“Stephanie Bell?” he asked.
“Stevie,” she corrected him.
“I’m Mark Parsons,” he said. “Head of grounds. You got Minerva. Nice house.”
Stevie’s things and the Bells themselves were loaded into the cart. Germaine and her family were put in another and sent off in the opposite direction.
“Everyone wants Minerva,” Mark added when they were out of earshot. “It’s the best house.”
The property was full of smooth, twisting stone paths between copses of trees. They rode along under the heavy shade, and Stevie and her parents were cowed into impressed silence by the school buildings. There were some large, grand ones of stone and red brick, with Gothic arches connecting them and tiny turrets softening their corners. Some were bare and grand, while others were wrapped so tightly in ivy it looked like they were being presented as gifts to some forest god. This wasn’t her local high school. This was clearly a Seat of Learning.
There were Greek and Roman statues of cold, white stone behind the trees, standing alone in the clearings.
“Someone’s been to the garden center,” her dad said.
“Oh, no,” Mark replied, steering the cart past a chorus of heads, their eyes blank and empty but their expressions determined, looking very much like some committee in the middle of an important decision. “These are all the real thing. A fortune’s worth of statues out in the open.”
There were, to be fair, maybe too many statues. Someone should have had a talk with Albert Ellingham and told him to maybe relax with the statue buying. But if you’re rich enough and famous enough, Stevie figured, you can do pretty much anything you want with your mountaintop lair.
The golf cart stopped in front of a low, dignified house built in alternating red and gold brick. It seemed to be in several parts—there was a large section on the right that looked like a normal house, then a long extension off to the side that ended in a turret. The entire structure was covered in a coat of Virginia creeper that obscured the bas-relief faces that peered from the roofline and from above the windows. The door was bright blue and hanging open, letting in the breeze and the flies.
Stevie and her parents stepped into what appeared to be some kind of common room, with a stone floor and a wide fireplace surrounded by rocking chairs. The room was cool and shaded and still smelled of wood and past fires. It was decorated in a slightly claustrophobic red flocked wallpaper and a mounted moose head that wore a crown of decorative lights. There was a hammock chair hanging by the fire, lots of floor cushions, a beat-up but exceedingly comfortable-looking purple sofa, and a massive farm table that took up most of the room. On the farm table was a tackle box and some small items that looked like craft supplies—beads, or the many mysterious things involved in the scrapbooking process. Right by the door, eight large pegs protruded from the wall. These were maybe nine or ten inches long—far too large for coats. Stevie touched one with the tip of her finger as a physical manifestation of the question: What are you?
“Hello!”
Stevie turned to see a woman coming out of the small kitchen area with a mug of coffee. She had a shaved head with just the smallest amount of peach fuzz and a petite but deeply muscled and tanned frame. Her arms were elegantly tattooed in sleeves of flowers. She was dressed in a loose T-shirt that read I DIG DIGS and cargo shorts, which showed off a pair of strong, hairy legs.
“Stephanie?” the woman asked.
“Stevie,” she corrected again.
“Dr. Nell Pixwell,” the woman said, extending a hand to each member of the family. “Call me Pix. I’m the Minerva faculty housemaster.”
Stevie chanced a better look at the tiny objects by the tackle box. On closer examination, Stevie realized that these weren’t crafting supplies—they were teeth. Lots and lots of loose teeth. Here. On the table. Whether they were real or fake, Stevie didn’t know, and she wasn’t sure it mattered. A table full of teeth is a table full of teeth.
“Did you have a good drive?” Pix asked, quickly sorting the remaining teeth into compartments.
(Plink, said a tooth, hitting the plastic. Plink.)
“Sorry, I was just sorting a few things out. You’re definitely the earliest . . .”
(Plink, said a molar.)
“Can I get anyone a coffee?”
The group was herded into the tiny house kitchen, where cups of coffee were distributed and Pix could explain the eating situation to Stevie’s parents. Breakfasts were provided in-house and all other meals were in the dining hall. Students could come in and make food whenever they wanted, and there was an online grocery-ordering system. As they came back into the common room, Stevie’s mother decided to address the obvious.
“Are those teeth?” she asked.
“Yes,” Pix said.
No other answer was immediately forthcoming, so Stevie jumped in.
“Dr. Pixwell is a specialist in bioarchaeology,” she said. “She works on archaeological digs in Egypt.”
“That’s right,” Pix said. “You read my faculty bio?”
“No,” Stevie said. “The teeth, your shirt, you’ve got an Eye of Horus tattooed on your wrist, the chamomile tea in the kitchen has packaging written in Arabic, and you have a tan line on your forehead from a head covering. Just a guess.”
“That’s extremely impressive,” Pix said, nodding. Everyone was quiet for a moment. A fly buzzed around Stevie’s head.
“Stevie thinks she’s Sherlock Holmes,” her father said. He liked to make these kinds of remarks that sounded like jokes, and may have been well-intentioned on some level, but always had a hint of shade.
“Who doesn’t want to be Sherlock Holmes?” Pix said, meeting his eye and smiling. “I read more Agatha Christie when I was younger, because she wrote about archaeology a lot. But everyone loves Sherlock. Let me show you around. . . .”
In that moment, with that one remark, Pix won Stevie’s everlasting loyalty.
The six student rooms of Minerva House were all located on a single hallway to the left side of the common room: three rooms downstairs, three up. There was a group bathroom on the first floor with tiles that had to be original, because no one would make anything that color anymore. If that shade required a name, Stevie would have to go with “queasy salmon.”
At the end of the hall was the turret with a large door.
“This is a bit special,” Pix said, opening it. “Minerva was used for the Ellinghams’ guests before the school was open, so it has some features you don’t find in the other dorms. . . .”
She opened the door and revealed a magnificent round room, a bathroom, with a high ceiling. The floor was tiled in a pearly silver-gray. A large claw-foot tub took center stage. There were long stained-glass windows depicting stylized flowers and vines that bathed the room in rainbows.
“This room is popular during exams,” Pix said. “People like to study in the tub, especially when it’s cold. It doesn’t get a lot of use otherwise because there is a bit of a spider issue. Now let’s show you your room.”
Stevie decided to ignore what she just heard about spiders and moved on to her room, Minerva Two. Minerva Two smelled like it had been slowly baking for a few months, thick with the scents of closed space, new paint, and furniture polish. One of the two sash windows facing the front had been opened to try to air it, but the breeze was being lazy. Two flies had come in and were dancing around near the high ceiling. The walls were a soft cream color; a black fireplace stood out in stark contrast.
As they moved Stevie’s things in, there was talk about where the bed should go, and could people get in that window, and what time was curfew? Pix handled these questions easily (the windows could be opened from the top and all had good locks, and curfew was ten on weeknights and eleven on weekends, all monitored electronically through student IDs and by Pix in person).
Her mother was about to unpack Stevie’s bags herself when Pix intervened and dragged them off on a personal tour of the campus, leaving Stevie with a
moment of stillness. The birds chirped outside and the breeze carried a few faraway voices. Minerva Two made a gentle creak as Stevie walked across its floor. She ran her hand along the walls, feeling their strange texture—they were thick with years of paint, one coat on top of another, covering up the previous inhabitant’s marks. Stevie had recently seen a true-crime documentary on how layers of paint could be peeled back, revealing writing that had been hidden for decades. Since then, she had desperately wanted to steam and peel a wall, just to see if anything was there.
These walls probably had stories.
April 13, 1936, 6:45 p.m.
THE FOG HAD COME ON QUICKLY THAT DAY—THE MORNING HAD BLOSSOMED bright and clear, but just after four, a curtain of blue-gray smoke fell over the land. That was the thing so many people would remark about later, the fog. By twilight, everything was wrapped in a pearly dark and it was difficult to see more than a few feet ahead. The Rolls-Royce Phantom moved through this fog slowly, up the treacherous drive to the Ellingham estate. It pulled halfway up the circular drive in front of the Great House. The car always stopped halfway. Albert Ellingham liked to walk the drive when he got out of the car to survey his mountain kingdom. He stepped out of the back door before the car fully came to a rest. His secretary, Robert Mackenzie, waited the extra few seconds to make his exit.
“You need to go to Philadelphia,” Robert said to the back of his employer.
“No one needs to go to Philadelphia, Robert.”
“You need to go to Philadelphia. We should also spend at least two days at the New York office.”
The last busload of men working on the final stages of construction pulled past them, heading back to Burlington and the various small towns along the way. It slowed so the passengers could raise their hands to their employer in greeting as they left.
“Good job today!” Albert Ellingham called to them. “See you fellows tomorrow!”
The butler opened the door on their approach, and the two men entered the magnificent entry hall of the house. Every time he entered, Ellingham was pleased with the effect of the place, the way light played around the space, bouncing from every bit of crystal, tinted by a well-spent fortune’s worth of Scottish stained glass.
“Evening, Montgomery,” said Ellingham. His booming voice echoed through the open atrium.
“Good evening, sir,” said the butler, accepting the hats and coats. “Good evening, Mr. Mackenzie. I hope your trip was not too arduous in this fog.”
“Took us forever,” Ellingham said. “Robert was bending my ear about meetings the entire way.”
“Please tell Mr. Ellingham that he has to go to Philadelphia,” Robert said, passing over his hat.
“Mr. Mackenzie wishes me to inform you—”
“I’m starving, Montgomery,” Ellingham said. “What’s on for tonight?”
“Crème de céleri soup and filet of sole with a sauce amandine to start, sir, followed by roast lamb, minted peas, asparagus hollandaise, and potatoes lyonnaise, with a cold lemon soufflé to finish.”
“That’ll do. As soon as we can. I’ve worked up an appetite. How many hangers-on do we still have?”
“Miss Robinson and Mr. Nair are still with us, though they have been indisposed most of the day, so I believe it will just be Mrs. Ellingham, Mr. Mackenzie, and yourself, sir.”
“Good. Get them. Let’s eat.”
“Mrs. Ellingham has not yet returned, sir. She and Miss Alice went out for a drive this afternoon.”
“And they’re not back yet?”
“I imagine the fog must have slowed her, sir.”
“Have some men with lights wait at the end of the drive to help her on the path back. Tell her as soon as she gets back it’s time to eat. Don’t even let her take her coat off. March her right to the table.”
“Very good, sir.”
“Come along, Robert,” Ellingham said, heading off. “We’ll go to my office and have a game of Rook. And don’t try to argue with me. There is nothing so serious as a game.”
The secretary was professionally silent in response. Playing games with his employer was a nonnegotiable part of his job, and “there is nothing so serious as a game” was one of Ellingham’s many mottoes. That was why the students always had access to games, and the new Monopoly game was mandatory for students, residents of the household, and staff. Everyone had to play at least once a week, and there were now monthly tournaments. This was life in the world of Albert Ellingham.
Robert picked the day’s mail out of the tray and sifted through it with a practiced eye, tossing some letters immediately back in the tray and tucking others under his arm.
“Philadelphia,” he said again. It was his job to make sure the great Albert Ellingham stayed on course. Robert was good at this.
“Fine, fine. Schedule it. Ah . . .” Ellingham plucked a Western Union slip from his desk. These tiny slips of paper were his favorite medium for writing short notes. “I started a new riddle this morning. Tell me what you think of it.”
“Is the answer Philadelphia?”
“Robert,” Ellingham said sternly. “My riddle. This is a good one, I think. Now listen. What serves on either side, and if you wish to hide, may protect you from your foe, or show him where to go? Well? What do you think?”
Robert sighed and paused his mail sorting to think.
“Serves on either side,” he said. “Like a spy. A traitor. A duplicitous person.”
Ellingham smiled and gestured that his secretary should keep thinking.
“But,” Robert said, “it’s not a who. It’s a what. So it’s an object that works from two directions . . .”
There was a knock at the door, and Ellingham hurried over himself to answer it.
“It’s a door!” he said, throwing it open and revealing his ashen-faced butler. “A door!”
“Sir . . . ,” Montgomery said.
“One moment. You see, Robert, the door can be used from either side . . .”
“And you can hide behind it, or it might show where you’ve gone,” Robert said. “I see. Yes . . .”
“Sir!” Montgomery said. His urgent tone was entirely unfamiliar to the two men, and they looked at him in confusion.
“What is it, Montgomery?” Ellingham said.
“There is a telephone call, sir,” Montgomery replied. “You must come at once, sir. On the household line. In the pantry. Please, sir, hurry.”
This was so out of character for Montgomery that Ellingham complied without another word. He followed to the butler’s pantry and took the phone that was held out for him.
“I have your wife and daughter,” a voice said.
3
STEVIE BELL HAD A SIMPLE DESIRE: SHE WANTED TO BE STANDING OVER a dead body.
She didn’t want to kill people—far from it. She wanted to be the person who found out why the body was dead, that’s all. She wanted bags marked EVIDENCE and a paper boiler suit like forensics wore. She wanted to be in the interrogation room. She wanted to get to the bottom of the case.
Which was all well and good and probably what a lot of people wanted, if only people would be more honest. But her old high school was not the kind of place where she felt like she could fully express this desire. Her old high school was a fine high school, if you liked high school. It wasn’t bad or evil. It was just like it was supposed to be—miles of linoleum and humming lights, the warm funk of cafeteria stink too early in the morning, the flashes of inspiration that were quickly quashed by long stretches of tedium, and the perpetual desire to be somewhere else. And while Stevie had friends there, there was no one who fully understood her love of crime. So she had written a passionate essay, poured it all onto the screen, and sent it away almost as a joke. Ellingham would never take her.
Ellingham liked what they saw. They had given her this room.
The furniture was wooden and surprisingly big. There was a big dresser that wobbled when Stevie touched it; the polish couldn’t cover the many nicks on its surface. S
ome were just scratches from use, but a few were clear words and initials. Stevie opened the drawers and found, to her surprise, that there were already some things in there: a plaid flannel blanket, a heavy purple fleece with the Ellingham Academy crest on the breast, some kind of military-grade flashlight with a new pack of batteries, a blue flannel robe, and some rackets with clamps on them. These Stevie had to remove and examine for a while before she determined that these must be the snowshoes, and the pegs she’d seen by the door were likely places to hang them.
Stevie had known that she was going to Vermont, and she knew Vermont could get cold, but these items suggested survivalism.
She started opening up her boxes and bags. She pulled out her old gray sheets, the striped comforter that she’d had since she was ten, two of the less-yellowed pillows from the closet. As she looked at these objects in the clear Vermont sunlight, they all seemed a bit—drab. She had a few new items, like the requisite bath caddy and flip-flops for trips to the bathroom, but these things didn’t exactly liven up the room.
But it was fine. In her imagination, her dorm room was going to look like Sherlock Holmes’s residence on Baker Street—shabby, but genteel.
She put in her earbuds to finally continue listening to her podcast. This one was about H. H. Holmes, the Chicago serial killer: “. . . they would discover the many rooms of Holmes’s murder castle: the rooms fitted with gas lines, the hanging chamber, the soundproof vault . . .”
She’d marked one of her boxes with stars, and she opened this one now. This box contained the bare necessities of her life: her mystery novels. (At least, a carefully curated selection of a few dozen essentials.) These were lovingly arranged on the bookshelf in the order in which she needed to see them.
“. . . the chute to the furnaces in the basement where the bodies could be . . .”
Sherlock Holmes on top with Wilkie Collins. Then Agatha Christie spread over two shelves, leading into Josephine Tey and Dorothy L. Sayers. She worked her way down to the modern era and ended with her books on forensics and criminal psychology. She stood back and examined the overall effect, then tweaked until the arrangement was just right. Where her books were, she was.
Truly Devious Page 3