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But there is another solution - one that is much more tidy. Father just killed everyone. He just ... he ... Maker's Mercy. And the proof - you saw the proof. You stared right at the proof, completely uncomprehending. Why didn't you see it for what it was? Why didn't you ask, why didn't you think why a house which in all other ways was kept so meticulously clean had two ashboxes filled to bursting the middle of the fraying Growing Season? That horrible, sooty ... greasy ash.
Tears streaming down your face, and feeling as if you are about to start dry-heaving, you impuslively break out into a run, a full-tilt run - then you catch yourself, returning to the two-leg canter, but with a much more aggressive gait than before. All the while, your head is spinning. You must be wrong; you must. The ... ash had to have come off of the Construct. But try as you might, you cannot recall any ash anywhere but in the ashbox. There was nothing in the hearths, nothing on the body of the Construct as well - and not to mention, nothing that showed any signs of flaking off. Couldn't it just be something else? There were books missing, as well as all those empty planters in the conservatory - it could be those. Aye, for a surety - but if the ash was just books and Mysteries, that means you are back to having no explanation for the absence of the mourners. Father ... would father really do something so extreme? Would he Unmake someone, deny them an afterlife, for no more reason than to cover his tracks?
No!
No?
The man is diligently irreligious, robs graves nearly as regularly as he digs them, and his most prized possession is a Life-Loom made from the spine of a girl who was a few years younger than you were when he and mother killed her. Yes, the girl was a Mitigator, and yes, she was trying to kill them too, but ... can you honestly say that he couldn't do something like this? You might not know the Mystery or the means that he used to do it, but he has been quite open about keeping such things from you. So then, a better question than 'could he' is 'would he'? Would he kill an entire household, then conceal all of the bodies on site - that is a brutal solution, and it becomes monstrous when the concealment is achieved through ... cremation, but if father could manage it, then it would make the near impossible task of installing the Constructs without being made into what would merely be a rather involved chore. And ... the fact that he house is in mourning, that makes this ghastly stratagem all the more effective; for if no one is out front to take visitors, then no one will call at a house that is in mourning. Nor would anyone be immediately suspicious if the house was silent, with no one coming and going either. Eventually someone would have to check - probably sooner than later, what with the mess that was made of the Morgue and the Coroners - but still, he would have the house empty for days to finish something that would take mere hours from what you saw.
