Chapter 17
~Chapter 17~
“Ah… Has the rumor already spread that far?”
“It’s become quite the topic of conversation.”
But just as she began to wonder why on earth that had brought a complete stranger to her, Alfonso opened his mouth with a displeased expression.
“Upon hearing that Viscount Listerwell had terminated his guardianship of you at the monastery, the suspicions I’d harbored for so long turned into certainty.”
“Pardon? What do you mean…?”
“I was one of the people who went boating in Albrecht Park nine years ago.”
At the mention of Albrecht Park, Harriet froze.
Nine years ago, Harriet’s parents, Arthur and Lilian Listerwell, had attended a picnic at Albrecht Park and drowned while boating. Harriet had survived because she’d wanted to play with her friends instead of going boating, but she often wondered whether becoming an orphan was truly better than dying alongside her parents.
Alfonso continued with a regret-filled expression.
“At the time, the Viscount Listerwell couple met with an accident right in the middle of Tasia Lake. That area is deep and dangerous, so no one usually goes there.”
Just recalling that incident was painful.
Like everyone else, Harriet’s parents had rented a boat at the dock to enjoy time on the lake with their siblings.
But about an hour later, John came running, shouting at the top of his lungs.
“Someone! My brother’s fallen in the water! He’s fallen in!”
At that moment, Harriet had thought people would rescue her parents right away.
She vividly remembered that her only worry back then had been hoping her mom and dad wouldn’t catch colds.
But all the people had been able to retrieve was one of her mother’s shoes and her father’s hat.
“When we arrived, the boat and the Listerwell couple had already sunk completely.”
Harriet had been too shocked to believe what was happening, and her uncle had wailed beside her like a madman.
Their bodies weren’t found until a week later, on the opposite side of the lake in Saint Antoine Park.
It had been deemed too cruel to show a child the waterlogged corpses, so Harriet hadn’t even been allowed to see them when they were laid in their coffins.
“Why are you telling me this only now?”
Harriet barely pulled herself together to ask, and Alfonso looked up at her.
“When the Viscount Listerwell couple fell into the water, my wife and I were nearby. Not extremely close, but near the boundary where the water starts to deepen.”
Harriet’s eyes widened.
But his confession didn’t end there.
“People even closer to them than us were your uncle, John Listerwell, and his wife. And when the viscount couple’s boat started sinking due to a problem, your uncle rowed it in the opposite direction.”
“Pardon? The opposite direction…?”
“Instead of heading toward the viscount couple, he rowed toward the shore.”
“That can’t be…!”
At the time, John had said he and his wife had been resting on the shore. He’d claimed that the moment he saw his brother and sister-in-law flailing in the water from afar, he’d rushed over, and that he couldn’t understand why his brother had taken the boat so far out into the lake.
Alfonso let out a long sigh.
“I rowed as fast as I could, but I didn’t arrive before they sank. I was sixty-two at the time, so it wasn’t easy. But I swear I did my best. It must sound like an excuse to you.”
“No, no. That’s not it.”
Harriet wasn’t interested in what Alfonso had done.
“Are you saying you believe my uncle deliberately moved away from them?”
“I’m sorry to put it this way, but yes. It looked like he had no intention of trying to save them.”
Alfonso recalled Arthur Listerwell desperately calling out to his younger brother.
“John! The boat’s leaking! Help us!”
“John! John! Don’t go! At least save Lilian!”
Arthur’s desperate cries, hoarse from shouting, had reached Alfonso’s ears clearly, even though he’d been farther away than John.
But John had acted as if he heard nothing, staring only at the shore and rowing furiously.
His wife, Miriam, had also turned her head in the same direction as her husband, as if it had all been planned.
That was why they hadn’t realized Alfonso had witnessed the entire scene.
“Then why didn’t you say anything back then? Why have you stayed silent all this time?”
Resentment laced Harriet’s voice, and Alfonso wiped his bald forehead as if sweating.
“I agonized over it a great deal. I kept asking myself if we’d really seen it clearly or if there could be another explanation. And John Listerwell seemed so devastated at the time, with everyone consoling him.”
Harriet understood what he meant. Even she had thought her uncle grieved her parents’ deaths more than she did.
“So I stayed silent. I worried that speaking out rashly might lead to us being blamed instead. I tried to convince myself I’d seen wrong and force myself to forget.”
When Alfonso heard that John had taken Harriet in and raised her, he’d thought he must have misjudged him. Even when she gained a reputation as a troublemaker, he’d only pitied her as a child lost after losing her parents.
But upon hearing that John had not only sent Harriet to the monastery for a year but also terminated his guardianship, a strong intuition flashed through Alfonso’s mind.
“I don’t want to believe your uncle deliberately sabotaged the boat. But I do suspect that when your parents were on the brink of death, he decided to seize the family for himself. Abandoning you at the monastery and cutting off his guardianship… it looks like the final step in his plan.”
Even though a bill allowing women to inherit titles and property had passed two years after the accident, it still required the family head’s will. That was why Harriet hadn’t been able to inherit her father’s title.
Lately, however, there had been more court rulings allowing the unmarried daughters of deceased family heads to inherit dowries. But Harriet had a problem. Filing such a lawsuit required money.
And if she chose to become a nun, taking holy orders meant severing ties with her family, so she would lose any right to claim anything from the Listerwell family.
“To not only turn his back on his dying brother and sister-in-law but also to drive you into a corner where you can’t even marry and cast you out. How despicable.”
“From my uncle’s perspective, it was a clever move.”
An unexpected opportunity to inherit the title.
Harriet realized that the John she knew wouldn’t let such a chance slip by or ignore it.
“I’m sorry to bring you such tragic news. But I felt I had to tell you before I die.”
The old man’s regret-tinged confession came to an end.
Only after hearing everything did Harriet realize something she’d never considered before.
‘Why didn’t I ever think it was strange that my parents went all the way to the middle of the lake?’
They’d gone boating several times before the accident, but her parents had never entered the lake’s dangerous areas.
But Alfonso said John and Miriam had been nearby.
‘What if my uncle persuaded my parents to go there?’
If he’d even lied about not being there, it meant he knew the truth would make him look guilty.
And if he really had persuaded them to go there, it meant he knew the boat would sink.
‘It’s almost unbelievable… but everything fits together too perfectly to call it coincidence.’
Even if it wasn’t a premeditated murder, it didn’t change the fact that John had abandoned Arthur and Lilian in the water and left them to die.
Fierce anger blazed in Harriet’s chest, but at the same time, she felt a sense of relief at finally learning the truth.
What if she’d never found out?
Foolish as she was, she might have forgiven her uncle someday, thinking she owed him for raising her until she came of age.
“Thank you.”
Harriet bowed her head to Alfonso.
“You could have stayed silent, but to come all this way…”
Overwhelmed with emotion, her voice choked, and she couldn’t continue. In front of her, Alfonso pulled out a white envelope and held it out.
“It’s not much, but I hope it helps you stand on your own.”
“Oh, no, Baron! You don’t have to do this!”
“One reason for my silence all these years was certainly to protect myself. Knowing what happened to you tormented me for days.”
He firmly placed the envelope in Harriet’s hand.
“Please accept it. It’s my atonement for my cowardice. I’m truly sorry it’s so little.”
Seeing the old man bow his head even deeper in apology, Harriet finally shed tears.
She was grateful and sorry.
But at the same time, rage made her tremble.
‘The one who should be bowing his head and apologizing to me is someone else!’
