Hall of Secrets (A Benedict Hall Novel)

by Cate Campbell

  “No. Soon enough it won’t matter, anyway.” He turned away from her, leaning his elbows on one of the windowsills. She cast a glance at the stairwell, wondering if she dared to dash down those slick steel steps. He said, without looking at her, “Don’t try it. You’ll just slip and fall, and the door’s locked at the bottom anyway.”

  “What are we doing up here, Cousin Preston?”

  He said, gazing out into the mist, “We’re waiting.”

  “For what?”

  “For them to really get the wind up.”

  “I d-don’t know what that m-means.” Her teeth began to chatter again, and her words came out in staccato bits that felt like crushed ice between her teeth.

  He turned his head to speak over his shoulder, readjusting the scarf when it slipped. “It means I want them all to get good and worried about you. To be frightened.”

  “Wh-why?” She was rubbing her arms now and stamping her feet.

  He said, “Christ,” and slipped off his overcoat. He held it out to her. “Put this on, but don’t mistake it for kindness. I just don’t want to listen to you stutter for hours.”

  The coat was noisome and greasy, but she put it over her shoulders anyway. The pockets were heavy with things she had no wish to explore, and she kept her hands away from them. An automatic thanks for the coat rose to her lips, but it died unspoken. He didn’t deserve gratitude. It was his fault she was freezing, after all. “Tell me why you want the family frightened, and I’ll tell you they probably don’t care what happens to me.”

  He spun to face her. “What do you mean, they don’t care? Precious little cuz, I’m sure they’ve all got their knickers in a twist, thinking you’ve run off or been abducted for ransom!”

  “Have I been abducted for ransom?” she snapped. Part of her knew she should be afraid, but another part of her—a larger part—found the whole situation absurd. And after what she had done this evening, after hearing her mother squalling about her broken arm, none of this seemed to matter much. Nothing mattered much.

  “No. Money can’t help me now.”

  “Then what? If you wanted to hurt me, you would have done it by now.”

  The ghastly chuckle. “Not necessarily. Although, the more you seem like her—thinking you know everything—the more I feel like hurting you.” He took her earlobe in one of his cold, disfigured hands and tweaked it, hard. It hurt, but she bit back her cry. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Goose bumps ran down her neck and across her shoulder, but she thrust out her chin and glared at him.

  “Why aren’t you afraid of me?” he demanded.

  She shrugged inside his big, disreputable coat. She wandered away from him, walking to one of the windows to peer out through the grate. There was nothing to see but a cloud of fog, but she supposed, when the sun rose, the view was very nice. “You don’t know me,” she said.

  “Oh, but I do,” he said sourly. “Pretty little deb, downy chick getting all plumped up for the market! Parents sparing no expense or effort!”

  “You don’t know anything about it.” Her tone was every bit as sour as his. “The market part is right. Not the rest.”

  “Poor little cuz. The heart breaks.” He coughed and spat. “See those lights down there? They’re looking for you. Searchlights, the Essex rolling around the streets, no one getting any sleep.”

  She peered through the fog and saw that he was right. Lights bobbed here and there around the park and along the street. She could just see, through the mist, that lights still burned in Benedict Hall, though it must be nearly three in the morning.

  “What happened there tonight?” Preston asked. “What did you do?”

  She turned to face him, putting her back to the brick wall. “I broke my mother’s arm.”

  He made a sound that might have been a gasp of surprise or a chuckle of amusement. “You amaze me, little cuz. I suspect you’re trying to shock me.”

  “No. It’s true. We had an argument, and I—I didn’t mean to hurt her, but I—” She raised both hands in a gesture of surrender. “You might just as well toss me down these stairs, Cousin Preston. They’ve been threatening to put me away in a sanitorium. Now they’ll do it for sure.”

  Margot watched in astonishment as Henry started up the staircase, undoing his tie as he went. She said, “Uncle Henry! Allison went out with no coat, no gloves—it’s freezing out there.”

  He didn’t pause. “She’ll remember them next time, then,” he said, and stripped his tie from his shirt. As he reached the landing, he was already at work on the buttons. “Ruby, you go to bed, too,” he ordered. “I’m not paying you to walk the streets in the middle of the night.”

  Margot turned back to face her family and found Hattie with tears in her eyes. “Miss Margot—Mr. Dickson—you won’t just leave her out there? That poor little mite—”

  Margot said briskly, “Of course not, Hattie. If Uncle Henry won’t telephone to the police, I will.”

  Her father moved toward the telephone resting on its pedestal in the hall. “Let me do it, daughter. I’ll call Searing directly, and he’ll know how to keep it out of the newspapers.” He rummaged in the little drawer below the telephone and came up with a city directory. He started thumbing the pages.

  Ramona said, “I don’t know what to do to help.”

  “Ramona,” Margot said, “I really think you should go to bed. Dick, she shouldn’t get overtired.”

  At this both Hattie and Blake turned to look at Ramona, and Ramona colored and gave a small, embarrassed wave of her hand. “I’m sorry, Hattie. I was going to make the announcement soon—that is, we were, Mr. Dick and I.”

  Hattie exclaimed, “Mrs. Ramona! It’s a baby, isn’t it?” She gave a small sob and pressed her hands to her plump cheeks. “Just as I thought, just what I was suspecting! Oh, my lands, that’s just the best news I’ve heard in such a long time! Go on now, you and Mr. Dick, you go off to bed. You hungry, Mrs. Ramona? Some warm milk, maybe?”

  Ramona denied wanting anything but sleep, and Dick shepherded her up the staircase. In the hall, Dickson leaned against the wall, the earpiece of the telephone in his right hand, the base in his left, speaking in a low voice. Blake said, “Shall I go out again, Dr. Margot? Have another look?”

  “I’m gonna go with you!” Hattie said, which at another moment might have made Margot laugh. Hattie was notorious for avoiding the Essex whenever she could. Funerals, weddings, and sick calls, she had always declared, were the only reasons for climbing into that motorcar.

  “Hattie, that’s not necessary,” Margot said. “You should go to bed, too.” As Hattie began to protest, Margot put up her forefinger, but she took care to speak gently. “We’ll need you in the morning, Hattie. Blake and I will go out and search again, I promise.”

  “Oh, Dr. Margot—but you have the hospital, and the clinic—”

  “First things first,” Margot said firmly. “We need to find Allison.” It was true, she had rounds to make in the morning, but fortunately no surgeries. She glanced outside at the heavy fog roiling over the shrubs and curling around the bare trunk of the camellia, and thought of Frank. He wouldn’t try to fly in this, surely!

  Her father strode back to the foot of the stairs, jamming his hat on his head and beginning to search his pockets for his gloves. “Searing’s sending two officers,” he said. “I’ll meet them outside. If Henry comes down, tell him—oh, tell him to go to the devil!”

  Margot said, “With pleasure, Father, but I suspect he’s already enjoying the sleep of the just.”

  “What kind of father is that?” Dickson muttered, stamping toward the front door. “Little girl like that, out in the dark with no one to protect her. . . .” He was already on his way down the walk, still grumbling.

  “We’ll leave the door unlocked, in case she comes back while we’re out.” Margot was putting her coat on again. “Hattie, please. Try to sleep.”

  Reluctantly, Hattie made her way toward the kitchen and her own room. Lik
e Dickson, she muttered to herself as she shuffled past the staircase, untying her apron as she went. “Poor little mite,” Margot heard her say. “What is this world coming to? With parents like that!”

  Moments later, Margot and Blake were in the Essex, prowling through the foggy streets with the headlamps turned low. Margot sat in the front, beside Blake, and for once he didn’t demur. They crept through the mist, the lights from the automobile stabbing at the gray fog, reflecting uselessly back at them. Margot wondered if it wouldn’t be better to just extinguish the lamps altogether.

  “By now she could have walked quite some distance,” Blake said gravely as he turned out of Fourteenth Avenue and started down Aloha.

  “I know,” Margot said. “I thought of the streetcar, but I doubt she has any money.”

  “She could make her way down to Broadway.”

  Margot said, “I should tell you, Blake. She did slip out once, though I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone. She went out with a young man she met on her crossing. They went to a speakeasy—” She felt, rather than saw, his sidelong glance. “She was sick under the roses,” she said drily, watching the sides of the road for any sign of a shivering girl in a short-sleeved dinner frock. “But she never mentioned the name of the place.”

  “I wouldn’t know it even if you told me,” Blake said. “I’ve never had occasion to drive to a speakeasy.”

  “Nor have I, Blake. Nor any inclination.”

  “No indeed.”

  She searched the foggy street. On Broadway, nothing moved at this hour except the occasional stray cat and, once, a dog rising from a shadowed doorstep, its hackles lifting. They drove slowly to the very end of Broadway and back again. Misty streetlight halos illuminated the fog here and there. Alleyways melted into gray dimness. Margot peered into the mist until her eyes ached, and tried to imagine Allison somewhere safe and warm.

  She looked fragile, he thought, though she acted tough. Her neck was as slender as a child’s, and her ankles, hidden now by the drooping panels of his overcoat, looked as if they could barely hold her upright. Her eyes were huge above her little pointed chin. It occurred to him that those eyes were the same blue as the sapphire, and he liked the synchrony of that. It seemed a good omen. A promise that he would, at last, complete his purpose.

  When he held out his hand and said, “I’ll need the coat for a few minutes,” she didn’t protest or question him. She slid out of the coat, but she dodged his hand, letting the coat fall in a puddle to the floor of the observation deck. The pockets, heavy with his special treasures, clanked on the hard floor. Allison, stepping out of the folds, looked like a chick emerging from its broken eggshell. She hobbled on her uneven shoes to one of the arched windows, where she stood hugging herself against the chill.

  “I’ll give it back soon,” he found himself saying, which was ridiculous. What the hell did he care if she froze to death? Surely he had learned by now that being softhearted was a waste of his time.

  He shrugged into the coat, avoiding her eyes as he felt in his pockets. Just touching the stone, even disguised as it was, encouraged him. From his other pocket he drew the straight razor. Turning so she could see him, he opened it. Even in the dimness, its polished blade glimmered. Her eyes grew even wider, the whites gleaming in the darkness. He supposed her face went pale, though the light was too poor to show it. She fell back a step, her bravado gone. It was utterly gratifying, and his loins stirred in answer to her fear.

  The razor was nearly new, from Sheffield, with a pearl Bakelite handle and a blade that had been freshly honed when he lifted it from the barbershop down on Post Street. He held it up so she could see it clearly, and advanced toward her with an unhurried step. She emitted one small whimper and shrank back against the brick wall. The starlit fog outlined her fair hair and her slender silhouette, and he was tempted—oh, so tempted!—to do exactly what she feared, to slash through that tender throat and see the hot blood pour over her georgette dinner frock.

  He had done it before. He relished the feeling of power, of reckless daring. It was how he had acquired the stone in the first place. He could imagine it with no difficulty, a single swift stroke, her body crumpling to the floor, himself leaping back to avoid being stained by the spray of her heart’s blood. He could take what he needed, wrap it in something—what? A scrap from her dress, perhaps? His message would carry the greatest impact that way, but . . .

  The image faded. Margot would never come to him if Allison were already dead. He needed her alive, his pretty little cousin, cowering now in terror against the brick wall.

  He reached her, stretched out his hand, and lifted a lock of her pale hair. A good, thick strand, one that would be easily identifiable, too much to have been given up willingly. He lifted the razor with his right hand.

  She cried out and tried to duck away from him. He held tight, forcing her to dangle from his handful of her hair. Some of it came away on its own, tearing free of her scalp, but the rest held so her head was twisted upward, her eyes turning to him in the most pitiful way.

  He grinned behind his mask of dark wool. “Shhh,” he said. “I’m not going to cut you, little cuz. I just need a hank of this.” He poised the blade close to her head and wielded it. The blade was sharp, even sharper than the saber he had wielded in Jerusalem. It cut through the strand easily, instantly. Her support gone, she fell to her knees.

  He held up the fistful of hair in triumph. At his feet, Allison sobbed, which made his groin tingle again, but he ignored that. He needed to be moving, to get this done.

  “I,” he told her, turning toward the stairs, “will be back before you know it.”

  He clattered down the long curving staircase, unlocked the door with the key he had lifted so neatly from the maintenance shed, and locked it again when he had gone through. He laid his palm on it, briefly, a gesture to reassure himself he had her safely stowed. It was all going just the way he had planned.

  He had known, once he had the sapphire in his possession again, that it would. Margot had shown him herself, though she would never know it. She had poked at the building’s footings where the stone was buried, drawing him to where the bubble had emerged from the cement, practically begging for him to retrieve it. The hammer and chisel had been laughably easy to lay his hands on, lifted from a toolbelt hanging by the back entrance to the Compass Center. He had only to wait until it was too dark for anyone to see what he was doing, and then it was a simple task to chisel out the stone. It practically met him halfway, in any case, bulging out of the concrete that way. He had to repress an urge to apologize for taking so long, as if it were an abandoned child or a pet left behind! That was laughable, too, but he couldn’t help thinking that if he had only had it with him, all those months while he tried to heal in an obscure country hospital, he might not look like a monster now.

  The good thing, he saw, once he got the chunk of concrete into the light and could see the stone, was that its true color had returned. It was alive again, its depths glistening, reflective, gleaming almost as vivid a blue as it had that day in Jerusalem, when he had liberated it from that arrogant Turk. He had made mistakes, he knew. He had pondered each one of them while he lay in the hospital swathed in such layers of bandages he could barely see. He had examined them, considered them, assessed where he had gone wrong, what he should have done.

  He understood clearly, now, what he had to do. He wouldn’t try for subtlety. He wouldn’t take the indirect approach, as he had in his attempt to burn down Margot’s building. He had his bait, and he had a plan. It wasn’t in his nature—as it hadn’t been in hers, the incomparable Roxelana—to flinch from what was necessary. Roxelana had imbued the sapphire with all her power, and despite the price he had paid for his mistakes, he would wield that power effectively this time, and then his work would be finished. He could leave this earth without regret, and be united with Roxelana wherever it was people like the two of them ended up.

  He listened hard to be certain no automobiles
were approaching on Fourteenth Avenue before he dashed across. He took care not to let the gate creak as he came through it. He crept up the porch to the front door in perfect silence. He left his shoes there, gingerly lifted the latch, then tiptoed across the hall and up the staircase.

  It was strange, being in Benedict Hall after all this time. The smell of it was achingly, even perilously, familiar. The air was redolent of the past, of easier times. His half-destroyed nostrils flared at the reminiscent scents of cooked food, of floor wax and furniture polish. He detected random ghosts of perfume in the air, like imprints of the ladies who had passed through the house. Lights burned in the small parlor and in the hall, lighting the staircase from below. The second floor, where the family’s bedrooms were, was dark, every door closed, every light off. He breathed slowly, wary of the sounds his lungs made, and which he couldn’t control. He stepped gently on the strip of carpet as he moved to the front of the house, where Margot’s bedroom faced north, to the park.

  Despite the need to hurry, as he passed his old bedroom, opposite hers, he was tempted. Just one peek, one quick glance inside. It would be his final glimpse at his boyhood sanctuary. It was sentimental, no doubt, but in the face of what he was about to do, surely he was entitled.

  He listened at the door first, to be sure there was no one occupying it. He wondered if it was Allison’s room now. That would have been logical, placing her close to the front of the house, next door to Margot. If it was hers, of course, it was now conveniently empty. That made his scarred lips curl beneath the cover of his muffler, and he gently, slowly, eased the door open.

  He caught a breath before he could stop himself, and the whistle of it in his scarred throat sounded like an explosion in his ears. He tensed, listening for any sign that someone else had heard, but there was nothing, only the natural sighs and creaks of a big sleeping house. He sidled into the room, pushed the door closed behind him, and looked around the bedroom he had slept in since he was a child.