The Curious Affair of The Palvine Residence: Part One

As I walked down Old Oakbourne Street my eyes turned to the large manor house almost silhouetted against the whiteish sky. An odd chilled wind echoed as a concealed whisper through the twilight air, piercing it like a mirror hitting the hard ground and shattering into a thousand glistening shards of nothingness. The Palvine Residence. It stood detached between the empty cross road and the old nursery with two huge gates standing open as if to welcome unknowing visitors into their confines. The gates themselves, I noticed as I came to halt adjacent to them were comprised of tall wrought iron bars standing proudly, though harshly bent and disfigured in places with thick brown rust infecting their flesh. It was strange, that place had always somehow scared me though I cannot recall its existence before I was thirteen, though it undoubtably must have been there, odd how the mind is so selective in what it remembers. But since Halloween, it’d particularly caught my notice: I had seen no movement from the house until that day but it came to my attention that, despite the fact that no lights were on, a singular small pumpkin had been left alight outside on the doorstep, beside it, a small bowl of what looked like sweets, though I hadn’t had the courage to investigate further. I wondered who must’ve left them there.

This question had perplexed me so much over the next weeks that I had begun to ask around as to if anyone lived in the house or knew if the house even belonged to anyone and was directed to a quinquagenarian lady who’d spent the last fifty years living in a rather small cozy house with a lilac cream exterior and window frames the colour of melted butter. I was informed her name was Rita Pearlhall and that if anyone could tell me about the odd house on Old Oakbourne Street, it would be her. So it was for this reason that after school on an unusually warm day at the end of November, I arrived at the her door in my smartest black dress and jacket with a camera bag and note pad and told her that I was a local investigative journalist, a lie she had readily believed.

Author Notes: The story as it continues will include themes of murder, deceit and adultery.

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