The Fate of Mercy Alban

by Wendy Webb

  She shook her head. “Grace? I don’t understand.” She put one age-spotted hand, rings on every finger, up to my face and stroked my cheek. “Why are you acting like this? Whatever is the matter with you, my darling Adele? And where’s my mother? I can’t imagine where my mother has gone.”

  I grasped for Matthew’s eyes with mine, silently pleading for help.

  He understood immediately. “It’s been a long day and you must be very tired, Miss Alban,” Matthew said to her.

  She smiled up at him, and as she did so, the years seemed to disappear from her face. Beneath all that garish makeup, I could see the beauty she had once been.

  “During Daddy’s summer solstice parties, we girls always take naps in the afternoons,” she said, turning in a slow circle to address all of us. “That way, we’re fresh for the nighttime activities. We’ll have a bonfire! Down by the lakeshore. And we’ll dance and dance and dance to the ancient songs. Mama likes that, don’t you know. I’m quite light on my feet, that’s what they say. All the fellows want to dance with me.” She had turned full circle and held out her hands toward Matthew. “I’ll save you a dance if you’re lucky.”

  As she was speaking, a shroud of chill wrapped itself around me. It was clear—this woman was time traveling, perhaps even back to the party, fifty years earlier, when David Coleville took his own life. To the night she herself disappeared. I wondered if she had ever left that night or whether she was stuck there, reliving whatever happened to her, year after year after year.

  Jane must’ve realized the same thing because she sprung into action, hooking an arm around Fate’s waist and leading her away. “You’re right, it’s time for your nap now, Miss Fate,” she said. “You want to be fresh for dinner and the evening’s festivities. Your mother and the rest of the girls are already sleeping. I’ll make up the chaise in the library for you. That’s where you like to rest. Come on now.”

  Fate sighed and rolled her eyes dramatically for the benefit of all of us. “All right, Jane. If you say so.” And she waved at us over her shoulder as she let Jane lead her out of the room. What a character she must’ve been in her youth, I thought.

  When they had gone, I whirled around to face Harris Peters, the grief I had been keeping at bay for the past several days finally and completely catching fire.

  “What is the meaning of this?” I demanded, my voice louder than I had intended, gesturing my arm toward the room where Jane had led my newly found aunt. “You burst in here on the day of my mother’s funeral using a poor, confused old woman as a prop? I don’t know what you think you’re doing or what you’re trying to accomplish with this stunt, but you’re not making any friends here. Today of all days!” I stomped toward the window determined to hold back the tears that were threatening to erupt. “What kind of person are you?”

  He just stood there, cool and collected. “I should be asking you that question,” he said. “You’re the head of a family that kept this ‘poor woman,’ as you called her, a prisoner in an institution for fifty years.”

  “That’s not true,” I spat back. “We had no idea where my aunt was. Nobody knew what had happened to her. She disappeared from this house fifty years ago. We all thought she was dead.”

  But even as I said the words, they rang hollow in my ears. Hadn’t I been wondering, just the other day, about her disappearance and whether my grandparents had launched a search for her? The old family story just hadn’t seemed right to me, it never had. This, at least, explained where she had been all this time.

  Harris walked over to the sideboard and poured himself a drink. “You Albans might have controlled the press and the police generations ago, but not anymore. I knew something didn’t add up about her disappearance. I knew she was out there somewhere, and I just couldn’t stop wondering about it. Why send her away and cover it up?” He took a sip and continued. “I’ve spent years trying to find out what really happened.”

  He reached into his pocket, fished out a folded sheet of paper, and handed it to me.

  “What’s this?” I asked, but as I looked at it, I answered my own question. My college French told me it was the address of a hospital in Switzerland.

  “Go ahead, call them,” he went on. “You’ll be told that Miss Alban has been living there since 1956. When I started this investigation, I figured she was in hiding somewhere. A plush villa in Italy. An estate in Ireland. After years of turning up nothing, I finally got the idea to check the best mental institutions worldwide. I don’t know what made me think of that. Just a sixth sense, I guess.”

  While he was talking, my mind was racing in different directions at once. On the one hand, I should’ve been thanking this man for finding my long-lost aunt and bringing her home. I had no idea why she was institutionalized, but even if she needed around-the-clock care, we could certainly afford to hire a live-in nurse for her so she could stay at Alban House or, barring that, place her in the best care facility in town. But his demeanor made it impossible to be grateful. He stood there so proudly, so defiantly, as though he had unearthed a dirty family secret that we had intentionally kept hidden. I had no doubt that was the slant his book was going to take and I wanted to squash it here and now.

  “She was in a mental institution and my family didn’t feel the need to tell the world about it,” I said, trying to steady my voice. “So what? Back in those days, mental illness was covered up. There’s no bombshell here.”

  “Are you kidding?” Harris laughed at me. “I’ve solved the mystery of the Alban daughter who vanished the night of David Coleville’s suicide! It’s like finding the Lindbergh baby. Only her disappearance wasn’t at the hands of a servant wanting ransom, it was the work of the family itself. Again, Grace, you have to ask yourself: Why?”

  “You have no idea how or why she ended up in that institution, only that she was there,” I said slowly, choosing my words carefully. “She might have run away from this house on her own. Others have. She certainly had the means.”

  “Do you really think I haven’t asked her about it?” Harris chuckled. “What do you think we chatted about during that long plane ride across the Atlantic? And boy, does she like to talk.”

  “You went over there to get her,” I said.

  “I did indeed. Apparently her father had an entire wing at the hospital built just for her. It really is quite beautiful. That’s how I found her, you see. One of my sources told me about how this hospital in Switzerland was a replica of a famous mansion in the United States, and it got me thinking. I pushed further, paid off a few people, and found her. And my source was right. It’s a dead ringer for this place.”

  He took another sip of his drink and then continued. “She’s all the way across the ocean imprisoned in a psychiatric hospital, and it’s like she never left home. Maybe that’s why she remembers the past so well. Especially when it comes to your mother. She’s quite fixated on her.”

  I could feel the hair on the back of my neck bristle. I didn’t know what he was implying, but I didn’t like his tone.

  “Of course she remembers her.” I shrugged. “My mother was Fate’s best friend when they were growing up. Again, that’s some ‘bombshell’ you’ve got there, Harris.”

  But even as I said it, I realized I was feeling my way blind. I was trying to downplay an event in my family history that I knew nothing about. But then a thought occurred to me and I ran with it.

  “If she told you so much, why are you here?” I asked him. “Why aren’t you holed up someplace writing that book of yours or trying to convince a literary agent that it’s worth publishing? I’ll answer my own questions, Harris. It’s because she hasn’t told you anything you can use, or enough, at any rate. And you’re here to get me to fill in the blanks for you. Isn’t that right?”

  He swirled the scotch in his glass. “I’m here because after learning what I did from your aunt, I wanted to talk to your mother—”

  “You’re a bit late for that, I’m afraid,” I interrupted him, my vo
ice disintegrating into a rasp.

  “I realize that. Just before I was to meet your mother, your housekeeper called to tell me she had passed away. It was quite a shock.”

  “I’ll bet it was,” I spat back at him. “Imagine, spending all those years solving the mystery of the vanished Alban girl, only to lose the last remaining eyewitness just minutes before she might have told you all you needed to know. And now here you are, with a crazy old lady on your hands, and nobody to make sense of what she’s saying.”

  “As I said, that’s why I’m here.”

  “Now you’re the one who’s not making sense,” I said. “Knowing my mother had passed away, why didn’t you just get in touch with me? I’ve been here for more than a week. Why pull this stunt now, showing up like this at her funeral?”

  “I tried to contact you,” he told me. “Your housekeeper wouldn’t put me through. I came in person; your police guards did their job. Talk about a stone wall. But I kept trying because, after all, I had your aunt and I needed to bring her here, whether you were going to talk to me or not.”

  I had heard enough. “Well, you’ve done that. Now it’s time for you to leave.” I shot a look at the officers, who were at his side in an instant.

  “But we still have so much to say to each other,” he said.

  I crossed my arms in front of my chest. “I don’t think so.”

  As the police escorted him to the door, he turned. “You need to know that this book is going to come out whether you talk to me or not. I had my tape recorder turned on during the entire flight and your aunt talked of nothing but the past. I don’t have to write the book so much as transcribe it. And I promise you, Grace, much of what she said is going to rock the literary world. Scholars have been speculating for fifty years about the night Coleville killed himself. Now they’ll have a firsthand account.”

  “And I promise you, Harris, if you slander my family in any way, you will know what it feels like to be on the wrong side of one of the most powerful families in this country.”

  “I’d think twice about making threats in public if I were you, Grace.” He smiled.

  “Think about this, Harris: You set one foot back on this property or try to contact me and I’ll be delighted to have you arrested.”

  “Arrested?” He laughed. “On what charge?”

  “I’m an Alban.” I walked up to him, locked my eyes with his, and lowered my voice to a hiss, feeling the presence of my mother, father, and brothers behind me and invoking the spirits of that very house as I spoke. “If you know anything about my family, you know there doesn’t need to be a charge.”

  I turned to the officers. “Gentlemen, please escort Mr. Peters from this property. Far from it.”

  As they led Harris Peters out of Alban House, I hurried to the window to see them put him into the back of their squad car. He saw me and waved, the cocky bastard. I watched as they pulled out of the drive, satisfied that he was really gone.

  I turned around to find Matthew and Amity staring at me, openmouthed. “Anyone else thirsty?” I asked, making my way over to the sideboard and pouring myself a large glass of wine.

  “I’ll have one,” Matthew said, grinning at me. “Whoa. I knew you were a strong lady, Grace. But I didn’t know how strong.”

  I handed Matthew a glass and we stood in silence for a moment, my heart pounding so hard that I was sure the others could hear it. And then Amity said something that made it nearly stop. “Mom,” she began. “Do you think he was the one in the false basement?”

  This hadn’t occurred to me, but it made perfect sense. “Aunt Fate could’ve told him all about the secret passageways when they were on the airplane coming from Switzerland! What a great way for him to dig up information from a family that he knew wouldn’t talk to him.”

  “Unbelievable,” Matthew murmured, staring down into his glass. Then he looked up at me, his brows furrowed. “You know, you threatened to have him arrested, but I wonder—do you think you could file kidnapping charges against him? He did walk out of a hospital with a patient.”

  That hadn’t occurred to me, either, but it, too, made perfect sense. “I’ll check into it. And I’m going to have the police put a trace on him, to make sure he doesn’t worm his way back into the tunnels.”

  I crossed the room and sank into one of the armchairs by the fireplace, weighed down by what I had just learned. Fate Alban, suddenly alive, and sleeping on the chaise in the library.

  My aunt had been, apparently, institutionalized since the night of David Coleville’s suicide. I didn’t want to admit it, to myself or to anyone else in the room, but a deep sense of dread was wrapping around me. I knew Harris Peters was right, that my grandfather, most likely, had put Fate away and covered it up, not even telling the family where she was. But why? Was whatever happened here that night horrible enough to drive her insane?

  “Grace,” Matthew began, his words pulling me back into the room. “How, do you think, did Peters get your aunt out of the hospital? I mean, you can’t just waltz out of a locked ward with a longtime patient. If she suddenly turned up missing, why wouldn’t the doctors there have called you?”

  “They did.” It was Jane, leaning against the doorframe.

  CHAPTER 14

  Nobody said anything as Jane slowly entered the room, exhaled, and sank into a chair. She fished a tissue out of her sleeve and dabbed at her brow.

  “You knew about this?” I asked her finally.

  She shook her head. “No. But I did take a call. The day before your mother died.”

  I exchanged glances with Matthew and then rose from my own seat and pulled up a chair next to her. “Go on, Jane. What did they say?”

  “There was a call from a hospital in Switzerland,” she confirmed. “I couldn’t make heads nor tails of what they were saying at first, but finally it became clear that they were talking about a Miss Alban, that she had gone missing from their facility. I nearly had a heart attack myself when I realized what it all meant.”

  “Did you know she had been living there all this time?” I asked. “What I’d always been told—”

  “No!” Jane shook her head violently. “You were told the truth, as we all knew it. Miss Fate disappeared from Alban House that night. We in the household were asked never to speak of it again, that Mr. Alban’s grief at losing his daughter was too great. We did as we were told!”

  By this time, Mr. Jameson had crept into the room and was standing at his wife’s side, patting her shoulder and cooing comforting words, his voice nearly a whisper.

  Her expression, the look in her eyes, was wrapped in guilt and shame. I got the impression that she was feeling somehow responsible for this situation, that she had let the household and, worse, my mother down. For Jane, there could be no greater failing.

  “Of course, Jane,” I said, smiling slightly and patting her hand. “Of course you’d do what my grandfather asked. You didn’t do anything wrong. Let’s just back up for a second. What did they say on the phone, the people from the hospital?”

  She cleared her throat. “They were calling to report that Miss Alban had gone missing from their facility,” she repeated, her face ashen.

  “And that’s all?” I asked. “Nothing about how long she had been there or why she was there in the first place or how—”

  Jane let out another long sigh and twisted the apron in her lap. “I know I should’ve asked all those questions, Miss Grace, but I was so stunned—struck down, almost—when I realized what they were saying. Miss Fate, alive! I didn’t think to ask anything else.”

  I could understand that. “You said the call came just before my mother passed away. Did you tell her about the call?”

  Jane held my gaze for a long time, and in her reddened, pained eyes, I saw the answer. She shook her head just the slightest bit before confirming what I knew. “I did not,” she whispered, her voice breaking apart like shattered glass.

  I wasn’t sure what to say to Jane—I didn’t know if telli
ng my mother would have been the right thing to do or not—but I didn’t have to respond, because Jane went on.

  “Your mother hadn’t been feeling well off and on for a couple of weeks,” she explained. “It was one of those spring colds she always used to get. The horrible coughing. She was on the mend and just starting to get her strength back when the call came in. I wasn’t quite sure what to do. I talked to Mr. Jameson about it and we decided to wait a few days to tell her, until she was feeling strong and well and more of herself.”

  “Aye,” Jane’s husband piped up, nodding his head. “We didn’t want to give the lady too much of a start, not until she was up to it. We were”—his voice broke—“worried about her heart.”

  “But the journalist,” I said. “When he called, didn’t you think—”

  “That we did,” Jane confirmed. “He had been calling for weeks. When I took the call from the hospital, I put two and two together. I suspected he had been the one who had found Miss Fate. Too much of a coincidence, it was. I don’t believe in coincidences.”

  Jane dabbed at her nose with the tissue. “Because your mother agreed to talk to him—it surprised me, sure it did—I was planning to tell her about it before he got here. When she came in from her walk. I thought that, if she was feeling up to going outside, well, she could handle the news that Miss Fate was alive and that I suspected this journalist was the one who had found her. And maybe it would convince her not to talk to him. That’s what I was hoping. Never in the world did I think he would bring her here. Like this. Today of all days.”

  I took Jane’s hands in mine. It was time to come clean, for both of us. High time. “I want to hear exactly what you know about that night, Jane. The night David Coleville killed himself here at Alban House. And I have something to tell you in return. I found some letters—”

  But I didn’t get a chance to tell her about the letters, and she didn’t get the chance to tell me what she knew about that night, not just then. Before either of us could get any more words out, I heard my daughter’s voice, distant and small, hesitant at first. “Mom?” And then more urgent. “Mom!”