Obscurity, The Thirty-Eighth Chapter

In which we learn the secrets of the third Marie.

We last read The Thirty-Seventh Chapter, in which the philanthropist met his fate. If you have recently joined us, start with The Prologue.

We have mentioned slightly the third of the Maries, who traveled with the widow from France, was interred into the convent, and was discovered to be missing from it some time later. What we have not discussed is how she came to be a most important member of this most peculiar story.

The third of the Maries was born into poverty, her mother a seamstress, supporting her child in a small unheated and unfurnished room shared with her employer, a most disreputable clothier. There was peeling paint upon the walls and no beds upon which they could sleep. Eventually, her mother passed away from a lingering influenza — her coughing had become more ratchet each year, and at last she could do nothing but succumb to it.

At the passing of her mother, the clothier became despondent. Unable to turn a living without a seamstress to fulfill his orders, he turned to the drink to suppress his existential angst. On the brink of hunger, with none to support her, the girl who would come to be called Marie began taking the orders herself.