The Hand on the Wall

by Maureen Johnson

  The billboard, which was sponsored by a group associated with the now-defunct campaign of Senator Edward King, had been unpopular with many members of the community. Its unusual destruction brought about a cheer in many areas of town.

  “I have no idea who did it,” said local resident Sean Gibson. “But I’d like to buy them a milk shake.”

  DNA TEST ON REMAINS NOT A MATCH FOR ALICE ELLINGHAM

  True Crime Digest

  April 7

  DNA testing done on the remains of a child found at the Ellingham Academy outside of Burlington, Vermont, revealed that the child was not related to either Albert Ellingham or his wife Iris, eliminating her from consideration as the long-missing Alice Ellingham. Alice disappeared in 1936, aged three, when she and her mother were kidnapped in a roadside attack. While Iris’s body turned up in Lake Champlain some weeks later, Alice was never found. Her whereabouts have been the subject of intense interest since that time, many dubbing her disappearance “the case of the century.”

  According to forensic experts, the body found meets the description of Alice Ellingham in all other ways. “In many ways, this body comports with Alice Ellingham,” said Dr. Felicia Murry of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, where the body was sent to be examined alongside forensic experts from the FBI and a team from the Vermont Forensic Laboratory. “This is a child approximately three years of age, who was born and died in the period between 1928 and 1940. The clothing on the body had no labels or markings that could establish an identity or be traced, but we could date the manufacture from the materials used to between 1930 and 1940. We could not establish cause of death. We were able to collect usable DNA samples from Albert and Iris Ellinghams’ personal possessions. The DNA tests performed on the remains did not prove to be a match for either parent.”

  If the girl in the wall is not Alice, then who is she?

  28

  WHEN SPRING CAME TO THE ELLINGHAM MOUNTAIN, SHE CAME IN glory, whipping her robes of fresh air and spreading fecund greenery over the mountain like a goddess on a fecund greenery-spreading binge. Life reappeared in the form of birds and buds. The cold was not fully banished, but it had a softer edge. Stevie sat in the cupola wearing her red vinyl coat. She shivered a bit underneath, but the air felt good. It kept her bright and alert—that, and the mug of coffee she had slipped out of the dining hall a few minutes before. On her lap was her new tablet, open to the article on the results of the DNA testing of the body in the wall. This, Stevie was resolutely ignoring in favor of the view.

  So much had happened in the last five months. In the beginning there had been a flurry of news, stories about the case and sometimes her. She became the teen detective, the Ellingham Sherlock. There were interviews, articles—Netflix even showed interest in making a movie. It took several weeks for Ellingham to open their doors again, and when it did, not everyone came back. Before, Stevie would never have been able to return. But things were different now between her and her parents. There were no more jokes or dismissive remarks about her interest in crime. She had solved the case, and she had even made enough money from the publicity to pay for her first year of college. And now that the culprit was gone, there was the feeling—the hope—that nothing more was going to happen at Ellingham Academy for a very long time.

  It had all worked out, and now Stevie was left with the beautiful view.

  “What are you doing?” said a voice.

  Nate, of course. He approached cautiously, his hands sunk deep into the pockets of his beaten khakis. She had been waiting for him. She knew he would come and find her in her thinking spot.

  “Studying,” she said. “I have a quiz on the limbic system.”

  Nate cast an eye on the article open on the tablet.

  “That’s some bullshit, huh?”

  “Nah,” she said, setting the tablet aside.

  “Nah?”

  “Nah.”

  “Are you folksy now?” he said, sitting down next to her. “Nah? The DNA on that body didn’t match and you’re . . . okay?”

  Stevie tucked her knees to her chest and looked over at her friend.

  “Because I knew it wasn’t going to,” she said, smiling.

  “Wait . . . are you saying you knew that wasn’t Alice?”

  “Oh, it’s her,” Stevie said. “It’s Alice.”

  “Not according to the tests.”

  “There’s always been speculation that Alice was adopted,” Stevie said. “There’s no proof, but there was always a rumor.”

  “A rumor won’t help you get millions of dollars.”

  “Nope,” she said, smiling a bit.

  “Now you’re smiling?” he said. “Are you trying to scare me?”

  “See, here’s the thing that was bothering me,” Stevie said. “Once I knew Alice was back on the grounds, I kept wondering why. Alice didn’t die here. She died somewhere else. And the person responsible for her death was George Marsh. That much, I know. But why, if she died, would he do something so insane—bring her body back to her home and put it right under her father’s nose? I had to be missing something. So I went to the library. The Ellinghams had this thing called a clipping service—it’s like a human Google alert. Every time they were mentioned in an article in the news, the service would cut it out and send it to them. There’s boxes and boxes and boxes of this stuff in the library here. It hasn’t been digitized because no one really thought it was interesting or worth it. I had to read a lot of stuff—society reports and stuff about hats and dances and people sailing together. Did you know they used to report who was on famous ocean liners? Like, that was a whole news story. Anyway, it took me a few weeks, but I finally found this.”

  She reached into her pocket and pulled out a copy of a clipping from a Burlington newspaper dated December 18, 1932.

  “Read it out loud,” she said, handing it to Nate.

  Nate took the paper cautiously and began to read.

  “‘Wife to Albert Ellingham’—that’s nice, she’s not her own person or anything—‘gives birth in Switzerland. Businessman and philanthropist Albert Ellingham and his wife, Mrs. Iris Ellingham, welcomed a baby girl on Thursday, December 15, in a private hospital outside the city of Zermatt, in the Swiss Alps. Both mother and daughter are doing well, according to Robert Mackenzie, personal secretary to Mr. Ellingham. The child has been named Alice.’ Why am I reading this?”

  “Keep going.”

  “‘Mr. Ellingham is of course known locally for his property on Mount Morgan, where he intends to open a school. The Ellinghams chose a different snowy mountain setting for the birth to avoid publicity, according to Mr. Mackenzie. They were accompanied on their trip abroad by Miss Flora Robinson, a friend to—’”

  “There it is,” she said.

  “There what is?”

  “I already knew that Alice was born in Switzerland,” she said, her eyes glistening. “But I didn’t know they went with a friend. One friend. Flora Robinson. Iris’s best friend.”

  “Makes sense, I guess? Take your friend if you’re going on a long trip to give birth?”

  “Or,” Stevie said, “they went away to the Alps, to a super private place, so that Flora could give birth and they could arrange the adoption. Adoptions are personal things. If it had happened here, the press could have leaked it. Maybe they didn’t want Alice to know, or they wanted to be the ones to tell her, on their own time. People have a right to privacy, especially when it comes to their kids.”

  “Just because Flora went to Switzerland with them doesn’t mean she gave birth to Alice, does it?” Nate asked.

  Stevie closed the DNA article on her tablet and brought up a digital notebook of scans, all of long pages with neat, elaborate handwriting.

  “Charles was nice enough to give me the house records, probably to keep me busy. I made copies of them for myself because I like to make my own fun. The Ellingham house was the kind of place where everything got written down, all the visitors, all the menus. So let’s
go back to March 1932. Who’s here? Flora Robinson. So let’s see what she’s doing. . . .”

  Stevie triumphantly showed the next pages of scans. These were of menus, daily lists of what was served at the main table and to all the guests.

  “Look at Flora Robinson in March. This is her normal breakfast.”

  She held up one of the menu pages.

  Guest, Miss Flora Robinson, breakfast tray service: coffee with milk and sugar, tomato juice, toast and marmalade, scrambled egg, sliced ham, orange slices.

  “You’ll see, she gets this almost every day, same thing. She loves her tomato juice and scrambled eggs and orange slices. But then, we get to mid-May, and it all changes.”

  Guest, Miss Flora Robinson, breakfast tray service: tea without milk, ginger ale, saltine crackers, dry toast.

  “That’s what she gets, if she gets anything at all,” Stevie said. “All of this starts in late May and goes on through June. What does this suggest?”

  “Morning sickness,” Nate said, his eyes widening.

  “Morning sickness,” Stevie replied, smiling.

  “You terrify me,” Nate said quietly.

  “I went through the rest of the records. Flora was here for most of 1932. Like, almost all of it. Then, in September, they all pack up and go to Switzerland. So, let’s say Flora was Alice’s biological mother. It means there must also be a biological father. Who is he? This is where George Marsh’s actions start to make sense. . . .”

  Stevie was getting that high, frenzied excitement, the one that made Nate visibly nervous.

  “George Marsh is never written down as a guest, but he turns up in the records because they have to make up his room and he also gets meals. Here he is, all over March and April. In fact, for at least one weekend in April, it was the Ellinghams, George Marsh, and Flora Robinson. It’s the weekend that, if you count back, would have been pretty much exactly nine months before Alice’s birth. But if you want more, here is Flora . . .”

  She brought up a picture of Flora Robinson.

  “And here is George Marsh . . .”

  One more photo.

  “And here is Alice.”

  Nate examined the three photos together.

  “Oh,” he said.

  “This is why he brought her back,” Stevie said. “Because he was her biological father. He wanted to bury her properly, at home.”

  “Okay, so you’re going to explain all of this so you get the money? I guess it would be hard to prove, but they could probably do it, check birth records and get DNA . . .”

  “Nah,” Stevie said again.

  “Okay, what is this nah thing? You aren’t going to try to prove it?”

  “It wasn’t about the money,” she said. “If I even tried to claim it, think of the lawyers and the creeps I’d have to deal with. It would ruin my life.”

  “Seriously?” he said. “You’re not going to fight for seventy million dollars?”

  “What can I buy for seventy million dollars?”

  “Anything. Almost literally anything.”

  “The way it is now,” she said, “the money stays here, in the school. Alice’s home. The one her father made. He wanted to make a place where impossible things could happen. Albert Ellingham believed in me. He let me come here, and I’m making sure it stays open. This is for Alice and Iris, and for Albert, for Hayes, and Ellie and Fenton.”

  She raised her mug.

  “Oh my God,” he said. “What are you, a saint or something?”

  “I stole this mug,” she said. “So, no. Besides, if the school closed down, you’d have to go home and finish your book or something. I did it for you. I’m not even telling anyone else. I mean, aside from my friends. Like you.”

  “Are you trying to make me have an emotion?” Nate said, his eyes reddening a bit. “Because I’ve spent my whole life learning how to repress and deflect and you’re kind of ruining my thing.”

  “I have more bad news. Look behind you. The happy couples are coming out . . .”

  Janelle and Vi waved back, arm in arm. Behind them, Hunter and Germaine were not quite at this level, but they were talking intently, in that way couples do. Janelle and Vi had only grown closer since the events of the fall and were even planning on how they would visit each other during the summer and coordinate their schedules. Hunter and Germaine and bonded over a mutual interest in the environment and K-dramas. Things at school had not been easy or perfect for anyone, but they were definitely pretty good. It turned out school was generally more straightforward when people weren’t getting murdered all the time.

  As the others reached Stevie and Nate, Stevie’s phone rang. She held up a hand and stepped off a few paces to take a video call.

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  David was on a street somewhere, in a purple campaign T-shirt.

  “Oh, um . . .” He looked around. “Iowa. We’re going to three cities today. I’m doing prep work, setting up events at some diners, stuff like that. I wanted to call early because I saw that DNA stuff. You’re all good?”

  “I’m great,” she said. “How’s the campaign going?”

  “I knocked on three hundred and fifteen doors yesterday. Imagine how lucky those people were, opening their doors to see me.”

  “Blessed,” Stevie said.

  “That’s the exact word. Blessed. I even knocked on the doors of some people who had a sign for my dad out on their lawn. Some people just won’t give up on the dream.”

  Since leaving Ellingham, David had landed an internship with a rival presidential candidate. Ellingham had offered him the chance to return, but his father had blocked it. He was technically without a school, working on his own to finish his GED. Between the two things, he was going day and night. Stevie had never seen him at this pace, and it seemed to suit him. He looked and sounded healthier, even though she suspected he wasn’t sleeping much. They spoke two or three times a day. Her parents, ironically, were absolutely delighted that she continued to have a relationship with that nice boy who turned out to be Senator King’s son. Senator King’s views on David’s relationship with Stevie were not known and not sought out.

  “I’m thinking about telling him what I’m doing,” David said.

  “You are?”

  “I feel like he should know I’m out here, working hard for democracy. You know, the people on the other side. I fixed their local database last night, and tonight I’m helping with social media outreach. It turns out I’m really good at this stuff.”

  “I always believed in you,” Stevie said.

  “Did you?”

  “No,” Stevie said. “But you have a nice ass, so I let you slide.”

  They smiled at each other from a thousand miles away. Stevie had never felt closer to him.

  “I guess I’d better get back and finish studying,” she said. “I have an anatomy quiz. Do you know anything about the limbic system?”

  “What don’t I know about the limbic system? Except what it is.”

  “That’s about where I am,” said Stevie.

  “You don’t get a ‘the DNA sample wasn’t a match’ pass on that?”

  “No.”

  “Even if you solve the case of the century, you still have to do your homework? The world is made of bullshit.”

  “Not everything,” said Stevie.

  “No,” he replied, his mouth twisting into a smile. “Not everything.”

  When Stevie was off the phone, the group fell in together to walk toward the classroom buildings. Stevie took a long, deep breath of the fresh mountain air—the air Albert Ellingham had loved so much, he bought the side of the mountain and made his kingdom.

  “Can I ask you something?” Vi said. “How did David manage to record his dad’s reaction? Did he bug the office?”

  “You mean, hypothetically?” Stevie said.

  “Obviously.”

  “Say you get yourself beaten up and put up a video of it to freak out your dad and make him think you’ve run off
to smoke pot and drop out of society, but you’re really sneaking back to the house to get information.”

  “Seems normal,” Vi replied.

  “Say you also have a sister who feels the same way about your dad that you do. And that you tell that sister what you are about to do so she doesn’t freak out. And that sister wants to help. So she flies from California to Pennsylvania to be at the house when you tell your dad you destroyed all his blackmail material. And she happens to be ready with her phone to record his reaction.”

  “Such an amazing coincidence,” Vi said. “And then that recording happened to get out?”

  “I know,” Stevie said. “The weirdest stuff happens in this family.”

  “Have your parents given up on Edward King yet?” Vi asked.

  “No,” Stevie said. “They think it’s all a plot against him or something. Some things you can’t change. Anyway, I have to go or I’m going to be late. This quiz won’t fail itself. Want to meet for lunch at . . .”

  Her attention was drawn to a movement in the woods in the direction of the river. The trees were slowly coming back into bud, but they were still bare enough that she could make out a shape.

  “Moose,” she said, almost in a whisper. “Moose. Moose.”

  She tugged Nate’s sleeve.

  “Moose,” she repeated.

  The object moved away, out of sight. Stevie blinked. It had just been there, the massive antlers moving through the trees.

  “My moose,” she said in a low voice. “I finally got it. The universe paid me in moose.”

  With one backward glance at the magical spot, Stevie Bell resumed walking toward her class. Anatomy was still ahead of her. Lots of things were ahead of her, but this one was the closest.

  “That wasn’t a moose, was it?” Janelle said when Stevie was out of earshot. “That’s a branch, right? It moved in the wind?”

  “It’s a branch,” Nate replied.

  “Like, that’s obviously a branch,” Vi said. “Should we tell her? She seems really invested in this.”