The Blot

Mystery surrounds a death by suicide

Words 885
Hi, thank you for dropping by. As all of you who regularly read my blog know, I rarely take the news we watch, read or listen to at face value and attempt to read between the lines. This week I have been investigating the suspected suicide of a young man with everything to live for.

As I stand here in the snow outside the house on Oak Street nothing appears unusual. The family, who has lived here for over twenty years, has never demonstrated anything out of the ordinary. Yet the presence of the police vehicle outside number 17 hints a life has been tragically lost. A death has taken place at this address, the death of a young man, Max Brunner, who on the face of it had much to live for but according to a note discovered by his mother, Max was a young man who felt he hadn’t deserved to live.

Mr Brunner was 22 years of age—he worked in the tool department at Vauxhall and came home each day with metal filings in his overalls. He was a quiet young man who kept himself to himself, according to those who knew him. Yet Max had a life no one knew about. In a suicide note he wrote of a ‘blot’ which “could not be erased.” It appears three others were aware of it but he left it up to the conscience of those who knew whether they revealed it or not.

His honour, Judge Hopkins, stated in his summary, the so called ‘blot’ was nothing more than any other young man might have in his past. (His statement gave this reporter cause to wonder whether his honour may have been reflecting on his own youth.)

Anyway, I digress.

The neighbours, who lived in the vicinity of the Brunner family were left in no doubt as to Mr Brunner’s romantic feeling towards a certain young lady who lived close by. Whether those feelings were reciprocated by the female in question is unknown.

A work colleague of Mr Brunner—who asked to be anonymous —spoke to me about Mr Brunner’s mental state during the weeks leading up to his death. “Max wasn’t himself at all,” he shook his head, “he was such a cheerful sort usually, but something was bothering him,” the man suddenly seemed to recall something, “he once asked me if a man could really outrun a bad decision. What he meant by that I guess we’ll never know.”

Those are the facts as presented to the public— a quiet young man, a failed romance, a perhaps trivial mistake magnified out of reason. Case closed.

Yet I remain unconvinced. I ask what was Max Brunner hiding?

This “blot,” he spoke of in his letter intrigued me. It is such an old-fashioned way of describing a secret, heavy with moral judgments. A blot is not so easily erased, it spreads, stains. I feel impelled to find out more.
So, what, I ask, was Max Brunner hiding? And why, if it was truly so trivial, have the identities of the three people who knew been so carefully protected?


I returned home that evening from Oak Street with the cold still lodged in my bones. Although the official narrative insists on simplicity, the note troubles me. Not for what it says, but for what it refuses to say.
Max did not name the blot. He did not defend himself, nor did he beg forgiveness. There is no apology, no explanation—only certainty. The certainty of a man who has already been judged.
And by whom?

The three people who know the secret have kept their silence. Why? The judge offered up the explanation as “respectful” but respectful to whom and why?

I requested access to the coroner’s report. For some inexplicable reason lines were redacted where I saw no reason for redactions. The coroner made no reference at all to the “blot” which seemed an extraordinary omission given the weight Max gave to it in his last breath.

I have since learned that Max did not post his letter. He did not seal it in an envelope. He left it face-up on his desk, as though expecting someone—perhaps one of the three—to come looking.
What disturbs me most is this: no one has publicly denied knowing what the blot was.

Not his family.
Not his friends.
Not the authorities.

They deny its importance, yes. They deny its seriousness. But they do not deny its existence.

When I revisited Oak Street yesterday, the police car was gone. The snow had been disturbed and re-settled. Number 17 looked once again like an ordinary house. Curtains drawn. No sign of mourning. I stood there longer than I should have. At one point, I had the distinct sensation of being watched.

In the coming days, I will be examining records that were not mentioned in the initial report. Minor infringements. Youthful mistakes. Trivial, after all. But a blot, once made, does not fade. It sinks into the paper. And the harder one tries to ignore it, the darker it becomes.

If any of the three people who know the truth are reading this, I would urge you to ask yourselves a simple question: At what point does silence become participation?

I intend to keep digging. Even if something—or someone—would prefer I didn’t.


Prompt: So, by way of celebrating the 24th anniversary ... I took a look at news headlines from the NYT for February 4th, 1924 -- that is to say, from 2/4/24. (Since the headlines for the year 2424 were not yet available.)

Here are three that stood out, each linked to a copy of the short blurb they headed:
Suicide's 'blot' trivial - A young man kills himself because a 'blot' prevents him getting wed.
Hero Medal For Boyscout - A boyscout saves a comrade from dying.
Heir Found in Almshouse - The heir to a vast French fortune is found living in a Kentucky poorhouse.

For tomorrow, pick one of these three articles and write a story or poem which "fleshes out" that report, creatively telling the larger tale which the article describes. One of your genres must be EMOTIONAL.