Dust motes danced in the shafts of early sunlight cutting through the high, arched windows of the college mailroom. The air smelled faintly of damp wool and the floor polish used by the overnight porters. Eleanor stood before the wooden pigeonholes, her fingers tracing the edges of a cream-colored envelope that didn't belong in the current century.
It was addressed to Iris Vance in a script so precise it looked etched rather than written. Her grandmother had been dead for over fifty years, yet here the letter sat, nestled between a departmental circular and a bill for the Archival Society. Eleanor turned it over. The postmark was crisp, the blue ink still vibrant: 12 OCT 1962. It had been mailed only three days ago from an address just five miles down the river.
Why now, after all the silence? A heavy crimson wax seal held the flap shut, the crest unfamiliar but hauntingly formal. She checked the corridor; the college was still asleep, the Master’s office dark. Her thumb breaks the aged wax, and the first line of the heavily slanted handwriting begins to slide out of the envelope.
