to take her mind off of.

There was a painting very dear to Ophelia and even though she little understood it, she had, nonetheless, hung it on one of the walls of her bedroom. It was indeed a confusing painting, to be honest. If you looked at it all you would see is a bunch of weird-looking people staring back at you.

On the morning of the day she was supposed to attend Layla's wedding, she, after taking a shower, walked into her bedroom to find her beloved painting lying on the floor. The frame was intact but the glass had shattered to pieces, having torn through the painting.

"Oh, My God!" She yelled, while running to pick the painting up. She put it on her bedside table and went to look for Evelyn, the maid, for the cleanup, but Evelyn had already left for the market.

It hadn't taken Madelyn long to realize where the noise was coming from, and as soon as she realized it, she had removed the painting from the frame. She was in the middle of the process of tearing away the painting on Ophelia's side of the frame, too, when Ophelia returned to the room

Ophelia had come back prepared, with a brush and a dustpan, to clean up the mess herself. But nothing in the whole wide world could have prepared her for what she was about to witness.

The painting that she had left held up on the table against the wall, now had a lady inside of it. This lady was nothing like the people that were there in the painting before. For starters, this lady was not a painting, to begin with, but a real-life human being with flesh and bones.

Madelyn grew more confused and scared with Ophelia's every step towards her. Ophelia was equally, if not more, confused. She picked up the painting to bring it closer to her face.

They both just looked at each other for a moment, without saying anything.

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