Chapter 2: The Constable’s Question
656 Words
Chapter Summary :
Helena visits Constable Elias Harrow under the pretense of returning Charles’s pocket watch. Their conversation is filled with suspicion and quiet barbs. Elias is already investigating inconsistencies in the case. Meanwhile, Helena keeps the ledger secret — for now. But both leave the meeting knowing the other is hiding something.
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Part 1: The Pocket watch
Helena visits Elias at the constable’s office to return Charles’s pocket watch, claiming it felt improper to keep. She masks her nerves behind perfect etiquette. Elias, gruff but observant, senses there's more behind her visit — especially given her presence at the boathouse the day before.
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The constable’s office sat just off the main square — a squat, slate-roofed building with bars on the windows and mud at the threshold. Helena stepped through its wooden door at precisely half past three, dressed in charcoal gray with her hair pinned in its usual neat coil.
Elias Harrow stood behind his desk, coat slung on the back of a chair, sleeves rolled to the elbow. He looked up as she entered. One brow rose, as if the fog itself had walked in.
“Mrs. Ward,” he said, with a nod so slight it was almost imagined.
“Constable.” Her voice was smooth as always, but softer today — as if she wore grief on her tongue like perfume.
He gestured toward the seat across from him without rising. “Something I can do for you?”
Helena unclasped her small satchel and withdrew the pocket watch. Brass, scuffed at the edges. Still ticking. She placed it gently on the edge of the desk.
“It was among the things returned to me,” she said. “Charles’s. I thought it might serve better with the case file. Or… wherever such things go.”
He stared at it. Not suspiciously. Not sentimentally. Just long enough to make the silence stretch.
“Was it not your gift to him?” he asked at last.
“Yes,” she said. “But I don’t care to keep clocks that belonged to dead men.”
He picked up the watch, turning it over once in his calloused palm, then set it aside.
“I don’t usually see widows return keepsakes. Especially not ones with initials etched inside the lid.”
Helena gave him a brittle smile. “You searched it thoroughly, then.”
“It was evidence.”
“And now it’s not?”
“That depends.”
He leaned forward, forearms on the desk.
“You were seen at the boathouse yesterday. After the funeral. Alone.”
“Of course,” she replied, crossing her legs. “Is it illegal to grieve near the place one’s husband died?”
“It is, when the place was sealed by my order.”
She didn’t blink. “Then you’d better fine me.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. Not a smile. Something more like acknowledgment. Not many people spoke to him that way — and fewer still did so with gloves on and a straight spine.
“I assume you went there for answers,” he said finally.
“I don’t believe in answers,” Helena said. “Only in paperwork. And my husband’s doesn’t quite add up.”
Elias tilted his head slightly. “That’s interesting.”
“Is it?”
He reached into the drawer and pulled out a thin file. “You’re right. It doesn’t. The coroner never signed the death report. We don’t have a body. Only a ring and a watch.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Then you buried nothing.”
“Oh, something was buried,” he said. “We’re just not sure what.”
Their eyes met. His were sharp — steel-gray, like winter metal. Hers were unreadable.
And for the first time, a new question formed between them, heavy in the air:
Who was investigating whom?
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**End of Part 1**
- Writer
