Truly Devious

by Maureen Johnson

  “Aren’t we going in?” Stevie asked.

  “End of the tour!” he said, walking them past the walled garden, and back into a clearing in the trees to a large, sprawling modern building of raw Vermont wood and stone. It had a high, peaked roof like a ski lodge.

  “This is the art barn,” Kaz said. “This is the only building that was added to the original campus, and it keeps getting bigger. They’re adding to it now.”

  The ground around one side was dug up, and the construction looked new. Stevie couldn’t help but note that the building bordered closely on the walled garden—the famous walled garden that held the lake where the Ellingham ransom drop had occurred.

  The garden gate was open, and people wearing hard hats were passing through. Stevie craned her head to look, but the tour was moving on into the art barn. There would be time. She would get in.

  “The art barn isn’t just for art,” Kaz said, while walking backward. “Everything kind of happens here. Yoga and dance, meetings, some classes.”

  Kaz was never so excited as when he was talking about the eco friendly construction of the art barn, the bamboo floors and the locations of composting toilets. Stevie began to twitch from anticipation. After what felt like an hour-long lecture on sewage, they left and walked back to the Great House.

  When they stepped inside, Stevie stopped breathing for a moment. The house was built around a massive foyer, with balconies on the upper floors looking down over the space. Before her were the master stairs, sweeping up to the balcony of the second floor, and from there twisting elegantly up to the third. On the wall at the top of the first level of stairs was a massive painting, done by the famous painter and Ellingham family friend Leonard Holmes Nair. The setting was the lake and the observatory in the background, at night. Though that much was clear, the style was borderline hallucinatory. Iris and Albert loomed in the foreground of the picture—mythical figures in swipes of blue and yellow. Iris’s short black hair seemed to spread from her head and weave into the branches of the trees. Albert Ellingham’s face was merged with the full moon that hung over the observatory and spilled light onto the lake. They looked away from each other, their expressions stretched, their eyes pulling long, their mouths almost rectangular.

  Stevie had seen many images of this painting. Online, it wasn’t that impressive. But in person, it gripped her and held her attention. It was disturbing. There was something about it, something that seemed to haunt the shadows in the background, something that seemed to be behind the observatory. This was painted two years before the kidnapping, but it seemed to foretell the doom that was on the horizon, and that the observatory would be part of it.

  The painting seemed to preside over everything.

  “Meet Larry,” Kaz said, indicating a man who sat at a large desk next to the front door. He was an older, uniformed man with salt-and-pepper hair clipped into a crew cut.

  “I’m Security Larry,” he said. “It’s what people call me. It’s what I answer to. I’m head of security for all of Ellingham. I already know all of your names. I get to know everyone before they arrive.”

  “Security Larry knows everyone!” Kaz said.

  Security Larry didn’t look excited by this interruption.

  “We’re very secure up here, but if you ever need us, you can hit the blue button on the alarms you’ll see in the campus buildings and on some light poles. The rules here aren’t hard, but you have to follow them. If you don’t, I’ll show up. I live just down the path at the gatehouse, so I’m always here. If something says Keep Out, that means Keep Out. It doesn’t mean go in because someone dared you or because you heard about other people going in. Some of the original features of the property are no longer structurally sound. You may get in, but you may not get out. We’ve had people stuck for days, so they were starved and terrified before they were expelled. You’ve been warned.”

  “What does that mean?” Janelle said quietly as Kaz waved them toward one of the front rooms. “Original features aren’t sound?”

  “He means the tunnels,” Stevie said. “And the hidden passages.”

  On the right side of the front door, opposite Larry’s desk, was a dayroom with magnificent painted panels depicting twisting vines and pale roses, all decorated in delicate raised plaster patterns in silver. The furniture was upholstered in violet silk and the floors were covered in a massive decorative rug. This was an eighteenth-century room the Ellinghams had imported from Lyon, France—the furnishings, the rugs, the curtains, and wall decorations—all of it had been boxed up, shipped to America, and resized and assembled here.

  The next room, the ballroom, had a set of glass double doors, the panes set in an elaborate art nouveau–style. The doors were partially open, so Stevie pushed them all the way and stepped into a massive room in front of them that stretched up two stories. The floor was patterned in black-and-white marble diamonds; the walls were slashed with floor-to-ceiling mirrors, sculpted and framed in delicate silver. The wall panels depicted scenes of costumed players in masks. The floor-to-ceiling rose-pink curtains were like theater curtains. The ceiling was painted in the light blue of early evening with the constellations and their representative figures all in gold. Most of America’s high society danced in this ballroom in the 1930s.

  “And this,” said Kaz, leading them to a massive oak door, “was our founder’s office.”

  The office had massive proportions—it was two stories high—but unlike the echoey main hall, this room was thickly carpeted from end to end in a lush, deep green, and over that there were Persian rugs. By the fireplace, there was a leopard rug, head and all, that was obviously and disturbingly real. Long windows stretched up to the ceiling and were covered in heavy satin drapes that blocked the sun. The second story of the room was entirely bookshelves, with just a walkway around for access.

  The fireplace in this room was made of a rose-colored marble. Two massive desks filled one side of the room. One held six sleek black rotary telephones. There was a spinning globe that Stevie guessed contained the names of countries that had long ceased to exist, giant wooden file cabinets, and a strange piece of furniture with tubes coming out of it that Stevie recognized as being a Dictaphone—an early-twentieth-century recording device. Dictaphones were big in a lot of mystery stories.

  This was where Albert Ellingham worked out the plan to try to save his family. They had counted the ransom money on this floor. She could have spent forever in this room.

  But they were being ushered out again into the foyer. A man in a blue-and-white-striped seersucker suit with an Iron Man T-shirt underneath came bounding down the steps in a slow-motion run. His fine blond hair was swept to the side and bounced a bit as he came down each step.

  “And now,” Kaz said, “to welcome you all, the head of the school, Dr. Charles Scott!”

  “Welcome, welcome!” he called. “I’m Dr. Scott. Call me Charles. Welcome, you all, to your new home. I say I’m the head of the school, but I like to think of myself as the Chief Learner . . .”

  “Oh my God,” Nate mumbled under his breath.

  “As you’re at the end of your tour,” Charles said, we need to say a word about Alice. Alice Ellingham was the daughter of our founder, Albert Ellingham. Alice is technically the patron of our school, and we open each school year with a thank-you to her. So please join me in saying, Thank you, Alice.”

  It took a moment and some gesturing for everyone to realize that this was serious, and literal. Eventually, there was a mumbled, “Thank you, Alice.”

  “That was cultlike,” Nate said as they walked back to the green, where a picnic was being set up. “Why did we just thank a dead child?”

  “It’s all in the rules,” Stevie said. “The school belongs to Alice Ellingham, if she ever turns up. We’re all technically here on her dime, so we have to thank her. She’s supporting us.”

  “But she’s dead,” Nate said.

  “Almost definitely,” Stevie replied. “She was kidnapped
in 1936. But this place is hers . . . if she is alive and if she appears. She’d be old, but she could be alive, technically.”

  “That really is a thing?” Janelle said. “I thought that was a myth?”

  “Really a thing,” Stevie said.

  “You said you know a lot about it?” Vi said. Vi had drifted out with them.

  “Oh, Stevie knows it all,” Janelle said. “Go on. Tell us.”

  Stevie had the strange feeling that she was being called on to perform, like a dog that knew how to use an iPad. At the same time, she now had an audience of people who wanted her to talk about the thing she loved, and that was a foreign and delightful feeling. The sun was warm and the grass was springy and all around her was the scene of murder.

  They were heading toward the green, but the walled garden was just there, behind them. Stevie turned to have a look. The garden door was still open just a bit and there was no one around.

  “Come on,” she said. “I’ll show you.”

  “Are we supposed to go in there?” Nate asked.

  “It’s open!” Vi said, stepping ahead.

  The garden door was heavy and black, and passing through it had the quality of a dream. They stepped into a massive, lush garden surrounded by a high, perfectly spaced ring of trees. The grass was a brilliant, saturated green. The Great House stood at one end, with the low stone patio leading down to the lawn. There were small fountains and elaborate benches and planters. It was a regal garden, designed by people who took cues from the royal gardens of England and France. But there was one major thing that really stood out.

  Most of it was a giant hole, covered in lush grass.

  “What the hell?” Nate said.

  “That,” Stevie said, “was a lake. Iris Ellingham was a champion swimmer. This was her pool. Albert Ellingham rerouted a stream to fill it, and there used to be rowboats to go out to that.”

  She pointed to a knoll in the middle, where there was a round structure with a domed glass roof.

  “That’s the place the kidnappers had him go to drop off the money,” she said. “After Iris and Alice were kidnapped, people used to contact Albert Ellingham with all kinds of theories. I think a psychic told him that Alice was in the lake, so he drained it. She wasn’t there. But he never refilled it. It probably reminded him too much of what happened. He left it just like this.”

  “They call it the sunken garden on the map,” Vi said. “I see why.”

  “Explain the dead child thing,” Nate said.

  “The deal is this,” Stevie said. “The school and all the Ellingham fortune belong to Alice, but Ellingham kind of knew she was dead, even if he couldn’t admit it to himself. When two years had passed, he reopened the school.”

  “And people came?” Vi said. “After the murders?”

  “It was a one-off,” Stevie replied. “And it was still the Depression. And this was one of the most famous places in America. Free school from one of the richest men in the country . . . that was a huge deal. And no one thought the kidnappers were coming back. They’d kind of taken everyone there was to take. So this school was supposed to be a beautiful thing for Alice to come back to. Albert Ellingham wanted the place to be lively. He was sort of . . . making sure there were people for Alice to play with.”

  “That’s really grim,” Janelle said. “Sweet, but . . . grim.”

  “So how many millions of people said they were Alice?” Nate said. “Before DNA testing, everybody must have claimed they were Alice.”

  “That was a thing,” Stevie said, nodding. “But Ellingham had a plan. Alice’s nanny was devoted to her and the family. She refused to give up any details about Alice. Ellingham had a secret file made of information about Alice, so that if anyone came forward, they would be able to check.”

  “What, like a birthmark or something?”

  Stevie shrugged. “That’s the point. No one knows except the people in the trust, and they can’t inherit. The people who run the trust are Alice’s keepers. I mean, now they’d just use DNA, so the secret Alice file doesn’t really matter as much.”

  “It’s good to know we’re going to the most morbid school in America,” Nate said. “Now let’s go. I’m hungry and I’m still pretty sure we weren’t supposed to come in here.”

  “Again,” Vi said, “gate was open.”

  “We probably should go,” Janelle said. “But this is amazing.”

  And it was amazing. For so many reasons.

  April 13, 1936, 8:00 p.m.

  FLORA ROBINSON HAD A WELL-DEVELOPED SENSE OF IMPENDING trouble, a skill she had developed in her time working at a speakeasy. You had to be able to feel the ripple that went through the room when the police were approaching the door. You had to know a false alarm from the real thing. You had to develop the reflex to hit the alarm button at just the right moment—that button that tilted the shelves and opened the chute and sent hundreds, or sometimes thousands, of dollars’ worth of booze and glass down into a hidden disposal area. Do it right, and you saved the club from closure and all the patrons from arrest. Do it wrong, and you simply ruined everything.

  Flora could taste fear and anticipation in the air tonight. She turned and looked at the little silver clock on the side table. Iris and Alice had been gone for a long time. She’d seen them off at noon. Usually, when Iris took her drives, she was back in an hour or two. She’d been gone eight. No one had called Flora for dinner.

  This break in routine made Flora extremely uneasy. There was trouble around, somewhere in this quiet mansion tucked up in the mountains. She sat on her bed in her room, hugging her knees, listening and waiting. Her keenly tuned hearing and the acoustics of the house meant she heard the arrival at the front door. Iris was back. She slipped out of her bed at once and went to the edge of the balcony to see what had kept her friend.

  Instead of Iris, the butler was ushering in a man. It was George Marsh, a close family friend and member of the intimate Ellingham circle.

  Normally, George would have come in and made small talk with Montgomery as he handed over his hat and coat. Tonight, the hat and coat stayed on and the two of them walked briskly and silently toward Ellingham’s private office.

  George was a former New York police detective. Several years before, he had saved Albert’s life when an anarchist placed a bomb in his car. Full of gratitude and impressed with his wits and courage, Albert called J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI, and recommended that George be taken on as an agent. George tended to be wherever Ellingham and his circle were—if they were in New York, he worked out of the office there. If they were in Vermont, George would be moved up to Burlington to work on smuggling cases coming down from Canada via Lake Champlain.

  George Marsh was Albert’s de facto security man, and tonight, Flora could see he was here on business. Off duty, George was loose and gregarious. This was on-duty George, his step quick, his tone clipped. George and Montgomery were speaking in very low voices, but Flora could make out a few words.

  “. . . thirty-five minutes,” George said. “Have you . . .”

  “No, sir,” Montgomery replied. “No police . . .”

  Within a few seconds, he was ensconced in Albert’s office along with Montgomery.

  Police. Not a word Flora wanted to hear. She had to act.

  She went down the servants’ stairs to the floor below, and then made her way to Iris’s dressing room by keeping close to the wall. She pulled a key from the pocket of her dress and unlocked the door to a large room—an oasis of comfort. The pearl-gray carpet was soft under her bare feet. The long silver satin curtains were still open and pale moonlight seeped in, causing the gold trim and threading on Iris’s Louis XV furniture to take on a gentle glow.

  Iris had so many things; Flora needed one object in particular. She started at the mirrored makeup table, where Iris’s extensive collection of cosmetics were kept in rigorous order by her maid—lipsticks lined up like soldiers, French perfumes pleasingly arranged, silver hairbrushes and mirror t
idily side by side. Flora tore into the drawers of powders, shadows, hairpins, creams, lotions . . . where was it? Not in here. She moved on to the chest of a dozen drawers that housed Iris’s gloves, hat pins, cigarette cases, sunglasses, and any number of small accessories. Not in there. She worked the room, steady and fast, drawer by drawer, until every one was exhausted.

  Flora heard knocking on the doors down the hall and her name being called. The maid was looking for her. There wasn’t much time. She had to think. Where had she seen it last?

  An evening bag. The pink silk one they’d gotten that day in Paris when it rained so much they had to run barefoot down the street.

  Flora ran to the closet, opened the baize door, and switched on the light. The closet was not a closet—it was another room full of racks and shelves of silk and satin, with beads and fur, with enough shoes to fill a store all lined up on shelves. The handbags took up an entire wall. Flora scanned them until she found the pink bag. She yanked it off the shelf, snapped it open, and removed a Schiaparelli makeup compact in the shape of a telephone dial.

  The knocking was getting closer. Flora had to hurry. The maid was at the dressing room door, knocking and calling.

  “Coming!” Flora said.

  With only seconds to work, she shoved the compact down the front of her dress, wrapping her arms over her front to conceal any lump, and went to the door to admit the maid.

  “You’re needed downstairs,” the maid said. “At once, miss.”

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  “I’m not sure, miss. Mrs. Ellingham and Miss Alice didn’t come home and Mr. Marsh has come. That’s all I know.”

  Flora pushed the compact down near her belted waist as she followed the maid downstairs; she would have to deal with its contents later. She was ushered into the office. She had only been in here once or twice before. It was the nexus of Albert’s business, his private area. Tonight, the large room was strangely close, the long curtains drawn, the fire in the fireplace making a sweaty heat.