Samuel pinched his fingers to turn the page. But page three didn’t give way to the next, for there was no next page. He went through the letter again. Page one, page two, page three. He felt each page carefully—perhaps page four was stuck behind one of the other sheets. It wasn’t. The boy reread the last paragraph, a frown carved like a scar between his eyes, and after a while the words became a blur and it was hard to make any sense of them.
He didn’t understand, not in any way that felt good; he just knew that his mother was unhappy. And that the next page of that letter was very important. What was she trying to say? Was she writing about him? Samuel’s wicked mind began to play with him again but he did his best to chase the thoughts away.
She loved him. She loved him best of all and he could prove it, too. All he needed was the rest of that letter. That would clear everything up, because she was certain to have written something special about him in closing—wasn’t that usually when the most tender feelings are put down on paper? The missing page was probably mixed up with the other letters in his mother’s bedroom. Samuel folded the letter and returned it to the Antarctic. Then he went to the desk drawer and pulled out the key.
“Samuel!” Ruth’s voice was like a bark in the night. “Where have you gotten to?”
“I’m in here,” Samuel called back. He listened for footsteps but heard none.
“Where’s here?”
“Mother’s study.”
“Whatever for?”
“Just looking at the atlas.”
“Well, your dinner’s ready, so hurry along.”
Samuel closed the drawer, slipped the key into his pocket and set off toward the kitchen.
24
“How’s that throat?”
“The bleeding’s stopped,” said Samuel.
“Didn’t I tell you it would?”
Samuel nodded. “It still hurts, though.”
“Be gone by the morning, you mark my words.”
After dinner, if Ruth was in a good mood, they sometimes had tea or hot chocolate in the sitting room. Ruth liked to listen to the radio, usually some sort of detective story or a quiz show, where very smart people would answer questions. Often, Ruth would know the answer before the smart people and Samuel had told her more than once that she should go on one of those shows and win the prizes. Ruth would always wave him off and say that she was no scholar, and besides, who ever heard of a housekeeper winning a quiz show?
Samuel took another sip of hot chocolate. The fire in the hearth was little more than kindling, and as the boy watched the smoldering logs begin to crumble, it didn’t hold his interest the way it usually did. He was thinking about how he might slip away and find the missing pages of that letter and he understood it wouldn’t be easily managed.
Typically, Ruth was everywhere all at once, but lately it was even worse—as if her eyes were always upon him. She was either passing by or coming to find him or looking from afar. She seemed to know where he was headed before he did. Twice, Samuel had said he needed to use the toilet upstairs and twice Ruth had said the one downstairs was just as good so he should use that one instead. Yes, it would take some managing.
“Did you finish writing the psalm?” Ruth had her reading glasses on and was mending a hole in one of Samuel’s favorite shirts.
“Yes.” Samuel shrugged. “Well, almost.”
“You were to finish it today.” Ruth looked at Samuel from over the top of her glasses, which was her way of conveying utter seriousness. “Was I not clear about that?”
“I was going to work on it after school but then...”
But then he had nearly choked to death on a piece of glass. A piece of glass that Ruth had baked into a chocolate cake. This wasn’t said aloud but it splashed about between the silence, which is why Ruth sniffed and her voice lost some of its edge. “Well, I don’t suppose the day is over yet.” She looked down at her watch. “You’ve still got forty-five minutes until bedtime. Fetch the Bible and finish it now.”
“But Reverend Pryce isn’t coming to class until Monday.”
“Even so, it’s best you get it done now.”
Suddenly a solution rose up in front of Samuel. He got out of his chair and started toward the door. “You’re right, I should get it finished. Good night, Ruth.”
“Good night?” Ruth was looking at him over her glasses again. “And just why are you wishing me a good night?”
“The Bible’s in my bedroom.”
“What on earth is it doing there? Isn’t it in the kitchen?”
It was in the kitchen. But Samuel knew he had to push on. “I took it up after dinner, so that I could work on it before bed.”
Ruth seemed to consider this for a moment, her eyes closing to a squint. Finally, she said, “Well, go up and get it, then.”
“Shouldn’t I finish it in my room?” Samuel motioned to the radio sitting between two armchairs. “It might be very distracting.”
“Nonsense.” Ruth held the shirt up to the lamp and examined her stitching. “I’ll turn the radio down if I must. Besides, I want to be sure you write the Queen’s English in such a way that Reverend Pryce will be able to read it.”
This was unhelpful, but Samuel would have to make do. “Yes, Ruth.”
He checked the clock by the radio and then walked quickly into the hall.
* * *
He wanted to run up the stairs but Ruth would probably have something to say about that. She hated running on the stairs. Said it sounded like a stampede and made her head rattle. So Samuel took two at a time and went as fast as he could manage without stomping on the boards.
When he got up to the landing, the grandfather clock’s wretched tick seemed to delight in reminding him he didn’t have much time. He had to break into his mother’s bedroom, find the missing pages of the letter, then steal into the kitchen, get the Bible and his workbook and make it back into the sitting room without rousing Ruth’s suspicions. There was hardly any time, but right at that moment, finding the rest of the letter felt like the only way to chase away the wicked thoughts and make things better.
Coming off the landing, Samuel began to run. He didn’t pay any mind to the grim shadows splayed about the corridor and he barely noticed that the moonlight drifting through the windows had drenched the long, empty corridor in a kind of mist. As he came to a halt outside his mother’s door he was already digging the key out of his pocket.
The door opened and the boy rushed into the bedroom, tripping on the rug and nearly crashing to the floor. The curtains were drawn, and Samuel had to feel along the wall to find the lamp. He switched it on and then jumped over the bed, moving swiftly toward the object of his attention.
The top drawer opened roughly, catching on the left side. The baby blanket was folded neatly and everything else looked undisturbed. Samuel just assumed the contents of the drawer would be in a great mess after Ruth had been in there looking for her pin. But everything was neatly arranged and in its proper place. He lifted out his father’s baby blanket and placed it on top of the chest and then searched through its folds for the slim parcel of letters. They weren’t there.
Samuel didn’t want the bad thoughts, but they clawed at him, anyway. All about Ruth removing those letters so that Samuel wouldn’t know what his mother had written. No, he reminded himself, she had been looking for her pin, nothing more. Just looking for her pin, which meant so much to her because her father, God rest his soul, had given it to her. The letters must be there; he just had to keep looking. He pulled out the rusted tea tin with his mother’s gold earrings and the ruby necklace in it, placing it on top of the blanket. Under it was a stack of wrapping paper covered in white and red stripes and to the left were an address book and a volume of poetry by someone called Wordsworth. Samuel moved them aside and found that under these things was his bounty.
The boy untie
d the parcel of letters. There were four in total. The fifth was hidden in the atlas down in his mother’s study. Samuel glanced at the clock on the mantel—he’d been gone eight minutes. Ruth would soon be looking for him if she wasn’t already. Still, he had to find those missing pages.
His hands worked quickly, opening each of the letters. They were all addressed to his father, from the same address in Bath, and though the words flew past him in a blur there was hardly a mention of his name, just a great deal about the hot springs and her reinvigorated spirits and Dr. Boyle. What he didn’t find was the fourth page. How could it have vanished into thin air? It had to be there somewhere; pages from important letters don’t just disappear.
There wasn’t time to think on this. Samuel eyed the clock again. Ten minutes.
“Samuel, what are you doing up there?”
It sounded like Ruth was in the hall, probably at the bottom of the stairs.
“Coming, Ruth!” Samuel yelled back. “I had to go to the toilet again.”
“Did you indeed? Well, just get yourself down here and finish that infernal psalm.”
“Yes, Ruth.”
Samuel put the letters back where he found them. After all, they were no good to him, and besides, Ruth might check. Next, he took the tea tin and placed it at the bottom of the drawer and then covered it over with the blanket. His hands were moving faster than his mind, so it took a moment for him to realize. That’s when he stopped. Samuel set the blanket aside again and picked up the tea tin once more. The one with his mother’s very favorite jewels in it—the earrings from her wedding day and the necklace his father had given to her when Samuel was born. He picked it up, even though he had no time, for one reason only. The tin hadn’t rattled. It hadn’t released its distorted percussion, the clack and clatter of the jewels moving about inside it.
“Samuel Clay, do I have to come up there and get you myself?” shouted Ruth.
“Coming!”
Samuel unscrewed the lid and looked inside, and the dark void he found there, full of nothing but questions, made the bad thoughts dance anew before his eyes.
25
The devil didn’t come looking for him. Samuel expected to hear her stomping down the corridor, almost certainly with a look of thunder on her face. But it didn’t happen. He’d put everything back in the drawer, locked the bedroom door and hurried down the back stairs to collect the Bible and workbook from the kitchen.
He flew down the narrow steps and along the back passageway, leading straight into the kitchen. Ruth was a nasty crook, he knew that now. She had stolen his mother’s best jewels. That’s what he had caught her doing the other day when she was going through the drawer—stealing like a rotten, no-good robber. It was just as Joseph had said: Ruth was up to no good. And if she was wicked enough to steal his mother’s jewels right from her very own bedroom, then was it really so hard to believe she could do much worse? Ruth had hurt his mother; didn’t that empty tea tin practically shout that out? She was the reason his mother had vanished in the night. She was why his mother hadn’t come back in over one hundred and nineteen days. Ruth was the devil.
He would confront her about the missing jewels—he knew he must—but then she would know he had done the very thing she told him not to do and then it wouldn’t be about the stolen earrings and the necklace; it would be about what a horrible boy Samuel was for breaking into his mother’s bedroom. Ruth had a way of doing that. He wouldn’t let her twist and turn things around on him this time. She killed his mother. And she had put that glass in the chocolate cake to kill him, too.
Ruth thought herself very clever. She’d probably plotted this whole thing out, dreaming of having the house to herself and his mother’s jewels besides. Just like that housekeeper in Germany. But Ruth wasn’t as smart as she imagined. Samuel knew what she’d been up to and she wouldn’t get away with it. He would do something terrible to her: smash her in the head with a hammer and let her bleed to death or push her down the stairs and listen as her bones broke and her neck snapped. He would kill her for what she’d done. Wouldn’t his mother be looking down from the other side and wouldn’t she want him to avenge her? To make Ruth pay for taking her away from him and for being a cold-blooded murderer and a no-good thief? It would take some thinking about, some planning and such, but he would do it.
The kitchen was wrapped in layers of twilight, the cupboards vanishing into the gloom, the large table rendered an ominous black box. Samuel squinted to make something out of the darkness, moving swiftly in the direction of the icebox. Despite the rage in his heart, he couldn’t deny there was fear pulsing there. If Ruth caught him she would know the Bible hadn’t been in his bedroom and that he had lied.
Samuel’s right elbow hit the icebox. He reached out and felt around it for his schoolbook and the Bible. He couldn’t find them. And he knew, he just knew, what that meant.
“Looking for something?”
Ruth’s voice seemed to blow at him like a cold wind.
He blinked into the darkness. “Ruth?”
The light came on and she was there, standing by the door, the Bible in her hand. Her face looked remarkably smooth in the pale light, her eyes two dark pools, her mouth almost carved into a half grin. Samuel didn’t want to be afraid. She had done awful things—he knew that now—and what he owed her was fury not fear. Yet he did fear her. He was afraid.
“Do you think me a stupid woman?” Ruth was looking at him as if she were reading a book she didn’t quite understand. “Is that it, Samuel? You think it’s as easy as telling me a story and then getting up to no good while I sit downstairs like a fool mending your clothes? Is that how it is?”
“No, Ruth.”
“But isn’t that just what I’ve caught you doing?” Ruth uttered this softly, looking down at the Bible. “Lying to me about where this is and then going upstairs?”
Samuel couldn’t think what to say.
Ruth was shaking her head now. “There isn’t anything you can do that I won’t know about, Samuel. This house won’t hold your secrets—it will betray them. In every creak of the floorboards, every foot on the back stairs, every flick of a light switch, every turn of a key—this house tells its tales for anyone with sense enough to listen.”
“I thought the Bible was upstairs.”
“Oh, yes?” Ruth was leaning against the doorframe. “So it’s not that you lied to my face? It’s that you just thought you had taken it to your room? You just imagined doing something you never did? Is that the sorry tale you’re asking me to believe?”
Samuel nodded his head. Ruth’s cool indignation was a beast with many heads, many weapons, and it made easy work of snuffing out his own righteous anger. He might have imagined that knowing what she had done would arm him against her. But now he saw that while she was a general, battle-scarred and fearless, he was hardly a foot soldier.
“I won’t allow you to wallow in the foul waters of deceit.” Ruth’s voice had found its muscle again. “Some sort of degenerate who tells a lie as easily as tying their shoelaces. I won’t have it, Samuel Clay.” She lifted her finger and beckoned him. “Come here.”
The telephone’s shrill ring took them both by surprise. Ruth glanced out into the hall and then back at Samuel. And that was all the boy needed. He ran for the back stairs.
26
“Get back here!” Ruth shouted. “Now, Samuel!”
The ferocity was there, in every hollered word, but something else was there, too. Samuel was well schooled in the timbre of her rage, so he heard that tiny pocket, that small pinprick, of hesitation.
Ruth never could let a telephone go unanswered. He was running along the second-story landing when the telephone stilled and he heard Ruth’s voice rising up from the hall below. Samuel crouched down, a safe distance from the banister.
“That does sound exciting,” Ruth was saying. “I expect you m
eet a lot of very interesting characters at gatherings like that...Oh, would I? Perhaps I’m not as easily shocked as you might think.” Ruth laughed then and it sounded sincere. She was twisting the cord around her fingers and swaying just a little. “No, Mr. Clay, still no word on Mrs. Clay’s return.”
Mr. Clay? That was his father’s name, but he had gone to an eternal rest or was watching from the other side. The small cloud of confusion quickly parted and Samuel realized that Ruth must be talking to his uncle Felix. That made the boy lean forward, straining to listen.
“Yes, well, I don’t need to tell you about Mrs. Clay.” Ruth’s voice practically sang with condemnation. “She never likes being tied down for long.” Silence. “Exactly.”
Hearing this caused the boy’s teeth to clench, his nostrils to flare. Ruth was lying about his mother, making it seem like she wanted to be away, when all the while she was the reason his mother wasn’t there. Samuel stood up.
“Oh, we’re managing well enough,” Ruth went on. “Well, I won’t pretend things aren’t tight but, as I say, we’re managing.” There was a pause. “I’m afraid Samuel’s at a friend’s house. It’s the boy’s birthday and he invited Samuel to stay the night.”
Samuel was running down the stairs. He had to talk to Uncle Felix—tell him everything and make him call the police and get them to come and take Ruth to prison. To the gallows. The housekeeper glanced up and saw him on the stairs.
“Yes, Mr. Clay.” Her words were tumbling out now. “I’ll be sure to tell him. You have a lovely time at your little soiree.”
Samuel jumped the last three steps and broke into a sprint.
“Good night to you, sir.”
His hand swung through the air, grasping for the telephone, but Ruth slammed it down. Such was Samuel’s speed that he stumbled over her and hit the table, knocking the receiver from its perch. It dropped to the floor with a clang.
The Boy at the Keyhole Page 12