The Duke's Eccentric Lady

Lady Mystery's Second Life

"AAAAAAHHH—!!!"

The pitched scream of a woman. The sounds of breaking glass.

It jolted Fiona awake harshly. She was disoriented at first, scrambling to get a grip of whatever is near. She managed to grab hold of something next to her while she adjusted her sight and other senses.

What happened? Did she somehow survive the strangling incident? Or is this the afterlife?

Fiona knitted her brows as she looked around. The crystal chandelier dangling from the ceiling made her realize that this can't be a hospital. Rococo-style furniture and paintings of unknown figures clad in extravagant clothes decorated the room she was in. There was an unpleasant and sharp scent wafting through the air, but she couldn't put a finger on it.

She noticed that she wasn't alone in that room. Several women wearing lavish dresses and intricate pieces of jewelry were standing by the doorway in front of her. Their faces were aghast. Meanwhile, Fiona was confused on why these women were wearing regency dresses as if they were in a historical costume party. A glass of red wine was shattered in front of the foremost woman, it was probably the source of the breaking noise she heard earlier.

Before Fiona could even talk, one of the women shrieked, "Dear Lord! It's Lady Davenport! She killed Lady Davenport!"

That statement confused her. Was there a murder in this room? She tried to take better observations of her surroundings and that was when she realized the situation she was in.

Fiona was sitting on top of a vintage velvet sofa. But it wasn't what shocked her the most. The 'thing' she grabbed hold of earlier when she was still disoriented was the corpse of a blonde woman who was sprawled next to her. A dagger was plunged deep into the woman's chest while blood trickled down, her expression froze post-mortem in terror.

The black-haired woman immediately yelped in horror upon the sight and quickly let her hold go. It made her lose balance and fall from the sofa with a loud thud, but considering the sight she is looking at right now, her fall was the least of her problems.

She was seeing an actual corpse from what possibly might have been murder.

Moments before…

"I have deduced who the killer is!"

The female detective had exclaimed in front of the whole police precinct. Her blue eyes glimmered confidently, the cocky smile evident on her facade. The uniformed police officers who had gathered around her looked at her curiously, waiting for the continuation of her sentence.

"It was the wife, Mrs. Jane Salazar!" She continued as she scrambled through her files. "I have checked her background, and it turns out that before marrying Mr. Robert Salazar, guess what her maiden name was? It was Mason! Her name was Jane Mason!"

"What?" An officer asked, not entirely following her. "Detective, I don't see what's the relation of that with this case."

"When we hit a dead end with this case, I ended up retracing my steps and I checked out all of the suspects' backgrounds. I found that Mrs. Jane's name used to be Jane Mason, and I thought to myself; why does that sound so familiar?"

As the female detective explained it to them, one of the officers raised his brows, waiting for her to elaborate further.

"So, I decided to investigate her past. It was then I found out that she was the younger sister of a victim from a hit-and-run case that happened 10 years ago!" The female detective slammed a piece of an old newspaper article on her table. It featured the case of a person who became a victim in a hit-and-run car accident, a man named Nathaniel Mason died instantly while the culprit wasn't apprehended due to 'lack of evidence in court, despite the suspicions that he was drunk driving. And the culprit's name—was Robert Salazar.

"Look at here, the name of the grieving sister who was interviewed," the detective said, pointing at the name of Jane Mason. The officers who were following her words gaped at the revelation.

"Then, this gives her motives," one of the officers stated.

"Yes! A very solid motive! She probably married him so that she can exact her revenge and made a plan to kill Robert years later. She's the killer!"

The officer who had been conversing with her went silent before he decided to open his mouth, "But, Detective, Mrs. Jane's alibi was rock solid. She was with her friends at the time of the murder, drinking cocktails at a hotel bar. Her friends and the staff had given statements that she was indeed there for several hours, she couldn't be the killer."

The female detective staggered as the uniformed officer reminded her of Mrs. Jane's alibi, "W-well, statements can be bought… She is rich from her husband's money, after all."

"The security cameras from the hotel showed that her statement wasn't false. She entered at the time before Mr. Salazar's murder, and exited much later, long after the murder's timeline."

"Maybe the recording was tampered…?" The detective started to doubt her own words.

"Along with three other street cams surrounding the hotel? There's no way anyone can tamper with that many cameras."

"Then, maybe she hired a hitman…?"

"When would she hire the hitman? We already thoroughly checked her bank statements and financial records, remember? There was no suspicious activity there that would indicate her hiring a hitman."

The female detective fell silent, the stares of her colleagues made her realize her mistake as she bit the nail on her thumb. After a while, she sighed heavily.

"You know what? This whole case is so stupid anyway, I'll just delete it all and restart."

And after that, a black-haired woman clicked exit on her document file without saving it, before throwing the whole file into the trash bin of her laptop. Gone was the story of Robert Salazar's murder case, another unfinished and discarded story draft.

Fiona groaned in frustration while she leaned her body on her comfortable ergonomic chair. Her eyes were tired from gazing at the laptop screen for too long, so she closed them briefly to rest her eyesight as she thought hard about what she should write next.

Damn it, she can't believe that she had committed the mistake of writing something that contradicts the previous plot she made. She thought she could dump the blame on Jane Salazar, but she forgot that she had made solid alibis for Jane at the beginning of the story.

Fiona Greene is a murder-mystery novelist who is more familiarly known by her pen name, F. Greene. She found her fame writing mystery fiction after one of her manuscripts won the Garfunkle Books Awards, a famous book award in her country. Many publishers coveted her stories afterward.

At first, Fiona found the fame enjoyable. But as time passed, she had coughed out numerous mystery novels that it was harder for her to think of more cases to make. To make it worse, she was hitting writer's block while her editor was gawking at her like an eagle, continuously asking for a new manuscript.

"... I should take a walk," Fiona murmured to no one in particular.

Right after saying that, the black-haired woman straightened her posture and put her laptop on sleep mode. She stood up, going to the bathroom to lightly splash her face with cold water. Fiona then tied her hair in a messy bun and wore a baggy hoodie before grabbing her wallet before going outside her apartment. She decided to walk towards her favorite minimarket, wanting to buy food, coffee, and restock on a bunch of other necessities too.

It was already night. The cool breeze caressed her hair while she gazed longingly at the sky. She always thought how it was a shame that the metropolitan city lights made the stars to be veiled. But no matter how much she wanted to move to the countryside, she couldn't do it. Fiona was born and raised here, she never knew another world outside of being a city girl. The thoughts of having to move out of her comfort zone scared her. That, and the fact that she couldn't be so far away from her publisher right now, not at the height of her career.

She was so lost in thoughts that she didn't realize that someone was following her.

"Hey, Fiona?" The stalker called out to her. Fiona froze, she recognized that voice, the identity of her stalker was immediately revealed after she had turned around.

"Oh my God, Marie?" The black-haired girl said excitedly. Marie was her closest friend when she was in college. Unfortunately, they lost contact upon graduating, so naturally, Fiona was thrilled to see her old friend. "I haven't seen you since forever! It's been, what? Three years? I missed you!"

Marie smiled at her, yet somehow there was a bitter taste behind that smile of hers. "Yeah, it's been so long, isn't it?" She replied. "So, listen, I wanted to talk to you about something."

"Yeah, yeah, anything! Let's talk, I know a lovely cafe nearby. We can head there and we'll catch up."

"Fiona," Marie repeated her name, this time with a firmer tone. "Look, I wanted to talk about something more serious with you instead of just catching up. Do you remember the first novel you published? The one that won an award?"

Fiona blinked several times in confusion. Of course she remembered, it was her work that first launched her career as a mystery author. "Clue of the Whispering Creek? Of course, I remember, what's wrong?"

"Do you still receive royalties from it?"

"Well, my publisher still reprinted it and people still buy that book, so yeah."

Marie breathed in sharply, "Then, I need you to do me a favor. Announce me as the co-writer of that book and give me a contract share as well."

Fiona was utterly dumbfounded by the request. She worked on that book alone and wrote it all by herself even in the middle of her busy college life. Back then, she didn't even have an editor yet, so she was the one who did all of the proofreadings and struggled so hard to get a publisher interested in it. Sure, Marie was her cheerleader back then. Comforting her and cheering her up whenever she hit a stump.

But Marie never gave hands-on help for the novel.

"I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous," Fiona stated, her voice becoming firmer this time. "Marie, I wrote that novel all by myself. You didn't help me write it at all, so why are you asking to be credited as a co-writer?"

"I was the one who gave you the idea for that murder case! Plus, I always helped you whenever you were stuck!" Marie argued.

"Yeah, by talking! I'm pretty sure that's not enough for you to be the co-writer. In the end, I was still the one who wrote it down into a coherent plot, word by word!"

Fiona sighed as she saw Marie glaring at her full of anger while biting her lower lip. The black-haired woman tried to reason with her former friend, "Marie, if you have money problems, I absolutely don't mind helping out. Rent, food, utilities—whatever you are struggling with. But I can't fulfill your request."

This enraged Marie further, she couldn't help but feel insulted by that statement.

"What do you know about my struggles?!" Marie shouted out. The street they were currently in was rather empty, it was laden with stores yet it was already way past closing times, so no one else was bothered by the sudden rise of volume. "While you were enjoying fame and fortune after that stupid award you got, I never got my success! I had already written numerous manuscripts, numerous novels, but no one was willing to accept them! All the while I have to see your pen name on every damn bookstore in town!"

Fiona scrunched her brows. It seems that Marie was jealous of her writing career. But behind all that, Fiona also didn't have it easy. Before she gained the award, she was all too familiar with rejection letters from multiple publishers. So, hearing Marie's tantrum was ridiculous.

"You know what? You're unbelievable, I can't believe you got so jealous that you blamed me for that. I'm finished talking to you. Good night, Marie."

Just as she was about to turn around and walk away, Marie suddenly lunged at her and seized her hands firmly on Fiona's neck. The sudden action surprised the latter. She tried to struggle against it, but it was hard to gain the upper hand when it was an unexpected assault. Marie was so overwhelmed by anger that she was putting all of her powers to strangle her former friend.

It made Fiona slowly lose air. Her throat and lungs felt like they were burning. Not long after, her consciousness was starting to become thinner. Her life flashed in front of her eyes. How ironic, she had written many stories about murder by strangling, and now she is being choked on by the woman she used to call her friend.

The last thing Fiona saw before everything went to black was Marie's enraged face.

Until she woke up again in an unknown room to see the blonde lady's corpse sprawled so grotesquely next to her.

'If this is the afterlife, then I'm certain that I've descended down to hell.'