Mortimer Cymbelline’s was a death for the headlines.
One could say Mortimer first became famous in his childhood, when newspapers experienced record-breaking sales from the headline CYMBELLINE HEIR SHOT DOWN IN STREET. Of course, it wasn’t in any street, but on the tracks of one of the family’s privately owned tram services. One article in particular would go into now famously grisly detail of the boy’s death. And of course, he hadn’t died. He was shot in the head and quickly shuffled away inside while the family fetched their personal doctor. The shooter, and the highly illegal gun held in private possession, seems to have not been a matter of concern to law enforcement.
Though he was small at the time of the incident, many who knew Mortimer as a child mentioned how different he was after his injury. Before he had been like any laughing boy at the playground. He ran off with friends, came back dirty, laughed at the world. Afterwards they would say he never smiled again. This is probably an exaggeration, but the release of the family’s now-deceased doctor’s notes contains an entry that is commonly believed to be about Mortimer. In the entry he reviews a clinical interview he engaged in that day. His subject, “a boy who was set up to inherit the world,” from “the family that has always been Endcliff’s most doting,” was undergoing a probing interview to gauge the state of his mental capacity after a traumatic brain injury. The doctor noted “He seems to think that his full potential has been lost. He described himself as a vase that had fallen and broken on the floor. One tries to glue the vase back, but so much of it’s form was rendered to dust and blown away. He feels as though he only has a few pieces of himself left, as opposed to how he conceived of himself before.”
As an adult, Mortimer is a sleepless man, moody and mercurial. He avoids daylight as much as he can. The gunshot’s most prominent echo was Mortimer’s extreme light sensitivity. He is either prone to migraines or prone to lying about them to get out of social engagements, though most who know him personally say they view him as an honest man. In fact, Mortimer has always kept a close cohort of loyal friends made up from lesser names around Endcliff. What public appearances he made was in the company of these friends. Little is known of Mortimer but what journalists have gleaned from wild speculation. Over a lifetimes worth of public attention, reclusive though the subject may be, many of noticed his extreme reservation. He’s never been photographed or reported to shake someone’s hand, hold an arm around his wife, or give regard to his children.
Mortimer’s death was sudden, it occurred while he was descending his front stairs. The main line out of the rumor mill was that his wife, Cora, had done something to him. She was investigated as one of the primary suspects, but the Directory investigators found no sign of involvement. Even after the autopsy, the only evidence that every came to record was the story of one of the house’s staff members. The woman, one of the cleaners, had told recorders that she had seen him fall and when he landed he’d said, “She’s done it,”. He died some moments after.
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The Normal Times 