Some fifty yearsabout 1920 ago my grandmother(Countess Ana Teresa Vieira Ribeiro) Click on the SEARCH icon and enter her ID number (658) to be taken to her personal page decided to develop a large property in Macau, which her late husband(Count Bernardino de Senna Fernandes) Click on the SEARCH icon and enter his ID number (635) to be taken to his personal page had acquired many years before, part of a former huge estatespanning some 270m stretching from the Leal Senado almost to the Clube de Macauadjacent to the Teatro D. Pedro V. While workmen were demolishing a block of small buildings which were probably servants' quarters, they came across a sealed room, inside which they were shocked to discover two skeletons lying side by side.
The police were informed of this gruesome find but lost interest after a medical examination revealed that the skeletons were more than a hundred years old, and possibly much older. My eldest brother João Corrêa Paes d'Assumpção JrClick on the SEARCH icon and enter his ID number (27) to be taken to his personal page who was then in charge of all of my grandmother's legal affairs, became keenly interested and decided to carry out his own investigations, specially as there had always been a rumour in Macau that the wife of the owner of this large property had mysteriously disappeared.
He had no difficulty finding the name of the original owner of this estate but he found little else in old newspapers. He then sought interviews with the oldest members of the community, and finally came across an old lady who said that she remembered that her grandfather, a retired male nurse, had once told her, when she was a child, how an old African had cried and screamed just before his death in hospital, begging him to release his mistress and her lover from their tomb.
Realizing the value of this information, my brother went to the hospital in question, but was disappointed to learn that its old records had been destroyed to make room for new ones. However, the clerk-in-charge of these records, on learning about the two skeletons, suggested that there might be records in the Council House on the registration and the freeing of slaves, and he was correct: in the Council's archives my brother came across a document, signed by the original owner of this estate, which not only gave freedom to two of his slaves but also willed to each of them two decent small houses, plus quite a good sum of money.
From this evidence my brother became convinced that the old African might well have been compelled or induced to entomb his master's wife and her lover, and probably later repented for his part in such a cruel deed - and for having received compensation for his cooperation.
And there the mystery remains unsolved. Was the husband a cruel man who drove his wife to seek a lover? My brother thought not, because he must have earned the loyalty of his servants and slaves, otherwise surely the story would have leaked out. We may never learn the truth.