The Impersonator (Leah Randall/Jessie Carr Novels)

by Miley, Mary

  I can’t. I can’t move.

  I’ve waited so long.

  All right, all right. Here’s how it goes. On eight beats, tiny mincing steps: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Stop, bow right; stop, bow left. Eight again in a circle. Repeat, opposite direction.

  Oh, this is fun! Let’s do it again!

  I can’t.

  I want to do the dance!

  We don’t have a third.

  Yes we do. Here’s your mother.

  Mother? No, you’re dead. My mother’s dead, Jessie. She died when I was twelve.

  I was orphaned at eleven. Same thing. Come on now, sing the words while we all dance! From the top.

  Three little maids from school are we

  Pert as a school-girl well can be.

  Filled to the brim with girlish glee

  Three little maids from school.

  Now the chorus. It should be louder. Sing louder.

  Three little maids who, all unwary

  Come from a ladies’ seminary—

  Why did you stop?

  My throat hurts! I can’t do it. Leave me alone! I just want to go to sleep.

  Don’t you dare die now! Stay awake! I’ve waited for you all these years. Keep singing.

  Freed from its genius tutelary

  Three little maids from school.

  Louder! You sound like a raspy whisper.

  Three little maids from school!

  You skipped a line. Let’s start over. Louder.

  Life is a joke that’s just begun

  Three little maids from school.

  Oh, I like that one! Shhh. Listen! Do you hear that?

  What?

  Someone’s calling Jessie! Do you hear? Up high.

  No, I didn’t. Yes, now I heard. She was right. Someone was calling for Jessie. Someone was looking for us. David Murray? Had David come to the house and found me missing?

  Down here! I called. We’re down here. The words rang clear and loud in my head—like the songs I’d been singing—but Jessie was having none of it.

  They can’t hear that. Louder.

  Here! Down here, I rasped.

  They’re going away. Louder!

  Help! Help!

  It’s no good. They can’t hear you. Whistle.

  What?

  The unholy whistle. Quick.

  I took a few shallow breaths to put some air in my lungs, fitted my tongue against my teeth, and let fly the shrillest notes on a sliding scale that I could manage.

  “Jessie? Jessie?” I heard them calling from very far off. To save my life I couldn’t reply.

  A flurry of unintelligible orders followed, then scrapes, clanks, and squeaks. I heard a string of mumbled profanity as the person lowered into the crevice realized he had missed the shelf where I lay.

  “I see her! Shit, she’s too far away,” Ross shouted. “Haul me up, quick! We need to move about six yards over.”

  In moments he was back. Climbing out of the sling that brought him down, he set an oil lantern on the shelf. “Jessie! Jessie! Thank God you’re alive!” He leaned back and shouted, “I got her.” He continued, more gently, “We’ve got the doctor on his way. Can you get over here—no, never mind, I’ll pick you up and try not to hurt you. Damnit, you feel like ice!” He gathered me clumsily in his arms and shifted me into the canvas sling.

  “Get Jessie.”

  “What? Yes, yes, I’ve got you.”

  “No, get Jessie. I’m not Jessie. Jessie’s there.” Only then did he notice the remains. He lifted the lantern. “That’s Jessie,” I croaked. “Henry killed her. He tried to kill me the same way. You can’t leave her here.”

  The weak light shone on the crumpled remains and I saw what was left of Jessie for the first time—little more than bones, matted hair, and some scraps of clothing had survived seven years on the inaccessible underground shelf. And her Venetian beads.

  “Okay, David, haul her up!” he shouted.

  “No! Get Jessie! Don’t leave her!”

  Creaking and groaning under the weight, the bootleg pulley strained to lift me.

  “Get Jessie! Don’t leave Jessie!” No one listened.

  Strong arms lifted me out of the sling. “You’re safe now. I have you,” David said as he yanked off his topcoat and wrapped it around me. It felt like an oven, all warm and soft, and smelled of leather and pipes and men. He held me tight as Chen and Buster dropped the sling down into the crevice again for Ross.

  “Make him get Jessie. David, please. Make him get Jessie.”

  He frowned at me, no doubt thinking that I was hallucinating. “You’re safe now, you’re right here.”

  “I’m not Jessie! Jessie’s still down there, dead. Henry killed her, like he tried to kill me. Seven years she’s been waiting.”

  “You’re not Jessie?”

  “No … an impersonator.”

  “You’re not my sister?”

  “No.”

  “Thank God!” And he kissed me gently on my icy lips. “I knew I couldn’t feel this way about my own sister! Hold on a second, I’ve got to help Buster pull up Ross.”

  In less than a minute the two men had raised him to the top.

  “Jessie…” I whispered, too weak to cry.

  “I got her,” Ross said tersely as he climbed out of the sling. He paused long enough for Buster and Chen to see what he’d brought up, then he folded the corners together in a bundle and picked it up.

  “Let’s go home,” he said.

  We headed toward Cliff House, me in David’s arms, my head on his shoulder, warm and safe and alive and happy enough almost to forget the pain in my leg. Behind us, Buster, the only person who had truly loved Jessie, dropped to his knees on the ground, sank his head in his hands, and let out a one-note wail that hung in the air until the wind carried it out to sea.

  53

  We reached the house just as Doc Milner’s sedan pulled up and Val bounded down the front steps calling, “Here’s the doctor!” Henry was right behind her, his face white as a plaster bust.

  “Is she—” he croaked, no doubt praying I was as dead as I looked.

  “She’s alive,” said David, his voice sharp as a steel blade, “but she’s hurt pretty bad. Jessie’s dead, but I figure you knew that. We found her too. Her bones have been in that cave since the day you killed her seven years ago. Listen up, Henry Carr, because I’m telling you a fact. If this girl dies, I will kill you with my own two hands, before the hangman can get to you.”

  “Jessie’s here, Henry,” said Ross, laying the bundle on the ground and opening it so everyone could see the pitiful skull and remains.

  Val screamed, then dropped to the grass in a faint. Aunt Victoria rushed down the steps, and froze at the bottom, paralyzed with confusion over whether to tend to me or her daughter. “Henry? Henry?” she kept saying. “What happened?”

  Caro ran up. “What do you mean, she isn’t Jessie?” Everyone started babbling at once.

  “Arrest Henry,” I tried to say, but no one heard my feeble attempts to speak. And who was there to arrest him?

  Doc Milner broke into the mayhem. “All right, all right, the dead are dead, and no one can help them. I’ve got to look to the living. Get this girl to her bed right now. Get that one some smelling salts.”

  David carried me into the house as if I weighed no more than a doll. Doc Milner began issuing orders to Rainy as we entered the hall.

  “I’ll need hot water and clean towels—”

  “I already got those in her room,” said Rainy. “I heard Miss Valerie telephone for you and I figured you’d want that. And some mercurochrome. And I put a clean sheet over her bed.”

  “Good girl. Get me every hot water bottle you have, filled with hot water, not boiling.” Aunt Victoria sprang back to life and darted toward the kitchen with a set to her jaw that said she would wait to ask questions after the crisis had passed. “You, girl, what’s your name?”

  “Lorraine, sir. I’m Miss Jessie’
s maid.”

  “Get some brandy or whiskey and come with me, Lorraine. You’ve got sense.”

  Grandmother was waiting for us at the top of the stairs, her face like stone as she followed David into my room and stood by the bed as he laid me gingerly on the sheet. The commotion had alerted Uncle Oliver, who appeared at the threshold, pale as flour paste, with Grandmother on his arm. The old lady insisted on taking the chair closest to the bed, closest to me, so he stood behind her, his pudgy hands gripping the chair back. I must have looked a horrible sight because a collective gasp went up as the doctor unwrapped David’s topcoat.

  Rainy came in with a bottle of brandy, followed by Chen carrying several hot water bottles.

  “Give her a couple swigs of that,” the doctor said.

  It gagged me a good bit along the way, but the effect was liquid fire slithering down my throat and pulsing through my veins.

  Without being told Rainy began washing the blood off my face, exposing the wounds as the doctor put his stethoscope to my chest. The room was as silent as an empty church. “Someone get me some scissors,” he snapped. “I’ll have to cut these clothes off.”

  Ross rummaged through my desk until he found some shears. Doc Milner began cutting away the wet, shredded fabric that clung to my skin, peeling it off in pieces just as Aunt Victoria came in with more hot water bottles. He covered me with a blanket and put the rubber bottles on top of my chest so the warmth could seep into my skin.

  “Leg’s broken. I’m not sure about the arm. What do you think?” He looked at Chen.

  Looking startled to be asked his opinion, Chen stepped forward. His fingers worked methodically up my left arm from the frozen fingers to the bloody shoulder before he said in a quiet voice, “I think, not broken. Cracked perhaps. I think set it anyway.”

  Doc Milner nodded. Without another word the two began making preparations to set my arm and leg. Rainy continued washing my scrapes and dabbing them with mercurochrome. My skin was so numb I barely felt the sting.

  “I … I don’t understand,” began Aunt Victoria as she searched the faces in the room for an explanation. “How can you say she’s not Jessie? She must be Jessie. She— You look just like Jessie. Just like Blanche.”

  Ross replied for me from the corner of the room. “Says here her name is Leah Randall. Her mother was not Aunt Blanche, but some vaudeville singer named Chloë Randall.”

  A low cry escaped Grandmother’s lips. Ross’s soft eyes hardened into polished jet as he read aloud from the notes in his hands. The notes I’d compiled on Henry’s crimes.

  “She’s an impostor,” he said, and he packed the word with venom enough to kill.

  I found my voice. My throat was on fire and every word scratched its way out like cactus past raw flesh. “Henry knew it all along. But he couldn’t say how he knew because he had killed the real Jessie. He beat her senseless in that cave where he delivers his whiskey, and he left her to drown so he could get the Carr inheritance.”

  Aunt Victoria’s hand flew to her mouth and she moaned, “No, no, no,” in disbelief, over and over as I continued.

  “The idea was for her body to wash ashore with water in the lungs so her death would be ruled an accidental drowning, and no one could blame him. But her body didn’t wash up because, before she died, she managed to crawl above the waterline to a dry shelf. I only found her because he did the same thing to me. I’d be there still if you hadn’t come. Dead by now.” I looked at David, standing beside the bed. “How did you find me? Did you know about the bootleg deliveries?”

  Grandmother made her way out of the room as David took my hand and explained what had happened.

  “When I got here, no one knew where you were. Caroline told me she’d left you on the beach, heading for the cave, but the beach was already covered with water. I thought you might have been trapped and I knew Henry used one of the caves to bring up his shipments every few weeks, but I’d never seen the place. I grabbed Ross and a couple servants, and we found the hole pretty quick when we saw the pulley nearby. I was never so glad of anything in my life as when I heard you whistle. Valerie was with us. She ran back to the house to call Doc here.”

  “Where’s Henry?”

  “Getting the hell out of here if he has an ounce of sense.”

  “I don’t believe this.” Aunt Victoria spoke up in frightened denial. “What are you saying? Henry would never hurt anyone. Why, he was just a child himself when Jessie disappeared! I’m going to go find him so he can clear this all up.”

  Ross indicated the notes in his hand. “This is a matter for the police.”

  “No! Not the police!” said Aunt Victoria. “You’ll ruin his reputation right before the election!”

  “I’ve already done that,” I told Ross, ignoring Aunt Victoria. “I wrote a long letter to Smith and Wade, confessing everything and giving them all the information you have in your hands. I sent another to the governor’s office and one to the newspaper for good measure, in case Henry was bribing the police. Clyde mailed them for me yesterday. I can’t prove everything, but it’s enough for them to start their own investigation into the other murders I believe Henry committed.”

  “Other murders?” Ross asked.

  I lacked the strength to explain further. “It’s all in there.”

  “You’ll go to prison for your part,” said Ross.

  “That wasn’t part of my plan,” I said weakly. “I was going to leave tomorrow morning and disappear for good.”

  “You’re not going anywhere anytime soon, young lady,” said the doctor.

  Aunt Victoria couldn’t make sense of anything. “I don’t believe any of this. You are Jessie. You must be Jessie! You knew things only Jessie would know.”

  “She’s an actress, Mother. An impersonator and a damned good one. Who set you up? Who fed you all that information?”

  I could feel Oliver tense, but I knew better than to look in his direction. “Your governess, the late Miss Lavinia. She had the goods on Henry and was trying to blackmail him. He hired someone to run her down in San Francisco. He tried that on me too, in Portland the day we arrived. He had someone waiting in a car at the Benson. At the time I thought it was a liquored-up driver. It was meant to look that way. But Henry boasted about it to me Friday night. He knew I couldn’t tell anyone without exposing myself. Like you once said, David, we had a Mexican standoff.”

  David nodded absently, his mind obviously miles away.

  “Henry tried to kill me two other times: with a heavy dose of your asthma medicine, Ross—that’s why you ran out of your medicine unexpectedly—and by ruining the brakes on my Ford. When those didn’t work, he told me he’d track me down in Europe and make it look like an accident. He was going to get the Carr money, no matter what. I couldn’t let him do that. And I couldn’t let him go on killing.” I was talking to Oliver now, trying to make him understand. “I had to find out what had happened to Jessie, who killed her.”

  Grandmother sat back in her chair. I hadn’t noticed her return. I was looking up at Ross. “I’m truly sorry for what I did,” I said as tears began welling up in my eyes. I blinked hard but they overflowed and made my voice crack. At that, David, who had been stroking the back of my hand with his fingers, lifted my hand to his lips and kissed it, right in front of everyone. I don’t know what they were thinking, but I thought it was wonderful. Everyone hated me, but not David. At least I still had David. I took a deep breath and pressed on.

  “It seemed pretty harmless when I started, just a way to divert some of the Carr money in my direction. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. I did it for the money, sure, but then I came to care about your family. You’re a really nice family, and I loved being one of you, even if it was just for a few weeks. Being Jessie Carr was the best role I ever had.”

  Aunt Victoria shook her head with disbelief. “But you look just like Blanche! Just like Jessie! The freckles, the hair…”

  “I believe I can explain that.” All eyes turned t
o Grandmother. “This is from my son Clarence,” she said as she slowly unfolded a piece of paper. “It was the last letter I ever had from him.” Without looking at it, she began to recite what she had long ago committed to memory.

  Dear Mother,

  Our ship docked yesterday. The crossing was smooth water and sunshine all the way to England. I met up with my partners in London. We’re staying at the YMCA near St. Paul’s until our deal gets under way. As soon as I have the money, I’m sending to New York for Miss Randall and we’re going to get married. I know what you said, but Chloë’s not that sort of actress; she’s sweet, beautiful, and I love her, and we’re going to get married as soon as I can support us. I’m sorry you don’t approve. You will change your mind when you meet her.

  Your loving son,

  Clarence G. Beckett.

  She paused as she refolded the letter, then looked directly at me with eyes that would pierce anyone’s defenses.

  “When were you born?”

  “April 25, 1899.”

  She nodded. It was the answer she expected. “He wrote this in October of 1898. It was delivered to me along with a letter from a nurse at the London Hospital telling me of his death from meningitis. She had found this letter in his pocket, addressed but not yet posted. She said the disease came on quickly, and he did not suffer.”

  Everyone in the room looked from Grandmother to me and counted the months in their heads. Even Doc Milner stopped mixing the plaster and stared. Ross’s nervous cough broke the silence. “You don’t … ah, you don’t look twenty-five,” he said uselessly.

  “My mother never talked about my father. Not his name, not anything, except that he left her with promises he never intended to keep. And a baby. She was very bitter. I suppose she thought someone would have notified her in the event of his death.” I aimed a questioning look at Grandmother, who was staring at the wall without a particle of emotion in her face.

  “I could have done so,” she said, finally. “Clarence had mentioned her in a previous letter and I knew where she was working. But his father and I were angry that he would waste himself on an actress, and we saw no reason to have any further contact with her after he was gone. A couple of months later she wrote to Clarence at our San Francisco address. I never opened the letter. I marked it ‘Addressee Unknown, Return to Sender.’ I never considered the possibility of a child. And that is why you look like Blanche. Clarence and Blanche were five years apart but as alike as twins.”