Chapter 3 - The Room Without Dust.
Lucas demanded the key to the lower corridor.
Margaret claimed the old servants' level had been sealed for renovations, but Amelia knew she was lying.
Two weeks earlier, while cataloging the late Gideon Vale's papers, Amelia had found fresh invoices for locks, cameras, and medical equipment delivered belowground.
Gideon was Margaret's father and the family patriarch.
He had hired Amelia personally three months before his sudden stroke.
On her first day, he had studied her pendant and whispered, “The snail always returns.”
Amelia had assumed it was the confusion of an old man.
Now the memory chilled her.
Lucas tried the dining room doors, but the electronic system ignored his code.
Margaret watched with folded arms.
“This is my house now.”
“Grandfather is still alive,” Lucas said.
“For the moment.”
Vanessa smiled again, and Lucas looked at his aunt as if seeing a stranger beneath familiar skin.
Amelia quietly showed him Ruth's phone.
The message vanished seconds after he read it.
Only a blue snail icon remained on the screen.
Lucas remembered the unused nursery at the east end of the second floor.
Margaret had kept it locked for as long as he could remember.
He turned toward the guests.
“If you stay silent now, you become witnesses for her later.”
No one answered.
Then Daniel Price, the family attorney, loosened his tie and looked away.
That was enough to tell Lucas that Margaret had already purchased the room's obedience.
He picked up a heavy dining chair and drove it through the glass panel beside the door.
The alarm screamed, but the broken opening allowed him to reach the manual release.
Lucas carried Amelia into the corridor before Margaret could stop them.
“If you go upstairs, you will regret what you find,” she called.
They climbed the grand staircase while security shutters began descending across the windows.
Amelia's injured shoulder throbbed, yet fear pushed her forward.
The blue nursery waited behind a white door with no handle.
Lucas removed the decorative cover from the key plate and found a shallow spiral indentation.
Amelia lifted the jade snail from her chest.
It fit perfectly.
The lock released with a soft click.
Inside, the nursery looked untouched by time.
Blue wallpaper covered the walls.
A wooden crib stood beneath the window.
There was no dust anywhere.
Someone had cleaned the room recently.
On a dresser sat two silver frames.
One held a photograph of four-year-old Lucas beside his mother.
The other held a photograph of an infant wearing Amelia's pendant.
Amelia gripped the dresser until her knuckles whitened.
The baby had the same pale crescent birthmark behind the left ear that Amelia had hidden beneath her hair all her life.
Lucas saw it too.
He began to speak, but a floorboard creaked behind them.
Vanessa stood in the doorway holding the missing hammer.
“Mother said you would come here.”
Lucas pushed Amelia behind him.
“Put it down.”
Vanessa locked the door and slid the hammer's claw beneath a loose board near the crib.
She pried up a narrow strip of wood.
Underneath lay a charred metal box.
“You want the truth?” Vanessa asked.
She struck the box once, breaking its rusted lock.
Inside was a hospital bracelet bearing Amelia's birth date and the name BABY ELEANOR VALE.
Beneath it lay a small cassette recorder.
Vanessa pressed play.
Margaret's younger voice filled the nursery.
“The boy saw me carry the baby out, so make him forget.”
Lucas staggered backward.
Then another voice answered on the tape.
It belonged to Gideon Vale.
May you like
“If Lucas remembers, kill him too.”
THE JADE SNAIL | A VALE FAMILY THRILLER
