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Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
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“My dear Sofia,” said her smiling husband, “Come, the grand tour awaits!” He swept her off her feet and carried her into the house.
And the tour was grand! He showed her every room, starting with the great hall with its wide trailing staircase, the dinning room with golden candlesticks and he did not forget the kitchen, which was cleaner than she had ever dreamed a kitchen could be. He showed her the drawing room with its crystal chandelier and ornate plasterwork on nearly every inch of the ceiling and walls. The guest rooms dripping in silk canopies and sheets covering mahogany beds. Their own room had been redone after the passing of his last wife (the fourth wife one he’d lost, poor man) with completely new furnishings, including a charming vanity with a mirror in a gilt frame, that he’d commissioned just for her. Squirrel was dazzled. He ushered her up the stairs to the servants’ quarters, which after the opulence she had just witnessed, seemed more bare than any others she had once inhabited (when she was lucky.) The tour ended at the door of the garret at the top of the house.
“And now, my bride, my dear, mistress of the house! You have seen everything, you are queen here. The keys to your domain, my lady!” He made a show of bowing and handing her a ring with a great many keys.
“Thank you, my lord,” she laughed and curtsied as she took them. “But what is behind this door?”
His face darkened, but he smiled, “Aha, that my precious, is the one place that I forbid you to enter. This key here,” and he pointed to a key smaller and older than the others. “Opens the door, but that you must never do, my love. It shall not go well with you if you do.” And he led her away down to dinner.
Well, thought Squirrel, Why give me the key at all? Why shouldn’t I use it?
She did not climb the rickety stairs to the garret that night though, nor the next night. Squirrel waited. She had learned patience on the streets, where one wrong move could have ended her life or sent her to the jailhouse. Instead, she enjoyed the lavish meals, and the fine clothes, and the fairytale she’d somehow found herself in. She went in and out of the many rooms and looked them all over carefully, for they were hers, and this was a novelty she would never get over.
At the end of the first week, Lady Corrine wrote her with entreaties to come home. Squirrel was amused and tucked the letter away. At the end of the second week, Mr. Price went away on a business trip. “I must be away for some six weeks. But do not pine in my absence. Invite your friends, my dear Sofia. Invite your lovely parents. It will ease their minds. Be merry!” Squirrel thought of the room at the top of the house and sat down to write a great many invitations to her house party.
Mr. Price had hardly left the grounds when her guests descended on it. Captain and Lady Delman were first among them, as well as a number of young lords and ladies and their servants. They bustled in every which way they could, and Squirrel greeted them as prettily as Lady Corrine ever had.
“And now,” cried Squirrel, before they had a chance to settle in. “The grand tour!”
Her tour was not as grand as Mr. Price’s. The guests had a glimpse of the great hall, but they they saw not a peep of the drawing room, nor dining room, nor hardly anything of the furnishings, for Squirrel led them straight up to the top of the stairs to the garret and thrust the little old key into the locked door. The door swung open and the key fell out onto a floor of blood. For in that haunted room were the cut up bodies of the four former wives of Mr. Price. There were screams and gagging and the town guard were sent for and Captain Delman himself led a hunt for Mr. Price. Lady Corrine whisked Squirrel back to the city and fussed and scolded, “I told you it was dangerous! I told you not to do it!” she said. “Didn’t I say the lawmen could get to the bottom of it without you getting involved?”
“The most recent Mrs. Price was my friend. I had to do something,” said Squirrel unrepentant. “Besides, what danger was I in when I in with everyone around me when we looked into that room?”
Lady Corrine shuddered and kept her indoors until Captain Delman returned, with the prisoner in tow. Mr. Price was locked up in the Imperial Dungeons of the Realm, and quickly executed.
“Well, now Sofia,” Captain Delman said to her after Mr. Price was deep in his grave. “You married him, his estate is yours. Whatever shall you do with it?”
“Burn it,” said Squirrel.
Prompt: An Escape
For more of Squirrel's adventures read: The Sword Thief.
Blue Beard has many variants, but the one by Perrault is quite nonsensical. The heroine discovers her husband's murder room during a house party, while there are tons of guests. Does she raise the alarm? No. Instead, she must face Blue Beard alone. Perrault then has the audacity to end the tale by claiming the "moral" is that women shouldn't be curious. This was unacceptable, so I fixed it. The Grimm brothers' version, Fitcher's Bird, is much better.
