“Outside her room down in the basement,” Harry Noons said. “Back in those days the basement was the servants’ quarters, and there was an entrance from the back of the house. Nowadays that’s been closed off, and you can only get to the basement from the inside of the house. That’s because Mr. Young doesn’t have any servants who live there anymore. After what happened to Beatrice, all the servants were turned into day staff. No servant ever lived in that house again. The servants’ entrance was sealed off.”
“But you were inside the servants’ quarters to witness this argument?”
“Ayuh, I most certainly was. I had gone inside to wash my hands. I was done for the day and I was going home. And I saw Beatrice and Clem arguing. She was saying she’d never marry him, that she was going to marry a much better man than he was, and it was making Clem angry. He didn’t like to be told that anyone was better than him. He was a dumb animal, but like any animal that gets cornered, that gets provoked, he got angry. And I remembuh Beatrice was holding her baby in one arm as she shouted at Clem, and Clem called the baby a bastard. She slapped him then, right across the face.”
“What did you do?”
“I was just trying to mind my business, you know, so I didn’t say nuthin’. I finished washing my hands and got the hell out of there. I went up the stairs back outside and then walked across the terrace to the kitchen entrance. I stepped inside for just a moment to tell Mrs. Young that I was done for the day. The sun was starting to set, I remembuh. The sky was a bright blood red. Mrs. Young told me that Mr. Young would be down in a moment to give me my pay. He was good like that. Always paid me at the end of each day. But then we heard the screams from downstairs. They were horrible. Really bloodcurdling. Mrs. Young turned all white, and I immediately ran back outside and headed down the stairs into the servants’ entrance. There I found Beatrice….”
The old man’s voice faltered.
“How did you find her, Mr. Noons?”
“I found her impaled on the wall with a pitchfork.”
He began coughing again, the horror of the memory overtaking him.
“And where was the baby?”
“Don’t know that. Nowhere that I could see. But Beatrice…she was hanging there on the wall, dripping blood everywhere….”
The old man made a sound of horror and began hacking violently.
Kip switched off the recorder.
“It took him a while to compose himself and be able to speak again,” Kip told them, “so I’ll just paraphrase the rest of what he told me. The household came running, Mr. Young and all the Young sons, including our current Mr. Young, Howard. Harry Noons told them what he’d seen, and they immediately dispersed across the estate looking for Clem. They searched for hours, but couldn’t find him.”
“Did they ever find him?” Douglas asked.
Kip shook his head. “Apparently not. He never resurfaced, as far as Harry Noons ever knew.”
“But the sheriff must have led a manhunt to find him,” Douglas said.
“No.” Kip sighed. “For the simple reason that your great-great-grandfather never made any accusation against him.” Kip sat back down, shaking his head. “The family was terrified of scandal. They only reported that Beatrice had died of an accident. They never let anyone into the house. They never told the sheriff the nature of Beatrice’s accident, and reported simply that she’d been buried in the family cemetery nearby.”
“And such has always been the power of my family that what they decree is accepted by the authorities.” Douglas sighed. “Money has its privileges.”
“But the newspaper reports make no mention that she had a baby,” Carolyn observed.
“No,” Kip said. “That much isn’t all that surprising. Back in the day, a bastard child was an unmentionable in the press.”
“So what happened to the baby?” Carolyn asked.
“Harry Noons was told that Mr. Young had found a home for the baby.”
Douglas seemed aghast. “And the sheriff didn’t even inquire further?”
Kip shook his head. “Mr. Young was apparently simply taken at his word. Of course, this was in the days before aggressive child welfare services and things like that.”
Douglas stood, unnerved and agitated by all that he heard about his family. “And so when the high and mighty Desmond Young issued a pronouncement, the local authorities just shook their heads and said, ‘Yes, sir.’” He snorted. “I know how it works. And it’s not right.”
“So there was never any investigation into Beatrice’s death,” Carolyn said.
“None,” Kip said.
“And no inquiry into what happened to her baby.”
“None.”
Carolyn was adding it all up in her mind. “And Clem disappeared, never to be heard from again.”
“Except to haunt members of the family,” Douglas said. “Okay. So this tells us some of the history. How did the lottery start? What connection does it have?”
“I’m afraid that I can’t tell you precisely,” Kip said. “Yet again, Mr. Young was stingy with some details. All he would say is that without the lottery, without the sacrifice of one member of the family every ten years, the entire clan would perish. This is what was told to his father, Desmond Young, who inaugurated the first lottery a week after Beatrice’s death.”
“Who told him?” Douglas wanted to know. “Who told Desmond Young that they had to send someone into that room? The ghost of Beatrice?”
Kip could only shrug.
“It would appear again,” Carolyn said, “that certain details are being withheld from us, whether through choice or force.”
“Okay,” Douglas said, trying to find some iota of logic in all of this madness, “let’s suppose it was Beatrice who started the curse, or whatever you want to call it. It would seem that it would have to be her, right? Because as far as we know, Clem didn’t die that day. He escaped. So if it was Beatrice, why would she want to hurt a family who had been so good to her? Who hadn’t cast her out when she got pregnant? For a family that feared scandal, that was pretty nice of them. So why would she want to hurt them?”
“Again,” Kip said, “your guess will be as good as mine on that.”
“Perhaps Beatrice is the force in that room,” Carolyn observed, “but perhaps she isn’t the originator of the curse. Perhaps it was someone else—someone we have no idea about as yet.” She stood, wrapping her arms around herself, still struggling to get warm. “As an investigator, I can only go with the facts as we know them. I cannot add two and two to get four, because there may be another variable to consider in the equation. Maybe it’s two plus two plus two again—and we get six.” She smiled. “It’s not enough for me to say that Clem just disappeared. What happened to him? And for that matter, how do we know Harry Noons is a reliable witness? Why did he wait seventy years to tell his story?”
Kip smiled. “Oh, I’m sorry; I left out a rather salient point.” His eyes moved over to Douglas. “Your great-great-grandfather paid him a considerable amount of money to keep quiet. In the midst of the Depression, with five younger siblings in his struggling family, Harry couldn’t refuse. Only all those years later, when I found him, did his conscience compel him to tell the real story.”
Douglas groaned, putting his hands in his hair and turning to look out over the marsh.
“And you found Noons to be trustworthy?” Carolyn asked.
“I did. As did Georgeanne.”
“I held his hand,” she said. “He was speaking the truth.”
Kip chuckled. “She’s rather like a human lie detector. I can’t get away with anything with her.”
Carolyn managed a small smile. “So we still don’t know how the lottery began and what power keeps it in force—or what does the killing in that room.”
“If I were still working on this case,” Kip said, “I would try to reach the spirit of Clem. Find out what happened. Where did he go? And why did he kill Beatrice?”
“We don’t know he killed Beatrice
,” Carolyn said.
“He was the only one with a motive,” Kip said. “Noons said he saw Beatrice turning him down, taunting him.”
“But he didn’t see him kill her. He left the basement. And when he went down there again, Clem was nowhere to be found.”
Kip made a face. “He saw Clem there moments before the screaming began.”
“And he rushed down there immediately and found only Beatrice. No Clem.”
“He could have been hiding in the basement somewhere.”
“Possibly.”
Kip looked extremely sad. “I wanted so much to help the family. I wanted so much to end those terrible deaths that they face every decade. I volunteered to continue my research after it was clear that I had failed. I wanted to keep going, to try to find the cause and the solution so that next time…but Mr. Young said I was done.”
Douglas turned his head at that. “Why wouldn’t my uncle want you to continue? After you had already discovered so much?”
“He is a very stubborn man,” Kip said simply.
“Did he blame you for not ending the curse?” Carolyn asked.
“Let’s just say he wasn’t very happy with me.” Kip sighed. “I refused to accept any payment from him. But I did promise him that I would speak of it to no one, unless he sent other researchers to me. I heard nothing until I got your call, Carolyn.”
“That’s why you never wrote a concluding report,” Carolyn said. “Howard Young was done with you.”
Kip nodded sadly. “I suppose I can understand his distress. I had failed. Another family member of his was dead. The curse went on.”
There was nothing much more to say. Carolyn and Kip exchanged a few words as they looked over each others’ notes while Georgeanne refilled everyone’s coffee cups. Douglas remained where he was, standing looking out over the marsh. The ducks had all taken flight, nearly in unison, and flew in formation over the coastline. The sun was dropping lower in the sky, emerging from the gray clouds to stain the marsh pink.
He didn’t like what he’d learned about his family. The secrets were horrible enough. But the way they’d withheld information from the police, picking and choosing details, was reprehensible. That woman’s killer was never brought to justice. No wonder she and her baby haunted the family. And the parceling of information that was done eighty years ago was not so different from the way Uncle Howie shared certain details with some people and not with others. What was going on?
They all bid good-bye soon after that. Kip offered to be of service if he could, telling Carolyn to call him. Georgeanne, too, said she would be willing to use her powers of intuition, as she called them, if they were ever needed. Carolyn thanked them both. Douglas shook both of their hands. To Kip he said, “Thank you for trying. I know you did all you could.”
Kip seem very moved by his words, and brought him in for an embrace.
On the ride back to the airport both Douglas and Carolyn were silent. As before, it was not until they were airborne that they spoke of what they faced.
“I’m scared,” Douglas said.
“I am, too,” Carolyn admitted.
“I just wish I knew who—or what—I was scared of,” Douglas said. “Beatrice? Clem? Or something else?”
Carolyn nodded. That was exactly what she was thinking. She rested her head against the window and looked down at the waters of the Atlantic. She steeled herself, vowing she would do everything in her power to find out what she needed to know. She vowed she would succeed where Kip had failed.
If only she had more time than one slim month.
Chapter Ten
Ryan Young wasn’t pleased when he hung up the phone with his Uncle Howard. The old man had told him that his cousin Douglas was visiting. Douglas had been there at the house for nearly a week now. Ryan had tried to seem happy that his uncle had a visitor, but inwardly, he was seething.
Leave it to that gypsy Douglas to sneak in and work on Uncle Howard before any of us could get there, Ryan thought. He was anxious to tell his father about his cousin’s sneaky ways. They didn’t trust Douglas. He played at being carefree and happy-go-lucky, a hippie on a motorcycle who didn’t give a damn about money and inheritance. But he was fooling them all. He wanted that house. He wanted all of Uncle Howard’s property. Ryan was certain of it.
Ryan glanced in the mirror at himself and liked what he saw. He’d just come from the pool, and his hair was slicked back against his head, his chiseled body glistening. He had not six abdominals but eight. His eyes brimmed with ambition and desire. He was as dark as Douglas was fair. Uncle Howard liked to say that Douglas was a lady-killer—in fact, at that very moment, Douglas was charming a young lady who was working for him. That only made Ryan more angry. It was Ryan who was the lady-killer, Ryan who had every woman in New York chasing after him at nightclubs and restaurants. It was Ryan who often showed up in the gossip columns with some starlet or socialite on his arm. Last he knew Douglas was dating some babe who worked at a diner, for Christ’s sake! Ryan had dated Paris Hilton—and had his picture printed on Page Six to prove it!
“Chelsea!” he shouted. His sister was staggering out of her room, still sleepy-eyed, her hair a mess. It was two in the afternoon, and she was just getting up after being out on the town very, very late last night. “Guess who’s up at Uncle Howard’s right at this moment!”
“I don’t really care,” the girl grumbled. “I have a wicked hangover.”
“Douglas! Dear cousin Douglas!”
She spun around to look at him, her eyes suddenly coming to life. “No fucking way!”
“Way.” Ryan folded his muscled arms across his broad chest. “I just spoke to Uncle Howard. I called just to show what a good nephew I was. Calling in to check up on him, to see how he was feeling and to tell him how very, very much”—here Ryan’s eyes rolled comically for his sister to see—“I’m looking forward to the family reunion.” He paused, his face puckering as if he’d just bitten into a lemon. “And what does our dear uncle tell me? That Douglas is there! Once again, the loser has gotten in ahead of us!”
Chelsea was running fingers through her hair, trying to untangle the knots. “Well, he’s not going to be a loser for long if he keeps kissing ass like he is. Uncle Howard will leave him everything. You know Daddy worries about that.”
“We have to go up there right away,” Ryan said. “I’m not waiting until the actual reunion. There will be too many people around then. Paula and Dean and those obnoxious twins of his.” Both Ryan and Chelsea shuddered. “If we leave soon, we can have a couple of weeks with Uncle Howard.”
Chelsea made a face. “We have to stay up there a couple of weeks? In that backwoods? There are no clubs, no happening places….”
“Do you want to be in the will or not?”
She nodded. “Okay. You’re right.” She narrowed her eyes. “But will Douglas still be there?”
Ryan shrugged. “I don’t know. Uncle Howard didn’t say how long he was staying. But he may well be. But all the more reason for us to get our asses up there! Douglas may be planning to stay up there buttering his toast for as long as he can. He knows he has to work on Uncle Howard. He has to prove that he’s more than just a wandering hippie.”
“That will be difficult,” Chelsea said.
“Yeah, but he’s always been able to wrap Uncle Howard around his finger. Remember when we were kids and he’d convince Uncle Howard to let him play in the attic? You and I were never allowed to run free through the house.”
“It’s true,” Chelsea grumbled. “Douglas was allowed to go anywhere he wanted.” She thought a moment. “Except the basement.”
“Well, no one was ever allowed in the basement,” Ryan said.
“What’s down there anyway? Why is it always closed off?”
Ryan grinned. “Probably the family jewels. Which can all be ours, dear sister, if we can charm Uncle Howard in the next couple of weeks.”
She laughed. “But Daddy has already made us rich. Wh
y would Uncle Howard want to leave us more when Paula or Dean or especially Douglas need it more?”
“Uncle Howard is a businessman,” Ryan insisted. “He is a shark. He’d have to be, to accumulate the fortune he has. He respects businessmen. He’s told Daddy that many times. He admires the way Daddy has run his business. If he thinks we are just as shrewd and smart and capable as Daddy, he’ll make sure we get a good chunk of his change.”
“Is he really all that richer than we are?” Chelsea’s voice dropped into a whisper. “Does he really have that much more money than Daddy?”
“He makes Daddy look like a pauper,” Ryan assured her. “Think about what we could do with Uncle Howard’s money. We’d have access to everything and everyone.”
Chelsea laughed. “Still burning over the fact that Paris dumped you?”
Ryan’s lips tightened. “If we are Uncle Howard’s main heirs, we will have so much more money than the Hiltons.”
“Well,” Chelsea said, heading back toward her room, “I need to sleep off this hangover a little longer. When do you want to get on the road?”
“I have a few things to finish up at the office today, so let’s head out first thing tomorrow morning.” He was planning on a quick jaunt into Manhattan to issue instructions to his assistants and then to enjoy a late supper with one of his girls. Of course, he’d need to make sure it was the best restaurant and the prettiest girl he could find. If he was heading up to Maine tomorrow, it would be a while before he got back to civilization. “Be ready bright and early tomorrow,” Ryan called after his sister. “I mean it! Like eleven o’clock!” She groaned. “Okay, no later than noon!”
She shut her door without answering.
Ryan bolted down the stairs and into his father’s study. There were files in here on a couple of business deals he was working on. He’d bring them into the office and dump them in his assistant’s lap. He could do things like that. He was the boss. Or more accurately the boss’s son. Which was the same thing.
He was standing at his father’s desk, riffling though the pages of several spiral-bound files, when he heard the door behind him gently click shut.
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