The Fate of Mercy Alban

by Wendy Webb

  “You’re absolutely right.” Matthew smiled back at me. “So where are you going to begin looking?”

  “I really have no idea where it might be, but I’m thinking that my mother’s safety deposit box at the bank might be a good place to start.”

  Amity settled into the back of the sofa, pulled up her legs, and crossed her arms around her knees. Her eyes were narrowed.

  “What is it, honey?” I asked her.

  “There’s one big thing about all of this that I just don’t get,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “If Grandma was so much in love with David Coleville, why did she get married to someone else so soon after he died? You said it was just a few months after his death, right? That seems really weird to me.”

  As Amity’s words hung in the air, a cold wind wrapped itself around me. There could be only one reason for a rushed wedding so soon after a planned one had fallen apart because of a tragedy, and the look I exchanged with Matthew told me we both knew what it was.

  CHAPTER 16

  The math just didn’t add up, not by a long shot. I was my parents’ eldest child, and I was born years after their wedding day. There was no way I was David Coleville’s child.

  Still, my father’s last words to me were knocking at my brain as I quickly ticked off the months between my parents’ marriage and my birth. If I hadn’t been his child, it certainly would’ve explained why he was so utterly despondent that Jimmy and Jake had perished that day in the lake instead of me.

  I didn’t want to say any of this out loud, didn’t want to let on to Amity what I had been thinking. But I knew Matthew had been thinking the same thing, and I wanted him to know it wasn’t the case. I held his gaze and shook my head slightly, silently saying “No” in my own head, and by the way his features relaxed, I knew that he got the message.

  As it was, we were left with a snarl of questions and no definitive answers. I knew only one thing for sure. All of it, every last thread, was running through one terrible night here at Alban House more than fifty years ago.

  I took the last sip of my tea and placed my cup back on its saucer, wishing I could somehow time-travel back to a summer solstice party in 1956 to see for myself what really happened there.

  “Miss?” Jane’s voice broke my concentration. “The police have arrived and Mr. Jameson has taken them up to the master suite. I’ve told them what I know, and they’ll be wanting to talk with the three of you next.”

  Matthew, Amity, and I stood up, and I saw him stretch his arms above his head and yawn. I wasn’t the only one who was tired.

  “Every time you’re here, the police come.” I smiled at him. “Coincidence? I’m not so sure.”

  He chuckled and raised his eyebrows. “The sinister minister. It has a nice ring to it.”

  “You’re not going to want to visit me anymore,” I went on. “It gets a little tedious, crime after crime after crime.”

  “Ah, the monotony of constant danger and intrigue. You really should try to liven things up around here.”

  Despite our attempt to lighten the mood, a shroud of exhaustion was wrapping itself around me and pulling in tight. I had dealt with enough today—the last thing I wanted to do was to talk to the police yet again. What I wouldn’t give for a long, hot bath and a good book. But if we were ever going to get to the bottom of who was lurking within the walls of this house, I knew it had to be done.

  We briefed the police on the latest developments, and as they began another sweep of the passageways and the grounds, I walked Reverend Parker out.

  “Thank you for today,” I said as we neared the big double doors in the front of the house. “I appreciate everything you’ve done, truly.”

  He smiled and shook his head. “It’s what we clergy do. I know it’s not easy for you, Grace, especially not now with all of this going on.” He gestured toward the window, where we both could see three squad cars parked in the driveway.

  He grasped the doorknob but then hesitated a moment. “This is where you grew up, but you haven’t been back here in a couple of decades,” he said, his eyes reaching for mine. “I’m not sure how many people you know in town anymore. I guess what I’m trying to say is, anytime you’d like somebody to talk to, or even just take a walk with, please know you can call me.”

  I leaned against the doorframe and managed a smile. “Thanks. Maybe I will.”

  “I hope so,” he said, and walked out into the night, closing the door behind him.

  As I turned to climb the stairs, despite how tired I was, I found myself wishing he had stayed awhile.

  CHAPTER 17

  When I left the house for my appointment with our family’s lawyer the next morning, I found that the rain that had drenched the funeral had dissipated during the night, and it was a bright and blue day. The sun shone on my face as I made my way up the stairs to the old stone office building downtown, so I peeled off the cardigan I had thrown on over my cotton dress. I was grateful that our lawyer had made an exception for me and agreed to meet on a Saturday. I was eager to dispense with this formality—the reading of my mother’s will—and get on to the next phase of things.

  I sat across the enormous wooden desk from Bob Robinson, who had handled my family’s affairs for as long as I could remember.

  “The reception was nice,” he said as he assembled the paperwork. “Adele would’ve loved it.”

  “Thank you.” I nodded, twisting my cardigan in my lap. As he looked up at me over his bifocals, he held my gaze a bit longer than I would’ve liked, a stern expression on his face. I got the feeling he was getting ready to tell me something unexpected and strange, and it made my stomach do a quick flip.

  He cleared his throat. “First things first,” he began, handing me checks my mother had designated for Jane, Mr. Jameson, and Carter. Generous sums, as I knew she would give our family’s most trusted employees.

  “They could retire on this,” I said, flipping through them.

  He still held my gaze. “That’s up to you,” he said. “It depends on what you want to do with the house, of course. I know you’ve made your life out on the West Coast, but your mother has left you a suggestion that I think might change things in that regard.”

  I squinted at him. “What kind of suggestion?”

  He pushed a piece of paper across the desk toward me. It was written in my mother’s delicate handwriting.

  In conjunction with the university that is already conducting tours of Alban House, I propose, each summer, to turn the house and the grounds into a monthlong retreat for writers and artists who either:

  • Intend to write or are writing works of fiction of a gothic nature.

  • Intend to paint or sketch a series of landscapes and wish to use the Alban property as inspiration.

  The program, to be deemed the David Coleville Retreat, will house up to three artists and three writers during the month of June.

  The writers and artists will be expected to work full time on their projects, emerging at the end of the month with, if not finished work, then good, solid progress.

  The writers and artists in attendance will be chosen by a panel of writing and fine arts professors at the university, with the final decision being made by Grace Alban, who will also administer and host the program.

  I sat there staring at the page and the potentially new future it held for me. A purpose. Something to dedicate my life to, other than raising my child, who was already beginning to become more and more independent. In just a couple of years, she’d be in college, and then what would I do with myself? It seemed that my mother had provided an answer to that question.

  “I think it’s an excellent idea,” the lawyer said. “Your mother was a great patron of the arts, as you know, and this is a wonderful way to honor her. But it’s up to you. She spoke about this with me and was going to bring this up to you within the next year or so. Specifically, she didn’t want to force you into anything, so she didn’t tie your inherit
ance, which is the bulk of the estate, to this. Take some time, process the idea, and know that you can put it into motion anytime you wish.”

  I nodded, and a pang of melancholy went through me when I realized how much she must have loved the man to create a retreat in his honor.

  “For now,” he said, shuffling more papers on his desk, “we should finish the business at hand. I’ve got a noon tee time.”

  There were no more surprises in her will. A generous trust for Amity, which she could access only after she had finished college and embarked on a meaningful career of her own. Everything else went to me. So that was it, then.

  On the way home in the back of the car, something about this proposed retreat gnawed at me. If I was going to take on this project, dedicate my life to running a retreat in the name of this man, I really needed to know, more than ever before, how and why he died.

  After Carter dropped me off at the front of the house, I headed toward the kitchen to find Jane.

  Pushing open the door, I asked: “Do you have a minute?”

  She looked down at the vegetables she was chopping and looked back at me. “Of course,” she said, “but—”

  “You don’t need to stop what you’re doing,” I said quickly. “I just have a few questions about the night that David Coleville died.”

  She eyed me darkly. I could see full well that she wasn’t happy about this topic of conversation. But I leaned my elbows on the counter and continued. “It’s just—everything happening around here lately seems to be tied to that night, and I was hoping, since you were here, you could shed some light on it.”

  She wiped her hands on her apron. “Miss Grace, you’re searching for answers that don’t exist. It’s best you leave it be.”

  “But you were here,” I pressed on. “What is it that I don’t know?”

  She shook her head. “I wish I had the answers for you,” she said. “It’s true, I was here. But you have to understand, that night was your grandfather’s annual summer solstice party. This was the social event of the season. Hundreds of people were here. Politicians, artists, professors, dignitaries of all kinds. I was busy making sure the whole thing went off without a hitch.”

  I squinted at her. “So as far as you knew, nothing out of the ordinary was going on that night? Nothing to explain what happened?”

  “Aye. That’s what I’m telling you. The first I heard of it—his death, I mean—your father had already called the ambulance.”

  “My dad found him, then?”

  Jane shook her head. “The way it was told to me, your mother came upon his body in the garden. It was her screams that brought Johnny running. Always looking after her, he was. Ach, such a scene. I wasn’t sure she’d ever come out of the shock of it.”

  “And when did you realize Aunt Fate was missing?” I asked her.

  Jane thought for a moment. “Hours later. It was pandemonium—the ambulance arriving, guests leaving. Mr. Alban wanted everyone to leave immediately, and I was rushing to get their coats and hats.”

  That didn’t sound quite right to me. “But didn’t the police want to question everyone who was here?”

  “Child”—she smiled—“this was Alban House fifty years ago. Your grandfather and the chief of police … Let’s just say they had a rather special relationship.”

  I nodded. Of course they did. Just like my mother and Chief Bellamy.

  “Your grandfather called the police—actually made the call himself—and told them what had happened here,” she said, holding my gaze. “And that was all there was to it. There was no investigation.”

  “And when you realized Fate was missing …?”

  “Mr. Alban said he was handling it, that he had dispatched people to find her and we, the staff, were told not to worry about it. We did what we were told, Miss Grace.”

  “And that’s all you know?”

  Jane nodded. “That’s all I know, child. As I said, I was just a girl myself. If anyone in the household had known anything else, it would have been your grandfather’s man, Hamilton. He handled everything for Mr. Alban back in those days.”

  And he was long dead, I knew. I had never met the man.

  Changing the subject, Jane said: “The doctor from the hospital in Switzerland returned your call while you were out.”

  “On a Saturday?” I wondered if Swiss doctors kept different hours from their counterparts in the States.

  “He said he’ll call back,” Jane said. “He’s not going to be available tomorrow, so it’ll have to be Monday.”

  “Damn it!” I whispered under my breath. Another whole day would go by without my talking to him, and I needed information about my aunt’s condition, sooner rather than later. I was worried my aunt was supposed to be on medications that she wasn’t taking, and that her care was being compromised because of Harris Peters’s rash action of taking her out of the facility and bringing her here. I thought about Matthew’s suggestion that I sue him or make it a police matter—a kidnapping charge certainly wasn’t out of the realm of possibility—but my first action needed to be to secure her care. Then I’d deal with Harris.

  I made a mental note to wake up early Monday morning (or stay up very late) in order to call the doctor during his workday, some seven hours earlier than it was here in the Midwest.

  “How has Aunt Fate been doing today, Jane?” I asked. “I haven’t been to see her myself, I have to admit. I know I should just go and talk to her but I …” I didn’t quite know how to explain the fact that I’d been avoiding my aunt. Jane must’ve seen the guilt on my face because she did her best to absolve it.

  “With all that you’ve got on your shoulders right now, miss, you don’t also have to be dealing with a sick, old woman,” she said. “I am taking care of her. It’s my place, not yours. I’ve known her since she was a girl, remember, and I can deal with her care now until things get sorted out with her doctor. Miss Fate is tired and confused—the journey alone must’ve taken it out of her—and she needs her rest. When she’s back on her feet, then you can have a nice long chat with her.” Jane cast her gaze up to the ceiling. “I must confess that I’ve been keeping her suite locked on the third floor.”

  I bristled at the thought of it—it sounded rather Dickensian to me. I didn’t know if I liked the idea of keeping the woman locked up. “But—” I started to protest, but Jane cut me off.

  “It’s for her own safety,” she said, straightening her apron. “I can’t be watching her all the time, not with everything I have to do. Until we get a care nurse for her full time, or whatever we do with her, she needs to be where she’s safe. I don’t want her wandering outside and getting lost or hurting herself on the stairs.”

  She took a deep breath in and let it out. “Not that there’s much chance of that,” she continued. “Miss Fate seems more than content to stay in her childhood rooms on the third floor. She looks out the window, reads some of her old books, and even watches a little television. It’s where she’s always felt the most safe, so it is.”

  “Still, I don’t relish the idea of keeping her locked up,” I said. “Use your discretion, Jane, but maybe we could just lock the doors at night?”

  My head began to pound at the weight of everything I was dealing with.

  “Do you ever wish for the bliss of being bored with nothing to do?” I managed a weak smile and ran a hand through my hair. “I’m not sure I even remember that feeling.”

  “Aye.” Jane nodded. “That’s what it is to be the head of Alban House. Always has been.”

  I supposed she was right.

  “Your mother took things one at a time,” Jane went on. “Got one crisis off her plate, then on to the next. It’s the only way.”

  I smiled at her. “Good advice.”

  As I made my way up the steps to the second floor, I looked around and thought of the proposed retreat that I very well could be running here the following year. I imagined artists painting outside in the garden and writers with their heads ben
t over their manuscripts … just as my mother and Coleville had done all those years ago. And then it hit me—she not only wanted to honor the man, she wanted to re-create what they did here together, making the house a sort of shrine to their relationship. How she must have loved him.

  My heart began to ache for her, for what she lost that night at a summer party fifty years earlier.

  “What happened that night, Mom?” I said aloud. “If the Albans killed the man you loved, how in the world did you end up here, with them?”

  With Jane being a stone wall, I realized that if I wanted more information about what had happened, there was only one place I was going to find it: Coleville’s lost manuscript. It wouldn’t tell me about the night he died, obviously, but it would provide the background for his death and, if it was as inflammatory toward my family as he said it was, perhaps even the reason for it. It also wouldn’t tell me how and why my mother had married my dad, but at least it was a start.

  My mother had kept his letters. I couldn’t imagine her not keeping the manuscript, too. It had to be here in the house.

  But where?

  I opened the door to her bedroom and put the packet of papers from the lawyer’s office into her desk. Then I began rummaging around—the desk, the nightstand, the armoire. I scoured her bookshelf, riffled through the closet, and peered under the bed. I opened her wall safe. Nothing. And then I remembered there was another wall safe downstairs in the library.

  My mind flipped back into the past as I hurried down the stairs, and I gave a small, internal cheer when it hit on the crucial bit of information I was trying to remember: the combination. My mother had changed it years before to my brothers’ birthday—01-27-19-73—and had told me about it at the time.