The butler did it. If you care only for the conclusion to this mystery–the content of tomorrow’s headlines–you have your answer. Please leave me as quickly as you came. But I know better than to hope for such abatement of my pain. What good is a headline without details to fill your columns? Your papers need sensational facts, clues of the case laid out in an easy-to-digest timeline filled with wild but always accurate speculations. I care not for your papers or the idle gossip they promote and spread farther and quicker than any known contagion. I wish only for peace. Peace predicated on a story. I shall oblige, but only so long as you stay for my final words. I cannot dictate which words you shall print, but you will know the cost of these few–and meaningless–before I am finished.

The butler, as I have already said, was the culprit. And from the start, fortune was on his side. Fortune that the storm knocked out the power soon after the Man of the House’s body was found in the study. He planned to escape–I surmise–through the hidden passage to the kitchen after injecting the Old Man with that syringe. The murder weapon, I grant you. Its substance: Strychnine. A quick acting-poison causing uncontrollable spasms for the… poor victims. Victims suffer terrible pain as they lose control of their nervous systems until dying of asphyxiation. A popular choice in crime novels, our culprit was a reader, my first observation. It also causes muscle stiffness, a detail our foolish butler forgot. Poison-induced muscle stiffness combined with world-class rock-climbing acuity allowed the Man of the House to hold his killer in place with a death grip, figuratively as well as literally. This left the butler no choice but to cry out for help. In the commotion, no one–including myself, regrettably–noticed the murder weapon in his hand. And soon thereafter, the lights were no more. Without a moment of hesitation, the Butler did the most natural thing for a Butler to do in such a circumstance. He lit a candle, attending to the guests. All the while, secreting his weapon of choice into the hollow candlestick.

At this juncture, I expand our cast to include the entirety of the house’s occupants. Let me no longer hold my conclusion so tightly and retrace a line of fleeting observations and circumstantial evidence to demonstrate its verisimilitude. The butler, as well as myself, were in attendance alongside the Old Man’s first and second wives–both long-since separated–and, finally a young man. I will elaborate further upon his significance when time permits. But, even the least trained of you will have noticed the two obvious suspects. A suspicion which will be strengthened when I explain the purpose for our meeting this evening. It regards the Will of the Old Man and how it would be–or rather would have been–redefined.

Once world-renowned with celebrity status, the Man of the House cultivated a small corporate empire with his tourney winnings coupled with a sizable inheritance and occasional appearances in motion pictures. His luck in investments famously did not follow him into his personal life, however. His first marriage ended after a mere 5 months. They were young, your papers excused at the time. Barely adults, drifting apart after discovering themselves, a natural development. And it ended so magnanimously with both sides making public statements wishing well of the other. She took half his money, but that still left him a King’s ransom.

It wisely was another 3 years before he was to remarry. A youthful young man now grown to a corporate mogul, the public hoped age now informed his decisions. At first, it would appear as much, the pair remaining together for the better part of a decade. But this time, the split was more explosive. The fallout, toxic. Where his first wife had taken his earnings of the past, his second claimed those of the future. She cared not for his accumulated pile of gold, that he kept. His companies, however. She proved to the courts they were off in her hands. No public statements followed the ruling.

With these separate histories now divulged, noting they weighed heavily on my mind at the time, I bring you presently to the reason for our visit. The Man of the House’s faculties had unwound in his old age. An unknown degenerative disease had begun ravaging his body. Doctor after doctor in the states had run their test and read their books, perhaps even asking their colleagues, but to no avail. There were rumors, however. The Old Man had caught wind of a doctor in Europe known for diagnosing and curing such–for lack of a more appropriate term–loss causes. He was also known for his lofty billing services. It would cost no less than everything, in the Old Man’s estimation. And, being as we were all in his Will, he had brought us together to ask permission to recant on his promises. Permission to hope, even the possibility, to remain in his own mind long enough to meet his end.

At least he was granted that much.

His wives, both written into his Will while each was together with him, granted his request, the former more ardent in her wishes than the latter. The Butler written in for a lifetime of service declared he had no right to the honor in the first place and would gladly give up a few hypothetical banknotes for his employer’s dignity. I had been granted a small place in the discussion as thanks for once clearing a murder charge against the Man of the House. It was unnecessary, I said as much at the time but he would not accept my humility. I had happened by the station on my way to lunch, greeting the Constable along the way and merely pointed out lack of soil on His shoes which I would have expected to see had he truly killed the gardener. And I may have also suggested that, since the driver was the only other person on the grounds at the time, perhaps it would be prudent to check his shoes as well. I expected nothing for such elementary observations and gave up my place among his inheritors in turn. Finally, there was the boy. He was confused why he was in the Will to begin with, having never met the Old Man and no known familial relationships. He had only heard of the Will that morning and said he could not give up that of which he held no expectation. So it was settled. The Old Man smiled. He wore hope well. It gave even his fragile body a regenerative youthfulness.

He expired the following hour.

We could not telephone the police with the storm raging outside. The nearest station, an hour’s drive away, we had no choice but to shelter inside until weather permitted. Although I took this offense against the Old Man personally and vowed to see this case closed for his sake, my ego would not have prevented a call for help were it granted me. Perhaps it would have saved two lives. I ordered you hear my words, so listen well. My increased fame from another case solved with keen intellect–this additional feather in my hat–nothing more than a stain on these people’s legacies. Lives were lost today. Friends, family, lovers, acquaintances, individual lives teeming with potential, unique lights snuffed out for nothing more than banknotes. And the fact that this tragedy will be touted as another of my triumphs in tomorrow’s paper will rob me of countless nights of sleep. But a story I promised you, and a story you will get.

I waited in the sitting room with the first wife, keeping an eye on one of my two suspected murders. The butler, having offered food to his guests, ushered the other two away. Perhaps their relationship didn’t end as pleasantly as the papers made it out to be. Or she could have since spent her fortune and arrived wanting the other half. I questioned her on the divorce and her life afterward, if they had spoken since. Her voice shook with anxiety as she responded. Could I ascribe it to regret or fear? I was not sure. There were secrets to uncover with their split, details hidden from the public, but she insisted it was cordial. She fell in love with the man, not his money. In fact, he was the one to insist on the settlement amount. They went well together at first, but she became quickly estranged by his wealth. The extravagant parties, the dining table too long to converse across, the butler waiting on her every need. It became too formal for her taste, she longed for intimate moments with a man who could not be convinced wealth was the problem rather than the solution. Afterward, she placed her settlement into a trust and has since never wanted for anything monetarily. She insisted she would have turned down her inheritance no matter.

I describe this much only to illustrate my inquisitive mind at work, attempting to uncover the pertinent details of the case. I did not spend my time idly. This case, however, granted me a break far less glorious than those written into novels. Lucky, perhaps. Disappointing to readers of tomorrow’s paper, certainly. But in an instance, both of my suspects were eliminated from my list of potential murderers. The first wife excused herself to the restroom, only to scream a moment later. The second wife had been injected with the same poison which killed the Old Man and was now seizing on the floor of the hall. Judging by her symptoms she had been there some time. It would have been impossible for the first wife to have injected her in the moment she was out of sight, and she had been under my watchful eye previously. Which left me with only the boy and the butler to consider. But before I followed up on my newly found information, the four of us stared on helplessly at the dying woman. Shaking violently, writhing with pain, she would never be able to answer the one question on everyone’s mind. She grabbed my arm at one point, eyes pleading for an antidote we both knew did not exist. Instead I offered a promise, I would get this killer.

For everyone’s safety, I locked each person in separate rooms, intending to question each in turn until the murderer revealed themselves through admission or evidence. A fatal mistake on my part.

The young boy, I questioned first. He repeated his claims that he was neither friend nor family of the Old Man. He grew up in a small town without much money to his name, his parents owning a local store that he helped stock on weekends and run after school. His only interaction with the Old Man was occasionally reading about Him in the paper. Until of course, that morning when he had received a summons. I spent some time with him combing his memories for potential connections. Perhaps he helped an older gentleman with a dire situation, not realizing he was famous or overly generous with his wealth. Maybe a vacation where they may have bumped elbows. A distance relationship on either his mother’s or father’s side. He repeated his negative response without fail, but a sense of doubt slowly crept its way into his voice. He would have ignored the thought had I not pressed him on it. His mother and father, put simply, weren’t. He was adopted as an infant. And judging by his age, he would have been conceived shortly after the Old Man’s first marriage dissolved.

I quickly left the boy and returned to the wife. I knew she was hiding something about her divorce. I confronted her forcefully. She and Old Man had a child. Feeling a growing resentment for Him, she couldn’t bear to raise His child. Probably didn’t even tell him, just left quietly and put the child up for adoption quietly. She denied it. Denied everything until I threatened to call her son from the other room. They didn’t have a child, she said. She did. And the Old Man was aware of him. She never told Him who the father was, it would have broken His heart to learn the truth. And the Old Man, he loved her as much as she had once loved him. If they couldn’t be together, he would still ensure she and her child would be cared for. They parted with well wishes, and he gave up half his fortune to prove it.

The rest is, well, as tragic as everything else. Recall the hidden passage I mentioned at the start. There existed paths between many rooms, including the ones where the butler and the boy were. We rushed in just in time to see the butler, syringe upstretched. Startled, he took the boy hostage, confessing his motives in a useless attempt to garner our sympathies. He worked his whole life for the Old Man, kept his house in order, took care of his guest, receiving no pay beyond a room in the mansion and the promise of a portion of the Will. He couldn’t let it go to waste on a treatment that had no chance of working. I care not to elaborate further on his senseless motivations. If he killed us all, he would be the sole inheritor, I need say no more.

The wife stepped forward, begging for her son’s life. The boy felt the grip around his throat loosen and struggled free, injecting himself in the process. It all happened in a moment. And had the boy waited a second, had he delayed a few more words… We stayed there with the boy, mother and father sobbing over their dying son while I paced angrily. He repeated over and over how he felt fine. How he’ll recover because he wasn’t in pain. He wasn’t in as much pain as the others. He wasn’t shaking at least. It was just his leg; that happened all the time. His arms weren’t shaking, he was just cold. He… He was just a boy. He didn’t even know why he was there.

I watched three people needlessly die today because greed killed a man’s humanity. Don’t let sensational headlines or potential scandals blind you to that. Three lives were ended this day. If we fail to mourn for that loss, we fail to distinguish ourselves from that man.

The butler did it. Case closed.