Truly Devious

by Maureen Johnson

  He took her down several aisles and turned down one full of archival storage boxes and three shelves of identical long, green leather books with dates on them.

  “This row contains a lot of the records and personal effects from Albert Ellingham’s office and the household management,” he said.

  At the end of the row, near the window, he knelt down to the floor and pulled a beaten metal box, about three feet in length and a foot or so high, off the bottom shelf. The box was clearly very old. It had been painted red, and parts of the paint remained, but much was worn or rusted away.

  “When the crew first went in the tunnel, they found this packed into the dirt used to seal up the tunnel. It was locked when the crew found it. . . .” Charles carefully lifted the old latch. “Everyone was excited. A buried box in the tunnel . . . it could have been anything. So we opened it and . . .”

  He lifted the lid, revealing two side-by-side piles of yellowed newspapers. The headline of the top one read: ELLINGHAM FAMILY KIDNAPPED. Stevie knelt next to Charles to have a better look. The newspapers were all different, different cities, different dates, but all featured the Ellingham Affair in the headline.

  “Someone buried a box of newspapers in the tunnel?” she said.

  “We don’t know who put them there,” Charles replied. “But I think it was probably Albert Ellingham. Maybe he was trying to bury the past, bury his pain.”

  “It must have been hard for a man who owned a newspaper to hide from the news,” she said.

  “A good point,” Charles said, nodding. “But I think you understand, that tunnel was a sacred space. It’s seen so much death. People are going to sensationalize this.”

  Stevie took this as a bit of an admonishment.

  “So here is what you are going to do,” he said. “These rows . . .”

  He took her back out and to another row, labeled 38.

  “Thirty-eight through forty-five are full of household items. Things were gathered up in boxes but not well sorted. I want you to sort and catalog these seven rows of materials.”

  “Is this my punishment?” she said.

  “We don’t do punishments,” Charles replied. “We do projects. This is your project. Sort, organize, catalog.”

  Stevie looked down the row. It looked like it contained bins of doorknobs, stacks of old magazines, bags of junk.

  “You can start now,” he said, “if you feel up to it.”

  “Sure,” she said.

  “Then I’ll leave you to it. Just let security know when you’re done. You may need to do this over a few days, so I’ll arrange it that someone can take you up here.”

  He left her alone with all of the treasures. As punishments went, this was about as good as it got. She wandered the aisles, taking in the view passively. She allowed the patterns to sink into her mind—clothes here, furniture there. Globes, books, dishes . . . It was her and the Ellingham items, and they became familiar with this repetition.

  She spent some time standing in front of a massive cabinet with horizontally glass-fronted shelves before working up the courage to open it up and pull out a delicate soup bowl—white, with a pattern of pink flowers and tender green vines, edged in gold. At the bottom of the dish, the letters AIE were also painted in gold. There was a stack of books near the china.

  She returned to the first row he had taken her to and looked at the long green ledgers. Some contained orders of groceries and household supplies. These people went through a lot of food on the weekends—endless lemons and oranges and eggs and mint for drinks. Massive orders of cigarettes to be put in cigarette dispensers. Notes of dozens of smashed champagne glasses and orders of fresh ones. Floor wax for the scuffs in the ballroom.

  One book just contained household menus. Stevie paged through until she found April 13, 1936. It was written in a neat, precise hand:

  MAIN TABLE:

  Crème de céleri soup

  Filet of sole with sauce amandine

  Roast lamb

  Minted peas

  Asparagus hollandaise

  Potatoes lyonnaise

  Cold lemon soufflé

  April 14 was not as elaborate:

  No main table service. Tray taken to office.

  Sandwiches of cold chicken and ham salad

  Sliced celery and stuffed olives

  Lemon cake

  Coffee

  Guest, Miss Flora Robinson, tray service: clear soup, tea with milk, tomato juice, sandwiches of cold chicken salad, sliced celery, junket

  Guest, Mr. Leonard Nair, tray service: scrambled eggs, coffee

  Insignificant though this may have seemed, it gave a sense of the day and the change in the household. Everything had been going along as normal on the thirteenth. On the fourteenth, it was a different place. The tray of cold sandwiches, thrown together because they had to eat to keep going. The weird addition of just some sliced celery that had probably been around from the day before and some olives (eat anything, anything, whatever is there), some cake that was probably already made. The coffee to keep them going.

  Flora Robinson and Leo Holmes Nair seemed to have eaten in their rooms, simple foods, foods you ate when you were sick or hungover. Scrambled eggs. Broth. And more coffee and tea. Just stay awake. The whole house, crackling with nervous energy, waiting for the phone to ring. And still, the butler recorded it, this desperate meal, because that was how things were done. The kitchen staff had probably been questioned as well, so they didn’t have as much time to prepare food.

  She worked her way along the row, pulling out boxes of old office supplies—three telephones, rolled maps, wax tubes, telephone directories. One large, velvet-lined box held a number of items that seemed unique—a crystal ink pot, a fine pen, pushpins, paper clips, a stack of business cards, an invitation to a dinner party on October 31, 1938.

  That was a meaningful date. These were the things that must have been on his desk when he died. She shuffled through them, the notepad with some circles and numbers drawn on it, with drips of ink on the page. A bit of ripped newspaper with information about the stock exchange. A Western Union telegraph slip with the words:

  10/30/38

  Where do you look for someone who’s never really there?

  Always on a staircase but never on a stair

  His last riddle, with no solution given. On the thirtieth of October, 1938, Albert Ellingham told his secretary that he was going for a sail. He seemed strangely bright that day. He took George Marsh, his loyal friend, with him. They sailed out of Burlington Yacht Club. Later that evening, residents of South Hero heard a boom and saw a flash on the water. Ellingham’s boat had exploded. The wreckage revealed a bomb had been placed on board. The anarchists who had long dogged him, who had been blamed for the murder of his wife and the disappearance of his child, seemed to have gotten him in the end.

  Last things were so strange. Most people had no control over or concept of what their last acts would be. She wondered for a moment if Hayes had realized what was happening to him, that he was going to die while filming a video at school.

  For a moment, she remembered the letter on the wall, her vision. It had seemed so real, but there was no way it could be. It made no sense. It had simply been a vivid dream caused by a racing mind. Stevie did not believe in psychics, in precognition. She didn’t think she had seen Hayes’s death coming. The word murder had appeared in her dream, but that was because murders happened here. There was nothing spooky about it. She dreamed of a murder, there was a murder. Albert Ellingham wrote a riddle, as he did many times, and then he died.

  She stared at the little telegram slip for a long time, examining the words, the ink, the old but well-preserved paper. This must have been Ellingham’s last riddle, something he was working on the day he died. A little bit of nonsense, a return to his old way of being. And then fate interrupted. Had anyone noticed this before, this little bit of detritus from his desk? Or did no one care about his little games in the wake of his death, when the great
empire had to be managed? Who cares about a little riddle when one of the richest men in the world dies?

  Stevie carefully put the slip of paper back in the box, like she was setting a flower on his grave. Her eyes teared up a bit and her throat grew rough.

  She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and went over to one of the windows and looked out over the expanse of the campus and the view beyond. Death had come to Ellingham again. Death loved this place. But if Stevie was going to cope with being here, cope with the job she wanted to do, she had to look death in the eye. She could not be afraid, or cry whenever she saw a sad memento. She had to be tough. That’s what the dead deserved.

  But, Stevie wondered, what was the solution to the riddle? What was always on a staircase but never on a stair?

  * * *

  FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

  INTERVIEW BETWEEN AGENT SAMUEL ARNOLD AND GEORGE MARSH

  APRIL 17, 1936, 5:45 P.M.

  LOCATION: ELLINGHAM PROPERTY

  SA:Thank you for taking the time to speak to me again.

  GM: Whatever you need me for.

  SA:This has been a difficult few days.

  GM: I haven’t slept in two nights. Doesn’t matter. Iris and Alice are still out there. Can I have one of your cigarettes?

  SA:Of course. Can I just go over your relationship to Albert Ellingham and the safety concerns in the past? You were with the New York police department when you met?

  GM: That’s right. I was a detective. We’d been working an anarchist gang that was causing trouble. We found out that they were planning to bomb an important industrialist. We found out it was Albert Ellingham, and luckily I got there in time.

  SA:You personally saved his life moments before the car exploded.

  GM: I did my job. After that, Mr. Ellingham was kind enough to recommend me for the FBI. I worked out of the New York office. You ever work out of New York?

  SA:No. Only Washington. Director Hoover sent me up here to work this case.

  GM: Mr. Ellingham asked me to come up to Vermont when he built this place. I do field work for the bureau and I consult for him.

  SA:But you don’t live here in the house.

  GM: No. I live in Burlington. I come here whenever Mr. Ellingham needs me. I usually come up when important guests are here. I was here for the party that weekend, mostly because Maxine Melville, the film star, was here. He wants to sign her for his studio, so he had her come up for a visit. The weekend party was mostly to entertain her. I watch the place, watch for press, make sure the staff don’t get too nosy. They’re pretty good, but people get strange around famous people.

  SA:What’s your thought on the missing student?

  GM: Wrong place, wrong time, most likely. I’ve looked through her school files. Good kid. Real smart. One of the brightest here. But she liked to find places to hide and read. I heard you found a book of hers in the observatory?

  SA:That’s right. We did.

  GM: Damn. Poor kid.

  SA:What was your assessment of the letter that came in on April eighth? The one that we’ve been calling the Truly Devious letter.

  GM: Mackenzie handles all the correspondence. He shows me the ones he thinks are trouble.

  SA:But he didn’t show you this letter until after the kidnapping?

  GM: It was a busy weekend. I think there wasn’t time. By the time I saw that letter, the thing was under way. Mackenzie’s always on top of things. It’s just too bad he didn’t tell me. Not that it would have changed anything.

  SA:What do you mean?

  GM: I mean that it’s hard to get Albert Ellingham to change his plans. Like this place, for example. You see exactly what I see. The advantage and disadvantage of this place is its location. On one hand, it’s hard to get to, so it’s not going to be the target of spontaneous crime. You have to really make an effort to come here, and then you have to make a bigger effort to get away. But, as we’ve found out, the disadvantage is that there are many places to ambush and many ways to escape.

  SA:Surely, as someone who foiled a bomb plot on Albert Ellingham once before, this occurred to you?

  GM: It worried me to death. I talked about it with Albert. I suggested getting more men up here to guard the place. He said no.

  SA:Why?

  GM: His words, “It’s not conducive to playful learning.” His words.

  SA:So he went without the necessary security?

  GM: Listen. There’s something you need to understand about Albert Ellingham. He’s a great man. No one I admire more, aside from J. Edgar Hoover himself. But he thinks he’s invincible. He thinks he can do anything. Because in his experience, he can. He made all of his own money. Everything he has—his newspapers and movie studio and the rest—he built from nothing. The guy was a newsie as a kid, lived on the street, didn’t have two pennies to rub together. Man’s a genius. But he thinks nothing can touch him. I don’t think he keeps me around because he thinks I actually help—I think he sees me like a lucky rabbit’s foot. I saved him from that bomb, but he saw it as luck and he took me along. I’m grateful. But he believes his will is enough. Something like this was always bound to happen. I knew it. You can see it. It was always bound to happen.

  [Interview terminated 6:10 p.m.]

  * * *

  22

  THE ELLINGHAM COACH SYSTEM WAS BACK IN EFFECT THE NEXT DAY on a special schedule to allow students and parents to meet.

  There were two stops—the rest stop and Burlington. Stevie had arranged to meet her parents at the rest stop. She waited for the coach with a number of other people. To settle herself, she had her earbuds in and her podcasts on.

  And she was settled, until David sidled up next to her. He was not dressed in his normal David gear of wrecked jeans and some old T-shirt. He had on a crisp blue fitted dress shirt, one that tapered elegantly down to a pair of well-cut black pants. He even wore black dress shoes. Everything about his appearance was crisp and tailored and showed off his slender, muscular frame. All of this was capped off by a slim-fitting black coat.

  Stevie had limited experience with guys in dress clothes. (Suited detectives on TV didn’t count.) David was showing his plumage, and it stirred feelings in Stevie that were physically agitating.

  “I hope you get the job,” Stevie said, looking away from him. “I think they really need you up in corporate accounting.”

  “Is that a deduction?” he said. “Get it? Accounting joke and detective joke.”

  “Where are you meeting your parents?”

  “I’m not,” he said, pushing his hands deep in the pockets of his long black coat. “They are safely far away. I’m just getting the hell out of Dodge.”

  “So why the . . .”

  “I like to look nice when I go to see His Majesty, the Burger King. And where will you be going?”

  “To eat. And hopefully coming back to school if my parents don’t think this place is full of deranged liberals that let people get murdered, which is sort of what they are currently thinking.”

  The coach pulled up and Stevie and David got in. Stevie sat by the window, and David plopped down next to her.

  “So,” he said, “you want to talk?”

  “About what?”

  “About the other night?”

  Most of the other people in the coach—not that there were many—were talking or listening to something already. But this was still public. Stevie felt herself break into a cold sweat.

  “Is there a reason you’re doing this?” she asked.

  “I just want to know. I like learning. That’s why I’m an Ellingham student. Learning is fun. Learning is a game.”

  “How serious are they about the policy regarding using violent language with another student?” she asked.

  Her palms were starting to sweat. And her forehead. And her feet? What the hell was that? Why was the human body such a jerk? Why did it flood you with hormones and sexy feelings and also flop sweat?

  “Deadly,” he said sternly.<
br />
  “Look,” she said, “I have enough to worry about. My parents are probably going to pull me out of school tonight, so . . .”

  “Life finds a way,” he said. “Didn’t you learn anything from Jurassic Park?”

  He rested his head back and put a large set of over-ear headphones on and left Stevie to think that one over.

  The coach made its way back on the path past the farmyards and the maple-candy stores and the glassblowers and the Ben & Jerry’s signs, back to I-89, and all the way to the rest stop where Stevie’s parents waited now, next to their maroon minivan, bundled tight.

  David stood to let her go by, and then he continued right off the coach. She thought he was just taking extreme steps to make room for her, but he remained off the coach and followed her right to her parents.

  “I’m David,” he said, extending his hand. “David Eastman.”

  Why was David introducing himself to her parents?

  “Nice to meet you, David,” her mother said. “Are you meeting your family here?”

  “No. Stevie said I could maybe ride into Burlington with you? If that’s no trouble. If it is, I can just catch the coach when it comes by again.”

  Stevie saw the light come on in her parents’ eyes. They looked from David to Stevie and back to David again, and they liked what they saw. Stevie felt the ground moving away from her feet.

  “Of course not!” her mom said. “You’ll come with us.”

  “We’re going to get something to eat,” her father said. “If you’d like to come.”

  Stevie couldn’t move. Her body had gone rigid. David, don’t, David, it’s not a joke, David . . .

  “Sure,” he said with a smile. “If it’s not a bother?”

  “Oh, it’s no bother,” her dad said.

  She saw David take in the EDWARD KING sticker on the back of the minivan. He gave her a sideways look, then went to the back door of her family’s car and opened it.