The Secrets of Winterhouse

by Ben Guterson

  Elizabeth absently ran a hand across Freddy’s laptop, which was sitting on the table between them. “I’m not sure. Someone’s trying to get in there, so maybe they know something we don’t about how to get in or what’s inside. Also, we still don’t know anything about where the fourth door is. Maybe that’s what they’re trying to find.”

  “Maybe.” Freddy looked distracted.

  “Remember how I told you I overheard Norbridge talking about how maybe someone was returning to Winterhouse and he was getting nervous about it?” Elizabeth said.

  “Something tells me you have an idea about this already.”

  “Well, what if Gracella is really behind all of this?” It was a notion Elizabeth had been considering for several days, something that was troubling her, given all that had occurred, not the least of which had been the red flash Mrs. Trumble had seen.

  “But she’s dead, Elizabeth,” Freddy said. “D-E-A-D, remember? So, it’s kind of hard to be behind everything if you’re not actually … alive.” His tone was joking, but he was serious enough that Elizabeth knew he, too, was anxious.

  “Okay, but remember how she was supposedly dead, and then she came back and tried to get revenge on everyone last year? We know what she’s capable of.”

  “But you can’t just come back to life any old time!” He looked perplexed. “Can you?”

  “Norbridge told me she has enough evil power to do something like that. And what if you had a bunch of people helping you out? Like, what if Mrs. Vesper and the Powters are somehow part of Gracella’s … I don’t know … group of helpers? Last year she had the Hiemses, and we still don’t know what happened to Selena.”

  “But you defeated Gracella.” Freddy lowered his eyebrows. “Didn’t you?”

  “Think about it. Why did she come back last time?”

  “To get revenge on Norbridge. To destroy Winterhouse.”

  “And how was she going to do that?”

  “By using The Book,” Freddy said. “Elizabeth, is this going somewhere?”

  “Yes! Listen! What if there is a different object—the charm I read about on the plaque in the candy kitchen—and it’s hidden somewhere and Gracella wants it! To do … I don’t know … some more magic or finally get Norbridge or something like that!”

  “Or what if this is just another fantasy from one of the million books you’ve read?”

  “No, I’m telling you! There’s something going on. Oh, and let me show you something else.” From her pocket, Elizabeth removed the piece of paper from the pouch that had the words from the seal written on it. She handed it to Freddy. “This is from my mother when she was about my age. It looks like she was also curious about the seal.”

  Freddy studied the page intently, flipping from front to back and examining all of it carefully. He looked up. “She was like you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Freddy held the page up before her. “Did you look at this carefully?”

  “Kind of,” she said, though after she and Leona had examined the paper and the other items in the pouch, she’d been so intrigued by the guest book she hadn’t thought more about it.

  “‘Snow-Rioter,’” Freddy read, staring at the page. “Turns into ‘Tower Irons,’ ‘Worries Not,’ ‘Orients Row,’ ‘Two Ironers.’” He raised his head from the paper and fixed her with his eyes. “She was doing anagrams. She was trying to see if there were words hidden in the seal.”

  Elizabeth plucked the paper from his hand and gaped at it. Sure enough, clustered around each of the four hyphenated words from the seal were combinations of letters in Winnie’s graceful cursive that consisted of reworkings of the words themselves.

  Elizabeth slapped a hand to her forehead. “I can’t believe I didn’t look at this closer! ‘Prison-Dodge.’ She turned it into ‘Ridged Spoon,’ ‘Sign Drooped,’ ‘Eroding Pods.’” She sighed.

  “But she didn’t figure it out,” Freddy said. He frowned. “Maybe the seal doesn’t have anything to do with anagrams at all.” He pushed at his glasses and glanced around Winter Hall. “Let’s just assume all of this is connected and isn’t just your imagination. What do you want to do about it?”

  Elizabeth tapped her temple. “I’ve been thinking that over, and I have a plan.”

  Freddy shook his head. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

  “What if there was a way to learn more about what Mrs. Vesper is up to and see if Gracella is really buried in the cemetery? All at the same time.”

  Freddy tightened his lips. “I think you’re about to make sure our regular, normal, not-weird-at-all Christmas gets completely un-regular, un-normal, and very weird.”

  * * *

  After dinner, Freddy left to work on the camera obscura, and Elizabeth headed to the skating rink. Elana was there, gliding around the ice gracefully—showing off, Elizabeth thought, especially in the way she took in compliments from other skaters as she spun and leapt.

  “Hey!” Elizabeth called when Elana stopped for a moment.

  “Elizabeth!” She was flushed from all her skating. “How’s it going?”

  “Good. I thought I’d get some skating in myself.” Elana said nothing, and Elizabeth continued. “I haven’t seen you much lately.”

  “Yeah,” Elana said, smoothing her hair behind her ear. “My grandmother’s been tired, so I’ve been spending time with her in our room.” She glanced around. “Freddy’s not here?”

  “Working on his project.”

  Elana glanced warily toward Winterhouse and bit her bottom lip.

  “You okay?” Elizabeth said.

  “Oh, yeah,” Elana said. “Just tired from skating.” She peered toward Winterhouse once more. “Did you enjoy Christmas?”

  Elizabeth mentioned something about the Christmas Eve dinner and some of the gifts she’d received, and then, by way of trying to perk up the conversation, she asked about Elana’s school and how it was where she and her grandmother lived—to which Elana offered vague responses. By then, Elizabeth had put on her skates.

  “Lead the way,” she said to Elana, and the two girls took to the rink.

  Half an hour later, they peeled off their skates, strolled the short distance to the Winterhouse doors, and entered the long corridor leading to Winter Hall and the lobby beyond.

  “I’ve been thinking about what you mentioned a few days ago,” Elizabeth said. “About getting together. Maybe you and I and your grandmother could go down to Havenworth. There’s that cool bookstore there I told you about, and seeing how you love books just as much as I do…”

  Elana wiped her forehead. “The bookstore. That might be fun. Let me talk to my grandmother about it.” She didn’t sound nearly as excited as Elizabeth had expected.

  “I’d love to go,” Elizabeth said, perplexed by Elana’s seeming indifference.

  “Okay,” Elana said. She continued to walk, but she kept her gaze on the carpet.

  “If you’re not up for it…” Elizabeth said.

  Elana turned to her and widened her eyes. “It’s not that. It’s just … Well, it’s hard to explain.” She looked away.

  “Is everything okay between you and your grandmother?”

  “Everything’s fine, really. I have a big competition coming up, so I guess I’m just nervous about it.”

  They came to the door to the Thatchers’ room, and Elana stopped. She ran her hand over the door obliviously. And then, to Elizabeth’s surprise, she leaned forward and put an ear to it. “Don’t you wonder what’s in here?” Elana said.

  Elizabeth was feeling, once again, that there was something going on she couldn’t understand, something Elana wanted to say or explain. It was another moment of perplexity in what was becoming a long list of strange events.

  “Just an empty room,” Elizabeth said. “Anyway, I just wanted to let you know I’d be up for a trip to town, if you want to go.”

  Elana backed away from the door and looked at Elizabeth uncertainly. She had the same expression on her fac
e Elizabeth noticed when kids in her class at Drere had been daydreaming and the teacher asked them a question.

  “Right,” Elana said blankly.

  Elizabeth decided to ask something that had been on her mind since the first night she’d met Elana. “How did your parents die?” Quickly, she added, “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. Mine died in a car accident when I was four.”

  Elana looked even more uncertain, but she recovered some of her poise before saying, “Mine, too, a few years ago. It was a bad crash on the freeway. The road was icy, and…”

  “I was just wondering,” Elizabeth said as Elana began to trail off. “It’s okay.”

  Elana looked to her with a tiny wince; it seemed she wanted to share more but couldn’t bring herself to do it. “My parents were … I guess I don’t want to talk about it. And I better get back to my room.” They began walking again; the corridor ahead diverged, and Elizabeth was about to leave Elana on her own.

  “I’ll see you soon,” Elizabeth said. She was feeling that her attempt to put a plan in place was failing and also that she’d touched on something upsetting to Elana, who was staring away wistfully. When Elizabeth followed her gaze, she saw she was peering at the train diorama down the hallway in its corner of the lobby.

  “Don’t you love that?” Elana said. “It’s so beautiful.”

  Elizabeth looked at the tiny town encased in glass. It was far off from where they were standing in the corridor, but it still looked magical even from this distance.

  “It’s very nice,” Elizabeth said.

  Elana kept staring. “I’d love to live in a place like that. Nice and peaceful.” She put a hand to her cheek. “Safe. Like how you live here with everyone. They all seem to treat you so nicely. My family is—or, it was…”

  Elizabeth felt Elana might be about to cry, though just why was unclear. And then the familiar premonition burst in on her: The feeling descended as if the temperature in the hallway had dropped ten degrees.

  “I’ll ask my grandmother if she’ll take us to town,” Elana said abruptly, turning away from her view of the diorama and beginning to walk again. “Maybe she—”

  The two girls turned the corner and there was Mrs. Vesper. It wasn’t clear to Elizabeth if the old woman had been walking toward them—by odd coincidence—or if she had, for some reason, been standing there waiting. Whatever it was, even as she tried not to show she’d been startled, Elizabeth was alarmed that, once again, Elana’s grandmother had shown up silently.

  “Grandmother!” Elana said brightly. “We were just talking about you.”

  Mrs. Vesper, in her black dress and long black shawl draped over her shoulders, didn’t change her expression. She looked neither pleased nor upset, simply inscrutable. She seemed to have something on her mind and had been disturbed while considering it.

  “You two have been enjoying your time together?” Mrs. Vesper said quietly.

  Elizabeth stared at the woman’s long hair. It was so purely white, it almost didn’t look real, and Elizabeth tried to recall if she had ever seen an old person with hair quite that color. If she hadn’t known any better, she might have sworn Mrs. Vesper had dyed her hair white, though it wouldn’t make any sense for an older woman to do something like that.

  “We were skating,” Elana offered.

  “Hi, Mrs. Vesper,” Elizabeth said finally, because although Elana’s grandmother made her uncomfortable, she prided herself on her politeness.

  The old woman nodded to Elizabeth. “It’s so wonderful that you live at this grand hotel. So historic here. So much to see, to experience. You must be enchanted by all of it.”

  Elizabeth shrugged. Once again, she had the feeling Mrs. Vesper had something on her mind and was trying to get at it from a distant angle. “Winterhouse is incredible,” she said. “I mean, it’s one of the most famous hotels in the world.”

  “The library is spectacular,” Mrs. Vesper said. “And that elderly lady who runs it—”

  “Leona?” Elizabeth said. The way Mrs. Vesper had said “elderly lady” landed on her ears like an off-key note; it didn’t sound like the sort of thing one old woman would say about another. It sounded like something that would be said about someone older than yourself, which was strange because Mrs. Vesper appeared to have a few years on Leona.

  “She’s the librarian,” Elizabeth said. “Leona Springer. I help her in the mornings.”

  “Elizabeth wants to take a trip to Havenworth with us,” Elana said quickly. “Maybe the three of us could go tomorrow.”

  The old woman’s eyes brightened for the first time. “Of course we can,” she said. “That will give us plenty of time to get to know one another better. I’ve been wanting that.” She tightened her shawl around her shoulders and leaned forward slightly. “Why don’t we leave right after lunch? I’ll arrange a car and driver for us.”

  “Terrific,” Elizabeth said. “I’ll be ready.”

  Elana took her grandmother’s hand. “We’ll see you in the lobby, then,” she said to Elizabeth.

  “I want to know all about you,” Mrs. Vesper said. “And perhaps you can share your knowledge of Winterhouse with us, too.”

  “I’m sure it will be a good time,” Elizabeth said. But the two sets of eyes staring back at her weren’t offering any sort of excitement; they both looked intent and severe, and Elizabeth had a moment of hesitation when she thought she might be making a big mistake in agreeing to a trip away from Winterhouse. She’d started her plan, though, and she wasn’t going to back down now.

  “It will be a lot of fun,” Elana said, and she and her grandmother turned to leave. Elizabeth watched them for a moment, and then she headed for the corridor and her room.

  Why would Mrs. Vesper want to know all about me? Elizabeth thought as she walked. She told herself that by the following afternoon, she hoped to know a lot more about Mrs. Vesper. She also planned to visit the cemetery in Havenworth.

  CHAPTER 24

  AN AFTERNOON IN HAVENWORTH THROWN

  Elizabeth was in the lobby the next day immediately after lunch.

  “Hey!” Sampson said to her from behind the clerk’s desk. “You heading somewhere?”

  “I’m going to Havenworth with Mrs. Vesper and her granddaughter.”

  Sampson’s face went from cheerful to blank. “Oh, that sounds nice.” He bit his lip, very obviously keeping himself from saying anything more.

  “What? Is something wrong?”

  “No, no!” Sampson said quickly. “It was just kind of weird. Yesterday the grandmother was asking me to show her that room we always have reserved for the Thatchers.”

  “Did she say why?”

  Sampson shook his head. “No, I guess she was just curious. Anyway, the Thatchers are coming soon, and they’re having a bunch of their stuff shipped. It’s supposed to arrive in a day or two.” His eyes caught something—Jackson was approaching.

  “Two of my favorite people!” Jackson said, looking bright and crisp in his spotless uniform. He always appeared very professional to Elizabeth, and she thought there could be no finer bellhop in the entire world.

  “Hi, Jackson,” Elizabeth said. “Say, is the afternoon shuttle running today?”

  “It is, it is. It will depart Havenworth at three o’clock and five o’clock right in front of the gazebo. Why do you ask?”

  “I’m heading there with Mrs. Vesper and Elana, but if I decide to return on my own—”

  Jackson winked at her. “We’ll see you back here at Winterhouse later today one way or another, Miss Somers.”

  “Buy me some jelly beans while you’re there?” Sampson said.

  Jackson fixed him with a level stare. “We do not request favors of our guests.”

  “But she lives here!” Sampson said.

  Jackson considered. “You’re absolutely right,” he said. He handed Elizabeth a five-dollar bill. “Two bags of jelly beans, in that case.”

  Elizabeth laughed. “Will do!”

/>   Jackson patted the desk sharply twice in front of Sampson. “Back to work, sir!”

  Elizabeth looked to the far side of the lobby; there, fixed like statues beside the puzzle table, stood Mr. Wellington and Mr. Rajput, both examining the spread of pieces before them as though they were climbing a mountain and trying to chart a way across a dangerous crevasse. They were lost in such deep concentration, neither noticed Elizabeth approaching.

  “Any luck today?” she said.

  Mr. Wellington dropped his hand from his chin and regarded her with a bright smile; he looked like he’d stirred from a nap. “Miss Somers!” he said. “So very good to see you! Are you heading somewhere or coming to assist us?”

  Mr. Rajput looked to Elizabeth with sad eyes. “Good afternoon. I’m guessing you are off on some adventure,” he said wearily. “And we will just puzzle away here ourselves, fruitlessly.”

  “Enough of that, Mr. Rajput,” Mr. Wellington said.

  “I am heading out,” Elizabeth said, “but I’ll try to come this evening and help—” She stopped, noticed a piece on the edge of the table, and moved to pick it up. She studied it, scanned a section of the mountain that was already part of a cluster of more than a hundred pieces, and then moved over and pressed the piece in to join the others.

  “How do you do that?” Mr. Rajput said, one of the few times his voice held any note other than boredom or melancholy. “Extraordinary!”

  “It just felt right,” Elizabeth said.

  “Remarkable,” Mr. Wellington said. “Absolutely remarkable.” He looked to Mr. Rajput. “Well, we’re up to three pieces on the day. What do you think of that?”

  “No tea until we reach five,” Mr. Rajput said. “As agreed upon.” He had returned to his regular gloomy self. “I expect this will be a long afternoon.”

  “Elizabeth!” someone called. Elana and her grandmother were at the clerk’s stand.

  “I better get going,” Elizabeth said to the two men. She glanced at the puzzle one more time, and then waved good-bye. “I’ll come by tonight, okay?”