The Vanishing Stair

by Maureen Johnson

  Vi wrapped themselves around Janelle.

  “Okay,” Stevie said, handing over the wire. “How does this work?”

  “Yeah, I was looking that up,” Vi said, detaching themselves from Janelle. “People collect these. Lots of tutorials. This is the best one I could find.”

  They passed their phone over to Janelle, who watched a video. She picked up the wire and spooled it, consulting with the video a few times.

  “I think that’s it,” she said. “I don’t want to record over it. I think that’s it. Want to try it?”

  Stevie nodded and Janelle flipped the switch. The wire turned on the spools. For a moment, there was only a crackling and hissing noise, then a few muffled booms, as if something was hitting a microphone. And then . . . a voice. Deep, male. Albert Ellingham, unmistakably.

  “Dolores, sit there.”

  “Sit here?” A girl’s voice. Dolores Epstein, speaking. Stevie reeled in shock. Dolores was a character, a person from the past, lost. Here she was now, among them, her voice high and clear, with a very thick New York accent.

  “Just there. And lean into the microphone a bit,” Albert Ellingham said.

  Janelle looked to Stevie with wide, excited eyes.

  “Good,” he said. “Now all you have to do is speak normally. I want to ask you a bit about your experiences at Ellingham. I’m making some recordings about the school so people know what kind of work we do up here. Now, Dolores, before I met you you got into all sorts of scrapes, didn’t you?”

  “Is this for the radio?” Dottie asked.

  “No, no. You can speak freely.”

  “I like to look around, that’s all,” she said.

  “And that’s a good thing! I was exactly the same way.”

  “My uncle is a cop in New York. He says I’m like a second-story man.”

  “A second-story man?” Albert Ellingham asked.

  “A second-story man is a thief, who, as the name suggests, enters through a second-story window. Slightly more sophisticated than a snatch-and-grabber. But to be honest, it’s my uncle who taught me how to get into places. Police officers know all the tricks. And I’ve always been interested in locks and things like that.”

  “What did you think when you first came here? It must be very different from New York.”

  “Well, I was frightened, honestly.”

  “Of what?”

  “I’m used to the city. Not the woods. The woods are scary.”

  “The woods are lovely!”

  “And dark and deep, as the poet Robert Frost says. When I told my uncle I was coming here, he said it was all right because you have an attic man here.”

  “An attic man?” he asked.

  “Another colloquialism. What’s above the second story? The attic. My uncle always said cops who could get the drop on the second-story men—that means catch them in the act—needed to be right above them. You have a policeman here from New York. Mr. Marsh. I felt better after that. I like it up here now.”

  Albert Ellingham chuckled.

  “I’m glad to hear it. And what would you tell the world about Ellingham Academy?”

  “Well, I’d say it was the best place I’ve ever been. It takes elements of the system developed by Maria Montessori, though I see elements of the work of John Dewey, who is from here in Burlington, actually, did you know that?”

  “I did not. I learn something new every day here at the school. We learn from each other. Like I’ve also just learned about second-story men. Now, let’s talk about what you do every day here. Tell me about your studies. . . .”

  Mudge’s voice was suddenly in Stevie’s head. They were looking at the cow’s eye. The one place where all the information goes in, you can’t actually see anything.

  There was a kind of flash behind Stevie’s eyes. All the pieces that she had collected and seen over years of reading about this lined up in place. She wanted to move around a little, so she had to keep grabbing them, making sure they didn’t move. She walked quickly to the door. She couldn’t hear anything more, couldn’t talk to anyone or she would lose her grip on it.

  “Hey,” Janelle said, stopping the machine. “Where are you . . .”

  Stevie waved a hand. The sky had turned a candy-colored pink and the air had a wet, frozen note to it. Good, clear air for thinking. That’s the reason Albert Ellingham had bought this place to begin with—he thought the air was conducive to learning and thinking. Maybe he was right. Once you got used to having a little less oxygen, everything seemed to move a bit faster.

  Think, Stevie. What was the thing she was missing? What had she seen?

  The Ellingham library stood in stark relief against the pink sky, its spires dark. The library. Dottie left her mark in the library.

  Stevie broke out into a run. She blew through the door as Kyoko looked like she was ending her shift for the night. Stevie almost skidded up to her desk.

  “Kyoko . . . I need one thing.”

  “Can it wait until tomorrow?”

  Stevie shook her head.

  “The book. Dottie’s book. The Sherlock Holmes.”

  “That can’t wait?”

  “Please,” she said. “I’ll be so quick. Five minutes. Two minutes.”

  Kyoko rolled her eyes a bit, but she reached down and got the keys and opened the back office. Stevie followed her along, past the metal shelving and the boxes, back down to the row where the treasures of 1936 were kept. She removed the sepia-and-white book from the box.

  “Be quick, but be careful,” she said, passing it over.

  Stevie accepted it like it was a holy object, carrying it over to one of the worktables.

  “What do you need this for in such a hurry?” she said.

  But Stevie could not hear her. She was busy looking for something she knew she had seen, something so small, a blip . . .

  There it was, in A Study in Scarlet. The mark in the book, one rough pencil line: Sherlock said, “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose.”

  In A Study in Scarlet a body is found with the word RACHE written over it in blood. Rache, German for revenge. A victim-left sign of what had transpired.

  “Did you find what you were looking for?” Kyoko said, leaning over the table.

  “Yeah,” she said, getting up. She was almost stumbling now, catching her foot on the table leg in her haste.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah . . . fine. Definitely fine.”

  She hurriedly closed the book and passed it back to Kyoko, who placed it gently in a carrying crate.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I have to . . . Thanks.”

  Stevie hurried through the library, past people working at tables with their headphones on. Once outside, she gulped in air that was full of gentle flurries. They floated into her nose and melted on the back of her throat. She yanked her phone out of her pocket and called Fenton.

  Fenton’s phone rang five times.

  “Come on,” Stevie said, bouncing on her heels. “Come on. . . .”

  She paced along the path in front of the library.

  “Hello?” Fenton’s voice was slurred, and loud.

  “Hey,” she said. “I need to talk to you. I’ve—”

  “Can’t right now, Stevie,” she said.

  “No, you don’t get it,” Stevie replied, trying not to yell. “I—”

  “Not now . . . ” she said, her voice lowering to a hiss. “I will call you back in a bit. The kid is there. The kid is there!”

  “What?” she said.

  And with that, she was gone.

  Stevie stood with the phone still pressed to her ear, the glass surface getting cold and fogging with her breath. She stepped along the stone path. Sounds echoed louder in the cold. Each footfall was crisp and distinct.

  How could Fenton just hang up on her? How was she alone in the dark of this mountain, with no one to share these little threads of her though
ts that were being woven together by the little mice in her brain?

  How did she explain that she knew who kidnapped Alice and Iris Ellingham?

  October 30, 1938, 5:00 p.m.

  IT WAS AN IDYLLIC SCENE: ALBERT ELLINGHAM’S SPORTY LITTLE SPARKMAN & Stephens daysailer, Wonderland, idling on the waters of Lake Champlain. It had one red sail and one white, both stiffly at attention, though the boat was drifting ever so gently. The fine October afternoon in Vermont was oversaturated with color, like a paint box turned over on the landscape. Albert Ellingham kept one slack hand on the wheel. George Marsh sat on the padded seats that lined the boat, comfortably leaning back, his arms spread wide, enjoying the afternoon.

  “Do you read much, George?” Albert asked.

  “No,” George replied.

  “You should, you should. Reading is one of the great pleasures of life—maybe the greatest.”

  “You must never have had a Cuban cigar.”

  Albert Ellingham laughed.

  “It’s true. All the money, all the power—none of it compares to a good book. A book gives you everything. It gives you a window into other souls, other worlds. The world is a door. Books are the key.”

  “You’ve lost me,” George said.

  “What about Sherlock Holmes? Ever read A Study in Scarlet? Surely you’ve read that one?”

  “Afraid not,” George said.

  “You should, you really should. It introduces Sherlock Holmes. It’s a marvelous story, very instructive. You learn about how Sherlock Holmes sees the world and approaches his work. As someone in law enforcement, it would interest you. As a matter of fact, that story made me who I am. When I was a boy, growing up in the boys’ home, we had only a few books. A collection of Sherlock Holmes was among them. I opened that book and read it, oh, perhaps a hundred times or more. It taught me to look—to see the world around me. It’s one of the most instructive things ever written.”

  “All right.” George Marsh laughed and pulled out a cigarette. “You’ve convinced me. I’ll get a library card.”

  “I’ve done my good deed for the day, then. Oh, and apologies, George. No smoking on the boat, if you don’t mind. Fire and boats don’t mix well.”

  George Marsh nodded and tucked the cigarette behind his ear.

  “I’m going to drop anchor here. We’ll sit for a bit. I like it up here by Maquam Bay.”

  Albert Ellingham idly unwound a line from the rope spool and spun it around his hand, lowering the anchor into the water.

  “You know,” he said as he worked. “When they found Dottie Epstein, she was reading Sherlock Holmes. She’s so often forgotten in all this. That’s my fault. I focus on Iris, on Alice . . . Little Dottie Epstein from the Lower East Side gets swept aside in the shuffle. It’s not right. She deserved better.”

  “That poor kid,” George Marsh said, shaking his head.

  “Dolores Epstein,” Albert Ellingham said. “Dottie, that’s what she went by. Exceptional girl, truly exceptional. She was the first student I picked for the school. Did I ever tell you that?”

  George Marsh shook his head.

  “No?” Albert Ellingham said. “No. I suppose it never came up. I heard about her from one of the top librarians at the public library, this girl from Avenue A who read Greek and slipped into one of the rare books rooms three times. They said she was trouble, but good trouble. Good trouble. You understand me, George?”

  “I do,” George Marsh said. “There’s some good trouble in you, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  “Not at all, not at all. I appreciate it. I went to her school, spoke with her principal. I could tell he was both happy to be rid of her and heartbroken at the same time. You don’t get students like that every day. I remember the joy on her face when she arrived at the academy—when she went to my library and found out she could have any book she wanted. . . . George, I’m a rich man. I own a lot. But I’ll tell you something—the best money I ever spent was on Dottie Epstein’s books. I was feeding a mind. She was a tremendous kid.”

  “What happened to her was terrible,” George Marsh said, nodding solemnly.

  “Beyond terrible. Beyond terrible. So much was lost that day. That mind of hers. And you know, in the dome, when they found her, there was a copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. She had been reading it when it happened. So strange . . .”

  Albert Ellingham paused, pulling the rope tight around his fingers for a moment before tying it off. The boat spun gently and rocked in position.

  “You know,” Albert Ellingham said after a moment, “in that copy I saw she made a mark under a famous quote: ‘I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic.’ I got to thinking about this line she underlined. It wasn’t neat—it was scratched in, in pencil. Rough. Uneven. No other marks in the book. But who thinks about a mark in a student’s book? And I was so caught up with Iris and Alice. I was looking, like Watson, but I failed to observe. But something must have lodged in my mind. You know how your mind works on a problem? It ticks away in the background. That mark under that line. It bothered me.”

  Albert Ellingham squinted a bit as the boat turned toward the setting sun.

  “I went over to the library and I had a look through the books Dottie Epstein had checked out. Not a mark on them, George. I confirmed this with the librarian. She checked for things like that. You don’t get things past librarians. It could have been another student, of course, but as it turns out, Dottie liked that book so much that no one took it out but her. She had it constantly. I think many of the other students were used to having their own books and didn’t use the library quite like Dottie did. I went a bit further. I looked at the police report about what was found in the dome and basement. A pencil was found on the floor of the liquor room—it had rolled off to the side of the room. It was dull. One of the student pencils. They’re blue and have ‘Ellingham Academy’ written on the side. So, it’s reasonable to conclude that Dottie made that mark, and made it that day, in the dome. But why?”

  “It could have been an accident,” George Marsh said. “She gets startled, or someone grabs her. She accidentally slashes the page with a pencil. . . .”

  “No, I understand why you might think that, but no. An accidental mark wouldn’t have been so precise. This was deliberately underlined. I think Dottie Epstein was making an effort to send a message she was hoping I would understand. She was counting on me, and I let her down.”

  “Albert,” George said, “you can’t do this to yourse—”

  Albert Ellingham waved down this injunction.

  “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, George, but it’s true. I understood Dottie. She was someone who played the game. Her uncle was with the New York City police, actually, like you. She claimed that she learned many of the techniques for breaking into places from him.”

  Albert Ellingham chuckled a bit, and George Marsh smiled.

  “Yes,” Albert Ellingham said, “she was a very clever girl, Dottie, and she didn’t go down without a fight. Oh, do me a favor. There’s a panel under your seat. Reach down between your legs and slide it to the left. Have a look inside.”

  George Marsh bent down as instructed and slid the panel. Under his seat were tight bundles of dark sticks of explosive, firmly fastened to the body of the boat.

  Albert Ellingham looked right at the sun.

  “This boat is rigged,” he said calmly. “There’s four more like that one. I’ve just set the trip wire and it is connected to the rope around my hand. If I release it, we will both go up. I could have used a gun, but it’s too easy to get a gun away from someone, and I don’t like guns. Frankly, I couldn’t trust myself. My desire to shoot you is too strong. This requires me to have some self-control if I want to find out all I need to know. Your only option right now is to sit very still and tell me how it all happened.”

  24

  STEVIE SAT ON THE CONCRETE FLOOR OF THE CUPOLA, THE COLD seeping through the fabric of her jeans. Around
her was a scatter of dried, dead flower petals. Many of the tributes were gone, but a stray card had escaped maintenance and their brooms and bags. It was a small piece of blue paper, the edges covered in a hand-glued rim of black glitter. The message on it was written in one of those fancy lettering styles that people who were really serious about their bullet journaling used. It read: NEVER SAY DEAD, NEVER STAY DEAD. LOVE FOREVER, MELODY.

  Stevie set the paper down.

  She had no proof, of course. She couldn’t take it to court. She could not immediately write a book—not that she knew how to write a book. She had seen Nate trying to write a book, and the process looked terrible. She had never actually worked out what she would do once she solved the case. Who did she tell? Did she shout it at the moon? Tweet it? Update her Facebook status to “crime solver”?

  Which is why she needed to talk to Fenton. She stared at her phone.

  “Why aren’t you ringing?” she said to it.

  The phone sat there, blank and unknowing. She picked it up and texted Hunter.

  What is your aunt doing? I need to talk to her right now. Can you tell her she needs to call me?

  She stared, waiting to see the message go from delivered to read. Nothing.

  Breathe.

  She got up and walked around in a circle, running her hands through her short hair, feeling the sides of her fingers slide up and lose the strands. What could she do with this thought she was having? How could she check her work?

  There was only one thing, of course. Do it like they did in the stories. Gather the suspects, run through the theory of the crime. Not physically, of course. In her mind. She would call down the dead. Line them up. Go point by point.

  Around the cupola, she set a ring of imaginary chairs. In two of them, she placed Edward Pierce Davenport and Francis Josephine Crane. Edward had his flashing, poetic good looks. Francis her blunt, raven-colored bob. Francis was dressed in a chevroned twinset, a sweater and skirt. Tight. Wool. Brown and cream. And she wore a beret tilted sharply to the right. Edward was wearing a white shirt, a tie loose at his neck, and an open black vest. He leaned over his knees to look at Stevie, his eyes flashing, while Francis sat back, cool and considered.