Truly Devious

by Maureen Johnson

  That day, in with the hundreds of letters, one stood out. The envelope was postmarked from Burlington. The address of the Ellingham estate was written on the front in dull pencil, in heavy, square strokes. Inside was a single piece of writing paper that contained the words:

  Look! A riddle! Time for fun!

  Should we use a rope or gun?

  Knives are sharp and gleam so pretty

  Poison’s slow, which is a pity

  Fire is festive, drowning’s slow

  Hanging’s a ropy way to go

  A broken head, a nasty fall

  A car colliding with a wall

  Bombs make a very jolly noise

  Such ways to punish naughty boys!

  What shall we use? We can’t decide.

  Just like you cannot run or hide.

  Ha ha.

  Truly,

  Devious

  Threats to Albert Ellingham and his family were not new—in fact, Albert Ellingham had barely survived a car bombing several years before. This was during a time in which industrialists were often under threat. What made this letter so different?

  For a start, it was constructed of colorful words and letters that would later be determined to come from popular magazines. In bright, cheerful print, it spelled out a diabolical poem, one that listed the many ways that Albert Ellingham might die. The letter writer gave themselves a name: Truly Devious.

  Five days later, while out on a drive, Albert Ellingham’s wife, Iris, was kidnapped, along with their three-year-old daughter, Alice. Along with Iris and Alice, a young girl named Dolores Epstein, who was a student at Ellingham’s new academy on the site, also vanished.

  A ransom demand was called in that evening, giving Albert Ellingham just a few minutes to bundle up the money in his safe and take it to a lake on his property. Ellingham was a bit short of cash, so the kidnappers beat up the person sent to collect Iris and Alice, and demanded more.

  Robert Mackenzie, Ellingham’s thirty-year-old private secretary, begged to call the police. But Ellingham was convinced that doing so would put his family in more danger. Instead, along with family friend George Marsh by his side, Ellingham took two hundred thousand dollars in marked bills to a remote point in Burlington and lowered the money down to a boat waiting below on Lake Champlain.

  The boat sailed off. On May 16, 1936, Dolores Epstein’s body was found in a field in Jericho, Vermont, in a shallow grave. She was discovered by a milk truck driver from a local dairy who had pulled off the road to relieve a call of nature. The cause of death was a massive blow to the head.

  Three weeks later, on June 5, 1936, the body of Iris Ellingham washed up near South Hero, Vermont. Maude Loomis, the local resident who discovered the body, stated: “She was wrapped in an oilcloth and she was in bad shape, real bad shape. It looked like they tried to weigh her down.” Iris’s body was found to have three gunshot wounds.

  Truly Devious seemed to be running down the list: there was a car involved, though it didn’t go into the wall. (In fact, Iris Ellingham’s cherry-red Mercedes was eventually found neatly parked deep on a country lane seven miles from the house, with no sign of a struggle.) There was a broken head, a gun, and a body found in water.

  The FBI was called in three days after the kidnapping. Agents immediately took possession of the letter and started their examination. Specialists determined that the paper was of an ordinary stock, sold in thousands of stores. The only fingerprints on the letter were those of Albert Ellingham and Robert Mackenzie. The paste was basic white glue. The words and letters came from popular publications such as Life magazine, Photoplay, and The Saturday Evening Post. In short, there was nothing remarkable about the letter aside from its content.

  Psychiatrists from all around the country had opinions on the identity of the letter writer. There were differing thoughts on the exact diagnosis, but all agreed that the writer was intelligent, highly verbal, and confident. Poets and literature professors examined the poem, with massively differing opinions. Some said the work was childish. Others said the poem was written by someone who knew poetry well, who was hiding their talent. One surrealist chillingly called it “the truest, greatest work of our time.”

  This presented a bit of a problem at the trial. While Anton Vorachek had some of the ransom money in his house and admitted to the crime, his English was extremely limited. Most experts involved in the case thought he was incapable of writing the letter, though one FBI specialist disagreed. Two years after Vorachek’s death, a woman claimed that he had been with her on the day of the crime, but that she had been too frightened to come forward earlier. Her account was widely disputed.

  Eighty years on, the questions linger.

  With modern technology, we might be able to learn more about the Truly Devious letter—but there is a problem. It no longer exists. The letter was taken to the Burlington courthouse for the trial. A week after the trial concluded, there was a fire in the courthouse basement, most likely caused by a smoldering cigarette. A dozen boxes of evidence were destroyed before the fire was extinguished, including the box containing Truly Devious’s work. So we are likely never to know Truly Devious’s secrets.

  Ha ha! as they might say.

  * * *

  15

  “WANT TO HEAR SOMETHING WEIRD?” JANELLE SAID AS SHE STOOD IN Stevie’s doorway. Stevie was still in bed, her phone alarm chirping, telling her that even though it was early Saturday morning, it was time to get up and shoot a video with Hayes. She wiped her eyes and looked at Janelle, who looked as perturbed as anyone can look while wearing baby-blue fleece pajamas covered in cat heads.

  “This is what’s weird,” she said. She lifted up her arm, and hanging from her fist was an Ellingham lanyard with an ID dangling at the end. “Guess where it was?”

  Stevie had no guess.

  “Literally outside. On the path. Someone took my pass and then brought it back, but not even all the way to the building. They could have shoved it in the door or something. Instead they dropped it halfway up the path. Who does that?”

  “Someone playing a prank?” Stevie said, rubbing at her short hair. “An asshole?”

  “Definitely the last one,” Janelle said. “At least I have it back. Crisis averted.”

  With that mystery resolved if not solved, Stevie got herself showered and dressed. The air was crisp, so Stevie put on her sweats and her Ellingham fleece. As she went into the common room, she was shocked to see David awake, in pajama bottoms and an old T-shirt from a surfing brand, sitting cross-legged on the purple sofa, hunkered over his computer.

  “Are you working?” she said.

  He looked up. His eyes were red, like he had not slept, and there was shade around his jawline. His curly hair stood on end. He looked tumbled and . . . attractive.

  “I go here,” he said. “Remember?”

  “Do you?” Stevie said coolly, walking to the kitchen. Had she just thought David was attractive? Could he tell? It was acceptable to have the thought, but not for him to know, and somehow, he would know.

  She filled her aluminum Ellingham bottle with coffee and left the house quickly, even before Nate came down.

  It was an aggressively pretty morning, as if the season wanted to show off before everything went to pieces and the trees got naked and everything died. The sky was big and blue. Stevie had a real sense of purpose and lift as she made her way over to the sunken garden. This felt like going to school, she thought, as she looked around Ellingham. Up early on a fresh Saturday morning, coffee in hand, to make a project. The energy of the tunnel was still with her.

  The door to the sunken garden was open, and Stevie stepped inside. There was no one there yet, so she took a moment to sit with her coffee and look.

  Stevie was well aware that this man-made lake was large, but when you saw it in person, saw this massive crater in the earth, it brought home just what Albert Ellingham was willing to do to make his family happy. His wife loved to swim, so the ground was leveled, the rock
blown away. When he got a tip suggesting that his wife and daughter or some evidence rested at the bottom, the lake was drained and dried and the earth scarred. And now, just the monuments remained—the statues that looked over the void, the observatory ridiculous on its little bump.

  “Thanks for waiting,” said Nate, coming in from behind her.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  He was wearing cargo shorts, despite the fact that there was a little chill in the air, and a T-shirt that said MY OTHER CAR IS A DRAGON.

  “You really love this stuff, don’t you?” he said, sitting down next to her on the damp grass. “It’s like you’re at murder Disney World.”

  “Murder Disney World would be amazing.”

  “That’s true,” he said. “I’d go to that too.”

  “It’s just . . .” Stevie looked for the words. “I’ve seen so many pictures of this place. I’ve read all this stuff. It was like everything I had in my head is . . .”

  She waved her hands helplessly in front of her. Luckily, Nate seemed to understand.

  “Yeah,” Nate said. “I guess it would be like that if I could go somewhere in a book. I always wanted stories to be real, so I started writing my own. That seemed to make it more real. I’m kind of jealous you get to see your thing. Gandalf isn’t coming for me.”

  “Never say never,” Stevie said.

  There was the modest sound of a golf cart coming, and Mark from maintenance drove in with their supplies, with Dash along for the ride. Hayes and Maris arrived last, and though they weren’t holding hands, they walked close enough together and looked at each other in a way that made it clear that they had not parted ways right away last night.

  There was a lot of moving things that day, lots of running and fetching. Janelle’s beloved poles were set into stands on which lights were attached. The ramp was placed into the sunken garden to create a place from which Hayes could row his imaginary boat. There was a generator to power the lights and the fog machines, which required lots of positioning and testing. Then the tripods were set, lights focused. It took hours, and it was boring. Nate and Stevie had little to do but obey commands to hold things and move things and get things. As Stevie and Nate went from the garden to the costume closet and back again, Stevie noted that Hayes didn’t seem to be doing a lot of running or holding or moving. He sat on a stone bench most of the time, looking at his computer. Stevie thought he was running his lines. The lines were all his—this was a monologue. The rest of the dialogue would be recorded separately and put on top as narration, so there was a lot to know. When she did a quick pass behind him, she saw he was looking at pictures and replying to messages.

  While the ramp was being positioned for the fifth time, Stevie noticed that they had been joined by someone new. Germaine Batt had slipped in through the gate and was floating around and heading in Hayes’s direction. Stevie wondered how this would play out, considering that Germaine had taken footage of Hayes the other night without his knowledge and posted it. But he seemed to welcome Germaine and even posed for some pictures. Stevie also noted that he made himself look very busy in those pictures.

  There was a short lunch break, during which Hayes disappeared for a bit back to Minerva to put on his makeup. When everything was finally in place, hours later, he was nowhere to be found.

  “Where the hell did he go?” Dash asked, looking around. “Stevie, can you find him?”

  Stevie had been sitting on her bag, trying to get enough of a signal on her phone to download the latest episode of her new favorite true crime podcast, Speaking of Murder.

  “Oh,” she said, getting up, “yeah. Sure.”

  She wandered around the empty lake, around the edges of the garden. She heard voices coming from the folly by the back wall. She approached and heard a female voice, an angry one at that.

  “You’re so full of shit, Hayes,” it said. “You owe me.”

  “And I’ll give it to you,” Hayes replied.

  “That’s what you said before.”

  “Because I will.”

  Stevie remained very still for a moment and listened.

  “You think people don’t know?” the unknown person said, her voice dripping with contempt.

  “Know what, Gretchen?” Hayes said.

  Gretchen. The girl with the hair. The queenly one.

  “Oh, please. You’re going to pretend with me?”

  “Why do you even care?” he said.

  “Well, first, I’m never getting paid back. Let’s not pretend about that. You do this to everyone. To me. Probably to Beth. At least she knows now, thanks to that girl who did the video. What about these dumb SOBs who are out here doing your work right now?”

  Dumb SOBs? Stevie was one of those dumb SOBs.

  “Gretchen . . .” It came out as a long sigh.

  “What if I tell that girl with the show all about it?”

  “I guess you do what you need to do, Gretchen,” he said. “Or you could take a Xanax and give me a week or two.”

  Before Stevie could move, Hayes came from around the back of the folly. It was clearly Hayes, but he was older. His hair was grayed and his face was full of lines and furrows. Maris had done a good job with the stage makeup.

  “Hey, Stevie,” he said, a little louder than necessary.

  “Hey,” she said. “It’s time.”

  Hayes smiled a bit, and Stevie realized he thought she was providing him cover to get out of the conversation. Now that she had been labeled as a dumb SOB who was doing Hayes’s work for him, Stevie regarded his expression with a lot more suspicion.

  “Thanks,” he said, his voice thickening and sweeting. Tupelo honey now.

  Gretchen emerged as well. She saw Stevie, but, to paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, she did not observe. Stevie was a part of the landscape. She strode past without a word.

  “Thanks,” Hayes said, dropping a slow arm over Stevie’s shoulders. “My ex. I mean, she broke up with me and she still seems mad about it. It’s strange. But you know how these things are.”

  Stevie did not know how these things were, but she nodded.

  “It’s tough,” she said.

  Hayes nodded and slipped into a deeper, more comfortable smile. Hayes had a smile like a hammock—just get in, go to sleep, forget your troubles and cares.

  A few things Stevie quickly learned that afternoon:

  One, shooting the video involved a lot of not shooting the video, and standing around, and talking about doing things again, and then sometimes doing them again, and then running to the bathroom to find that things were just about where they were before.

  Two, Hayes really could act. There was no denying him that.

  Three, theatrical fog stank.

  And four, it was possible for Stevie to tire of standing in the sunken garden and listen to the Ellingham kidnapping story being hashed over and over.

  As the hours rolled on, she started to resent the fact that she had allowed Hayes to take Truly Devious as a subject. Sure, she had agreed, but there was something wrong about this, about making this weird little video. And though Hayes was doing a good enough job, and no matter how well the makeup was applied, he was still a seventeen-year-old guy playing a man in his late forties. This was Stevie’s thing, and something about the whole filming process felt sideways and wrong in a way she could not quite place.

  By six, Maris said they’d probably gotten what they needed and Dash called a dinner break.

  “We’ll eat and then we’ll come back and clean up,” he said.

  “Tonight?” Nate replied. “Can’t we do it tomorrow?”

  Maris was helping Hayes wipe his face with a makeup remover cloth. When they were done, the group made their way out of the garden and to the dining hall. Stevie heard Nate’s stomach grumbling out loud.

  As they reached the green, Hayes took a step back.

  “You guys go ahead,” he said. “There’s something I forgot.”

  “I’ll come,” Maris said.

  �
��No, it’s cool,” he said, walking backward. “Go ahead and save me a place.”

  Stevie and Nate didn’t have to be told twice.

  It was strangely disconcerting to sit with a different group for dinner. Stevie worked her way through a plate of fried chicken and corn, watching across the room as some of her housemates reconfigured into groups. There was Janelle, taking a seat with some people from Vi’s building. Ellie sat with people Stevie had barely seen before. David never showed up at all. Nor did Hayes.

  “I wonder what’s taking him so long?” Maris said, fidgeting in her seat. “He’s not answering his texts.”

  “He’s probably on the phone,” Dash said, quickly eating some mashed potatoes.

  Maris sat on her hands and glanced around the room, her gaze landing on Gretchen as she entered the dining hall. She ran her tongue over her teeth.

  “I should go check,” she said.

  “Maris, he’s coming,” Dash said. “He’s just doing something.”

  “We should go back and move the ramp anyway.”

  “Oh my God,” Dash said. “Fine. Just let me finish eating for a second?”

  Gretchen turned ever so casually toward them, her gaze passing like a cloud overhead.

  What had she and Hayes been talking about earlier? What did Hayes owe Gretchen? And did being associated with Hayes cause this kind of turmoil? Maris was nervous, all of them were working on something that really benefited Hayes, Gretchen was literally seeking some kind of retribution.

  How did some people lead these kinds of lives?

  Dinner was finished quickly, much to Nate’s chagrin, and the four of them—Maris, Dash, Stevie, and Nate—made their way back to the sunken garden.

  It was now just coming on nightfall, the sky turning an electric blue with the trees standing out in stark relief. As they walked, Stevie heard someone approaching briskly, then turned to see Germaine Batt next to her.