Truly Devious

by Maureen Johnson

  FR: It may seem odd to you . . . but that’s what happened.

  SA: How long were you in the room?

  FR: I don’t know. I lost track of time.

  SA: If you could guess.

  FR: I don’t know . . . fifteen minutes?

  SA: And then someone came and got you. The maid, Ruth. She says she looked for you and found you at eight fifty. She called for you but you did not reply.

  FR: I didn’t hear her.

  SA: She was out in the hall.

  FR: I was very distracted.

  SA: Mrs. Ellingham keeps some very valuable things in that room.

  FR: Most of her things are valuable. Everything in this house is valuable. It’s not all locked up.

  SA: That’s a fair point, Miss Robinson. But there are some things of unusual value in that room. Isn’t that why it is normally locked?

  FR: Of course.

  SA: You’re not as wealthy as Mrs. Ellingham, are you, Miss Robinson?

  FR: Few people are.

  SA: You’re not a wealthy woman, are you? That’s what I’m asking.

  FR: I resent this. My closest friend is . . .

  SA: We’re doing this because your closest friend is missing. There’s no shame in not being rich, Miss Robinson. I’m simply saying you are from different backgrounds.

  FR: She would give me anything. Anything. Iris is the most generous person. Look at this school! They built a school that children could go to for free! They invite them into this house!

  SA: They are very generous. But let’s keep to the subject. What route did you use to get to Mrs. Ellingham’s room?

  FR: What route?

  SA: You didn’t come down the main stairs.

  FR: No, I took the side stairs.

  SA: The servant stairs?

  FR: Yes.

  SA: Why not the more direct method, down the main stairs?

  FR: I don’t know.

  SA: And you didn’t hear anyone calling you?

  FR: No.

  SA: If anything, Miss Robinson, I would think you’d be more attuned to someone calling your name at that moment. You spent all of that time looking out the window?

  FR: I was in a state.

  SA: But you heard the maid knocking.

  FR: Yes.

  SA: She said it was several moments before you answered the door.

  FR: I was in a state. I’d just heard my best friend was missing. It’s just what I did. I don’t know why.

  SA: There are many valuable things in that room.

  FR: Why do you keep mentioning how much her things are worth?

  SA: Because she’s missing and someone is asking for a lot of money for her return.

  FR: My best friend is missing. Why are you doing this?

  SA: I have to establish the facts.

  FR: What facts?

  SA: I need to know why you were in her room.

  FR: I just told you. You should be out looking for them.

  SA: Almost every police officer within a hundred miles is looking for them, and even more police beyond that, in every city on the East Coast. But what I need to know from you, right now, is what you were doing in Mrs. Ellingham’s dressing room for those fifteen minutes.

  FR: I told you . . .

  SA: You were looking out the window.

  FR: I was.

  SA: Miss Robinson, let me be perfectly clear. This is no time to lie. Every second you waste by lying is a second Iris Ellingham and Alice Ellingham could be in danger. When you lie, you put them at risk and you put yourself at risk.

  FR: I’m not . . .

  SA: You could hear people in the hall calling for you. The house was in chaos. There was nothing going on outside to see. It was dark. It was foggy.

  FR: I’m aware.

  SA: So you spent fifteen minutes looking at nothing?

  FR: More or less, yes.

  SA: We know a bit about you, Miss Robinson. We know you were a hostess at Carmine’s, the speakeasy on Twenty-Ninth Street. Carmine’s was owned by Big Bill Thompson, the mob boss. You worked directly for him. [REDACTED DUE TO ONGOING INVESTIGATION. SEE FILE 248B-2.]

  FR: My job was to sing, to entertain, to talk to people. It was a social job, and Iris and I got to be friendly because we liked each other.

  SA: One of the richest women in America and a speakeasy hostess.

  FR: I met a lot of important people at Carmine’s. Half of New York society passed through that door. Artists. Writers. Actors and actresses. Politicians. Policemen. We saw a lot of those in there.

  SA: Big Bill Thompson is also associated with smuggling operations that come down from Canada. His associates have been known to be in this area. You may know that from the fact that another FBI agent frequents this house.

  FR: You think George Marsh talks about his work? George Marsh is a brick wall about whatever he does for you. And I haven’t spoken to Bill in years. I’m here because I’m visiting my friend Iris, and my friend is missing.

  SA: It must be good to have rich friends.

  FR: It’s good to have friends, no matter what they’re worth. Iris is my friend, and she’d be my friend if she was poor as anything. Let me tell you something about Iris. She makes me laugh.

  SA: Makes you laugh?

  FR: That’s right. And that’s hard to do. Iris and I are friends, real friends. I understand her. I would do anything for her. You don’t know what it was like for her, coming here. She had such a good life in New York. Iris is an athlete. Did you know that? You should see her swim. She writes, did you know that? She wrote an entire novel. I’ve read it. It’s good. She doesn’t show anyone because she thinks they’ll dismiss her as Albert Ellingham’s wife and nothing more. But she is more. She should never have been up this godforsaken mountain, but she’s also very loyal, so she supported this school because Albert had a dream. You don’t know Iris. I do. She needs stimulation. . . .

  SA: And how does she get that stimulation here?

  [Silence.]

  SA: Miss Robinson . . .

  FR: I’ve told you everything I know. I have nothing more to say. I will do anything in my power to help my friend, but this is not helping. I’d go to the ends of the earth for that woman and for Alice. So why don’t you get out there and find them? Because if you don’t, so help me, I will get in a car and do it myself. Just try and stop me.

  [Interview terminated 1:13 p.m.]

  * * *

  18

  THE EVIDENCE WAS ALL OVER THE FLOOR—THE PAPER CLIPS AND PEN caps. A sunbeam illuminated a dent she’d made in the case board.

  The morning had come, and brought reality with it. And questions. Lots of questions, dancing around in her head in circles.

  The questions, in no particular order:

  What would the media make of this, another death at the infamous Ellingham Academy?

  Wait, never mind the media—what would her parents make of this? Fancy School Manages to Kill Student. And the fact that she had been there?

  Would the school close?

  Maybe close for a few days. It couldn’t close for the year because of this, could it?

  Why was she thinking like this? Someone was dead. Hayes was dead.

  Because that is what brains do. They think. Her brain attic was full of new and strange things she had not been able to classify and sort yet. Stevie couldn’t feel guilty for her thoughts and she couldn’t engage with all of her thoughts. That was something they taught you in anxiety therapy—the thoughts may come, but you don’t have to chase them all. It was sort of the opposite of good detective work, in which you had to follow every lead.

  She stuffed her face into her pillow for a while as her head throbbed gently. Her mouth still had a strange taste in it, the taste of . . .

  Outside, she could hear strange voices and the occasional squawk of a radio. She managed to pull her face up and out of the safe, soft confines of the pillow and rubbed the gunk from her eyes.

  Hayes. That had really happened. He h
ad actually died. Hayes had died, and they had found his body. And, in response, she had come back and made out with David. It was all too real, too immediate, her feelings all coming together into one knot of terror and shakes and queasiness and embarrassment.

  Focus.

  Her brain floated around the facts for a bit. Hayes was on the ground, already dead. How could that have happened? She mentally looked around the little space at the end of the tunnel. She peered at the empty shelves on the wall. She scuffed at the stone floor with her shoe. She looked up the ladder, at the hatch that led to the observatory. . . .

  About twelve feet up. If you fell from that distance onto the stone, you would be in bad shape. You could die.

  Stevie saw it in her mind’s eye. She had gone up there. She had closed that hatch behind her. Had Hayes gone up to look around? Maybe he stepped the wrong way in the dark and fell through the hole.

  Why did he go back? Probably to film something. But Hayes would have brought someone for that, probably. It really looked like he wanted to go alone. She saw the way he did his backward walk, trying to slip back.

  But he hadn’t gone back to the garden. He’d gone all the way around, to the maintenance road, to the woods, to the tunnel. He’d gone back and died.

  Riddle, riddle, on the wall . . .

  She’d almost forgotten that, the terror that had woken her the other night. She had to have dreamed that. She was thinking about murder and death and tunnels and Truly Devious and her brain projected it all onto the wall.

  Right?

  Stevie rested flat on her back and practiced a few minutes of breathing exercises, making the exhales longer than the inhales, taking the air all the way down to her abdomen.

  She could still smell some musky body wash or shampoo on her skin. David.

  There was that as well. On any other day, this would have been the only story. Today, it barely made the cut.

  “Okay,” she said to herself. “Now. Okay. Now. Get up. Now.”

  She got up.

  Shortly after, a showered Stevie, dressed in thin, loose sweatpants and her black hoodie, emerged into the common room. Janelle and Nate were at the table, both still in pajamas. Pix was on her phone in the kitchen. David sat on the sofa in rumpled jeans and a wrinkled maroon Henley shirt. His hair was wet, flattening some curls to his forehead. He looked at her when she came in—a direct, lingering look, but one without humor. He seemed to simply be taking her in, noting her presence.

  There was little to say, some mumbled good-mornings, some nods. What do you say when your housemate dies, even if you don’t know him that well? Even if what you did know you didn’t like much?

  You say very little.

  Ellie appeared, wearing paint-stained, waffle-textured long underwear bottoms and a large, ripped-up T-shirt for a French band and long tube-sock tops on her arms. Her eyes were bright red and swollen. She dropped down on the sofa next to David, curled into a ball, and put her head on his lap. He absently set a hand on her mess of matted hair.

  Stevie felt a swell of queasiness. Would they talk about what had happened? And if they did, what would they say? Maybe they would never talk about it. Maybe things that happened on nights like last night didn’t count.

  Something in her plunged at that thought, and she stared into her coffee. It tasted dank and bitter, but it was hot, and drinking it made her feel something other than weird. So she drank it.

  “Stevie,” Pix said, coming in. “That was Larry. They need to talk to you again, up at the Great House. He’s coming for you.”

  Janelle looked at her fearfully. Nate went pale.

  “That’s normal,” Stevie said. “The police do that. They need to ask the same questions several times to clarify the information.”

  “Everyone else has to stay here,” Pix said.

  “All day?” Ellie said, looking up from David’s lap. Her voice had that thick tone that happens after someone has been crying a lot.

  “For now,” Pix said. “There are counselors coming if you need to talk.”

  David rolled his eyes to the ceiling.

  There were two police cars from the Vermont state police under the portico of the Great House as Stevie and Larry approached it a short while later.

  “Just say what you know,” Larry said. “Just tell the truth.”

  “I know,” Stevie said.

  “How are you holding up?”

  “I think I’m fine. Maybe it hasn’t hit yet. Is that bad?”

  “It’s not bad or good. It just is. That’s something you’ll find out if you decide to go into this line of work. You have to take things as they are, not how you hear they’re supposed to be.”

  That was one of the most sensible things an adult had ever said to Stevie.

  Once inside, Stevie thought she’d be going to the security room, but instead Larry took her to the massive oak door that led to Albert Ellingham’s office.

  “In here?” she said.

  “That’s where the detective is speaking to people,” he said. “Just answer her questions. You’ll be all right.”

  A detective this time. Not a uniformed officer.

  Two leather chairs sat by the massive rose-marble fireplace, the disturbing trophy rug spread between them. A petite woman in a gray suit sat in one of these chairs writing in a small notebook.

  “Stephanie?” she said, consulting the book. “My name is Detective Agiter. Come sit down.”

  Stevie sat down in the opposite chair, one of Albert Ellingham’s personal chairs. Even though it was very old, the leather was still in fine condition and it had an easy, comfortable give. This is where he sat, running his empire, thinking of his lost wife and daughter.

  Detective Agiter was a carefully curated palette of neutrals. She had long, elegant hands. Her dark hair was swept tight across her head into a bun, not a single strand out of place. Stevie most admired her shoes, which were utterly nondescript black flats. There was a studied stillness to her face. Never give anything away. Stevie needed to master this look. This was what a detective looked like.

  I’m just going to record this,” she said, putting a digital recorder down on the small Art Deco table between them. “Interview between Stephanie Bell and Detective Fatima Agiter, Sunday, September tenth, nine forty-five a.m. Now, Stephanie, or Stevie?”

  “Stevie.”

  “Stevie, you were involved in the filming of video that was about the Ellingham kidnapping. Whose idea was the video?”

  “Hayes’s.”

  “How did you get involved?”

  “He came and he asked me to help him make it.”

  “And why did he ask you?” the detective said.

  “Because I know a lot about it.”

  “About the Ellingham kidnappings, you mean?” the detective clarified. Stevie nodded and admonished herself internally. You were supposed to be clear. It wasn’t clear.

  “I know a lot about the Ellingham case. It’s what I came here to study. The crime . . . the history of it.”

  “So Hayes wanted to make a show about the Ellingham kidnappings, and he came to you because you know about it. And you asked Nathaniel because he’s a writer?”

  “Hayes asked me to ask him,” Stevie said.

  “So it sounds like Hayes was assembling a group of people, all with different areas of knowledge. There was also Maris Coombes, who has theater experience, and Patrick Dashell, who studies film. And together, the group of you put this project together.”

  “Correct,” Stevie said.

  “How did you access the tunnel?”

  Stevie’s heart lurched a bit.

  “I opened the lock,” she said.

  “How did you open it?”

  “I picked it,” Stevie said.

  The detective raised one of her well-groomed eyebrows, her only tell in this interview.

  “You picked it?” she clarified.

  “That’s right,” Stevie said. There was no denying it. She picked a lock. Good-bye, El
lingham. It was fun while it lasted.

  “How do you know how to pick a lock?”

  “YouTube,” Stevie said, shrugging. The shrug was supposed to make it look like this was no big deal and just something that people did, but she wasn’t sure how it came off.

  “Any reason?”

  “No? It’s easy? No. People do it. It’s a thing. Just a hobby.”

  This did not sound good. Nothing to see here! I just pick locks for fun.

  “Larry told me your interest is in law enforcement,” the detective said.

  “Yes,” Stevie said.

  “We usually don’t pick locks.”

  “No,” Stevie said. “I know.”

  Detective Agiter scratched her ear for a moment, then moved on.

  “When you were finished, did you all leave the tunnel together, or in groups?”

  Strange. She didn’t ask about the hatch opening at all. Stevie’s heart skipped and her brain glitched for a second.

  “We left together,” she said. “Maris and Hayes . . . they stayed behind.”

  “Do you know what they were doing?”

  “I can guess,” Stevie said.

  “What is it you would guess they were doing?” the detective said.

  “Making out?” Stevie said. “Something like that?”

  The detective half smiled and consulted her notebook.

  “During the filming, there was theatrical fog. Do you know how this was created?”

  “We had fog machines.”

  “Did you use anything else?” the detective asked.

  This was a weird question.

  “No,” Stevie said.

  “Just the three machines.”

  “Correct,” Stevie said.

  Seriously. Why was she asking about fog machines?

  “I think that’s about it, Stevie,” she said. “Unless you can think of anything else that happened that was out of the ordinary?”

  Stevie looked around her brain attic. There was, of course, the note on the wall. The note she probably imagined. You couldn’t tell the police about stuff you thought you probably imagined.

  Except, could you? People did that in murder mysteries all the time, and it was always important.

  “Nothing,” Stevie said.

  “Okay. Interview complete at ten twenty.”

  She stopped the recording and Stevie pulled herself out of the deep chair.