The Portrait Murder

 

From History Legacy 

Murder wasn’t new to New York, but this one was different. The police found the body just before dawn — a young woman in a white dress, seated neatly in a rocking chair as though waiting for her photograph to be taken. No blood, no sign of struggle, only a faint scent of lilies and the distant hum of rain against the windowpane. The papers would later call it “The Portrait Murder,” but the real story began two nights earlier, when photographer Jonas Venn received an envelope slipped under his studio door. Inside was a note in red ink: *One final portrait. Midnight. Payment upon completion.*

Jonas had taken strange jobs before — mourning portraits for grieving families, staged photos of the recently dead made to look as though they were merely asleep. But this request came with no name, no address, and no return contact. Still, the pay promised enough to keep him fed for a month, so he waited. At exactly midnight, a carriage stopped outside. Two men in black coats carried in a veiled figure and left without a word. When Jonas pulled back the cloth, he froze. The woman beneath it was breathtaking, her skin pale but not lifeless, her lips faintly parted as if she were about to speak. He arranged her by the window, lit the flash powder, and pressed the shutter.

When the photograph developed, Jonas felt his blood run cold. The woman’s head had turned slightly — her eyes open, fixed on him with an expression that didn’t belong to the dead. He stumbled back, the air heavy with smoke and dread. The chair creaked, moving forward on its own. Then came the whisper — faint, close to his ear: *You’ve made me eternal.* By morning, Jonas was gone, his studio locked from the inside. On the drying line hung a single photograph — the woman alive, smiling faintly, a bloody handprint on the frame where his own should have been.