“1936?” she asked.
“Not very creative,” he replied with a smile. “But easy to remember.”
The attic steps were narrow, plain, stained dark. Once they got to the top, everything opened up into a massive space that covered the footprint of the entire house. It was very dark; the windows were covered in light-blocking shades and curtains.
“Obviously,” he said, tapping the digital buttons on a panel of lights, “the Ellinghams had a lot of stuff. The papers went to Yale, some to the Library of Congress. The really valuable things went to the Smithsonian or the Met or the Louvre or various art museums around the world. What we have here are the remnants of their lives. The furnishings. The dishes. The clothes. The household items.”
Flick, flick, flick. The space came to light.
Everything was nooks and corners, every direction just racks of metal shelving that went from floor to ceiling. Archive boxes and books in one direction. Trunks in another. Lamps, vases, extra pieces of furniture—bedsteads stacked by a window, chairs clustered together in a tight communion, ottomans, dressers pushed back to back. There were rolls of old wallpaper, globes, boxes of crystal doorknobs.
Stevie felt like her brain had been replaced by a few dozen bees, bumping and swirling in her skull.
“This way,” he said.
She followed without a word. Charles led her to the far wall, to a large lump, about four feet high and six feet wide, covered in a silver satin bedspread. He lifted the sheet carefully. It was the Great House in miniature. A perfect replica, in dollhouse form, right down to the flower boxes in the front, which were full of tiny flowers.
“Albert Ellingham had this made for Alice months after she disappeared,” he said.
He reached over on the side and clicked a hidden button, then swung the dollhouse open on a hinge, like a giant book. There was the atrium, the giant staircase. Everything was perfect—the lamps and the tiny crystal doorknobs and the fireplaces. Even better, everything was arranged as it had been then.
“I read about this dollhouse,” Stevie said. “I didn’t know it was still here.”
“You can go into the other rooms by opening the back and the side,” Charles said. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
Stevie moved closer and bent down to examine the little rooms. There was Alice’s room, complete with teddy bears on the bed. Iris’s dressing room had little silver hairbrushes and impossibly small cosmetics. The kitchen was full of china dishes the size of fingernails. And there was Albert Ellingham’s office, with two desks, tiny telephones, pictures on the wall . . . a replica of the past.
“It’s a masterpiece,” Charles said. “It cost ten thousand dollars in 1936 money. We would have sent it to a museum, but all of Alice’s things have to remain in the house, as part of the estate. Everything that’s Alice’s stays here.”
Stevie helped him close the dollhouse, and the sheet was replaced.
“So,” he said, “why do you think I showed you this?”
“Because it’s awesome?” Stevie said.
“It is. But that’s not why.”
A dollhouse. The house in miniature. The world made small.
“It’s simple,” Charles said, cutting right to the answer. “A grieving man made a perfect toy for his daughter that she would never see. This is about real people, not figures from fiction. I know this crime is popular—that crime itself is popular. But crime has a human face. If you’re going to study crime, you have to remember the people involved.”
Stevie couldn’t tell if this was a rebuke of some kind or just one of those one-to-grow-on lessons, but it was fair enough. At least he was taking her seriously.
“To that end,” he said, “before you get caught up in trying to break the case open, I want you to get involved in a smaller project, something that restores a human face to this tragedy.”
“What project?” Stevie asked.
“Oh, I don’t do that. You do that. You come up with something.”
“But is this a paper, or . . .”
Charles shook his head. “The rest is up to you. I’ve got to get to my next appointment. I’m excited to see what you’re going to come up with.”
As Stevie walked back downstairs, her head spun with all she had just seen. Germaine Batt came out of Dr. Quinn’s door and hurried down the stairs, moving past Stevie. Her expression suggested someone who had just seen a document detailing how they died.
Nate was waiting below. He watched Germaine go, and then turned around to Stevie.
“Well?” he said.
“It was good,” Stevie said. “He showed me the attic and some stuff the family owned.”
Nate nodded and folded his arms over his chest, looking around, not really paying attention.
“Did you notice something strange about what Hayes said this morning?” Stevie asked.
Nate turned back.
“You mean about Hayes not knowing anything about the Monroeville Mall, the setting of Dawn of the Dead and a super-famous zombie thing? Yeah.”
Stevie was pleased at how quickly she and Nate seemed to link thoughts.
“What did you make of it?”
“I have no idea. The guy looks like he came out of a 3-D printer.”
“Nathaniel,” came a voice from above. Dr. Quinn looked over the rail. “You may come up.”
“You’ll be great,” Stevie said, putting as positive a look on her face as she could.
“Yeah, don’t do that,” Nate said.
“Fine. It’ll be horrible.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I guess I’ll see you at lunch or something.”
He settled his brown canvas backpack squarely on his shoulders and took the stairs like a man climbing up to the guillotine platform.
Larry watched this from his desk and stopped Stevie as she exited.
“Dr. Scott gave you a little tour?” he asked.
“Of the attic,” Stevie said.
Larry tipped his chair back and picked up a pen, holding it like a dart.
“And what did you think of it?”
“I think it’s the best place I’ve ever seen,” she said.
Larry’s expression never changed. His face was as stony and unmoving as the mountain they stood on.
“Good meeting otherwise?” he asked.
“I think there’s a lot to do,” Stevie said.
“You’ll be all right. They work you hard here, but no one ever died of it.”
“I guess if you do, you can just take the body out into the woods and bury it,” Stevie said, smiling.
Larry did not smile. His eyes crinkled just a bit at the corners in an expression Stevie could not read.
This was maybe the kind of place where you didn’t joke about the buried bodies.
April 14, 1936, 10:00 a.m.
LEONARD NAIR HOLMES WAS ACCUSTOMED TO GAPS IN THE CALENDAR, days that simply went away. Once, in 1928, he misplaced all of June. And he had no solid proof that 1931 ever existed. People told him it did—they showed him newspapers and everything—but you can’t believe everything you read.
So when Leo woke in his darkened room in Ellingham house that Tuesday morning, he went about his business after his nice, refreshing sleep. It was time to find breakfast. He scuffed out of his room in slippers and a tattered and overly long maroon silk robe that dragged behind, gathering dust. This was something, considering that Leo was well over six feet tall. He’d had the dressing gown made for a giant, all loose sleeves and big pockets and long drag. He made it as far as the landing before being scooped up by Flora Robinson, who pulled him to his room.
“Even if I wanted to, darling,” he said to her, “I’m going to need a grapefruit, four eggs, and about three ounces of gin before . . .”
She clapped a hand over his mouth and shut the door.
“What’s gotten into you?” he said, reaching his long-fingered hand into the dressing gown pocket to find his cigarette case.
“Leo! Iris and Alice have
been kidnapped!”
Leo slowly raised his peaked black eyebrows and pulled a cigarette from the silver-and-jade case. He tapped it a few times on the side before putting it to his mouth. He patted his pockets. Finding nothing, Leo went to his bedstead and fumbled around for a moment, turning on the light and wincing. He dug through the pile of books and detritus, finally producing a battered box of matches to light his cigarette.
“They were taken when they went out for their drive yesterday, and there’s been a ransom call,” Flora said, keeping her voice low. “Albert brought George Marsh back. They’re feeding the staff a bull story about how she spent the night in Burlington with a friend, and they’re trying to keep the cops out of it for now. I know they did a drop last night that didn’t go well. The kidnappers took the money but they didn’t get Iris and Alice back. They asked for more money. Albert’s getting it now.”
Leo took a few long, lung-congesting draws to get his brain moving.
“Oh,” he said.
“Oh? That’s all you can say? They’ve been kidnapped.”
Leo pulled hard on the cigarette, producing a burn audible from across the room, stroked the beard he had developed while he was sleeping with a blue-fingernailed hand. He examined the edges of nail varnish for a moment.
“Have you cleaned up?” he said.
“I did what I could,” she replied. “For her. I went to her room as soon as I realized something was happening.”
“For all of us, Flora. A rising tide sinks all boats.”
“We need to do something,” Flora said.
“Such as? I don’t know where she is. I barely know where I am.”
“We have to think. Who would do this? Maybe we should tell them everything. Maybe we have to.”
“Flora,” Leo said slowly, “I realize you have a conscience and that’s what’s talking now, but how will that help? It won’t help us and it certainly won’t help Iris or Alice.”
“You don’t know . . .”
“Think, Florie. Think. Have you noticed where we are? We are in the remote home of Albert Ellingham, tycoon. Anyone who likes money could have taken Iris and Alice, and everyone likes money. And anyone could do it because we are up on the side of a mountain. Albert will pay them.”
Flora sank back against the wall.
“You, my dear, need something for your nerves,” he said.
“No,” Flora snapped. “I don’t.”
They were interrupted by a heavy rapping at the door. Leo motioned for Flora to open it.
“Morning, Albert,” Flora said. “I was just getting Leo out of bed. Everything all right?”
“No,” Albert said, all pretense gone. “It’s not. Nair, I need you to make a batch of your invisible ink.”
“I don’t have my equipment.”
“We have a fully equipped science lab here.”
“Of course,” Leo said. “Give me a few hours. . . .”
“No,” Albert said. “Immediately. This moment. Make as much as you can as fast as you can. How long does it take?”
“An hour?” Nair said, looking at Flora uncertainly. “Maybe two. It depends on the quantity.”
“Then you have an hour. You take whatever is necessary from anywhere, but you must be quick.”
“Let me get dressed and I’ll get to it.”
When Albert was gone, Flora pressed the door closed.
“Ink?” Leo said.
“Ransom money,” Flora replied. “He must be marking it. You get to it and I’ll see what else I can find out.”
Once Flora was gone, Leo locked the door and went to his closet. Inside, on a small table, was a small setup of scales and beakers and burners. There were delicate blue bottles that contained not an insignificant amount of chemicals of all sorts. Leo had always loved chemistry as a child. He mixed his own paints, which was why they had such an unusually vivid hue. He also made makeup, which was how he got blue nails and Iris and Flora got such remarkable eye shadows and blushes. It was why his own cheeks often sparkled faintly of silver.
This was not a paint set. Or a makeup set.
He didn’t waste time. He put the bottles and beakers into his satchel, pulled a pair of trousers on over his nightclothes, and walked downstairs as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
10
STEVIE HAD GREAT HOPES FOR THE BOARDING SCHOOL DINING HALL. She knew better than to hope for floating candlesticks and ghosts, but long wooden tables didn’t seem out of the question. Long tables were also featured in so many murder mysteries, when all the guests of the house were arranged, eyeing each other over their wineglasses, wondering who Lord Dudley was going to put into his will or who might have killed Ratchets with the golf club.
What she actually got was something that looked a bit like the buffet area in the conference hotel she stayed in with her high school forensics club when they did a tournament in Hershey, just a little more artisanal and maybe crossed with a bit of ski lodge. (Or what she understood ski lodges to look like. She had never been to one.) It had a high, peaked ceiling made of bright pine-and-stone walls, scattered with tables of varying shapes and sizes—round ones that could fit a large group, square ones for four, and quite a large number of small ones that could fit only one or two people. There were also some plaid sofas and beanbags along the wall farthest from the food, with a few low tables—clearly some kind of coffee shop area for people who were too far up a mountain to get to a Starbucks.
The chalkboard menu really seemed to emphasize that everything was local and that everything had maple syrup in it. The BBQ beef was in maple syrup BBQ sauce. The mac and cheese was made with smoked maple cheese. There was maple tofu and maple-syrup dressing for the salads.
“Did you forget you were in Vermont for a second?” Stevie said to Janelle as they took their trays. “Look down. You are standing in maple syrup.”
“Yeah,” Janelle replied, a bit dispiritedly, as she took some tofu and vegetables. “It’s not my favorite.”
Nate stared down the sneeze guard at the mapleized meats.
“I’ll drink the living blood of trees,” he said. “Hit me.”
The drinks area had sparkling water on tap (fancy) and a cooler full of expensive natural sodas that were free to take, including one maple-lime-spruce-flavored one that Stevie examined out of intense curiosity. This was the kind of stuff she never saw and wouldn’t have had the money to buy, and it was just sitting here. This, more than anything else, seemed to indicate what kind of place this was. Free fancy sodas full of maple.
She took one. She had to.
Since it was still warm and bright, there were tables set up outside. Ellie had commandeered a picnic table and began waving at them to come over. Hayes sat across from her.
Janelle and Stevie started for the open door but Nate hesitated.
“Eating outside is the worst,” Nate said, waving away a fly from his plate, which seemed to be full of nothing but various meats.
“Vitamin D,” Stevie said. “You need it.”
“You don’t know that,” he said. “I want to eat my meat in my room with the lights off.”
“As a writer, are those really the words you want to use?” Stevie asked.
“Yes,” he replied.
“Let’s just sit with the others for today?” Janelle said. “We’ll sit inside next time.”
Nate sighed and went along.
“So how was it?” Ellie asked as they sat down.
“It was great,” Janelle said. “They’re giving me access to the workshop and I’m getting space in the art barn to work on my Rube Goldberg machine for the Sendell Waxman competition. That’s the high school version. There’s even budget to get supplies. This place is amazing.”
“Mine was okay, I guess?” Stevie said. “I’m supposed to come up with some project this week about putting a human face on crime.”
Nate was quiet.
“Well?” Janelle said.
“She hates me,” he said plainly.
“Come on,” Janelle said, shaking her head. “Stop it. You can’t be like this on the first day.”
“Yeah, I’m not kidding.”
“She said she hated you?” Janelle said.
“She never looked at me. She said something about how it’s so easy for anyone to be published now and then read me a list of classes and told me to go.”
“That doesn’t mean she hates you.”
“You had to be there,” Nate said.
Stevie felt eyes on her back. Eyes to the side. She glanced around as subtly as she could and realized that no one was looking at her—people were looking toward Hayes. He was like a weak center of gravity.
“What the hell are you drinking?” Nate said, turning the soda bottle to look at the label.
“Natural soda,” Stevie said. “It was there. I decided to try it.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to know.”
“It’s going to be bad,” Nate said. “What is there to know?”
“You don’t know that.”
“Oh my God.” Janelle drew a hand over her face. “Seriously, Nate. You have to like something. You can’t go around being miserable about everything.”
Nate indicated that Stevie should drink and folded his arms. Stevie took a long swig. As soon as the drink hit the back of her throat, it attacked her palate with a woody, biting, cleaning-fluid type sensation that shot up the inside of her nose. She lurched forward, clasping her hand to her mouth just in time to avoid spraying Nate with a maple-lime-spruce fountain. She coughed so loudly that people at the adjoining tables stared.
“Yes,” Nate said. “I see.”
“Tell me more about your book,” Stevie replied when she could speak again.
Nate returned to studying his plate of meats.
Janelle suddenly half stood and waved. “Vi!” she said. “Come sit here!”
Vi was back, with her tinted glasses, wearing an overall short set, a red tank, and striped knee socks. Her hair was perhaps a little spikier than the day before. She slid in beside Janelle.
Again, a tiny panic bubble glurped inside. What if Stevie was going to be completely friendless? What if Janelle didn’t pair bond with her and Nate never talked and that was it? Maybe she had given up her life before and come up this mountain and no one would like her and she would have to go home an abject failure.
Truly Devious Page 11