Chapter 5 - The Medical Ledger
The subterranean level beneath Blackwood Manor was a labyrinth of vaulted stone corridors, cold concrete floors, and iron-reinforced doors built during the Prohibition era. It was where the Blackwood family stored their finest wines, their secure financial ledgers, and where high-stakes interrogation sessions were conducted far out of earshot from the upper floors.
In the center of the underground holding room, a single stark halogen lamp hung from a exposed wire, casting harsh, unforgiving light onto a heavy iron table.
Arthur Vance sat on one side of the table, his hands trembling so violently that he couldn't keep his fingers still. Sitting beside him was his younger brother, Dr. Julian Vance—a fifty-eight-year-old physician with slicked grey hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and a immaculate medical coat that seemed entirely out of place in the dank cell.
Victor stood in the shadows near the stone wall, his arms crossed over his chest, his face still stained with the dark soot of the greenhouse fire. Emma stood half a pace behind him, holding a thick, leather-bound estate logbook she had retrieved from Arthur’s office under Victor’s orders.
“This is an outrage, Victor!” Dr. Julian Vance spoke up, his voice tight with indignant rage. “I have served this family for fifteen years! I was your mother’s personal physician! I treated your father’s heart condition until the day he passed! How dare you drag me down here like a common criminal?”
Victor didn't move. He didn't blink. “Twelve years ago, Julian, my mother was shot three times in the chest outside the main gates. You were the first person to touch her body when the guards brought her into the foyer.”
Julian flinched, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. “Yes! I performed emergency CPR on this very floor! I tried to clear her airway! I spent forty minutes trying to revive her while your father wept on his knees beside me!”
“And while you were doing CPR,” Victor said, his voice dropping into a terrifyingly quiet register, “where was your brother, Arthur?”
Arthur looked up, his face pale as death. “I... I was in the grand hall, Mr. Blackwood! I was directing the guards, clearing the driveway for the ambulance, calling the private hospital—”
“You were alone in the dining room,” Emma’s voice broke through the air, clear and calm.
Every eye in the room snapped to Emma.
She stepped forward, placing the heavy estate logbook onto the iron table with a loud thud. She opened the yellowed pages to a entry dated November 14th, twelve years ago—the night Eleanor Blackwood died.
“This is the staff duty log for that night,” Emma said, pointing her gloved finger at a series of hand-written entries. “Mr. Vance, you wrote this log yourself. At 9:14 PM, the gunshots were fired at the gate. At 9:16 PM, Eleanor Blackwood was brought into the foyer. At 9:18 PM, you logged that you were securing the estate perimeter.”
Emma turned her dark eyes onto Arthur.
“But the security cameras in the rear servants' hall—which were archived on the estate’s secondary server—show you entering the dining room at 9:19 PM,” Emma continued, her voice sharp as a scalpel. “You were inside that room for three minutes and forty seconds. Alone. In total darkness. While everyone else was in the foyer bleeding and screaming.”
Arthur’s mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. “I... I was checking the windows! I was making sure the shooter wasn't trying to breach the dining hall doors!”
“With what tool, Arthur?” Victor growled, taking two slow steps out of the shadows.
He pulled a small, heavy plastic evidence bag from his pocket and threw it onto the table. Inside was a tiny, specialized brass screwdriver set—the exact precision tools required to install a micro-transmitter into a carved wooden chair leg.
“We found this twenty minutes ago,” Victor said, his voice laced with venom. “Hidden inside the lining of your private medical bag in the doctor’s cellar, Julian.”
Dr. Julian Vance’s face went completely grey. He turned his head slowly to look at his older brother. “Arthur... what is he talking about? Why were my precision instruments in your quarters?”
Arthur collapsed back into his chair, covering his face with his gloved hands, his shoulders shaking with silent, desperate sobs.
“It wasn't meant to kill her!” Arthur wept, his voice cracking with sheer misery. “I swear to you, Victor! I swear on my mother’s grave! I never wanted Miss Eleanor to die!”
Victor was across the room in a flash.
He grabbed Arthur by the throat, lifting the sixty-two-year-old butler completely out of his chair and slamming his back against the cold stone wall with enough force to knock the breath from his lungs.
“Speak!” Victor roared, his jaw working violently. “Who were you sending the audio to?”
“The... the Moretti family!” Arthur choked out, his hands clawing uselessly at Victor’s iron grip. “Twelve years ago... I had a gambling debt! Three million dollars to the Moretti family’s underground casinos in Atlantic City! They told me... they told me if I didn't give them access to your father’s dining room conversations, they would cut my throat and kill Julian!”
Victor’s grip tightened, his knuckles turning white. “The Morettis were our primary rivals twelve years ago. They knew my mother’s car route because you listened to the lunch meeting that afternoon!”
“No! No!” Arthur gasped, tears streaming down his withered cheeks. “I didn't know they were going to shoot her! They told me they just wanted financial data! They wanted shipping manifests! On the night she died... during the chaos... Don Moretti called my private radio. He told me if I didn't plant the receiver beneath the chair that night, while everyone was distracted, he would tell your father I had been leaking information for months!”
Arthur’s eyes bulged as the air was starved from his lungs. “I had no choice, Victor! If I didn't plant it, your father would have executed me on the spot! I planted the bug... and then your father declared the chair sacred! He forbade anyone from moving it! It was... it was the perfect hiding place! Nobody ever touched it! Nobody ever swept under it!”
Emma watched as Victor’s chest heaved, his muscle tension reaching a terrifying peak. He was seconds away from snapping the old butler’s neck with his bare hands.
“Mr. Blackwood!” Emma shouted, stepping up beside him. “Don't!”
Victor turned a bloodshot, wild eye toward her. “He killed my mother, Emma!”
“He’s a pawn!” Emma yelled back, pointing at Arthur’s blue-tinted face. “Look at him! He’s a pathetic, terrified coward who’s been living in hell for twelve years! But who has been receiving the tapes today? Don Moretti died six years ago! The Moretti family was dissolved! Who was paying for the thermite in the greenhouse? Who turned on the receiver inside this house an hour ago?”
Victor froze.
The cold logic of Emma’s words cut through his blinding rage like a beacon through fog.
Don Moretti was dead. His syndicate had been wiped out during the mob war five years ago. Yet, the micro-transmitter beneath Eleanor’s chair had remained active, blinking its tiny red light, transmitting real-time data to a receiver currently operating inside Blackwood Manor.
Arthur wasn't the mastermind. He was just the open door.
Victor loosened his grip. Arthur dropped to the stone floor like a sack of wet flour, clutching his throat, coughing and gasping for air.
Victor slowly turned his dark, terrifying gaze away from Arthur and locked it directly onto Dr. Julian Vance.
The doctor sat completely frozen at the table. He hadn't panicked when Arthur confessed. He hadn't cried. He hadn't tried to defend his brother.
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He had sat there, completely calm, holding a pristine leather medical ledger in his lap.
“Julian,” Victor whispered, his voice dangerously smooth. “Why did you have thermite residue on your medical coat?”
