When June turned around, her smile was gone. “That’s one mystery solved, anyway. Too bad there are more.”
“What are the others?” Jim asked. “We know who painted the rest of these, after all—Nathan.”
June shook her head. “No—not quite. Not all of them, anyway.” She looked at Emily. “When Emily told me that Nathan died in 1919, I knew there was more to it.”
“Why?”
June walked over to a painting between two windows and pointed at it. “This one was painted later.”
“How can you tell?” Mark asked.
“The skyline of the city. And the paint.” She pointed at two other paintings. “That one over there is from the twenties, at the earliest, and so is that. And I’m pretty sure there are other paintings in the house from after 1919.” She held up her hands. “I have no idea who did them.”
Emily frowned, trying to recall the paintings she’d seen during the séance. She couldn’t remember for certain, but she was fairly sure those places on the walls had been empty. She and June shared a long look, and Emily shook her head, not willing to comment. She couldn’t be certain if the paintings were there or not. She’d been focused on the siblings, not the room.
Chris and Mark offered to cook dinner, and Emily realized as they suggested it that she hadn’t eaten in a long time—sometime yesterday, perhaps. Almost as if their suggestion spoke to her body, she was suddenly pierced with a hunger so deep and clenching, she almost moaned. Everyone else seemed to have a similar reaction, and June and Lara offered to help them in order to speed up the process.
They left her and Jim alone, and Jim moved his chair closer to hers so they could read the journal together. They puzzled over the first few lines together, heads close. After a few minutes, she looked over at him, and something warm and deep spread through her heart. Despite her claw marks down his face and his clear fatigue, he seemed in better shape than he had in days. Now that he was back to normal, she realized how much she’d missed him, and how fond of him she’d become. It was incredible to have close friends. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d liked people as much as she liked the people in this house, nor could she remember the last time she’d felt so accepted. Jim was unaware of her gaze, eyes rooted to the journal. She looked back at it, still smiling slightly with pleasure.
Soon after this, Jim pulled a little notebook from his front pocket and flipped through it. After reviewing for a moment, he turned to her, grinning. “I recognize this code. I already broke this one.”
She was surprised. So far, they hadn’t seen an example of a repeated code. “Oh? That’s strange.”
“It is. But look.” He pointed to the dates on the inside cover: 1918–1919. “It’s the earliest journal we’ve seen. Margot must have thought she lost it and saved herself the effort of coming up with a new code. I’d bet money Julia hid it from her.”
“I wish we could find some kind of key for all these journals. She must have written them down somewhere, or she wouldn’t have remembered this one. Our work would go much quicker if we had it.”
Jim nodded absently. They’d said the same thing to each other a few times, but so far had discovered nothing of the sort. He returned his attention to the journal a moment later, his face creased with concentration. She handed it to him, fully, perfectly happy to let him decode it. As he worked, he wrote down what he read inside his little journal, flipping from the key to his translation every other word or so. He finished the first entry and leaned back, pushing the journal away from him in disgust.
“Goddamn it. It’s more of the same shit. This entry was about a dressmaker’s visit.”
Her face heated with impatient temper, and she pulled the journal back to take another look. “But it can’t be! Or at least not all of it. She must mention something in here about Nathan or something else, or Julia wouldn’t have hidden it.”
“Well, if Margot did mention something, it’s not here at the beginning. We’ll have to read the whole thing to see if anything worthwhile is hidden in here.” He sounded defeated, and even she felt like the whole thing would likely give them nothing of value. They were missing something.
She thought back to the scene in the attic room and remembered something she’d almost forgotten: Julia had turned the journal on its side to read it. Suddenly excited, she did the same thing and was dimly aware of Jim leaning forward to see what she was doing. Using the same code, she started reading the lines along the side. It was difficult work, as the letters and symbols were written as if meant to be read upright on the page, but after she’d decoded the first line with the journal on its side, she knew she was onto something.
“Holy shit,” she said, leaning back away from the page.
“What?” Jim asked. He read what she’d written and then looked at her, shocked. “Oh my God. How did you know to do that?”
She explained about seeing Julia turn the journal on its side in the attic room during the séance. “It was almost like she was showing me how to read it—almost like she knew I was there.”
His face, if possible, went even whiter than before. “Maybe she did. Maybe some part of her knew you would see her.” He suddenly got to his feet, the movement so quick it startled her. He started pacing, rubbing his hands together.
“Do you know what this means, Emily?”
She beamed at him. “The other journals. We have to go through them again. We have to start over.”
The idea, though daunting, was exhilarating. Now that they’d figured out what Margot had done, she was certain they would find something incredible in the journals, though what exactly, she didn’t know.
Jim stopped pacing and looked down at her. “She must have been some kind of genius—Margot, I mean. First, she comes up with all these codes. Then she writes out what she wants to write out, then figures out a way for it to make sense written in either direction, upright or on the side.” He shook his head. “It’s incredible. I don’t even know if you could do that very easily with a computer.”
She tapped the journal again with her fingers. “And she started this one when she was what, nineteen?”
“Amazing.”
“She should have worked for the War Office as a code writer.”
Jim laughed. “Hell—maybe she did. Everything about her has been a complete mystery until now. Just think, before today, no one knew she was in an incestuous affair with her brother, a brother she later killed. Imagine what that will do for Lewis scholarship.”
They were both positively gleeful, and when June came back into the room a moment later to call them to dinner, she laughed.
“You two look like the cat with the canary,” she said.
Emily rose to her feet and raced toward June before pulling her into an embrace and giving her a long, deep kiss. June pulled away a moment later, blushing and glancing at Jim. “That was unexpected. I thought you wanted to keep us a secret.”
She laughed. “What? I thought you did.”
June shook her head, grinning. “I was following your lead. I would have been holding your hand this whole time if I’d thought you were okay with it.”
She laughed again, so pleased she could feel happy tears pricking her eyes. She blinked them away, glanced at Jim, and then winked at June. “Anyway, I think he knew all along.”
Jim laughed. “We all did. You guys weren’t exactly…discreet. And anyway, you can tell.”
“Tell what?” June asked.
Jim shrugged, his face reddening slightly. “Tell that you like each other, I guess. I saw it the first day Mark and I got here.”
June and she smiled at each other, and Emily took her hand in hers. “Let’s go eat. Jim and I have something really important to tell the rest of you.”
Chapter Twenty-six
The next morning, Lara called her family lawyer and hired a private-detective agency. She’d told her aunt what they’d found, and her aunt had been all too grateful to rid herself of the estate, if possible, giv
ing Lara full permission to look into tracing the lost heirs.
By Thursday, Lara decided that she wanted to have a more active role in the search and had left to join the detectives already on the hunt. Although she’d been at the house for only a few days, her departure made the place seem emptier, their adventure almost over. Everyone seemed to feel this way.
Cocktail hour that evening was quieter, sadder somehow, as if what they’d experienced was already in the past. This, of course, was not the case, as Emily knew that she, June, Jim, and Mark would be here for a few weeks yet, and Chris wasn’t leaving until early July, but the loss of one member of the party already seemed to suggest the end.
The search for Harry was called off on Friday, much to the relief of everyone in the house. The police seemed to suspect something the first day he was gone, but that suspicion, if it had ever actually been there, disappeared the longer Harry was gone. The police and search parties were just as baffled as the people inside. Harry seemed to have simply disappeared.
The house was quiet during this time. At first, Emily had braced for something to happen, and she was fairly certain the others had too, but by the weekend after the séance, they’d started to relax. No one said it, but Emily thought they all believed that now that the solstice had passed, things were quieting down again. They’d even started leaving the doors open, as they never closed on their own anymore.
Still, the lingering worry over Harry’s disappearance coupled with the fact that the house still had missing rooms made them certain that things weren’t quite finished yet. As to the solution of both these remaining problems, no one had any ideas.
Jim and Emily had gone into town and made scans of the first three journals—the one from the attic and the ones they’d already decoded. They printed out copies for everyone and divided them to speed up the work. She and Jim kept the bulk of the pages and worked on them during the day, but now the whole household would sit down and decode a page or two while they were in the sitting room together at the end of the day. Things went fairly quickly at first. Since Jim and she already had the solutions for the codes, it was simply a matter of transcribing the journals when they were turned on their sides.
She looked up from the page she’d been working on, her eyes automatically going to June. She smiled, heart swelling, at the sight of her. When June read anything, a tiny concentration line appeared between her eyebrows. She also wore reading glasses, which, rather than making her seem dowdy, were adorable. She had her hair piled on top of her head in a messy, loose bun held in place by a pencil. She was a brilliant, gorgeous woman made all the more attractive when in deep thought. She was focused too fully to notice Emily’s gaze, so Emily took the opportunity and continued to stare, wanting very much to go over and brush a loose lock of hair off her face.
Emily, however, soon felt eyes on her and turned to see Mark smiling at her. He’d clearly watched her staring, and noticed whom she was staring at, and she couldn’t help but color. Since Tuesday night, she and June had been open about their relationship. They sat next to each other, held hands, and didn’t bother to hide the fact that they were going upstairs together at night anymore. Everyone seemed happy for them, and no one had been in the least surprised. It was obvious they’d already known or suspected.
She gave Mark a quick grin, stretched, and glanced at the clock, surprised to see the hour. She clapped her hands once, making everyone jump.
“Hey, all! That’s it for today. Don’t strain yourself. Jim and I are the ones that are supposed to be doing all this.”
Chris pushed his pages away and got to his feet before stretching, touching his toes, and rotating a few times side to side.
“It’s interesting, at least, but man, am I ever glad this is your project and not mine. I like being outside, not cooped up.”
“How long do you think it’ll take to do all the journals?” June asked. She’d taken her glasses off, and Emily could see that her eyes were strained with fatigue.
She glanced at Jim and they both shrugged. Jim sighed. “Even with your help, it’ll still take all summer and most of the fall. It’s tedious, as you’ve all seen, even now that we’re reading interesting things.”
Emily had decided and asked the others to wait on the earliest journal, the one from the attic, and suggested that they go back to the ones she and Jim had already started on from 1934 and 1935, the year Margot came back from Europe and the year immediately following. So far, from the hundred or so pages they’d reexamined, it appeared that every third or fourth page had a secondary reading when turned on its side. Pages with poetry, for example, could only be read in the regular way, as did others that revealed nothing with the alternate orientation. She wasn’t sure, but she thought this was simply another way for Margot to confuse her readers.
In the pages that did have a secondary reading, they had found what appeared to be a new, previously unknown novel. The style was quintessentially Lewis, the story so far so much like her last novel, published in 1933, that it might have acted as a kind of sequel. Once they’d realized what they were reading, Jim had contacted the editor at a scholarly press, and when he’d told her what they’d found, the editor immediately sent them a contract to publish their findings. The novel, once it was assembled and edited, would come out next year with Jim and Emily’s names as editors, and the others as assistant editors.
Neither she nor Jim, however, had decided what to do about the biographical information they’d learned. So far, they had found no evidence for what Emily had seen during the séance, and aside from a few old rumors generations removed, they had no proof that Nathan and Margot had ever been intimate with each other.
Margot had possibly recorded some of this in her earliest journal—again, this might explain why Julia hid it—but, considering Margot was known as a fiction writer, even if she basically spelled out what had happened, it wouldn’t necessarily be taken as truth. This was, of course, one of the reasons Emily wanted to wait to translate the 1918-1919 journal. Seeing what she’d experienced during the séance in print would mean fulfilling a kind of obligation, to Julia at least, to set the record straight. She wasn’t sure she was ready for that or what, if anything, it would accomplish.
June suddenly stood in front of her with a gin and tonic, and Emily took it from her gratefully. The last few days had been scorching hot, the natural coolness of the house finally incapable of keeping up with the heat. The house was stuffy and almost fetid, the humidity very high despite the lack of rain. Even in her lightest clothes, she felt overwhelmingly hot. The others had taken to wearing extremely light clothing as well, so that the five of them sitting here looked like they were ready for the beach.
June moved her chair closer to Emily’s and sat down heavily, her drink almost sloshing out of her glass. She held the cool drink to her face for a moment before taking a sip and closing her eyes.
Emily squeezed her hand. “You seem tired. Are you okay?”
June opened her eyes and blinked a few times before giving her a weak smile. “I’m fine. It’s the heat. I’m not used to it. I’ve been thinking of running home for a few days to have a break. I have some things in the office I need to take care of, too.”
Emily’s stomach dropped at the thought. More than simply leaving for a few days, eventually, at the end of the summer, June would be leaving for good. She worked at a university in Seattle, almost as far from where they were now as you could get in the continental US. Emily had a hard time imagining the day that June and the others would leave, going back to their lives, while she did what?
Every time the notion arose, she repressed it, wishing her problems would resolve on their own, but she needed to start making inquiries to get her life back on track. It was much too late to get a position for the fall semester, though she might be able to find something temporary for the spring. Visiting positions to cover sabbatical or maternity leaves were sometimes available, after all. The idea of looking was daunting, however, and e
very time she thought about it, she felt a little nervous and sick. Getting her last job had been an enormous undertaking, and the idea of searching for a new one made her want to shut down and give up.
June, as if reading her thoughts, took her drink from her and set them both down. She turned in her chair, leaned forward, and took her hands. June made her meet her eyes.
“I know what you’re thinking, but you don’t have to worry. We’ll still talk. Every day. And we’ll visit each other. I know you’re worried about finding work, but something will turn up. I promise.”
She had finally confessed to June and the others that she was now unemployed, and their responses had been supportive and empathetic. Everyone in academia knew that a lot of positions were tenuous now, even with tenure, especially with conservative state governments in charge in many places. With money cut from educational budgets at whim, no one in the public sector could avoid hearing about it. Jobs that had been nearly impossible to lose were now evaporating at the stroke of a pen, and lots of academics were becoming more and more careful about what they said or published to avoid censure and dismissal.
Not able to stop herself, she asked, “But what if nothing comes up? What if I never find a position again?”
June smiled and pulled her into a quick hug. “You will. And anyway, didn’t Ruth say she was paying us for all of this? There’s enough work here to keep you busy for a long time. I’ve only worked on the journals a few hours this week, and even I can tell it will take months to finish.” She frowned. “But I wouldn’t want you to do it here alone, after we all leave.”
“Why not?”
June shook her head. “I would hate for you to be here by yourself. It’s not safe.” She looked away, her cheeks flushing. Her eyes darted back to Emily’s and then away. “Maybe…” She shook her head. “Never mind.”
“What?”
Still clearly nervous, June couldn’t meet her eyes. She laughed lightly. “I was going to say maybe you could come back to Seattle with me at the end of the summer. Work on the Lewis project there. You could adjunct, too, if you wanted.” She shook her head again. “I’m sorry. That’s stupid.”
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