The police had not been back because they thought they had their man. There were eyewitnesses to the crime, and people who had heard Charlie’s threat of violence. It seemed to be an open-and-shut case.
But what if someone had stabbed Hap and disappeared within seconds by taking this hidden door to the stairs? That someone would have needed to know this secret door existed. That likely meant a member of either the family or the house staff. It was plausible, she thought. Not likely. But plausible.
Then she heard voices. Male voices, coming from Bernard’s study next door.
• • •
Vivian backtracked down the hallway, listening for David and Adaline in the parlor, but she heard nothing. Apology accepted, she thought. She turned and pressed her ear to Bernard’s study door, but the voices she had heard were now silent. She knocked. There was no response for a full five seconds before Bernard answered in his self-assured voice.
“Who is it?”
“It’s Vivian.”
She pressed her ear to the door again and heard the sound of a chair sliding back on a rug.
“May I come in?” she said, placing her hand on the knob.
“Just a—”
She turned the doorknob and found it unlocked. When she stuck her head through the door, she spied Bernard half standing at his desk. He was holding a sheaf of papers, which he dropped as he caught sight of her.
“Am I interrupting something?” She glanced around the room. The door between the office and the sitting room was open. She hadn’t heard footfalls on the parquet floor of someone scurrying off. Her eyes fell on the small cathedral-style radio perched on the edge of Bernard’s desk. Perhaps the voices she had heard had been the radio. Perhaps he’d snapped it off when she knocked. Perhaps her nerves were playing tricks on her.
“No, of course not.” Bernard leaned forward on his hands and lowered his head briefly. He was breathing heavily, as if he’d done more than just stand from his chair as she entered. Then he looked up at her, concerned. “What are you doing here? Is something wrong?”
Vivian almost laughed at the inanity of the question. Is something wrong?
“Nothing at all,” she said. “Except that my fiancé is accused of a murder he didn’t commit.”
Bernard stared at her for a long moment. Vivian had spent nine summers here as a child, but she knew Uncle Bernard even less than she knew Aunt Adaline. He’d only come up to Oakhaven on the weekends, and even then had little to do with Vivian or his own children. He hadn’t had much to do with Adaline either, as Vivian could recall. It wasn’t an unhappy marriage; rather, Vivian got the sense that they tolerated each other. They had their own interests, and their orbits rarely crossed even when they were under the same roof.
Vivian knew her mother had sent her to Oakhaven those summers because she saw her sister’s family as a civilizing influence. Vivian’s father spoiled her, her mother thought. He doted on Vivian, gave her too much attention, let her run wild. Spending time among the stilted dynamics of the Lang family had taught young Vivian civility, yes, and also the delicate skill of swallowing any and all feelings as they occurred lest she cause an uncomfortable scene. Vivian soon learned that crying after scraping her knee got her nothing but a disapproving stare. Stiff upper lips were the order of the day around Oakhaven.
She didn’t know how to read the man before her. She stared into gray-blue eyes slightly magnified behind the lenses of his spectacles. His color was high—perhaps from the surprise of finding her at his door? Or perhaps he’d just spent too much time in the warm June sun. Bernard picked up the sheaf of papers again and tidied them. Then he sat down and motioned for her to do the same. “Fiancé? You didn’t tell me you were marrying the fellow.”
“Would that have made any difference?” She sat. The seat was warm. From someone that had just been sitting there, or from the morning sunlight streaming through the open window?
Bernard pushed the papers aside and leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk in front of him. “What happened to your trip to California?”
“Uncle Freddy, Charlie’s lawyer, sent me a telegram while I was on the train.”
“So you know that your…fiancé…has escaped police custody.”
She nodded. “I came back to help.”
Bernard scowled at her. “How can you help?”
Vivian swallowed. She’d come this far; she had to press on. “Why didn’t you go to the police like you said you would?”
“I did go to the police,” he said, looking down at his hands. “I told them Hap’s death was a terrible accident.”
“And?”
“And they thought I was trying to cover for family.”
“They didn’t believe you?”
He shook his head and glanced toward the closed hall door behind her. He lowered his voice. “They said they had evidence. Several people heard Charlie threaten to kill Hap, Vivian.”
She swallowed. Aunt Wilhelmina. Constance. “But that’s not evidence.”
He shrugged. “It’s premeditated intent…enough to start building a case. They called in the district attorney. He filed charges. And then Charlie ran. It’s as good as stamping ‘guilty’ on his forehead, isn’t it?” He pulled something from under the stack of papers on his desk and slid it toward Vivian. It was the front page of a newspaper, with Charlie’s picture under a headline that read MANHUNT!
Vivian stared down at Charlie’s mug shot, rendered in cheap black-and-white newsprint. Charlie looked hunted, haunted, with dark circles under his eyes. He looked like a criminal. And if all she knew of him was this photograph in the newspaper, that’s exactly what she’d think he was. Everyone in the county had seen this mug shot by now.
“No one saw Charlie stab Hap,” she said, sliding the newspaper back across the desk.
“Except you.”
Vivian shook her head, unable to speak for a moment. Anger welled up in her. She clenched her hands in her lap. “I didn’t see anything,” she finally said. “I jumped to conclusions.”
“By the evidence presented. You told the police what you saw, Vivian.”
She felt sick.
“He says he didn’t do it, and I believe him.”
Bernard stood and walked off toward the window on the far side of the room. It looked onto the side yard and ran all the way to the floor. Vivian watched a robin busily yank an earthworm from the thick turf, stretching its long, lanky body until it snapped.
“I understand that you want to believe that. But if Charlie didn’t kill Hap, who did?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder at her.
Vivian opened her mouth and closed it again. She swallowed. “I was going to ask you the same question, quite frankly.” Are you covering for someone? Family, as the police suspected?
“I’m sorry all this has happened,” Bernard said. “Truly I am, but he’s only hurting his case by running, you know. And I worry about you getting yourself mixed up with someone who’s capable of running from the police. Capable of doing God knows what.”
Vivian gripped the sides of the chair and squeezed. God knows what? Someone who’s capable of murder—that’s what Bernard meant. Someone of a lower class, someone of the criminal element.
“You don’t know where Charlie is, do you?” Bernard asked, turning back to her.
She shook her head. That was the truth as of this moment.
Perhaps Cal would be able to get Charlie a message, she thought. And perhaps that’s exactly what Bernard was after. Perhaps he was angling to get Vivian to lead him and the police right back to Charlie so that they could pin a murder on him. Clearly, Bernard felt the same way about Charlie as Adaline did. People like Charlie didn’t belong at places like Oakhaven, with people like the Langs. It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that Bernard would offer Charlie as the sacrificial lamb to make this whole nasty busi
ness go away. Charlie wasn’t family—and he could never hope to be, according to what Adaline had said in the hallway. Vivian didn’t know what to do. Who to trust.
She swallowed and stared at the swirling vine pattern of the rug. Her eyes fell on a little brown shell lying on the floor. Someone had tracked a cicada in from the woods. Those shells clung to everything. She thought of running into Hap on the path in the woods, the cicadas whirring around them. He’d been so alive. That had only been three days ago, and it already seemed like a lifetime ago.
“Where is Hap?” she asked, her voice raspy with emotion. When Bernard didn’t answer, she looked up at him. His eyebrows drew together over the bridge of his nose in concern. She realized the phrasing of her question had been odd. Perhaps he was worried the stress of everything had unhinged her somehow. She pictured Hap’s body on a slab at a mortuary somewhere, pale blue with death. A shiver crawled up her spine. She shook her head and tried again.
“There’s going to be some sort of service, I presume. His death was so…abrupt. We parted on bad terms, and I regret that. I’d like to pay my respects.”
Bernard nodded. “There will be a service, of course, but arrangements have not been made as of yet with the pending…situation.” He reached out and patted her hand, then cleared his throat. “I think Hap knew how you felt about him, Vivian,” he said. “I don’t think he bore you any ill will.”
Vivian sighed. A meaningless platitude. Uncle Bernard knew nothing of what she and Hap had shared. He had no idea how Hap had felt about her. The problem was, neither had she. Not really. And now she’d never know.
Chapter Sixteen
Bernard and Adaline wanted her to leave, and there had to be a reason for that. Something was going on here. Vivian snuck up the back stairs, unsure of how much time she had. Adaline was probably composing the telegram to her mother right at this moment. Adaline and Bernard wouldn’t remove her from the house with force, but they’d certainly ice her out—make it so uncomfortable that she’d leave of her own accord. In fact, she was already so uncomfortable that she wanted to do that right now. But first, she’d poke around.
The bedroom Hap had used the evening before the party had been thoroughly cleaned. Vivian wandered around for a few minutes, picking up objects: hairbrushes, mirrors, the pad of writing paper on the desk by the window. No personal items of his remained. Where had they gone? Had the police taken them? Had Adaline had the staff pack them up and put them in storage? Vivian pulled back the curtains, shook them out. She lifted every corner of the mattress, looked under the bed, in the corners of the closet. There was nothing to find.
She sat on the edge of the bed for a minute and closed her eyes, trying to find some sense of Hap’s presence in the room, but detected nothing other than the scents of furniture polish and clean sheets. She stood with a sigh and smoothed the counterpane. After giving the room one last lingering look, she closed the door quietly behind her. She started down the hall toward her own room but then paused at the next door down the hall.
Vivian rested her hand on the cut-glass doorknob and wiggled. It was unlocked. She opened the door and peeked in. Her eyes searched the cluttered room, but she was unable to assign an occupant until she spotted the bureau near the window. Every available surface was taken up with bottles and pillboxes. This bedroom was occupied by someone in alarmingly failing health, or someone who wanted it to appear they were. Constance.
Her cousin’s lack of vigor had always intrigued Vivian, but it seemed less a physical malady than a mental one. Constance had been active and sun-bronzed like the rest of her cousins in Vivian’s earliest memories at Oakhaven. She’d had tennis lessons, jumped off the dock with the lot of them, and won swimming contests to the floating raft. She’d been healthy enough to get married and give birth to two children. Vivian had never discussed her cousin’s health with anyone who knew, but she surmised that somewhere along the way Constance had gotten ill and realized that it garnered her more attention than she’d ever received in good health. There was always the outside chance that Constance truly was wasting away, Vivian thought, but her odds were on it all being manufactured.
Vivian glanced down the empty hallway and stepped lightly into the room, heading straight for the bureau. The blue Bromo-Seltzer bottle stood out among the clutter—an aid for the pleasant relief of stomach upset, nervous tension, headache. She had her own bottle in her toiletry bag. The radio jingle ran through her mind: Bromo-Seltzer, Bromo-Seltzer, Bromo-Seltzer chanted like a train picking up speed.
She picked up a small package lying next to the distinctive blue bottle. Dr. Shoop’s Restorative Nerve Pills—relief of acute constipation, nervousness, biliousness, sleeplessness, trembling, hysteria, spasms, conditions of the brain and nervous system. Chase’s Tonic Tablets—a tonic for the sick, convalescent, overworked. Overworked? Constance had never worked a day in her life. Snake oil, Vivian thought with the shake of her head.
Vivian passed her fingertips over the brown glass bottle with the yellow label. Ironized Yeast—builds strength fast. There were a dozen more bottles like this. Vivian’s eyes skimmed over them and then snagged on a small, clear glass bottle almost hidden in the back. She reached over and plucked it from the bureau. The white paper label said VERONAL in rusty red print, with flowers blooming from the end of the V and the L. Vivian squinted at the long scientific name underneath, followed by Descriptive name: Barbital.
Barbital? Barbiturates?
“It helps me sleep.”
Vivian whirled around. The glass bottle slipped from her hand and fell to the floor, landing on the rug with a muffled thump.
“It hasn’t helped much in the past few days.” Constance glanced down at the bottle and back up at Vivian. She stood for a moment just inside the doorway as if she wasn’t entirely convinced she should enter her own room. Then she stepped forward, her legs moving jerkily. She walked to the edge of the bed and sat, staring down at her hands in her lap.
She looked terrible. Wan, fragile, and her skin—pale even in the best circumstances—seemed translucent. Vivian could clearly see the delicate tangle of blue veins in her cousin’s temple.
“Are you feeling well, Constance?” Vivian stooped and picked up the bottle and replaced it on the bureau.
Constance shook her head. She raised a hand to her brow and shaded her eyes as if she were outside on a bright, sunlit day instead of in a dim bedroom with the drapes drawn. She squinted at Vivian.
“It’s really you, isn’t it, Vivian?” Her voice was a whisper. She held her fingers out as if she wanted to touch Vivian to verify her existence.
Vivian nodded. “Yes, it’s me.”
“Oh, thank God.” Constance’s body went limp with relief.
“Is something wrong?”
“Everything’s wrong,” she said. She closed her eyes. Vivian thought perhaps Constance had fallen asleep sitting up, but then her eyelids fluttered open again. “I thought I was seeing things again.”
“Seeing things?”
Constance waved her hand dismissively.
“Are you all right?”
“No,” Constance said. For a moment, it seemed as if she might say more, but she didn’t speak. Seeing the state her cousin was in, Vivian suddenly wasn’t so sure of her assessment of Constance’s nerves being a product of her own imagination.
“Would you like to talk about it?”
Constance shook her head. “I’d like to sleep.” Her voice was plaintive, full of desperation, as if it were a wish she desperately wanted and knew she could not fulfill. She looked longingly at the bottle of Veronal that Vivian had replaced on the bureau. “Sleep, and then I need to pack. I’m heading to Europe on the first boat I can get.”
“Oh?” Panic fluttered in Vivian’s chest like a butterfly trapped against her breastbone.
“Yes, I’ve decided to meet Gil in Paris.”
�
�But aren’t you a witness? There’ll be an inquest.”
“I’m not well. The police said I could go,” Constance said defensively. “They have my statement. I promised to come back if I’m needed.”
Yes, her statement. That damning statement about Charlie. Vivian eyed her cousin. But would the police trust the word of someone so obviously unstable? Constance had just said she’d been seeing things, hadn’t she? Would it be so far off to assume she could also have imagined arguments that hadn’t happened? Threats that hadn’t been made in earnest?
“Constance, about that—”
Constance shook her head. “I can’t. I can’t speak of it.”
“But…”
“Sleep. Just let me sleep, at least for a few minutes.”
Vivian nodded. Constance was not in her right mind. That much was clear. Vivian looked long and hard into her cousin’s face, but saw only fatigue, both of the physical and the mental variety. Vivian stood and walked to the door.
“Wait,” Constance said. “Are you staying the night?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Would you…” Her dark eyes were focused on the door that connected her room with the next bedroom—where Hap had slept. “Would you mind switching rooms with me?”
“Switching rooms?”
“Only for the night. I can’t sleep here with the constant reminder that Hap’s never coming back to that room. Please?” Constance looked so miserable, Vivian thought. What would it hurt to give her a little peace of mind?
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