Truly Devious

by Maureen Johnson

  “You need to go over to the Great House,” she heard Pix say. “Nothing’s wrong, Charles just needs to talk to you about—”

  “It’s fine,” he said. “Sure. I’ll come now. My coat’s downstairs.”

  Quiet. They seemed to have gone.

  Stevie crouched in the closet, her heart thumping, rumpled and a bit overheated, her breath coming fast. She slowed it down, turned on her phone for light, and shone it around the closet space. She looked at his shoes, picking them up, giving them the once-over. All had relatively unworn soles. Stevie had sneakers that had worn straight through the bottoms, and most of her shoes had scuffing to the toes, to the sides, little imperfections she either tried to hide or just accepted. These were new shoes. Replaced regularly. And all name brands. There were dress shoes in here, made of soft leather, with the name inside: ELLIS, OF LONDON. Tennis gear. Skis. Everything confirmed the diagnosis of well off, and not the son of a pilot and the manager of a fertilizer plant, probably. When she heard nothing outside the door, she crawled out of the closet and went to the door. No noise.

  She was just in David’s room. Alone.

  There is a principle often discussed in murder mysteries. Agatha Christie even wrote a book with the title: Murder Is Easy. The idea is that the first time is the hardest, but once you transgress that barrier, once you take a life and get away with it, it becomes progressively easier each time. Stevie had yet to see anything in her reading that showed that this was necessarily true in real life, though it certainly seemed true that people may commit additional murders in a state of panic. Still, it logically held up. Murder is easy. And going through rooms is easy, especially if the owner of said room is someone who let you in and left you alone there.

  And she had so many questions. Who was David, the David with no social media? The guy who kept telling weird lies about his family. The desire to know was like hunger, really—it rumbled, it demanded information.

  Maybe she could just have a little look around? Just eyeball the place. There would be time. To walk over to the Great House, meet with Charles, come back—that was a minimum of twenty minutes, even if Charles said very little. And it was probably best she wait in here a minute or two anyway, just to make sure Pix was gone.

  Just a little look around.

  He had a video game system, lots of computer gear. Good speakers—Stevie had seen the brand advertised. Good headphones. Good everything. His books were haphazardly piled. Subjects: philosophy, game theory, lots of literature, books on how to write (interesting), graphic novels. There was an e-reader on the stand next to the bed. She flipped through the library contents: more graphic novels, lots of sci-fi (David liked a space opera, clearly), books about history. David was a reader. An avid one.

  She put the e-reader back on the page it had been on when she picked it up and replaced it. She had a look at his bedside light: an Italian brand, another quality piece. Everything in his room was just a little bit better, from the weight and smoothness of his sheets (she sat down on the bed and gave them a feel; they smelled of him) to the heavy down comforter.

  She allowed herself to rest back on the bed for a moment.

  What else was in plain view? Police could look at things in plain view when they came inside with no warrant. The room was clean. Not tidy, but generally clean. An effort had been made to keep things in the right place. There was one old Led Zeppelin poster, but Stevie got the impression that it had just been put up as a kind of non-decorating. Get the first object you see, stick it up. The vast majority of the room was a blank canvas, without photos or decorations.

  She leaned back and her hand struck something hard. She reached into the sheets and pulled out his laptop.

  His laptop, just sitting there.

  She looked it over for a moment. No stickers, no markings. She put her hands on the edge of the computer.

  To open or . . .

  The thing about looking just a little bit means it’s really easy to look a little bit more. Once you’ve touched it, well, you’ve touched it, and if you have the computer in your lap and you open it and a screen comes up, there you are.

  Maybe this was what Pandora felt like when she got her famous box. Open it and the light pours out . . .

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  Everything stopped for a moment. How he had come upstairs without her hearing him was unknown. She must have been too into what she was doing—of course, what she was doing was going through his computer.

  Answering his question would have been self-incriminating, so Stevie sat there, still and silent. Still things can sometimes appear invisible.

  “What,” David said again, “are you doing?”

  “I was just . . .”

  He came over and put his hands out for the computer. She passed it over.

  “I . . . didn’t even look.”

  “It seems like you did,” he said.

  Well, yeah. It did. He was right. Stevie felt her defenses snap back into place.

  “What’s the big secret?” she snapped back. “You’ve met my family. You just got in the car and came along. You’ve had a look at me.”

  “And you wanted a look,” he said. “Did it ever occur to you there’s a reason I don’t want to talk about my family?”

  “We all have reasons,” she said. “You’re not special in having a weird time with your parents.”

  “My parents are dead,” he said. “Does that count as special?”

  One time, when she was little, Stevie was outside playing on a cold day. She caught some speed on a patch of ice and went, full speed, into a wall. As her abdomen made contact, she remembered the feeling of all the air being violently forced out of her body, scraping her throat as it exited.

  It sort of felt like that now. The angles had come back into David’s features, and something else.

  Hurt.

  “Just get out,” he said.

  “I . . .”

  “Get out,” he said quietly.

  * * *

  FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

  INTERVIEW BETWEEN AGENT SAMUEL ARNOLD AND ROBERT MACKENZIE

  APRIL 17, 1936, 7:10 P.M.

  LOCATION: ELLINGHAM PROPERTY

  SA: Just a few more questions, Mr. Mackenzie. We have to go through these things several times.

  RM: I understand.

  SA: When did you start working for Albert Ellingham?

  RM: When I left Princeton, eight years ago.

  SA: And you are his personal assistant in business matters?

  RM: Correct. I am his personal business secretary.

  SA: So you see quite a number of Mr. Ellingham’s transactions.

  RM: I see nearly all of them, if not all.

  SA: Do you find it odd, running the business from up here in this mountain location?

  RM: I don’t think any of us expected to be here this long.

  SA: What do you mean?

  RM: The school was just another project. Mr. Ellingham has a lot of projects. It seemed like he was planning for this to be a retreat, maybe to be used a few weeks in the summer. But he’s been here since September. We all seemed to be waiting for him to say, “All right! Back to New York.” But it never happened. We were here all winter. Do you have any idea what winters are like up here?

  SA: Cold, I’d imagine.

  RM: Half the time you can’t leave the house for all the snow. The locals don’t seem to mind, but everyone else had wild cabin fever. Mrs. Ellingham . . .

  [Pause.]

  SA: What about her?

  RM: Mrs. Ellingham is lively. She likes society and athletics. She did some skiing, but that wasn’t enough. You could see it wearing on her.

  SA: Did this cause friction between Mr. and Mrs. Ellingham?

  [Silence.]

  SA: I know you feel a sense of loyalty, but there are things we have to know.

  RM: I realize that. Yes, maybe a bit. They are very different people. A loving couple, of course, but very differen
t people. I think being up here has been hard on her at times. She has Miss Robinson to keep her company. That seems to help.

  SA: They’re close?

  RM: Like sisters.

  SA: And what is Mr. Nair like?

  RM: Mr. Nair is a brilliant artist and an inebriate.

  SA: A frequent drinker?

  RM: Often and in high quantities. I once watched him drink an entire case of champagne by himself. I was surprised he didn’t die.

  SA: Is he aggressive in that condition?

  RM: On the contrary, he usually just paints or talks and eventually we find him somewhere on the grounds, asleep. The students once pulled him out of the fountain. If you’re asking if he’s capable of arranging a kidnapping, I don’t think Leonard Holmes Nair is capable of arranging breakfast. This was organized.

  SA: You’re an organized man.

  RM: Which is why I know organization when I see it. I’m professionally dull, Agent Arnold. It’s why I was hired. I’m a foil to Mr. Ellingham’s exuberance.

  SA: It sounds like you’re sensible. On the night of the thirteenth, you advocated calling the police.

  RM: And I regret I didn’t do it, even though I was told not to.

  SA: You obeyed orders.

  RM: I obeyed orders.

  SA: Can you tell me about the letter that was received on April eighth, the Truly Devious letter? What did you make of it?

  RM: We get, on average, two or three threats a day in with the regular correspondence. The vast majority of it is nonsense and a lot of it from the same people. At first, this one struck me as a bit of a joke.

  SA: Why a joke?

  RM: The cutout letters. The poem. But then I noticed a few things. I noticed it was postmarked from Burlington. And then I noticed the address. You see, Mr. Ellingham has business correspondence from all around the country. As I’m sure you can imagine, mail delivery here is difficult. So we have all business correspondence directed to an office in Burlington, and we have it delivered by car every day, weather providing. If the weather is too bad, we have a secretary there who can read it to me over the telephone. What was unusual was that the letter didn’t come to any of the business addresses—that’s where most of the abusive mail goes to. It was addressed here, to this house. This one seemed much more personal.

  SA: But you didn’t show it to George Marsh.

  RM: I was going to. But there was a great deal going on over the weekend. I was going to show him the next time he came by.

  SA: So there was a party over the weekend?

  RM: For Maxine Melville, yes.

  SA: Did you attend?

  RM: Only in the sense that I was in the house. I was very busy finalizing the paperwork on an important deal Mr. Ellingham has been working on. He’s purchasing a newspaper in Philadelphia.

  SA: Was there anything out of the ordinary about the weekend or Monday morning?

  RM: Absolutely nothing. We went to Burlington on Monday morning to do some business and send some cables. We came back in the evening.

  SA: Let’s talk about this house and the school. Did you feel this location was insecure?

  RM: Absolutely, considering the threats and the attempted bombing.

  SA: Did you speak to your employer about this?

  RM: I tried.

  SA: You seem like a smart man, Mr. Mackenzie. Your instincts were always to reach out to law enforcement. You have your eyes open. Where do you feel Iris and Alice Ellingham and Dolores Epstein might be?

  RM: Nowhere good. To be honest with you, I think . . .

  SA: Yes?

  RM: I hate to say the words, Agent Arnold. I think that letter was from the kidnappers and Truly Devious meant every word on that page. I think they’re dead. God help me, I think they’re all dead.

  [Interview terminated 7:32 p.m.]

  * * *

  24

  ONCE UPON A TIME, A YOUNG GIRL NAMED DOTTIE FROM NEW YORK City came to Ellingham Academy and ended up dead from a knock on the head.

  Once upon another time, an actor from Florida came to Ellingham Academy and found out dry ice was not so nice.

  Third time’s the charm. A girl from Pittsburgh came to Ellingham Academy and she wanted to see a dead body.

  She got her wish.

  That same girl snatched victory from the jaws of defeat and got to stay at Ellingham Academy, but then, worried that defeat might be hungry, promptly fed the victory right back to its gaping jaws. That girl had a taste of something she didn’t know that she wanted or needed, and she had messed it all up.

  And life went on.

  Ellingham mourned and was counseled. There was an informal memorial in the cupola on the green, where people left candles and pictures and a small zombie doll. There were letters and phone calls from Charles and the other members of the board. Security tightened. Everyone’s passes were checked and upgraded. Curfew became a real thing, and rooms were checked and grounds patrolled. It wasn’t that anyone forgot about Hayes’s death—the subject was constantly talked about—it was just something that had happened. It was part of reality.

  Though the investigation was not yet formally closed, information was made available to reassure everyone. Hayes seemed to have died in an accident of his own making. Hayes, a person known to make videos in dark corners, took something that didn’t belong to him. His fingerprints were on Janelle’s ID and the golf cart used to move the dry ice, and a hand truck. This was, it was pretty clear to everyone, a case of Hayes really messing up. And he had stolen property as well. He had gone to great lengths to break rules, so his parents could hardly sue.

  The common wisdom was that Hayes had gone into the tunnel to film something new for The End of It All. Hence going back alone. Hence the secret. He’d seen the dry ice, looked in the tunnel, and had an idea that put it all together. He just put it together very badly.

  It was back to piles of books and anatomy labs and essays. Something called the Silent Party was scheduled—a dance with no sound or something. It was going to be in the Great House. That would pass as entertainment. Back to school. Because that was what Ellingham was, a school. Stevie tried to do this, but found her concentration was broken. She couldn’t finish her reading, couldn’t write her essays. The weather turned resolutely gray. Mountains are not kind when the season turns. The leaves on the trees started to turn gold and red at the tips and a few overachievers made the trip to the ground.

  David did not talk to her.

  He was over Stevie’s head, literally. She heard his steps, but that was about all she heard from him. He made himself scarce from the common room and the kitchen, and if he and Stevie crossed paths, he looked away.

  She would open books, stare at a page, and realize she hadn’t taken anything in. Then she would read it again, the words slipping in the front door and out the back. There were essays to write that never got past the note stage. There was some leeway in all of this because of recent events, but the leeway was not going to go on forever.

  None of this escaped the attention of Janelle, who finally hooked Stevie by the arm and pulled her into her room and sat her on the bed.

  “Are you going to tell me what the hell happened with the two of you?” Janelle said.

  “What?”

  “You and David,” Janelle said.

  Stevie blinked.

  “Do you think we don’t know?” Janelle said. “Everyone knows. There is nothing in the world as obvious as the two of you. So what happened?”

  “We made out,” Stevie said.

  “Yeah, I got that. And then what?”

  Shame is a terrible thing. Janelle would never go through Vi’s room. Sure, Vi wasn’t a lying weirdo, but even if she was, Janelle wouldn’t do that. Janelle had standards. Janelle was loyal. Whereas Stevie was a cretinous person who had no principles.

  Janelle waited for a reply, and when she realized none was forthcoming, Stevie saw a light go out in her eyes.

  This left Nate and Ellie.

  E
llie’s reaction to Hayes’s death was to go maximum Ellie. Minerva was woken in the morning by the terrifying cries of Roota. When painted makeup appeared on the Minerva gargoyles and some of the statues, it was fairly obvious who the culprit was. There was more drinking and bathing and French poetry.

  Which left Nate, and Nate had retreated to the misty mountains in his mind. He was always reading now, turning away from every conversation, frequently eating alone. Stevie found him in the dining hall at one of the small, high-top tables, his face buried in a copy of The Earthsea Trilogy and his fork working a plate of turkey meatballs and pasta.

  Stevie pulled up a chair and slid over her tray of lasagna and salad with maple dressing, because she had given up fighting the maple syrup.

  “Hey,” she said.

  Nate peered out of his book.

  “Hey,” he said.

  She waited for him to put the book down. It took him a moment to get the hint. He put a napkin carefully between the pages as a bookmark. Nate didn’t press books facedown and ruin their spines.

  “Talk to me about writing,” Stevie said.

  “Why do you hate me?” he replied.

  “Seriously. Tell me about it.”

  “Tell you what?” he said. “You write. That’s it.”

  “But how do you do it?” she said. “Do you just sit down and write? Do you have to plan first? Do you just write whatever comes into your head?”

  “Is someone paying you to do this to me?”

  “It’s just . . . remember that first day when we were talking about zombies? And Hayes had no idea what the Monroeville Mall was?”

  “Yeah?”

  “That was weird,” she said.

  He waited for her to explain what she was saying, but she had no explanation. Nate returned to his book and meatballs.

  “It’s like Truly Devious,” she said after a moment.

  Nate looked up with tired eyes, but he still looked up.

  “What about it?”