by Wendy Webb
“I think we both know who was creeping around in those passageways scaring the life out of Coleville,” I said.
He leaned forward in his chair. “If Mercy had developed some sort of mental illness because of her ordeal in the crypt, maybe she was kept away from visitors. Her parents simply didn’t introduce her to Coleville. It’s a big enough house to have pulled that off.”
“It’s exactly the type of thing my family would do, keep a sick relative hidden away. Very Secret Garden.”
“And let’s say Mercy didn’t much like that, being away from all the fun,” Matthew went on. “What would she do?”
My eyes opened wide. “She’d do what my brothers and I would do when we didn’t want to stay in our rooms … but also didn’t want our parents to know we were watching them.”
We sat in silence for a moment. We might never know what really happened all those years ago, but this explanation was sounding more and more plausible to me. But then another thought floated through my mind.
“You know,” I began, “something else is bothering me. We suspected that my family was upset about what Coleville wrote and killed him because of it. But this isn’t some sort of exposé of my family’s dirty laundry. This is just an old-fashioned, gothic ghost story. Who would be upset enough about that to kill him because of it?”
Matthew leaned back and crossed his legs. “What if it wasn’t the manuscript that got Coleville killed?”
And there and then, the explanation for Coleville’s ill-timed death seemed to simply lay itself out before me. “In Coleville’s story, he found on his writing pad: ‘The girl in white loves you,’ ” I said. “What if that really happened? What if Mercy, creeping around in the passageways spying on him, really did fall in love with him?”
Matthew picked up my train of thought. “And what if she found out he was coming back the next summer to marry Lily—er, your mother?”
“People have killed for a lot less,” I said, the certainty of it wrapping itself around me. “If she killed Coleville, that would explain why my grandfather put her in Mercy House. Mystery solved! I’ll bet you anything that’s what happened.”
But Matthew began shaking his head. “Nope,” he said. “It still doesn’t explain what happened to Fate. I’m wondering—”
The crackling of the intercom interrupted his thought.
“Miss Grace, are you up there?” It was a man’s voice.
I crossed the room and pushed the button on the desk. “I’m here. Who’s this?”
“It’s Carter, miss,” he said, his voice harsh and full. “You need to get down here to the main floor immediately. I’ve rung the police and the ambulance, but—”
“Ambulance? Police?”
“It’s Jane, miss. She’s been hurt. We’re in the kitchen.”
CHAPTER 31
Matthew and I flew out of the study and raced down the hallway, taking two stairs at a time on the way down. We reached the main floor just as the ambulance was pulling into the driveway, lights blazing, and I gave a quick thanks for living in a small town where ambulance response times can typically be counted in the seconds.
I burst through the kitchen door to find Carter standing against the wall of cabinets, his face ashen, and Mr. Jameson crouched over Jane, who was lying on the floor, a small pool of blood from her midsection seeping into the tile.
“You’re going to be just fine, dear,” her husband was whispering to her, his voice shredded to bits. “You rest now. You’re going to be just fine.”
My hands flew to my mouth. “What happened?” But even as I croaked out the words, a feeling was creeping its way up my spine. I exchanged glances with Matthew and could tell that he was thinking the same thing I was.
Mr. Jameson didn’t seem to hear me or register that I was there. Carter met my gaze and shook his head. Just then, the ambulance drivers were rapping on the kitchen door.
“We found her like this, just a few moments ago,” Carter told them after opening the door and standing to the side so they could rush in with their stretcher. “I had been waiting to take her into town. Mr. Jameson was with me in the carriage house playing cards. When she didn’t come—”
“We thought you all were in town when we got here,” I said, glancing at Matthew. “The house was so quiet.”
“How long ago was that?” one of the ambulance drivers asked as they worked to get Jane on a stretcher.
I searched Matthew’s eyes. “A half hour? Maybe a little more.”
I hurried to Jane’s side and grasped her hand, which was limp but still warm. “Jane,” I said to her. “Jane, what happened? Who did this to you?” But she didn’t even open her eyes. And then the ambulance drivers were ready to take her away. “I love you, Jane,” I choked out. She didn’t respond, but I felt her, ever so slightly, squeeze my hand.
“St. Mark’s?” I said to the driver, who nodded as they were wheeling Jane out the door, Mr. Jameson following close behind.
“I’ll get the car,” Carter said, his voice wavering.
“No,” I said to him over my shoulder as I locked the kitchen door. “This time, we’ll drive you.”
The ER waiting room was full of people, some slumped in their chairs, others staring out into space, and still others pacing back and forth.
“J-a-m-e-s-o-n,” I said to the woman behind the reception desk. “She was just brought in, for goodness’ sake.”
“Are you family?” she asked, snapping her gum and barely looking up from her computer screen.
“Yes,” I said to her louder than I had intended. “Where is she? How is she?”
“I’ll find out,” she said, rising from her chair a little more slowly than I would have liked and disappearing through an automatic door that led, I assumed, to the emergency room.
Several minutes later, she reappeared. “She’s in surgery,” she informed us as Carter blew his nose loudly into his handkerchief. “I’ll take you to a family room, where you can wait for the doctor to come and talk to you.”
Carter, Matthew, and I followed her to a small room where Mr. Jameson was slumped in a chair.
I didn’t even have to ask the question. “Collapsed lung,” he said, shaking his head. “Multiple stab wounds.”
I held my breath, not wanting to hear more.
“The doctor said she’s lucky,” Mr. Jameson went on. “He said it could have been much worse. He’ll know more when she’s out of surgery, of course.”
I sank into the chair beside him and squeezed his hand. “Jane’s one tough gal. If anyone could get through this, it’s her.”
He let out a deep sigh and pushed himself to his feet. “I can’t just sit in this blasted room. Does anyone want coffee?”
I glanced at Carter, who was staring off into space, his lips moving slightly, seemingly having a conversation that none of us could hear.
“I think we could all use some coffee,” I said, fishing a few bills out of my purse and handing them to him. “Do you want me to go with you?”
Mr. Jameson shook his head, his eyes brimming with tears. “I’ll get it. I need a walk on my own.”
When he had gone, Matthew sank down onto the sofa, where I joined him. But I couldn’t take my eyes off Carter. He seemed elsewhere, as though his present was hazy and unfocused, and he was instead immersed in the past.
“What happened, Carter?” I asked him, trying to prod him out of his funk. “When we got home, we assumed you all were out at the pharmacy because the house was so quiet. Jane was going to pick up the prescriptions Mercy’s doctor—”
Carter snapped his head in my direction. “What did you just say?”
Obviously, he hadn’t been told the identity of our houseguest. “Mercy, Carter,” I said with as much gentleness in my voice as I could muster. “I talked to her doctor in Switzerland early this morning.” It seemed like a lifetime ago. “We all thought the woman who showed up at my mother’s funeral was my aunt Fate, but the doctor let me know she’s really Mercy.�
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Carter put his face in his hands and leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. “Oh, dear God, no,” he murmured. “No.”
“Carter?” I said, a chill running through me.
He lifted his head from his hands to look at me. “You don’t know,” he said. “You don’t understand.”
“I think I’m beginning to,” I said, “but you’re right, I really don’t quite understand. Can you tell me—”
“We all thought she was gone,” he said, shaking his head. I wasn’t quite sure he had heard me. “We thought she was back with whatever had made her. I put her in the crypt myself.”
“I know,” I said to him. “Jane told me she was ill when she was a little girl, but—”
“For fifty years we thought we were safe. Jane, Thomas, your mother, God rest her soul, and I.”
“Carter—” I tried again, but he seemed to be caught once again in the web of his own thoughts. He turned his gaze back to a spot on the wall opposite us, but I knew he was looking at something else, something I couldn’t see.
“I think Carter is in shock,” I said, my voice low. “Will you get a nurse? I think he needs something. A sedative, maybe?”
Matthew nodded and slipped from the sofa and out of the room. A few minutes later, he returned with a nurse in tow.
“Mr. Carter?” she tried. “Mr. Carter? Are you all right?”
But Carter just shook his head. “She cannot stay at Alban House, not another day.”
The nurse nodded at Matthew and me. “Please come with me, Mr. Carter,” she said, gently taking his arm. And then to me, over her shoulder, “We’ll take his vitals and give him something.”
Carter looked back at me, his eyes seeming very far away. “We’ll be here waiting for you,” I said to him, squeezing his hand. “We’ll be right here.”
I slumped back onto the couch next to Matthew. “I really don’t know how I could have possibly handled this—any of this—without you.”
“I think you would’ve handled things just fine, with or without me. But I’m glad it was with me.”
I sighed. “You don’t think there’s any doubt that Mercy did this, do you?”
“I’m afraid not, Grace,” Matthew said. “Who else? Maybe Jane told her that the nurse from the hospital in Switzerland was coming to get her. Maybe that’s what set her off.”
My daughter’s face floated through my mind just then, and an ache reverberated through my core. “Do you think I should call Amity and let her know what’s going on?”
Matthew shook his head. “She’s safe at Heather’s, right?”
“For the night, yes.”
“And there’s no reason they might head back to Alban House?”
I had given Amity strict orders to stay away from the house. I didn’t believe she would go against my wishes on this. “None that I can think of.”
“Then I wouldn’t call her, not until we know what’s going on with Jane,” he said, leaning back and resting his head on the sofa. “When you have something to tell her, some news that presumably Jane’s going to be okay, then you can call.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but I didn’t have a chance because Chief Bellamy poked his head through the door of our waiting room, rapping slightly as he did. He held four paper cups in a cardboard tray.
Mr. Jameson followed him into the room and slumped back down into his chair as the chief handed the cups all around. “I understand Jane’s in surgery, the victim of a stabbing,” he said.
“That’s right,” I said, sitting up a little straighter and taking a sip of the coffee. It was bitter and harsh.
“Start from the top,” the chief said, taking a seat and turning to Mr. Jameson.
“I was in the carriage house with Carter,” he began, his voice wavering. “We were playing cards. Jane had let him know she was going out, and there we were, waiting for her. She didn’t come and she didn’t come, so I called up to the house. When she didn’t answer …” He sighed. “If only I had been in the kitchen with her.”
“Then what happened?” the chief prodded.
“It’s not like Jane to keep us waiting so long without a word, and it’s certainly not like her to not answer when I call,” her husband went on, a mix of guilt and shame radiating from his face. “Carter and I rushed up to the house, thinking something must be wrong. We found her in the kitchen.” His eyes were brimming with tears. “Carter called 911 and then called Miss Alban.”
“And where were you, Grace?” the chief said, turning to me.
“Matthew and I had met for breakfast at the Breakwater, and when we got back to the house—” I turned to Matthew. “What time was it? Around ten thirty? Eleven?” He nodded. “We thought the house was empty. Jane was supposed to be going to the pharmacy, so I assumed that’s what she was doing when she didn’t come to greet me.”
“She usually did that?”
“Yes,” I said, my voice cracking. “Every time I’ve walked through the door at Alban House, Jane has been there to welcome me home.”
Mr. Jameson blew his nose and coughed into his handkerchief.
“But not today,” I went on. “That’s why we thought she was out. We were in my study when Carter called us to come down to the kitchen, and that’s where we saw Jane.”
Chief Bellamy held up one palm. “Let’s back up just a minute,” he said. “You’ve had a police presence at the house since you called about the break-in several days ago. Do you believe this is related to that break-in?”
Matthew and I exchanged a look. I wasn’t sure what I believed. “Chief,” I said finally, “there’s a lot you don’t know.”
He leaned back in his chair and crossed one leg over the other. “I’ve got nothing but time, Grace. Start from the beginning.”
And so I told him about Harris Peters showing up on the day of my mother’s funeral in an effort to dig up dirt about my family for the exposé he was writing.
“He’s the journalist who was supposed to meet with my mother the day she died,” I said. “You had already left the reception, but two of your men were there. I think your guys questioned him after the second break-in, the day of the funeral when we found our rooms had been rifled through.”
And then I told him about my aunt, whom Peters had found in Switzerland, and how he brought her to the house after my mother’s funeral.
“Let me stop you for a second, Grace,” Chief Bellamy said, his intense eyes boring into mine. “As far as I know, and I’ve known your mother for thirty years, you don’t have an aunt on either side of the family. Can you connect the dots for me?”
I took a deep breath in. “There is a lot of backstory here, but suffice it to say that she basically disappeared fifty years ago, hadn’t been heard from since, and the entire family thought she was dead.”
Chief Bellamy blinked several times. “Oh, that aunt? Alive? I remember the story about her. Wasn’t Fate her name? ”
“Yes, but it’s a little more complicated than that, I’m afraid. We initially thought she was Fate Alban, but as it turns out, she is Fate’s twin sister, Mercy, who, as far as anyone in the family knew, had died when she was a child. You might imagine it was quite a shock to learn she was alive and kicking.”
“On the day of your mother’s funeral, no less,” the chief said.
“Exactly,” I went on. “But that shock wasn’t anything compared to the one when I found out where she had been for the past half century. I talked to her doctor this morning.”
I paused for a moment before continuing. I knew if I went on, I’d be opening a can of worms that I could never close. But I felt I had no choice. “She’d been in Switzerland, in a hospital for the criminally insane that my grandfather basically built for her.”
“Dear God,” he said, shaking his head.
“And there’s more,” I said, sensing a floodgate somewhere inside of me had been opened. The information kept pouring out; I was powerless to stop it. “She’s supposed to be on medicati
on, antipsychotics or something, and the doctor has been quite worried about her since she turned up missing. That’s why Jane was headed to the pharmacy today, to pick up those medications. She was taking my aunt with her because she didn’t want to leave her alone in the house.”
“So you’ve got someone who has been in a lockup for the criminally insane for fifty years. She’s here now and off her medications. And you believe she might be the one who did this to Mrs. Jameson. Is that what you’re telling me, Grace?”
“That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”
The chief stood up, fished his cell phone out of his pocket, and dialed. “There’s an older lady who has been staying at Alban House. An Alban relative, yes. She’s probably about”—he shot me a look—“seventy?” I nodded. “Have you seen anyone like that at the house? Well, find her, Johnson. She is psychotic and off her medication, and—have you found the weapon? In that case, she might still have it with her. I know she’s seventy but you’re to consider her armed and dangerous. I want the house searched from top to bottom, and I want her taken into custody.”
He hung up. “Grace, you need to know that the house is now a crime scene. Until my people finish up there, I’m going to have to ask that you stay away.”
“Understood.” I nodded. From years of watching police dramas on television, I had expected as much. “For how long?”
“They’ll be gathering evidence, fingerprinting, that sort of thing. It could take from a few hours to overnight.”
I certainly could go to a hotel for the night, but looking down at my jeans and flats, I realized I had no pajamas, no change of clothes. And then the image of the manuscript, sitting on an ottoman in the study, flashed into my mind. With it, an icy tendril of dread overcame me. The precious manuscript was so exposed, so vulnerable. Why hadn’t I remembered to lock it up?
“Can I go into the house to get some things?” I tried. “I don’t have so much as a toothbrush with me.”
The chief looked at me long and hard. “No, Grace. Let us do our work. I’m sure you can find what you need at the drugstore.”