The Secrets of Winterhouse

by Ben Guterson

  “I’m sorry,” Norbridge said, rubbing his forehead. “It’s clear I made the wrong decision on this.”

  “We could have talked about it later,” Elizabeth said, pressing her hands to her face as she began to cry again. “I’m just here for three weeks, and … and…”

  “You’re not here for three weeks.”

  Elizabeth halted in mid-sob and looked up. “What?”

  “You’re not here for three weeks,” he repeated, this time softly. “I apologize for that newspaper article. That was too much right away, I can see. But what I was leading up to was…” He scrunched his face, gave a little grunt of exasperation, and reached across the table with his napkin. “Here. Wipe your eyes with this, dear, and I’ll explain.”

  CHAPTER 4

  A STRANGE BOOK BEGAN

  Norbridge put a hand to his breast pocket, patted it to make sure the newspaper article was safely stored away, and then cleared his throat. “First off, my sincere apologies. I absolutely didn’t mean to upset you. But where I was going with all this is, well, there’s a connection between the auto accident and then with your aunt and uncle and then with the ongoing discussions I have been having with some lawyers and then again with some negotiating with your aunt and uncle and then more discussions with the lawyers.…” Norbridge pinched his eyes closed and moved his hands in front of his face like someone swatting at invisible flies. “I’m getting off track. What I mean to say, and what I was winding my way up to is: I’ve worked it all out, and you’re going to live at Winterhouse now. Forever. Or as long as you’d like. Whichever comes first, you might say.” He dropped his hands. “That is—Winterhouse is your home now.” He tugged at his beard. “If you want it to be.”

  Elizabeth’s shoulders slumped; the sad anger of a moment before vanished. She had the feeling of having exhaled something awful in one puff, so that now her head was clearing.

  “Really?” she said.

  Norbridge nodded quickly. “Winterhouse. It’s your home now,” he repeated. “I’ve taken care of everything. There were some last-minute details, but your aunt and uncle finally agreed to … Oh, forget about that! You’re here.”

  Elizabeth sat in silence, watched her grandfather grinning and nodding, before words returned to her. “Can it be true?”

  Norbridge laughed. “Yes, it’s true! I’m just sorry it took so long.” Norbridge stood, came around the table, and knelt in front of her, enfolding her once again in an embrace. “Welcome back, Elizabeth. And welcome home.”

  After a long moment he let go and she sat in a daze, wondering if maybe there was some mix-up. But Norbridge continued nodding, and Elizabeth tried to soak up his words and what they all meant. She felt that her most secret prayers had been answered.

  “You look like you’re trying to wake up from a dream!” Norbridge said with a chuckle. “I knew the news would be surprising, but are you okay?”

  “Am I okay?” Elizabeth said. “It’s the best news ever! I can’t believe it. It’s fantastic.”

  Norbridge lifted his mug of tea. “To many, many years of happiness at Winterhouse.”

  Elizabeth began crying once more—and then she started to laugh, too.

  * * *

  One hour later, Elizabeth was exploring the thousands of books inside Harley Dimlow and Sons, Booksellers, even as she felt she hadn’t yet touched the ground since Norbridge had explained that, really and truly, she would now be living at Winterhouse. He had detailed a bit about how Aunt Purdy and Uncle Burlap had signed the papers just the week before, how all of Elizabeth’s possessions would be shipped north, how she would now be attending the school in Havenworth—all this and two dozen more things were discussed as Norbridge steadily worked through the story of this new chapter in Elizabeth’s life. But at a certain point, as Elizabeth tried to stop shaking her head in wonderment, Norbridge said he had one errand to run and that it was impossible for either of them to eat any more pie or drink any more tea. He also told her that Jackson, Winterhouse’s head bellhop and Norbridge’s right-hand man, would be in front of the gazebo in forty-five minutes to pick them up.

  “Let’s meet there,” Norbridge had said. “Feel free to poke around for books while I pick up a thing or two.”

  Elizabeth had expected the bookstore to be cheerful and bright, perhaps because Havenworth overall felt so festive. And it wasn’t so much that Harley Dimlow and Sons was dingy. It was just gloomier inside than she would have guessed, with its dark oak paneling, overstuffed bookcases, and pale ceiling lights set a little too far apart.

  “Good afternoon,” the clerk said softly from behind the stacks of books on his high desk. He was gray-haired and stooped, and for a moment Elizabeth thought to ask if he was Harley Dimlow himself or one of his sons, but she merely greeted him in return and then surveyed the looming rows of bookcases that were crammed so full they appeared near to toppling.

  The man craned his head forward from the shadowy space where he sat. Elizabeth wasn’t sure if the creaking sound came from the man’s ancient desk, the floor beneath his feet, or his own crooked spine, but something gave out a slow crackling noise. The man fixed two bulging and bloodshot eyes on her through his thick glasses.

  “Looking for something in particular?” he said, his voice a whisper.

  “Do you have any books by Damien Crowley?” The Secret of Northaven Manor, Norbridge’s gift and a story about a girl who finds a secret gem in an old mansion, had entranced her, and she wanted to read more. She’d also noticed a book by Damien Crowley when she’d sneaked into Gracella’s girlhood room the year before, a strange coincidence she intended to discuss with Norbridge someday. The odd thing was that the librarian at her school had been unable to locate any books by the same author because, apparently, no bookstores or book suppliers carried them anymore. Elizabeth herself, on a trip to the nearby town of Smelterville with her aunt and uncle in midsummer, had stopped in the local bookstore there and been told by the owner that he hadn’t had a book by Damien Crowley in his store in several years. All of which had left Elizabeth intrigued at the prospect of finding something else Crowley had written.

  The man’s dull eyes gave a split-second flash. He tilted his head warily to regard her. “Nothing by Damien Crowley at the moment,” he said. “Not many requests for him anymore.”

  “Would you happen to have anything on secret codes?” Later, Elizabeth would wonder why she had made this request. There were so many other types of books she was interested in.

  The man lifted a bony finger and pointed to the far corner of the shop. “Aisle 13. In the back on the right.”

  Elizabeth looked in that direction and then leaned to one side and the other to glance down the aisles directly before her. She turned back to the man.

  “You have the place all to yourself,” he said, and then he eased back on his chair into the dimness, like an ancient turtle pulling its head into its shell for a long nap.

  The section she was seeking was tricky to find, given that the store was in disarray, with books wedged in here and there and the labeling on the shelves something less than accurate or systematic. She also made several stops along the way to look at a book of beautiful paintings by a man named Maxfield Parrish; an illustrated volume of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped she wished she could buy but that cost eighteen dollars; and a book in which a doctor claimed people could train themselves to live on air alone without eating any food at all. But she finally made her way to the rear of aisle 13. There were shelves labeled ESPIONAGE, UNEXPLAINED MYSTERIES, ANCIENT MIRACLES, all of which seemed a bit random. At the bottom of the huge bookcase, Elizabeth found a section labeled CODES, CIPHERS, AND SECRET WRITING.

  As she scanned the titles, a tremor moved through her: The strange feeling she’d begun experiencing well over a year before and that she’d worked so hard to control. It was the very heart of her still-developing power; only now it very rarely flared up without her summoning it. She felt it at this moment—and then her han
d moved to a drab book that she slid out of its shelf and examined: The Wonderful World of Words! by Dylan Grimes, a thin volume with a copyright date of 1886, though the edition she held had been republished in 1956.

  She scanned the table of contents: “The Alberti Disk,” “The Scytale,” “Great Seals,” “Ambigrams,” “The Playfair Cipher,” “Inks That Glow,” “The Polybius Checkerboard,” “The SINISTER Connection.”

  Freddy would love this book, she thought. She looked at the price and winced: $22.50.

  She thumbed through it, stopped at the section on “Great Seals,” and studied pictures of a United States dollar bill that showed pyramids and Latin words. She skipped ahead to a page entitled “Ambigrams,” a word with which she was unfamiliar, and began to read:

  Although there are many types of ambigrams, the most common ones are those where someone writes or draws a word in such a way that when it is turned upside down, another word—or even the same one!—appears. If that sounds confusing, look at this example, and it will most likely make sense—just turn the picture upside down, and you will see what I mean:

  It took a moment for Elizabeth to realize she was looking at the word “faith,” but once she did, she was astonished, even more so when she turned the book upside down and saw the same word. She touched her necklace and thought of the strange coincidence of seeing her pendant’s inscription being featured in such a curious way in this book. But what astonished her most of all was the realization that Marcus Q. Hiems, a man who’d assisted Gracella—his mother-in-law—in her evil plots the previous Christmas, had used this very same device on a business card he’d once presented to Elizabeth. His card had looked like this:

  At one point during her investigations the year before, Elizabeth had noticed Marcus’s signature, turned upside down, was “Sweth,” the middle name of the man who’d written The Book, a clue that had helped her understand Marcus and his wife, Selena, were in league with Gracella.

  Very strange, she thought. Faith, ambigrams, Marcus Q. Hiems.

  “Finding everything all right?”

  Elizabeth looked up; the old clerk was silhouetted at the far end of the aisle.

  “Oh!” Elizabeth said. “Yes, I’m finding everything, no problem, thanks!”

  The man turned away in silence. Elizabeth glanced at the clock on the wall and realized she needed to depart, and so she took out her notebook and wrote down the title of the book before reshelving it, jotted “Ambigrams” on her list of “Ingenious Puzzles or Word Games,” and then hurried to the door of Harley Dimlow and Sons.

  “Thank you,” she said to the clerk, wanting to depart quickly because she found the man more than a little creepy.

  “Come back soon,” the old man whispered as she reached the door. “I’ll see if I can find any Damien Crowley books for you.”

  CHAPTER 5

  A CEMETERY TO AVOID MEET

  Norbridge and Jackson were standing in the lightly falling snow just beside the gazebo when Elizabeth spotted them.

  “Miss Somers!” Jackson said. He wore a bright red jacket—the same color as his bellhop suit and the pillbox hat on his head—and he stretched out his arms to Elizabeth as she rushed to hug him. He had been, hands down, the most helpful and most chipper person she’d met at Winterhouse the year before—and Norbridge, she knew, trusted him without fail.

  “Jackson!” she said. “So great to see you!”

  He turned to Norbridge. “Couldn’t let Mr. Falls walk home,” he said, and then nodded to Elizabeth. “Nor you. I understand you’re coming to stay with us for a while.” Elizabeth told him how much she’d missed him and how glad she was to return—and now live at Winterhouse.

  “Find any good books?” Norbridge said.

  “That store is incredible,” Elizabeth said, and the thought came to her that she could visit it again whenever she liked, despite the strange man behind the counter.

  Jackson glanced skyward. “Perhaps we can talk it over while we drive back to Winterhouse, Miss Somers. If we leave now, we can outrace the storm heading our way.”

  Once they were in the small blue car and departing the heart of Havenworth, Elizabeth wanted to talk about Winterhouse and the bookstore and the book she’d found, but as she was about to start in, Norbridge pointed out the window to a low brick building beside a snowy field.

  “Your school,” he said. “Where Professor Fowles is the headmaster.”

  The building was trim and neat, with rows of windows. Her school in Drere was made of concrete and looked like a mini-prison. Although some of the teachers were nice enough, and although the librarian was particularly kind to her, Elizabeth usually kept to herself and found it hard to be excited about her classes or make close friends. Living in the shabbiest house in Drere and with the poorest couple—as well as always having her nose in a book—had tended to isolate Elizabeth, something that over the past year had made her feel lonely in a way she’d never truly recognized before. And in all of this she allowed herself a slight throb of optimism, the thought that a new start at a new school would be exactly what she needed.

  “The school is on holiday now, of course,” Norbridge said. “Classes resume after the New Year—and you’ll be in attendance.”

  Elizabeth kept staring at the brick building as they passed.

  “Do you think you’ll like that, Miss Somers?” Jackson said.

  “I think so,” she said, but then a thought came to her. She saw herself once again, just as in Drere, somehow not making friends with the new kids in Havenworth, maybe feeling, as always, outside and on her own. What if I don’t fit in? she thought.

  “Are there a lot of students there, Norbridge?”

  “It’s quality, not quantity!” he said. “Havenworth Academy is on the small side, but it’s a wonderful place. Jackson went to school there, and he turned out all right.”

  Jackson laughed, honked the car horn for no reason, and then turned a corner onto a road that began to climb uphill and away from Havenworth.

  Elizabeth launched into all sorts of questions about life at Winterhouse—if she would have her own room (“You’ll be back in Room 213 for now,” Norbridge said, “but we’ll get you something more permanent after the holiday.”), if she would be taking a bus to school (“Yes, at 6:52 sharp every morning,” Jackson said.), and if she could help Leona in the library as much as she liked (“She’ll badger me nonstop if I don’t let you,” Norbridge said, “so—yes.”). She sat looking idly at her notebook throughout, and as excited as she was about reaching Winterhouse, she kept thinking back to the Grimes book and the chapter on ambigrams and Marcus Q. Hiems. One very disconcerting fact was that Marcus and his wife had disappeared after Gracella was defeated in the library.

  “Did you ever find out what happened to the Hiemses?” Elizabeth said.

  The two men remained silent for a moment before Norbridge turned to Jackson, who pursed his lips and glanced at Elizabeth in the rearview mirror.

  “Mr. Hiems is no longer with us,” Jackson said softly.

  With a stab of realization, she considered his words. “Like, permanently?”

  Norbridge nodded. “Marcus Hiems died. Last year. Right after the incident on New Year’s Eve. Very unpleasant thing, and so I never mentioned it to you or Freddy. But he died here in Winterhouse that very night.”

  “New Year’s Eve?” Elizabeth said softly as she considered this news. She looked at her notebook and thought about the strange man who’d always worn black suits and kept his black, gleaming hair slicked. She recalled how she’d once seen Marcus on the small bridge outside Winterhouse, etching strange symbols on it to allow Gracella’s spirit to pass over. The memory made her shudder.

  “How did it happen?” she said.

  “Hard to know,” Jackson said. “But it appeared to be shock. Perhaps a heart attack. Nothing seemed wrong with him, you know, just to look at him.”

  Elizabeth felt it was strange to receive this news after so long. “You didn’t wan
t me to know last year?”

  “There was so much to absorb at that time,” Norbridge said.

  The car became silent, and Elizabeth looked at the falling snow. It was midafternoon, and the day’s light was already beginning to fade; within an hour the sky would be dark. She thought back to the conversation she’d overheard between Norbridge and Professor Fowles.

  “So I guess Marcus and Gracella died on the same night,” she said.

  Jackson’s eyes sought Elizabeth’s once more in the rearview mirror. “Quite a tragedy for that family,” Jackson said.

  “What about Selena?” Elizabeth said.

  “Not a trace of her,” Norbridge said. “By the time we sorted things out that night, she was gone. Disappeared. That’s the only remaining mystery.”

  “The only one, sir,” Jackson said. “The only one.”

  Elizabeth wanted to tell Norbridge she had heard what he’d been discussing with Professor Fowles, but instead she said, “Where was Gracella buried?”

  “The cemetery in Havenworth,” Norbridge said.

  “So we could go look at the tombstone, then?” Elizabeth said.

  Norbridge turned to her, his face severe. “I wouldn’t advise it. In fact, I would stay as far away from that place as possible.”

  “But why?”

  “It would be unpleasant,” Norbridge continued. “Unhappy recollections.” He turned to look forward. “You have a whole new life about to start here, Elizabeth, and the dangers of a year ago have passed.”

  Elizabeth felt there was something less than convincing in Norbridge’s words. “Have they really, Norbridge?” she said. “Gracella isn’t coming back?”

  Norbridge flicked his mouth into a gentle smile; he put a hand to his beard. “I wouldn’t trouble your mind with any of it.”

  Jackson looked at her in the rearview mirror. “That sounds like good advice to me,” he said. An odd silence had descended on the car. “Now, tell me, Miss Somers, what new book are you reading?”