by Wendy Webb
“Harriet?” I shouted into it, not sure if it would reach her or not. “Harriet!”
A few long moments later, I got a response.
“Yes, Miss Harper?” She coughed a few times. “What can I do for you?”
“Harriet, can you and Mr. Baines come up here to my suite?” I asked. “I’d come to you but I have no idea where you are. I’m sorry for the intrusion this late at night, but I have something that I really need to show you. It’s urgent.”
“Of course, Miss Harper,” she said. “We’ll be there in just a moment.”
I could feel my heart beating, hard, in my chest as I waited for them to materialize. Would they never come? Finally, I heard footsteps in the hallway, but I waited for the knock and Harriet’s “Miss Harper?” before opening the door.
“Oh, thank goodness,” I said, holding out the envelope. “You have to see this. I don’t know what to make of it, but it has scared me to death.”
Both of them winced. Perhaps that wasn’t the best choice of words. In any case, Harriet fished a pair of glasses out of her pocket, took the letter, and began reading. Her eyes grew wide. She handed the sheet to her husband without saying a word. After he had read it, the two of them exchanged glances. And I’d say they were charged glances.
“Do you have any idea what this is about?” I asked both of them. “To me, this sounds threatening. And it also sounds almost—I’m just going to say it—irrational. If you have anything to say about Miss Penny’s state of mind, you need to say it now, or I’m leaving, contract or not.”
After a moment, Harriet cleared her throat. “I wouldn’t make too much of this, Miss Harper.”
“Too much of this?” I shot back. “She has said my nightmare is just beginning. What is this all about? I’m certain that you two know more than you’re saying.”
“No,” Harriet said, straightening her posture just a bit. “We know nothing of the kind.”
“Oh, come on—” I began, but Mr. Baines jumped into the fray.
“My dear wife won’t say anything against her employer, but I will,” he said, smoothing his lapel. “We have noticed certain . . . incidents, I gather you’d call them, over the past few months.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “What sort of incidents?”
“I have to admit it—” Mr. Baines started.
“Oh no you don’t,” his wife broke in. “This is nothing we should speak of. Especially now. We do not speak ill of the dead. Especially in this house.”
He looked at me in silence, his thought cut short.
“Harriet, Mr. Baines, please,” I said, taking a few breaths, trying to calm myself. “I’ll be honest with you. This letter frightened me. And without a good explanation, I’m leaving. Tonight.”
Mr. Baines looked at his wife. “She’ll leave,” he said, his tone pleading. “Cliffside will close without a director. And then where will we be? After thirty years? Where do your loyalties lie, my love?”
Harriet sighed and took her husband’s hand. “My loyalties lie with you, Mr. Baines.” She turned to me, squared her shoulders, and cleared her throat. “The truth is, Miss Harper, we’ve been noticing a change in Miss Penny for some months now.”
I could see her husband visibly exhaling.
“What kind of change?”
They caught each other’s eyes again. Every word was a struggle for this loyal employee. “Her mental state, I’m afraid,” Harriet said. “I can’t rightly explain it, but something was happening, and we couldn’t figure out exactly what.”
Questions started forming in my journalist’s mind, pushing the fear I felt to the sidelines. “Was it confined to her mental state? What I’m asking is, was this internal, or did something happen?”
Harriet shook her head. “We don’t know. We couldn’t find the words to talk about it with her—we are her employees, after all—and she didn’t confide in us. All we know is that she was changed.”
“That’s why we were so happy she hired you,” Mr. Baines piped up. “We thought that she realized she was losing the capacity to do the job. Maybe dementia was setting in. We believed she wanted somebody in place to carry on, somebody she could train, before she lost it all.”
I took a deep breath. “So this bit about nightmares?”
“Miss Penny never had nightmares, not that I knew about,” Harriet said. “I can’t for the life of me think what she might mean by this.”
“Perhaps the nightmare of running this place on one’s own?” her husband offered. “The responsibility on one’s shoulders? I can’t think of what it would be, other than that.”
I just looked at them, unconvinced.
“We were here with her every day, Miss Harper,” Harriet tried again. “Believe me, if there were any nightmares, real or imagined, we’d have known about them.”
“And you didn’t,” I said. “You have no idea what any of this in the letter might be about?”
Mr. Baines took a step forward. “No,” he said. “Please, Miss Harper, chalk this up to the ramblings of a disturbed old woman on the day she took her life. It sounds a bit disloyal for me to talk so plainly about our former director, but I see that you are very upset by this and I feel that your needs, as director of Cliffside, must be our priority now.”
“You’re right, as ever, Mr. Baines,” Harriet said. “Of course, Miss Harper’s needs are our priority.”
And they stood there, looking at me, blinking. I didn’t know what else to say.
“If that’s all, ma’am . . . ?” Harriet ventured.
I nodded. “That’s all. Thank you both.”
And they turned to leave. I noticed Mr. Baines put his hand on the small of his wife’s back, gently guiding her. I watched them from my doorway as they walked down the dark hallway together. Neither said a word until they disappeared down the main staircase.
I closed my door and flipped the lock, shaking my head. That encounter hadn’t told me much, except that Miss Penny might have been suffering from some form of dementia. Was that all there was to this? As Mr. Baines had said, the ramblings of an old woman on the day she took her life?
And yet, the woman who had greeted me earlier in the day certainly hadn’t seemed in any way mentally impaired. There was no hint of any sort of dementia, or none that I could discern, anyway. It could very well be that the change Harriet and Mr. Baines noticed was caused by Miss Penny making the decision to end her life.
Still, something told me these two weren’t telling me the whole truth. A career spent interviewing people had taught me a thing or two about when someone was lying or holding something back.
I crossed the room and pulled open my curtains just a bit with one finger and peered outside, hoping to watch Harriet and Mr. Baines cross the lawn to their house—the gardener’s quarters, I’ve since learned—but I was greeted with a dense wall of fog obscuring everything beyond the windowpanes. I could see nothing but white, as though Cliffside were wrapped in cotton batting. I let the curtain drop.
My stomach was in knots at the thought of staying the night here, alone. Breathe, Eleanor. Breathe. Miss Penny and scores of fellows over the years had lived at Cliffside—I could too. I picked up my wineglass and sat on the edge of my bed. Only a sip or two remained, but maybe that would calm my nerves. As I took a sip, I told myself that it seemed silly, the whole thing. Nightmares. Last words. Miss Penny was gone, and whatever her motives for writing that letter, they died with her.
I curled into my bed and pulled the covers up around me, reaching toward the nightstand and grabbing the remote control for the television. I thought the sound of a sitcom or a nighttime talk show would help quiet the miasma that was swirling around in my brain. Thoughts had been screaming at me, but nothing congealed into a tangible possibility. In the end, as I settled in to watch a celebrity talk about his project du jour, I decided to chalk this letter, and its threatening tone, up to the strangeness of the day. Miss Penny had killed herself shortly after writing it. No telling what
had been going through her mind. I’d probably never know. It had to be good enough.
Just as I was drifting off to sleep, something from the letter ran through my mind. What had she written about a puzzle?
I slipped out of bed and padded over to my closet, where I had stashed the letter in my suitcase. I pulled the sheet from the envelope and read it again.
In my wake, I have left a puzzle for you to solve, Eleanor Harper. You, the would-be sleuth. You, of the curious mind. I know you will latch on to it, just as you latched on to the murders of my father and sister all those years ago. I trust you’ll be more successful this time.
I didn’t know what the puzzle was, but I certainly knew a threat when I heard it.
CHAPTER 6
I didn’t sleep much that night. I kept tossing and turning, drifting off only to be startled awake by my own racing heart. Each time, I’d look at the clock—eleven, twelve, one, two—and think to myself, At least I can get a few good hours in, if I fall asleep soon. And I’d snuggle down and close my eyes, willing sleep to come. At one point, I was sure I heard voices in the hallway, muffled voices. Coughing. I crept to the door to listen, but by the time I got there, they were gone.
It was a little before three o’clock when my eyelids began to get heavy and my body started to feel that light, swimmy feeling just before sleep. That’s when I heard it—laughter. Children’s laughter. My eyes popped open, and I sat straight up in bed. There it was again. I wasn’t imagining it or dreaming. It was coming from outside, I was sure of it. I slipped out from under my covers and crept to the window, drawing back the curtain just a bit.
The fog had dissipated, and the moon was illuminating the lawn outside my window. And there, running back and forth and kicking a ball, was a group of children, all dressed in white. It was their laughter I’d heard, then. Who were they—children of staff members, maybe?—and what were they doing awake and outside at this hour? I watched them kick the ball back and forth for a moment, and just as I was about to open my window and tell them to go inside, a woman appeared from under the balcony. She was also dressed in white, or seemed to be, there in the moonlight. I didn’t recognize her—I hadn’t met her earlier in the day.
“Children!” she hissed.
They stopped abruptly when they caught sight of her. Uh-oh, I thought to myself, smiling. Busted.
“You know you’re not supposed to be out here playing,” she said, her tone muffled and distant. “Now get back inside to your rooms this instant. This instant, do you hear me?”
The children scurried off and out of my view. The woman turned, and just as I was about to let the curtain drop, she looked up at my window and locked eyes with me. I expected her to apologize for the noise the kids were making, but instead she gave me a look that chilled me to the bone, as though I were the one who had done something wrong.
I let the curtain fall closed and climbed back into bed, wondering what that was all about. It wasn’t until I was drifting off to sleep that it hit me—had she been wearing a nurse’s uniform?
The thought jarred me, and I was wide awake again. It couldn’t have been a nurse’s uniform, could it? And when I had asked Miss Penny about others at Cliffside, she hadn’t mentioned any children. All at once I was ice cold.
I lay there, the covers pulled up to my neck, for hours. I remember seeing the first hints of light in the sky, but I must’ve drifted off shortly after that, because the next thing I knew, I was opening my eyes to a bright, clear morning.
I slipped from under the covers, drew back the curtains, pushed open the French doors, and walked out onto my balcony. The view made me take a quick breath in. I could see that my suite was directly above the veranda overlooking Cliffside’s manicured lawn, which undulated in waves to the edge of the cliff itself. The bay shimmered in the morning sun. I could see the forest and the rocky cliff below it on the opposite shore and, down the shoreline a bit, the chain of islands floating in the lake beyond. One lonely sailboat drifted by, its colorful spinnaker standing out against the blue of the lake.
It was so beautiful, so peaceful, that, just for a moment, I forgot about the events of the previous day. A knock at my door pulled me back into my stark reality—Miss Penny, dead. Me, in charge.
“I thought you might enjoy your breakfast on the balcony today, Miss Harper,” Harriet said, pushing her way through the door and carrying a tray. “I’ve brought it, your coffee, and the morning paper.”
I held her gaze. “How are you this morning, Harriet?” I asked her. “Did you sleep at all?”
“Fit and ready as ever for the day,” she said, carrying the tray to the table on my balcony and winding the umbrella into the upright position. All business, then. There was to be no talk of the previous day, I gathered.
She stood there, smoothing her apron, her face betraying the slightest hint of the grief I knew she was carrying with her. I wanted to reach out to her, to do something, but I got the distinct impression this approach was Harriet’s way of carrying on.
“Thank you,” I said at last. “I can really use the coffee this morning.”
Harriet smiled. “I wagered you wouldn’t have slept too well, first night in a new place. I brought the whole pot for you.”
Harriet’s eyes shifted to the window and she let out a deep sigh. But then she shook off whatever it was she was thinking. “I’ve much to do today to prepare for the fellows,” she said quickly, “but anything you need, miss, please don’t hesitate to ask.”
“I suppose Mr. Baines will be working in the gardens?”
She nodded. “It brings him so much joy to tend the gardens Miss Penny loved,” she said, her eyes glistening.
I took a sip of my coffee. “Harriet, who are those children on the property?” I asked her. “I didn’t see them yesterday when I arrived, but they were playing outside my window last night.”
She cocked her head to the side and furrowed her brow. “There are no children at Cliffside, Miss Harper,” she said, slowly.
I put my cup down. “But I saw them, last night.”
She shook her head. “You must be mistaken. There are no children here.”
That same feeling of coldness slithered through me.
“Perhaps you were dreaming?” she offered.
I didn’t think it was a dream. But I couldn’t really be sure. It was so ridiculous, a group of children out on the lawn. Maybe she was right. “That must’ve been it. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”
And then she turned to go, leaving me alone to wonder exactly what it was I had seen last night. The night had been bright and starlit—that was unusual after such a foggy, wet day. Wasn’t it? I had tossed and turned for so long, maybe I did drift off and dream the whole thing. The alternative made my stomach seize up.
After devouring my omelet and sipping my coffee until the last of it had gone cold, I lingered on the balcony for a long time, too long. The view was simply entrancing, and it was difficult to tear myself away. But when I noticed Mr. Baines stump out to one of the flowerbeds with a bucketful of tools in tow, I couldn’t justify my sloth any longer. He and Harriet were preparing Cliffside for the fellows’ onslaught, and I might as well do the same. I clattered all of the dishes back onto the tray and carried it to my desk. I nearly pushed the button on the intercom to ask Harriet to pick it up but then decided against disturbing her. Let her get on with her day. I’d take the dishes downstairs with me when I went.
I looked around, wondering what to do next. Just as I was heading out of my room, I heard my cell phone ring in my purse. I fished it out and recognized the number on the display. Meg Roberts, a friend and colleague from my old job at the newspaper.
“Hey,” I said.
“I just heard,” she said. “Unbelievable. Are you okay?”
“I still can’t quite believe it happened either, but yeah, I’m okay,” I said.
“What are you going to do? Will you stay on?”
“For the time being—” I stopped
talking when I heard the familiar click of a computer keyboard coming from her end of the line.
I could feel the heat rising to my face. “Is this an interview?” I asked her, my words coming out in staccato. “I thought it was just an old friend calling to see how I was doing after a horrible day.”
Meg sighed. “A little of both, I guess. I’m sorry, Norrie.”
“I don’t have anything to say,” I told her. “And I’m really busy today so—”
“Don’t hang up,” she broke in. “What’s with you? You know we’re going to be doing a story on this. It’s what we do. It’s what you used to do. When did you start thinking reporters were the bad guys?”
She was right, when did I? I had no idea why I was feeling so antagonistic toward her.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I’m just a little on edge.” But, at that moment, I didn’t really believe it. I realized that I was now on the other end of the countless phone calls that I myself used to make immediately after a tragedy, a murder, or an assault, to victims, to their families, to people who had witnessed crimes. All of a sudden I knew, firsthand, what an intrusion it was. I had a new respect for the people who had been kind and cooperative with me when I had asked those questions and I completely understood those who hadn’t been.
Meg interrupted my thoughts. “So, can’t you just give me a few quotes as the director of Cliffside?”
“Sure, I can do that,” I acquiesced. “What would you like to know?”
And so, over the next fifteen minutes or so, I talked to my old friend about the events of the previous day, telling her just enough, doling out the information carefully.
“So you were there just a few hours before Miss Dare died?” Meg asked, clicking away in the background.
“Yes,” I said, and left it at that.
“Do we know the cause of death? The police are being very tight-lipped about this with the media, but I figured you’d know.”
She figured right. But that didn’t mean I was going to tell her. All at once, I felt very protective of Miss Penny and Cliffside—more protective, perhaps, than I should have felt after less than twenty-four hours on the property. But this was my responsibility now, and I couldn’t stomach the idea that her suicide, and the pain that had led up to it, would be splashed all over the front page of the newspaper. She had been such a great lady, who many in town had looked up to, including me.