Days of the Dead.pdf - Upgrade Systems

Amicus Meus,
ONE
Hacienda Mictlán
Outside the City of Mexico
September 16, 1835
Enclosed with this missive you'll find a draft for what I hope is sufficient money
to pay your passage here by the speediest available transport. My host at the
moment is being so good as to hold the minions of Justice at bay, which is quite
generous of him given that I am widely supposed to have murdered his only son.
Were Don Prospero de Castellón even marginally sane, I would probably already
have been executed-the evidence is fairly damning. By remarks the Don has made,
however, I have the uncomfortable conviction that after the first of November-the
second at the latest-he will fall in with the popular view, not that I killed the
fellow, but that I deserve to be punished for the deed. In company with most of the
rest of the household, he believes that young Fernando will re-visit the house,
along with various other deceased relatives, at that time, the only difference
be­tween his belief and that of his daughters and their families being that he
thinks he will be able to ask the murdered man outright-and receive an answer in
no uncertain terms about what ought best to be done with yours truly.
The local constabulary is also in fairly steady atten­dance. If ever I have earned
your regard or affection, please come and engage in a few sleuth-hound tactics. I
am at a complete loss to imagine how anyone but myself could have made quietus
for young Fernando-who cer­tainly deserved what begot-and if you do not prove
oth­erwise, I shall soon be forced to begin suspecting myself. Please come. I am in
fairly desperate straits, though, as I said, I believe I shall be safe enough until the
Days of the Dead. '
Your friend,
Hannibal Sefton
Postscriptum: I don't know whether they still garrote heretics like myself here,
or hygienically shoot them as they do in the countryside. You understand that I
don't really like to ask.
Benjamin January folded up his friend's letter after its per­haps seventy-fifth reading in the three weeks
since its ar­rival on the morning of his wedding, settled back against the jolting seat of the Vera Cruz
diligencia, and won­dered-again-if he was going to make it to Mexico City alive, and if he did whether
Hannibal would still be alive when he got there.
At every inn enroute, the innkeepers had whispered darkly about "bandits in the mountains," prompting
the passengers of the diligencia to ride with rifles cradled in their arms and pistols at their belts: their
fellow-passenger