The Dollhouse Murders

by Betty Ren Wright

  Ellen whistled. “Not even a clue? Amy, maybe the killer is still here in Claiborne. Maybe it isn’t such a great idea to be living way out there in that old house. He might come back and—”

  “After thirty years?” Amy scoffed. “Why would he do that?”

  “Still,” Ellen insisted, “I wouldn’t like staying in a house where people were murdered. Even thirty years ago. It could be haunted.”

  Amy had been trying not to think about that. The parlor where her great-grandmother had died was only a few feet away. “I don’t believe in ghosts,” she said, more bravely than she felt. “And I guess Aunt Clare doesn’t either, or she’d never have come back here to live, even for a short time. Listen, Ellen, do you want to go back to the library with me next week and check the rest of the tapes for 1952? Maybe they caught the killer later. The last thing I found today was an article telling about Aunt Clare going to Chicago and my father being adopted by some cousins—” The floor creaked behind her, and she whirled around to discover Aunt Clare standing there, white-faced, holding a large cardboard carton.

  “I have to go. See you tomorrow.” Amy hung up the phone. “It was Ellen,” she said, unable to meet her aunt’s eyes. “I’ll carry that stuff. Where do you want it?”

  Aunt Clare turned away. “It’s some pieces of the best china,” she said. Her voice was cold. “I’m going to put them up in the attic with the rest of the set, so the appraiser can tell how much there is.” She shot a furious glance over her shoulder. “You must have a lot more telephoning to do. Everybody loves hearing about a gory murder.”

  Amy felt as if she’d been slapped. “I wasn’t gossiping, Aunt Clare—not really. I just wanted to know what happened to Grandpa and Grandma—and I haven’t told anyone but Ellen. She was with me when I found the stories in the papers—”

  Aunt Clare started up the stairs.

  “I’m sorry,” Amy said. “I know I keep saying and doing the wrong things. But I don’t mean to make you feel bad.”

  “Don’t bother to apologize,” Aunt Clare snapped. “You admit you’re curious—don’t expect me to like it. The past is dead, and it would help a lot if you’d leave it that way. You needn’t go back to the library, either. The police didn’t find out who killed them.”

  At the bottom of the attic stairs she stopped and waited for Amy to open the door. “I think I’d like to be alone for a while,” she said and went on up the steps, puffing a little with the weight of the box.

  Amy was close to tears. This time she’d made a real mess of things. Why didn’t I wait till tomorrow to talk to Ellen? she mourned. Now Aunt Clare is disgusted with me, and I don’t blame her.

  The hall was dark, the house very still except for Aunt Clare’s steps overhead. With dragging feet, Amy made her way down the hall, past the bedroom where her great-grandfather had been killed. She had just reached her own room and had her hand on the light switch when a strangled cry broke the silence.

  “Aunt Clare!”

  Amy raced back down the hall. “Aunt Clare! Are you okay?”

  There was no answer. Amy ran up the attic steps. Her aunt was standing in the far corner of the attic, staring in horror at the dollhouse. “How could you do it?” she cried. “How could you do such a cruel, ugly thing?”

  “Do what?” Amy hurried to her aunt’s side. The dollhouse was open, and the small box that had held the dolls was open, too. The girl doll was back in the box. The grandfather doll lay face down across the bed in the master bedroom, and the grandmother stood where Amy had last seen her, in the parlor.

  Aunt Clare bent, robotlike, and reached into the parlor, carefully avoiding the doll that balanced against the bookcase. With a fingernail she loosened a tiny latch in the wall and opened the wood-closet door next to the fireplace. The boy doll lay inside, its head pillowed on a log the length of a pin.

  She stood up. “This is unforgivable, Amy,” she said in a voice of ice. “I suppose you have a right to know our miserable family history—I can try to make myself understand your need to find out. But to make a game of the deaths of your own great-grandparents! How could you?”

  “I di-didn’t!” Amy’s mouth was dry with shock and fright. “I haven’t been up here since Saturday when I showed the dollhouse to Ellen. We put all the dolls around the dining room table, and that’s how we left them. . . .” Should she tell about seeing the grandmother doll in the parlor only minutes later? Her head whirled. “I mean,” she said, “I think—”

  “Don’t make it worse by lying,” Aunt Clare said. “I just can’t imagine how you could—”

  “But I closed the front of the house on Saturday,” Amy protested. “I know I did! And I didn’t put the dolls where they are now.”

  Aunt Clare just looked at her. “I’d appreciate it if you’d put all the dolls back in the box where you found them and leave them there,” she said. “Permanently.”

  Amy felt numb. She’d never been called a liar before. Trembling, she knelt and collected the dolls. She laid them in a row and closed the box with care. Then she stood up and faced her aunt.

  “I really didn’t move the dolls, Aunt Clare,” she said. “And I didn’t try to find out what happened to Great-Grandma and Great-Grandpa Treloar just so I could gossip with Ellen about it. I wanted to know! You wouldn’t talk about it, and I knew my folks wouldn’t either. So I decided to find out for myself.”

  She paused. Aunt Clare was staring into the dollhouse, almost as if she didn’t hear.

  “I didn’t move the dolls,” Amy repeated. She searched for a way to prove she was telling the truth. “I just found out about the murders after school today, Aunt Clare, and I haven’t been up in the attic since. You know I haven’t.”

  “I don’t know anything,” Aunt Clare said, and now she sounded more sad than angry. She closed the dollhouse and replaced the sheet that had covered it the first time Amy saw it. “If you didn’t move the dolls, who did?” she asked. “Tell me that.”

  Amy couldn’t answer.

  9.

  “I’ve Never Been So Scared in My Life”

  Amy’s notebook and English textbook were in the kitchen where she’d dropped them when she came home. She grabbed them and went back upstairs to her bedroom. Aunt Clare went into the parlor to watch television on the little portable set she’d brought with her from Chicago. They didn’t look at each other as they passed in the hall at the foot of the stairs.

  The bedroom felt chilly and impersonal. Amy dropped her schoolbooks on the bed and wandered around, thinking about her cozy bedroom at home, the bureau and desk tops covered with pictures and crystal bottles, the walls bright with posters, snapshots, and pennants. The shelves of books and miniatures. The friendly clutter. There was nothing in this room to remind her of home except Louann’s vase, standing on top of the bureau. Amy picked it up and ran a finger over the lacquered roses. She would have given anything to see Louann sitting at the foot of her bed right now.

  I’m scared, she thought. I’ve never been so scared in my life. It was bad enough to be screamed at and accused of lying. Aunt Clare was the most up-and-down person Amy had ever known. But it was the dollhouse, and the dolls that didn’t stay where they were put, that really frightened her. What was happening in the attic? Who—or what—had moved the dolls?

  She went to a window. The night was mild, sweet-smelling, and tinted with a pale wash of moonlight. I can call Mom from school tomorrow and tell her I want to come home. Her mother and Louann would be pleased. Her father would be disappointed. He really liked the idea that she and Aunt Clare had become friends.

  Amy turned to the bed and kicked off her shoes. She sat cross-legged with the pillows piled behind her and opened her English book on her lap. But she couldn’t concentrate on the assignment; the words ran together when she tried to read.

  Maybe the ghost—if there was a ghost—had a special reason for moving the dolls. If Amy went home, the reason would remain a secret. Aunt Clare would finish her work on th
e house and leave. She’d go on believing that Amy had lied about moving the dolls. If there was a ghost, it would be ignored.

  No one knows there’s a mystery here except me, Amy thought, shivering. I have to stay, even if Aunt Clare hates me.

  Downstairs the television murmured. A breeze lifted the curtains, and an owl hooted in the distance. Amy bent over her book and started to read again. The assignment was a detective story. She wished it were something else; a funny essay would have been nice. She was jumpy enough without reading about another dark old house full of secrets.

  An hour later she closed the book. She’d jotted down the answers to the questions at the end of the story, and in the morning she’d copy them over during her second-hour study hall.

  She undressed quickly. As she returned from the bathroom, the television clicked off downstairs. She heard Aunt Clare’s light steps moving around the house as she turned out the lights. Amy closed the door of her room and jumped into bed, pulling the covers up to the tip of her nose. Sleep, she commanded herself. Don’t think. Sleep.

  But sleep wouldn’t come. She listened to her aunt come upstairs, heard her go into her bedroom, to the bathroom, and back to her room again. What was she thinking now? Maybe she was deciding how to get rid of a no-longer-welcome houseguest.

  The owl hooted again, closer this time. Amy felt herself drifting, half awake, half asleep. Strange thoughts fluttered through her head—scraps of dreams, bits of conversation. She saw Louann holding up a potholder that glittered with golden threads and sparkled with diamonds. She saw Mrs. Peck, her arm around Louann’s shoulders, motioning Amy to go away. She saw Aunt Clare standing in front of the dollhouse, her mouth open in a silent cry.

  Then she woke up.

  The breeze had died down, and the curtains hung motionless. Amy raised her head and looked around the room. Someone was at her door. She stared, wide-eyed, as the old-fashioned metal knob turned ever so slowly in the moonlight.

  Amy cowered under the covers. Her stomach churned. She squeezed her eyes shut, willing this to be another bad dream. But when she looked again, the knob was still turning. Something was out there in the hall, trying to get in.

  A crash shredded the stillness. Amy screamed, a shrill wail that seemed to come right from her toes. The door flew open. Aunt Clare stood there, looking like a ghost in her long nightgown. Her face was as white as the gown.

  “Aunt Clare! What’s happening?”

  Her aunt ran across the room to the window that overlooked the backyard. “It’s those blasted raccoons again,” she said. “Two of them are running across the lawn.”

  Amy sat bolt upright in bed, one fist pressed against her mouth. If she moved, she’d start screaming again.

  “Amy, it’s okay. Really! Just raccoons prowling for their dinner. I warned you that it might happen—”

  “It—it’s not j-just that—” Amy’s teeth were actually chattering. “I saw the doorknob turn—”

  “Oh, my.” Aunt Clare came over to the bed. “I’m sorry. I wanted to peek in very quietly and see if you were asleep. I wanted to talk. . . .”

  Amy leaped out of bed. For this moment at least, talk was impossible. The dollhouse, the angry scene in the attic, the moving door knob, and now the raccoons were too much. “I can’t—” she began, and gave up. She raced down the hall, to the bathroom, both hands over her lips, and got there just in time.

  When she returned, the lamp on the bedside table was lit, and Aunt Clare was sitting in the rocker. Her feet were drawn up under her gown, and she looked almost like a little girl. She waited while Amy climbed back into bed and pulled up the covers.

  “Better now?”

  Amy considered. “Some. But I’m cold. I can’t stop shaking.”

  “Shall I close the windows?”

  “No. I’ll be okay in a couple of minutes.” Amy remembered something her mother often said. “I have a nervous stomach.”

  “Well, it’s had plenty to be nervous about this evening,” Aunt Clare said. “I’m sorry I blew up at you, Amy. That’s what I came to say—and scared you nearly to death in the process. I know I overreacted to that whole business up in the attic this evening.”

  Amy took a deep breath. Aunt Clare believed she was telling the truth, after all.

  “That’s okay,” Amy said. “I just didn’t want you to think I’d lie to you.”

  Her aunt leaned forward. “I don’t want you to think you have to lie to me,” she said. “That’s what’s bad about all of this. We’re friends—we should be able to be honest with each other.”

  Aunt Clare didn’t believe her.

  “It’s been such a dreadfully long time since I was twelve years old,” her aunt continued. “Kids are different now—you see so much violence on television and in the movies, I guess I can understand how you might be fascinated by . . . by what happened to your great-grandparents. It was just that seeing the dolls put into the rooms where Grandma and Grandpa were found that night brought back so much pain. . . .” She sighed. “I really am sorry I made such a scene about it.”

  Amy opened her mouth to protest, then changed her mind. If she denied moving the dolls again, it would only make Aunt Clare angry once more. “I’m sorry, too,” she said. “I know you want to forget all that.”

  “Yes, I do. And not just for the obvious reasons—the ones you read about in the newspapers. This was a very unhappy house, Amy—at the time Grandma and Grandpa were killed and for quite a while before. I was engaged to a man they didn’t like at all. He was several years older than I was, very handsome, very headstrong. He drank quite a bit. Grandpa and Grandma didn’t drink at all, and when he came to the house drunk one night, they ordered him out and said I was never to see him again. I was furious! We fought for months! I kept on seeing him secretly, then came home to their lectures. It was—awful.” She had tears in her eyes. “I told them I hated them,” she said in a whisper. “They died thinking that was true.”

  Amy sat up. “Oh, but they didn’t believe that,” she said. “People say lots of things they don’t mean. I do, when I’m mad at my mother. But she knows I’m sorry later. You can’t still blame yourself, after all this time.”

  Aunt Clare stretched her legs and stood up. “Oh, yes, I can,” she said softly. “You don’t know how much.” She patted Amy’s arm. “You go to sleep now,” she said. “I know I shouldn’t burden you with all this, but after my outburst tonight, I think you have a right to know a little more about what happened. And why I’m the way I am—even after all these years.” She smiled. “Shall we forgive and forget?”

  “Sure.” Amy lay back. “Thanks for telling me, Aunt Clare.”

  “Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  The door closed, leaving Amy with the uncomfortable feeling that Aunt Clare had told only part of what was troubling her. What had really happened in this house so many years ago? Amy wondered if she’d ever know. And what strange things were happening here now?

  This is a sad place, she thought, as she had before. The sadness was not just upstairs in the dollhouse; it was all around her.

  10.

  “When She Leaves, Where Will I Run?”

  It was nearly five when Amy biked into the driveway of her own house. She had never thought much about the house before—it was just the place where she lived—but now she knew that dark-gray clapboard and white shutters were the prettiest combination possible. Red and yellow tulips were in full bloom on either side of the front walk, and the lilac bush next to the back door filled the air with its scent.

  The garage was empty, which meant that her mother was not yet home from work. Amy used her key to let herself in, then wandered from room to room. She looked at her mother’s crewel work on the walls and Louann’s crayon drawings taped to the refrigerator. In front of her father’s big armchair Amy stopped for a moment; then she sat down and pressed herself into the cushions. The chair smelled of pipe smoke, and there was a scattering of tobacco in the a
shtray on the table. Amy picked up the tray and emptied it in the wastebasket under the kitchen sink.

  Upstairs in her bedroom, she laid her tape player on her bed and sorted through a stack of tapes to find the ones she wanted. There were other things she needed as well—the Charlie bath powder that had been a Christmas gift from Louann, the I-love-pizza-and-pizza-loves-me T-shirt she planned to wear at the party. Dental floss. An extra ballpoint pen. As she was dropping her things into a shopping bag, a car door slammed.

  Amy dashed downstairs and threw her arms around her mother. Then she hugged Louann. Louann’s face was flushed and smiling.

  “Look, Amy,” she said and plunged a hand into a sack she carried. “I made a puppet today. Look, Amy, look!”

  Louann fitted the sock puppet over her hand. She poked a finger up into the stuffing inside. The head bowed and nodded, and Louann laughed. “Like the puppets at the mall,” she cried. “Only nicer. Isn’t he nicer, Amy?”

  “Yes, he is,” Amy agreed. “Did you make that at school?”

  “Mrs. Peck showed us how. I love Mrs. Peck. We make things every day.”

  Amy and her mother exchanged glances. “Each afternoon they decide what they’re going to do the next day,” Mrs. Treloar said with a funny little grimace. “Louann can hardly wait to get there after school. Tomorrow they’re going to take a bus to the mall together—Mrs. Peck and Louann and Marisa. Mrs. Peck thinks the girls should learn how to take the bus by themselves.”

  “But they can’t!” Amy exclaimed. “They’ll get lost, Mom.”

  “Will not!” Louann thrust the puppet into Amy’s face. “Will not!” she roared. “I can do it!”

  “Calm down,” Mrs. Treloar ordered. “We’ll talk to your father about it tonight. Mrs. Peck has Marisa doing a lot of things Louann doesn’t do. She goes to the grocery store all by herself, and she has a little garden, and—”