I waved a hand in front of my face, struggling to get myself under control. “No, just... Yeah, water.”
He disappeared into the kitchen, and came back with a glass of water and no skillet.
I gulped down a swallow, coughed and sputtered when it went down wrong, and wiped my eyes with my sleeve. “I heard you coming in.... I thought you were a burglar.”
“I come in every night. I live here.” Pete peered at me, clearly thinking I was cracking up in front of his eyes.
I took another swallow of water, and leaned back against the wall. “It’s all these crazy things happening to the house. I came home this evening to find my new Japanese maples on fire on the front porch.” Tears started to fall again as I thought of those lovely trees reduced to ashes on the lawn. “Then Randall came with Fiona for her fitting, and he was snooping around upstairs. I don’t know why.” I started shivering, and hugged my arms around my body. “What if somebody tries to break in tonight, while we’re sleeping?”
“Well, they better run, ’cause you’ll bean them with a honking big frying pan! What were you planning to do with that thing? If you hit me over the head with that, I’d be as dead as your professor.”
I dropped my head in my hands. “I’m sorry, Pete. I’m kinda freaking out. It was so sad to see those Japanese maples all burned up.”
He pulled a sweater off the coatrack hanging on the wall and draped it over my shoulders. He sat down on the floor next to me and leaned back against the wall. “Who set them on fire, do you think?”
I shook my head. “The murderer? I don’t know.”
“Do you think it was Randall?”
“Randall, a murderer? I just don’t know. I’m starting to wonder if it’s all connected. Ruth’s husband died in an arson fire seven years ago. Is that where this was heading tonight?”
Pete leaned his head back against the wall. “I am so tired. The fire’s out, the house didn’t burn down, and you didn’t kill me with a frying pan. I say we go to bed and figure it all out in the morning.”
“I won’t sleep a wink.”
He heaved himself to his feet. “Fine. I will.” He reached out his hand and pulled me to my feet. Then we both froze at the sound of a number of cars roaring up the street to stop in front of our house. Doors slammed and people called out, despite the late hour. Several people stomped up the porch steps and milled about on the porch.
I looked at Pete, wide-eyed. He rolled his own eyes heavenward. “It’s Aileen, Daria. She lives here too. Try not to freak out on me, okay?”
Aileen flung open the door to admit her bandmates, all four of them, at going on one o’clock in the morning. She took in the sight of Pete and me in a glance. “You guys are still up? Scared of the bogeyman, aren’t you?”
“I’m just scared of the big black frying pan, but that’s beside the point.” Pete greeted Pinker and Corgi and the gang. “How was the gig?”
Aileen spoke for the band, as usual. “The sound system sucked and the crowd petered out by ten thirty, but that’s what you get with a midweek gig.” She frowned at Pete. “Don’t you have to be at work by six a.m., Moron?”
He nodded toward me. “Daria was worrying about intruders.”
I glared at him. But for once, Aileen didn’t scoff at me.
“Yeah, that’s what the guys are here for.” She indicated the band members, who seemed to be unpacking their gear in the hall and living room. “We’re gonna keep watch all night. Don’t worry, we’ll mute the amps.”
I started to laugh, mercifully without hysteria. “Thanks, Aileen. Nobody’s going to break in to the middle of a metal band rehearsal.”
“Damn straight!”
I chuckled all the way upstairs. Mute or no mute, I could still hear the band wailing away downstairs. For once it was music to my ears. I snuggled into bed and fell right to sleep.
I slept late the next morning. By the time I straggled downstairs for breakfast, both Pete and the Twisted Armpits had gone. Aileen sat at the kitchen table hunched over a supersized cup of coffee and a bowl of yogurt topped with bacon bits and jalapeño peppers. I stifled a gag and poured my own coffee. “Did you guys play all night?”
“Nah, we quit about five thirty. Then we played poker till seven, so I guess you could say we played all night.” She yawned and took a huge slurp of coffee. “No funny business, as far as I could tell.”
“Good.” I sat down next to her with a bowl of oatmeal, studiously avoiding the sight of her so-called breakfast. “I’m going to be out and about today. Do you think everything will be okay here?”
She shrugged and scratched her spiky head with both hands. “I’m gonna hang out, but I might go to bed at some point. We could set up some booby traps, if you want.”
“What, like tossing a bunch of dead mice across the front porch to keep the bad guys out?”
She grinned. “It’s worth a shot.”
“There is no way I’m throwing dead mice all over my own porch, Aileen!”
She laughed at me. “Careful not to lose your sense of humor over this, Daria.”
I glared at her for a beat. “Whatever.”
She got up and threw her bowl into the sink. “That’s my line.”
Chapter Thirteen
I left Aileen to hang out or go to sleep, although I doubted she’d ever sleep again after I watched her refill her gigantic coffee cup.
Whatever.
I knew I should head straight for Compton Hall to deliver Ruth’s gown, but I had one stop to make first. I set out on foot for the public library.
The Laurel Springs Public Library, built on Main Street in the 1820s, was one of the oldest surviving buildings in the downtown area. Its massive front steps flanked by Corinthian columns led to a surprisingly small interior, most notable for its domed ceiling. The bookshelves were arranged in a curve to mirror that impressive dome. The original building had been added on to, as had most buildings in the area. Small alcoves rayed out from the center like arms on a starfish, each one housing a different collection of books. I sought out the local history section.
I had browsed through some articles about the Compton family that I’d found online, but I felt like I needed more information. I knew the library had an extensive collection of materials on Major Samuel Compton and his illustrious descendants. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was looking for, but I had a feeling I would recognize it when I saw it.
I spent a good hour searching through books, maps, and newspaper articles on the Compton line, but nothing jumped out at me. I laid my head down on the table like I used to do at college when I needed a quick nap before an exam. What question was I trying to answer here?
I thought about the smoldering pile of maple branches on my front porch, and the bucket of warm ashes in the basement at Compton Hall. I had handled the mortuary urn containing the ashes of the late Thurman Ellis, who had died in a house fire that was deliberately set. I didn’t know why, but I had the feeling that his death was part of the story that was unfolding even now. I needed to find out what happened at the Ellis home in Philadelphia seven years ago.
I raised my head to see Mrs. Wirdle advancing on me. Mrs. Wirdle had been the librarian at the Laurel Springs Public Library for the past three hundred years, or so my friends and I thought when we were kids. We called her Mrs. Birdie, and took care to keep her from overhearing our conversations or seeing anything we wrote. She knew everything that went on in our small town, and she wasn’t shy about passing this information on to our parents when she thought the kids of Laurel Springs were out of control. Even now, the sight of Mrs. Wirdle approaching was enough to make me sit up and hastily close all the books surrounding me.
“There’s no sleeping in the library,” she announced in that stern voice I remembered from seventh grade. Her beady eyes took in the books I’d collected. “Interested in the Compton family’s h
istory, are we?”
I stacked the books into one tidy pile. “I am. I’m also interested in the Ellis family, specifically Thurman Ellis. He met a terrible fate, didn’t he?”
She pursed her lips, no doubt trying to decide if she should throw me out or help me with my research. I could almost see the scholar and the disciplinarian warring within her. I tried to help her out.
“I was looking for pictures of his house, both before the fire and pictures of the blaze. But I’m having a hard time figuring out how to access the newspaper archives.”
Mrs. Wirdle frowned at the laptop I held out to her. She rummaged through the bookshelf and pulled out a thin volume titled Notable Homes in Philadelphia: From the 1700s to the Present. A quick glance told me that the “present” was 1960 or so. Mrs. Wirdle leafed through the book until she found the page she wanted. She held it out to me, pointing a bony finger at “Fig. 37: ‘Delphos,’ home of the investment banker Charles Ellis.” The black-and-white photograph taken in 1924 showed a stately three-story mansion built of light-colored bricks, with fanciful turrets framing the roofline. Graceful elms arched over the grand front entrance. The photograph showed both carriages and vintage cars pulled up in the circular drive.
“Delphos was among the notable mansions in the Fairmount Park area of Philadelphia,” Mrs. Wirdle recited. “It belonged to Thurman Ellis’s grandfather Charles. It passed down to Charles’s son Robert, and then to Thurman after him. Thurman’s eldest son, also named Robert, normally would have inherited the mansion upon Thurman’s death, but after everything that happened, the legacy passed on to John, the second son. Although John was unable to inherit, of course, due to the complete destruction of the structure in the fire seven years ago.”
She flipped through the pages, showing me pictures of the interior of Delphos. “The house was renovated in 1957, when the north turret was removed in favor of a gabled roof. Then in 1989 the entire house was rewired to reduce the risk of fire by removing outdated electrical connections. Of course, no rewiring could protect the house from arson.” She turned a final page, a look of profound sadness on her face at the thought of such beauty destroyed by fire. I could sympathize with her feelings on that one.
I skimmed the captions accompanying the photos. There was no mention of any renovations to the house, and of course any work that was done in 1989 would not have been included in this volume from the sixties. I looked up at Mrs. Wirdle’s wrinkled face leaning over my shoulder. “How do you know about the different renovations on the house?”
She clicked her tongue. “I am a librarian, young lady. Knowledge is my calling.” She reached for my laptop. “The library has online access to the archives of the Philadelphia Inquirer. You can read the news articles about the fire there.” She pulled up the Inquirer website and keyed in a password with fingers too fast for me to follow. She returned the laptop to me. “If you need anything else, feel free to inquire.” Leaving me with that play on words, she bustled off to poke another sleeping library patron.
I scrolled through the first article on the fire, which featured a full-color photograph of Delphos completely engulfed by flames. The news story detailed the discovery of the fire in the middle of the night. By the time a neighbor called for help, the entire mansion was involved. Seventy-three firefighters battled in the predawn hours to check the blaze, but it wasn’t until after noon the following day before the fire was sufficiently out to allow them to enter the residence. They found the remains of Thurman Ellis in his bedroom, overcome by smoke and subsequently buried by falling debris. They searched the entire house for Ruth, finally giving her up for dead as well. Then she appeared on the scene, alive and well and telling a story about having an argument with her husband and leaving in the middle of the night to stay in a hotel.
As alibis go, this was pretty lame, which is one reason that the jury acquitted her of her husband’s death in the end. I skimmed through subsequent newspaper articles that detailed the sensational murder trial of Ruth Ellis. The jury concluded that if she had wanted to get away with killing her husband, she was clever enough to come up with a better alibi than a domestic argument, which would immediately focus suspicion on her.
I looked back at the pictures of the rooms in Delphos, trying to imagine the argument, Ruth stalking off in the middle of the night to end up at a hotel, Thurman going to bed, never to awaken again. According to the newspaper articles, someone had poured an accelerant along the foundation in several different places, igniting all of them to ensure that the mansion burned to the ground. The damage was not quite that extensive, but the remaining structure had to be torn down. To this day, nothing had been rebuilt on the site of Delphos.
I found one article that crossed the line from factual reporting to speculation. The writer was fascinated with questions of insurance, both life insurance for Thurman Ellis, and insurance on the mansion. He appeared to share McCarthy’s philosophy on journalism, as in asking a slew of obnoxious questions to ferret out all the intimate details. This reporter had interviewed lawyers at Flint, Perkinson and Hubbard, claims adjusters at Founding Fathers Insurance, as well as John Ellis and finally Ruth herself. His analysis of these interviews ran for seven paragraphs, and included a detailed family tree of the Ellis line starting with Charles Ellis who built Delphos in 1897. The mansion passed down in a direct line to the eldest son in each generation, and was worth at least 3.5 million dollars. It was insured against fire, with an insurance payout estimated at just shy of five million dollars, once the furnishings, jewelry, and art were taken into consideration. All insurance payments went into the estate of Thurman Ellis, bypassing Ruth, who was on trial for murder at the time that the claims were settled. Likewise, Thurman’s life insurance payment reverted to the estate, for fear that a murderer might benefit from her crime. When Ruth was acquitted of his death, she chose to leave the estate intact for her heirs, and moved to Laurel Springs to live with her sister Priscilla at Compton Hall.
I absorbed this information, reflecting on the fact that no arsonist had ever been identified. A quick check of the newspaper archives revealed that there were no news reports since the conclusion of Ruth’s trial. I wondered if that meant that the police still thought she had done it, even if they couldn’t get a conviction. Or maybe they had transferred the case to the cold case file, which was humorous in a twisted kind of way.
I closed the computer with a sigh. I didn’t know what I had learned, beyond the facts that Thurman Ellis had died in a house fire and Ruth had been acquitted of his murder. But I already knew that.
I piled up the books I had pulled off the shelves. Mrs. Wirdle had dropped off another one, Who’s Who in Pennsylvania. I paged through the Compton section, which had a long section on Major Samuel Compton and smaller paragraphs on his more anonymous descendants. Priscilla and Ruth were the sole surviving members of the Compton line, which would die out when they passed away. Presumably they owned Compton Hall, the family homestead. I wondered if Priscilla was legal owner as the older sister, or if Ruth had part or full ownership given the fact that she had a husband and sons. Either way, I wondered if John Ellis would inherit Compton Hall at their passing.
I flipped to the Ellis section. Who’s Who in Pennsylvania was not interested in relating scandal. Thurman Ellis’s death was merely mentioned as an “accidental death in a house fire,” and no mention was made of Ruth’s trial. A paragraph on John Ellis detailed his wedding to Collette Flaherty in 1990, and listed his occupation as banker, like his great-grandfather Charles. Evidently he had no children. I looked for the corresponding paragraph on Robert. There was none.
Suddenly I felt like I needed to know what happened to Robert Ellis. Priscilla had mentioned him a couple of times, in such a way that led me to think that some tragedy had befallen him. Mrs. Wirdle had just said something about after all that had happened, John was in line to inherit Delphos rather than Robert, the eldest son. What had become of Rob
ert?
I flipped my computer open again and searched for Robert Ellis in Pennsylvania. The name was too common to allow me to zero in on Ruth’s son. I went to the Philadelphia Inquirer’s website, but I needed the password again to access the archives. I gave a sigh of frustration—my forte was historical fashion design and construction, not historical research on the computer. I got up in search of Mrs. Wirdle.
She sat at her desk, scrolling through something on her desktop computer. I got enough of a glimpse to see that she was playing poker, of all things. I could scarcely contain my amusement.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Wirdle, could you get me back into the Philadelphia Inquirer’s website?”
She frowned as if I were a pesky fourth grader asking a question that I should have figured out for myself. “You should have gotten all the information you needed the first time.”
“I know.” I tried to keep my tone contrite, in the hopes that she would favor me with her assistance. I felt like I was channeling McCarthy, master of the art of winning people over. I smiled apologetically. “I realized that I wanted to look up Robert Ellis, to see what happened to him. There’s no mention of him in the Who’s Who book that you found for me.”
Mrs. Wirdle stood up and dusted her hands briskly. “Of course not. Robert Ellis is not a notable person in Pennsylvania.”
I walked with her back to my table. “Whatever happened to him?”
She turned to me, incredulous. “You don’t know the story of Robert Ellis?”
I shook my head. “Can you tell me?”
She leaned over my laptop and keyed in the password again. It would be simpler for us both if she wrote it down on a piece of paper for me, but I could tell that wasn’t going to happen.
“Robert Ellis was a wild child. He grew up in Philadelphia, but he and his brother would spend the fall semester in Laurel Springs with their aunt Priscilla while their parents traveled. I remember him coming in here during school hours, trying to persuade me that he was doing research for English class when it was obvious that he was only looking for a warm place to hang out while skipping school. This was when he was ten or eleven years old, mind you. When he was a teenager he found other, more unsavory, places to go.”
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