by Wendy Webb
“After what I saw through the lens yesterday, I don’t feel much like photographing the grounds of Cliffside for posterity, I can tell you that much,” he said. “How about we delve into this mystery of yours?”
That was an interesting idea. “What did you have in mind?”
“I thought you’d never ask,” he said, taking my arm and leading me up the stairs. “You believe the key to this whole thing is solving the riddle of why Penelope Dare wanted all of us here at the same time, right?”
“Right,” I said, running my hand along the smooth banister as we climbed.
“And we’ve already figured out that at least some of us are directly related to people who were here in 1952 with Temperance.”
“Right.”
“And you also said Penelope Dare was a meticulous record-keeper,” he went on.
“Right again. Everything is laid out in triplicate, except for your letters of application, it seems.”
“I’ll bet she kept them, or at least some record, somewhere, of why she was so intent on selecting this group of fellows,” he said. “Why don’t we see if we can find it? I’m up for a little treasure hunting today if you are.” He raised his eyebrows and grinned like a little boy with a new game. I couldn’t help grinning back.
And all at once, it hit me. Miss Penny’s office! Of course. With everything that had happened since the fellows had arrived, and all the time we had spent brainstorming about our shared connections to Cliffside, it hadn’t even occurred to me that the answers might be right under my nose in that office.
“I know just where to look,” I said.
A few moments later, we were in the director’s study with the door closed behind us. I flipped on the overhead light without thinking, and then opened the blinds to give us as much light as possible. As I took a first look around, I realized that I hadn’t been in this office for days. I wondered if there was any mail or other paperwork I was supposed to be getting to, in addition to reading the applications of prospective fellows. I should have been checking it every morning after breakfast. Another gold star for job performance, I thought with a wince.
I glanced at the inbox on my desk—it was full of mail. I’d get to it, but I had other fish to fry at the moment.
Richard turned in a circle, looking around the room. “I’ll take those,” he said, pointing to the gray file cabinet that stood under one window, “if you want to start in the desk.”
“Let’s do it,” I said, pulling out the desk chair and plunking myself down in it.
We both dove into our respective assignments, rifling through file after file, drawer after drawer.
After a bit, Richard broke the silence between us. “I think I found something,” he said, pulling a file folder out of the cabinet where he was searching. “Take a look at this.”
He opened the file in front of me on the desk, and I saw that it was stuffed full of newspaper clippings. I rifled through them for a moment, thinking maybe something in those articles would shine some light on things. Only then did I notice the bylines. I quickly ruffled through the rest of the pile.
I looked up at Richard. “These are all written by me,” I said.
“Apparently, Miss Penny was either a devoted fan of your work or she was keeping tabs on you,” Richard said.
“But what for?” I said, shaking my head. “What could possibly be the purpose of that?”
He shrugged. “It’s one more piece of the puzzle,” he said. “But it could have something to do with why she chose you to succeed her here at Cliffside.”
I stared at the clippings, not knowing what to think.
I went back to my search, and Richard went back to his. After a while I glanced up at him. “It’s got to be about noon,” I said. “What do you say we break for lunch? I don’t think we’re going to find anything here.”
But as I said it, I noticed he was holding another fat manila file and grinning. “This might shine some light on things,” he said.
“What is it?”
“A record of Cliffside’s expenses from 1952.”
I stared at him for a moment, my mouth agape. “You’re kidding.”
He shook his head. “No!” he said, gesturing to the opened file drawer. “These bottom three drawers are filled with nothing but folders containing the yearly expenses here. All the way back to 1935.”
All at once, the overhead light flickered on and off and then shone brightly.
“And let there be light,” Richard said. “I guess they got the electricity back on.”
“Well, thank goodness for that, anyway,” I said. “If you want to start going through the file you just found, I’ll pop across the hall and grab my laptop.”
“What do you need the laptop for?”
I swung my chair around and faced him. “Could it be as simple as Googling Cliffside, 1952?”
He smiled. “That would be very simple indeed,” he said. “Of course, it would take all the fun out of our search. But, I suppose”—he raised his eyebrows—“we could make our own fun.”
I crumpled up a piece of paper on the desk and threw it at him. “You’re terrible,” I said, grinning.
“That’s not what I’ve heard,” he called after me as I made my way across the hall.
In my room, I grabbed my laptop and its charger. I was about to go back to the study, but I decided to take a minute to freshen up, brushing my teeth and hair and dabbing on a bit of makeup. I squinted at my reflection in the mirror—my eyes looked like I hadn’t slept in weeks. I shrugged at myself. It was as good as it was going to get, for now.
Just then, as I was staring at my own reflection, another face swam into view in the mirror, superimposed over mine. A hideous, clownish face with garish red lipstick and dark circles around the eyes. I let out a gasp and took a few steps backward, but when I looked again, the vision, or whatever it was, was gone. The slightest hint of pain slithered up my spine and took hold at the base of my skull.
That was when I noticed the doll.
CHAPTER 29
It was sitting on the windowsill in my room—a doll from Miss Penny’s dollhouse. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like one of the dolls that had been seated at the tea table.
How had it gotten there? I picked it up and put it in my pocket and hurried back to my study, my computer under my arm.
Richard had positioned himself on the opposite side of the desk, where he was poring over the expense reports.
“Guess how much a gallon of milk cost in 1952?” he asked, looking up at me. “Ninety-six cents. That’s more than a gallon of petrol cost! Twenty cents for a gallon of American gas. If I’m remembering right, that’s the same year our dear queen took the throne. Although I would wager—”
He stopped. “What’s the matter?” he asked.
I set the computer on my desk and fished the doll out of my pocket. I held it out to him.
“I found this in my room.”
He took it from my palm. “It’s from that bloody dollhouse.”
“What do you think it means?” I asked him, sinking down into my chair. “Who would have put it there?”
“Damned if I know,” he said. “Somebody, or some thing, is trying to scare you, that’s clear.”
“It worked,” I said, shivering deep in my core.
“I think the sooner we solve this puzzle, the better,” he said. “Once we know what, exactly, we’re dealing with—”
“We’ll be armed,” I finished his thought. I agreed with him. I wanted to know, once and for all, what Miss Penny intended to do by gathering us all here. Kill us? Scare us to death? Torment us?
I plugged in the charger, opened the laptop, and waited a moment as it whirred to life. I was about to call up my search engine when I had a better idea. I picked up the phone’s heavy, black handset and dialed my old newsroom. Richard looked up from his file and squinted at me. I held up a finger as if to say, Just wait.
“Hey Meg,” I said, when I heard her famil
iar voice. “It’s me.”
“Norrie!” she said. “How are you doing? I’ve been wondering how you’ve been getting along since Penelope Dare’s death.”
I’ll bet she had.
“Just fine, thanks,” I said, “but listen, Meg. I gave you the information I had the day of her death, and now I’m calling for a favor from you in return.”
“Oh?” I could hear her tapping at the keyboard in the background. “What’s that?”
“I need your password to access the paper’s online archives,” I said. “I assume mine has already been deleted, and I need to get into those files.”
She was silent for a moment. “Why?”
I took a deep breath. “I just want to do some research into Cliffside’s history, to find whatever old articles the paper might have published in the past,” I said. “Two of the fellows here this session are doing projects involving Cliffside’s past, and they’ve run into a brick wall. I said I’d help them out, and when I couldn’t come up with anything in the files here, I thought of the paper’s archives.”
I winced at the white lie, but Richard nodded his head in approval. It wasn’t exactly the truth, but I had no intention of telling her what I was really up to. Because I was using her password, or hoped to, she’d be able to access my search after I logged off, and the story about helping the fellows with research would likely be enough to put her off the scent.
“You know we’re not supposed to give out our passwords,” she said.
“I’m not going to steal your identity, for goodness’ sake, I’m just going to spend an afternoon looking through really old newspaper articles. Please? Can’t you help me out?”
She let out a great sigh. “I suppose,” she said, and rattled off her password, which I jotted down. “But you’ve got one day. I’m going to change my password tomorrow morning so you can’t get into the files anytime you feel like it.”
By all means, I thought to myself with a huff, do all you can to prevent the heinous crime of somebody reading old newspaper clippings willy-nilly.
“Thanks, Meg,” I said to her. “I owe you one.”
“I’ll remember that,” she said, just before I hung up the phone.
“You’re very crafty,” Richard said. “Good thought, that.”
“We’ll see,” I said, calling up the newspaper archive’s website and punching in Meg’s password. “It might turn out to be nothing.”
“Or everything,” he said, pulling his chair around the desk to sit beside me. “Let’s find out.”
I punched Cliffside Manor, 1952 into the archive’s search engine and watched as a long list of hits came up. A sizzle of anticipation flashed through me. Maybe we’d find what we were looking for after all.
“That’s . . .”—Richard did a quick count as I scrolled through the list—“twenty-seven stories your newspaper did about Cliffside that year. That’s quite a bit of coverage on one institution, right?”
I nodded. “This search engine finds any story that has all the specific keywords in it, in our case Cliffside Manor and 1952, so some of these might be stories about other things that merely mention it. But you’re right. It seems to have been a banner year for Cliffside.”
Rather than reading them all, one by one, on the archive website, I clicked on each of the stories and downloaded them to my laptop. That way, I didn’t have to worry about Meg changing her password. I’d have these stories safe and sound on my own computer whenever I wanted to read them.
“What else should I search for?” I asked him. “We might as well cover our bases.”
“Penelope Dare,” he said. “Temperance Dare. And what was the sister’s name? Oolong?”
I let out a snort. “Chamomile, you goofball.”
“Who the hell names their child after a tea?” Richard said, his eyes twinkling. “This is my daughter, Orange Pekoe. And her brother, Earl Grey.”
That was it. Despite everything, the laughter bubbled up from somewhere inside of me and took over, my shoulders shaking with the force of it. Catching my breath and dabbing at my eyes, I said, “I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time.”
“You’re a very easy girl to laugh with, Norrie Harper,” he said. “But I shouldn’t make fun of her name,” he went on, wiping the tears from his eyes. “I met her once.”
I turned to him. “Who?”
“Chamomile Dare,” he said.
“When?” I asked. “Twenty years ago when you were here the first time?”
He nodded. “I was talking to Chester, and she came over and introduced herself. At first, I thought she was a nice lady, but then she got kind of creepy, to tell you the truth. The way she looked at me made me really uncomfortable. If she didn’t have a good thirty years on me, I would’ve thought she was coming on to me.”
I grimaced. “You’re kidding.”
“No,” he said. “I couldn’t wait to get away from her. But when I was walking the grounds scouting for good locations to shoot, I noticed she was following me around. Trying to hide so I wouldn’t see. Every time I’d turn around I’d see her disappearing behind the odd bush.”
“Sounds like she took a shine to you. Maybe she wanted a boy toy.” I raised my eyebrows.
He shook his head and laughed. “Whatever she was selling, I wasn’t buying. It was really odd, though. I heard them arguing. He said something about ‘not again’ and ‘unseemly’ and shortly thereafter, he asked me to leave.”
That set my mind alight. Richard’s visit to Cliffside, Chamomile’s crush, the accident, and then my visit to Cliffside. My gut told me there was a connection, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it might have been.
I turned back to the screen, punching in names and downloading the articles as fast as they appeared. Soon the desktop screen of my computer was loaded with articles about Cliffside.
“It looks like we’ve got some reading to do,” he said.
I nodded. “Indeed we do,” I said, glancing at the clock on my computer screen and then looking back up at Richard. “Wow, it’s two o’clock already. Are you hungry at all?”
“I am, at that,” he said, pushing his chair away from the desk. “Let’s go see what Harriet has rustled up. Then we can get back to this.”
It sounded good to me. We closed the study door behind us and I locked it. Not that I was worried anyone would get in—not much, anyway—but my laptop was inside and I wanted to protect the treasure trove of information that was on it. We were rounding the corner to the main staircase when we met Henry on his way up.
“Hey there, sir!” I said, giving him a big smile and intending to invite him to join us for a bite if he hadn’t already eaten, but the look on his face stopped me short.
“What’s wrong?” I asked him. “You look worried.”
He leaned against the banister and let out a sigh. “It’s probably nothing,” he said. “I do tend to make mountains out of molehills.”
“What is it?” I pressed. “I’ll help if I can.”
“I know you will, dear,” he said, giving me a weak smile. “And as I said, it’s probably nothing, but—have either of you seen Brynn at all today?”
Richard and I exchanged a glance. “She still hasn’t turned up?”
“No,” Henry said. “Not only did she stand me up for breakfast, but last night we made plans to take a picnic lunch to the cliff today if we both were at a stopping point in our work. We were supposed to meet in the winter garden at one o’clock. But she didn’t show up.”
I was beginning to get a very bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. There were all manner of dangers here on the property—Richard knew that firsthand—and I immediately began to think she might have wandered off outside and ended up at the bottom of the cliff or lost her way in the woods. But, not wanting to alarm Henry, I asked the obvious question first. “She tends to get caught up in her work, from what I understand,” I said. “You went to her room looking for her, I take it?”
“I did,” he said. �
�I knocked but she didn’t answer, so I tried the door. It was open, but she wasn’t there. I thought maybe we missed each other somehow—it’s such a big house—so I traipsed back downstairs, but she was nowhere to be found. Harriet said she hadn’t seen her, either.”
“It could be she just went off someplace,” Richard said. “Outside. Maybe she took a walk.”
Henry shook his head. “She wouldn’t go walking in the woods alone. She told me she had no intention of exploring the forest. She’s not the outdoorsy type. And I’ve already looked in the gardens.”
“I hate to even mention this, but—did you look in the pool?” I winced, picturing her tripping and hitting her head, and floating facedown.
Henry took my hand. “I know. I thought the same thing. The pool, the bottom of the cliff. I looked. Oh, I know she can be a bit of a diva with all of that bluster of hers, but she really is a dear girl, underneath it all.”
I squeezed back. He cared about her, that was plain to see. Shades of his mother’s compassion. “We’ll find her, Henry. She can’t have gone far.”
“And the others?” Richard piped up. “Have you seen them?”
He nodded. “I ran into Cassandra while she was having lunch, and Diana helped me look for Brynn outside.” Henry looked from Richard to me and then back again. “Neither had seen her all day, either. I’m starting to get worried. I’m not one to go in for all of this paranormal mumbo jumbo, but . . . it just has me spooked.”
Richard put a hand on Henry’s arm. “Let’s go to her room right now,” he said. “I know you already looked there, but as you say, it’s a big house and she could have gone back without you seeing her. We’ll start there.”
He turned and walked down the hallway toward the suites with Henry and me close behind. We reached her door and Richard knocked loudly. “Brynn?” he called out. No answer. He knocked again, but the silence on the other side of the door was tangible. He tried the knob and pushed open the door, and the three of us stepped inside.
“Brynn?” I said, but I knew she wasn’t going to answer me.
