George Marsh, Leo could see very clearly, had a secret.
“All right, then,” Albert said, ushering Leo, Flora, and Robert toward the waiting car.
George Marsh stood by the front door and watched the car drive off. Once he was sure that the group was a decent distance away, he got in his own car and left the property.
He was gone for several hours, returning near nightfall. He parked on the dirt road, far back from the house. He returned to the house and made note of who remained. The work crews had gone, as had the day servants. Montgomery had retired to his rooms and the other servants to theirs. He checked in with the security men, sending them out to patrol the edges of the property. Once all of this was done, he changed his clothes, putting on work pants and a simple undershirt. Then he took a lantern and walked out into the back of the house, grabbing a shovel as he went. He slid down the muddy ground, into the marshy pit where the lake had been, then he walked to the mound in the middle where the glass dome reflected the early moonlight.
It was unpleasant to go back into the dome now. It smelled of dirt and neglect and was full of footprints from where the workmen had been. There were no rugs or cushions now. He sat down on the bench on the side, exactly where he had been when he faced Dottie Epstein. She had tried to hide under a rug on the floor, but fear and curiosity got the better of her . . .
“Don’t be afraid. You can come out.”
Dottie looked at the things he had put on the floor—the rope, the binoculars, the handcuffs.
“Those are for the game,” he had said.
“What kind of game?”
“It’s very complicated, but it’s going to be a lot of fun. I have to hide. Were you hiding in here too?”
He had started sweating profusely at that part of the conversation, as he felt it all unraveling. How had he sounded so calm?
“To read,” she had replied.
The kid had a book with her. She was clutching it like it was a shield.
“Sherlock Holmes? I love Sherlock Holmes. Which story are you reading?”
“A Study in Scarlet.”
“That’s a good one. Go ahead. Read. Don’t let me stop you.”
At that point, he had decided nothing. His brain was spinning. What to do with her? Dottie had looked at him, and he could see it in her eyes—she knew. Somehow, she knew.
“I need to get this back to the library. I won’t tell anyone you’re here. I hate it when people tell on me. I have to go.”
“You know I can’t let you leave,” he had replied. “I wish I could.”
The words came out of his mouth, but he had had no idea what they meant.
“You can. I’m good at keeping secrets. Please.”
She had hugged the book.
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
George Marsh put his head in his hands for a moment. He couldn’t play the rest in his mind, the part where Dottie dropped the book and made her heroic, doomed leap toward the hole. The sound she made when she hit the ground below. Scrabbling down the ladder—all the blood. The way she moaned and dragged herself along the ground.
He blinked, stood, and shook it off. He lowered his lantern with a rope, then dropped the shovel and climbed down. The shelves had been emptied of liquor bottles. The little space was empty, cold. He pushed on, through the door, into the tunnel. The crew had started filling in the tunnel in the middle, so that is where he would go. He walked into the pitch-black, his little halo of light barely cutting into the shade.
It was like he was going to the underworld. To hell. To the place of no return.
The smell of earth was getting stronger, and soon some was underfoot. He stopped, set the lantern down, and tested the space with the shovel. Then he began to dig, shoving the earth to the sides, creating an opening. When the space met his satisfaction, he picked up the lantern and returned the way he had come, back into the world of the living. He walked out of the dome, back through the sunken pit, all the way to his car. He opened the back door.
There was a small trunk inside. He opened that as well.
There were ice cellars in Vermont, packed with ice and snow and hay. That was where he had been keeping Alice. She was not frozen solid, but she was stiff.
“Come on,” he said to her quietly. “I’m taking you home. It’s okay.”
He closed the trunk and removed it from the car. George bore his sad burden back the same way, moving carefully so as not to drop it as he made his way down the slippery side of the once-lake. He lowered the trunk with a rope, taking care to put her on the ground as delicately as possible. Then he carried her into the tunnel and into the space he had excavated. He packed the earth around her by hand. Once she was mostly covered, he began to fill with the shovel, until he had put several feet of dirt between her and the world.
It was nearly midnight when he emerged, his face slick with cold sweat. He moved silently toward the house, taking a route where he would not be seen from Montgomery’s window.
As soon as he was inside, there was a movement from behind a tree at the edge of the garden patio, the sound of a striking match, and the small glow of the tip of a cigarette. Leonard Holmes Nair emerged and watched as George Marsh walked out of sight.
“What have you been doing?” he said to himself as the door closed.
Then he moved silently through the garden, tracing the path that Marsh had just come.
18
IT WAS MORNING, NOT THAT YOU’D KNOW IT.
The snow obliterated the horizon. There was no sense of where the sky ended and the world began. There were hints of trees, but they were shortened in perspective by the depth of the snow, and their spindly, bare branches wore white gloves. Only the dome on the little mound seemed to be in the right place. The sunken garden was being refilled. The world was being erased and reset.
The morning room, where everyone was camped, managed to be both cold and stuffy at the same time. Stevie woke, stiff and still tired, and stared out from her sleeping place. The rubber mat and blankets didn’t do much to keep out the hard chill of the floor. She had a limited view under the sofa and could see Janelle’s extended arm reaching in Vi’s general direction, though Vi was several feet away, sleeping upright, tablet still in hand. Nate was curled into his blankets, which he had pulled over his head. There was a gentle, soft snoring coming from someone.
Stevie wiped away some drool and pushed herself up quietly to a standing position. Even David was asleep, draped over the chair, legs hanging off the side, a tablet next to him. Hunter, the lightly snoring one, was flat on his back on the sofa, his knit hat pulled over his eyes like a sleeping mask. There was something odd and intimate the way the soft light fell on her sleeping friends; it was almost as if the Ellinghams had even planned a room where the light would come down gently on any revelers sleeping off a party.
She tiptoed out into the main hall, where Call Me Charles was by the fire with his computer and a stack of folders. Call Me Charles was a lot to take at what her phone informed her was six in the morning, but there was no avoiding it.
“I don’t know about you,” he said, waving her over, “but I didn’t sleep much. I caught up on some work. Reading applications for next year’s class.”
Applications. More people would be coming, taking the same chance Stevie had—writing to Ellingham about their passions, hoping someone would see a spark and admit them. It was so weird to think of people coming after her.
“I hope we have a school then,” he said.
“You think the school won’t reopen?” Stevie said.
Charles sighed and shut his computer.
“The cat only has so many lives,” he said. “We’ll do our best. We could live to fight another day. We have to be hopeful.”
He sipped his coffee and gazed into the fire for a moment.
“Let me ask you something,” he said. “The Ellingham case. Do you think you understand it any better since being here?”
Stevie could have said, I
solved it. So, yeah, kind of better. But it wasn’t time, and Charles was not going to be her official way of getting this out into the world.
“I think so,” she said noncommittally. “Why?”
“Because,” he said. “That’s why you were admitted.”
“Did you really think I could solve it?” she said.
“What I thought and what I still think,” he replied, “is that I saw someone with a passionate interest. In fact, I thought you might be bored here, so I went up to the attic last night and got you something.”
He indicated the small table next to him, where four large green volumes sat. She recognized them at once, with their gold lettering on the side, indicating years and months.
“The house records,” she said.
“I thought you might like to go through them,” he said. “Only if you want.”
Stevie had read through these records before. They had been kept by the butler, Montgomery. They listed the comings and goings in the house—what meals were served, what occasions were held, which guests were in attendance.
“Thanks,” Stevie said, accepting them.
Above, Dr. Quinn came out of one of the offices. She was dressed in a cashmere sweater and a pair of elegant yoga pants with flowers twining up the sides. Ellingham was still ticking away.
“Can I sit in the ballroom and read?” Stevie said.
“I don’t see why not,” Charles said. “It’s cold in there.”
“I don’t care.”
He got up and unlocked the room for her.
The Ellingham ballroom was a magnificent hall of mirrors, and as such, it was very cold and empty. She sat in the middle of the wooden floor, surrounded by a thousand other Stevies. She set down the pile of house records and reached into her bag for the red diary. She felt the pages, which were surprisingly smooth given their age. Expensive paper in a well-made book, the penmanship formal and exquisite, with occasional drips of ink on the page. Francis Josephine Crane, baking flour heiress, had a lot to say about the school and the people who lived there. For starters, she didn’t have a lot of good things to say about the school’s benefactor.
11/13/35
Albert, Lord Albert, the man must think he’s a god. After all, he’s built himself his own little Olympus and furnished it with Greek deities. And he can say all he likes about his great experiment, but what he wants is to make a whole group of little Alberts, or what he believes himself to be. Luckily, he has rich friends who will give him their children (my parents couldn’t say yes fast enough) for the purpose. And poor people? Well, who wouldn’t entrust their son or daughter to the great Albert Ellingham? The talk of games is especially tiring. I think his wife may be all right. I’ve seen her around and about, speeding off in her car. (A very attractive one. Cherry red. I’d like one like that.) I think she skis and drinks, and she’s friends with Leonard Holmes Nair, who comes here to paint and visit.
11/16/35
The great Albert Ellingham took me around the campus today, the sanctimonious prick. I had to pretend to be impressed with everything he’s done in order to get him to show me anything interesting. He laughed at me. Something will have to be done about that.
She also had things to say about Iris that were surprising.
12/1/35
Amazing discovery. Eddie and I slipped into the back garden today, where the Ellinghams have a private lake. Iris and her friend were sitting out there in the cold, wrapped up in furs, giggling about something. We watched as Iris took a small compact from her purse, scooped something out of it with a small silver object, and snorted whatever was in it right up her nose! Her friend then took some. Our dear Madame Ellingham has a taste for cocaine! Eddie was delighted and said we needed to go over and ask for some—he loves the stuff. I’ve never had it, but he said it makes you see galaxies. In any case, we didn’t, but it’s a very good fact to put away. You never know when that one will come in handy.
There were always hints that Iris Ellingham liked a good party, but nothing about cocaine. There were observations about Francis’s housemates and housemistress as well.
12/3/35
Gertie van Coevorden made a cutting remark about the time I spend with Eddie. She said, “Whatever do you spend all that time doing?” I told her we do the same thing her father does with the downstairs maid. She did not understand. She is genuinely that thick.
12/6/35
The only one around here worth a damn aside from me and Eddie is Dottie Epstein, and that is mostly because she is a sneak.
12/8/35
Nelson is a drip. She swans around the house in her one good skirt and sweater, telling us all when we must retire for the evening, when we must study. Eddie tells me the boys’ houses have no such rules. Nelson has a secret. I don’t know what it is, but I will work it out.
1/16/36
Gertie van Coevorden drinks so much gin that if you set her on fire she would burn for a week.
As the entries went on and became more about cars, guns, open safes, and routes to the West, there were a few entries about Eddie that had a different tone than the rapturous ones at the start of the diary.
2/5/36
I wonder if Eddie is strong enough to do what we mean to do. I know I am. He likes to talk about poetry and the dark star and living a perfectly reckless life, outside of morality, but does he know what it means? What if he turns out to be like the others? I can’t bear it.
2/9/36
I have always felt that boys are weak-minded. I don’t think they can help themselves most of the time. I believed Eddie was different. What he is is drunk and debauched. Those are virtues, to some extent, but I thought there was more. What if there isn’t?
2/18/36
He’s such a spoiled boy. I’m spoiled too, but it didn’t rot me in the way it rotted him. The money corroded him. What is it about me that loves the decay?
And there was this entry, which Stevie kept coming back to.
OUR TREASURE
All that I care about starts at nine
Dance twelve hundred steps on the northern line
To the left bank three hundred times
E+A
Line flag
Tiptoe
Stevie set the diary down on her lap.
She was tired of people not saying what they meant. This, of course, was going to be a big part of her job as a detective. People would lie to her or talk around things. It was something she would have to get used to.
But David . . . he couldn’t have meant what he’d said last night, about ignoring each other forever. That was one of his games. A test.
Why had David even come back?
By midmorning, she had grown weary of staring at the diary and the house records. There was only so much energy she could spend on lists of routes and menus from 1935. She got up and rejoined her friends.
The morning room door was mostly closed, and there was a low hum of conversation. When Stevie stepped in, Janelle and Nate were watching the goings-on across the room like they were spectators at a major sporting event.
“What are you doing?” Stevie asked.
Nobody on that side of the room answered, or even looked up. Stevie turned to Nate and Janelle. Janelle beckoned her over.
“Something’s going on over there,” Janelle said, in a low voice. “They got really excited about an hour ago.”
David was comparing the screens on two of the tablets. Stevie went over and sat on the arm of the sofa and looked down at them.
“Is there something going on?” she asked.
Vi shushed her, which is not the kind of thing they would usually do.
“So all these payments here,” David said to Hunter.
“ . . . match the payments here. And the dates.”
“Plus the email records on the third one,” Vi added. “All the donors have been doing it. This guy, the private investigator, is always listed on the ones with an asterisk.”
Stevie tried to piece this all
together. Payments. Private investigators.
“Are you guys talking about blackmail?” she said.
Three faces tipped up to look at her.
“Something like that,” Hunter said, smiling.
“Who’s being blackmailed?” Stevie asked. No matter what was going on, talk of private investigators and blackmail was going to interest her. She addressed most of this to Hunter and Vi, trying not to make eye contact with David after the events of last night.
“What seems to be happening,” Vi said, “is that whenever this person, who we found out is a private investigator, shows up in the files regarding these major donors to the King campaign, these donors suddenly give a lot more money, and on a regular schedule. They formed organizations to raise even more.”
“What is the private investigator doing?” Stevie asked.
“Something with financial documents,” David said, not looking up. “He delivers loads and loads of these spreadsheets. We can’t work out what they mean exactly, because we don’t have enough information, but it definitely seems like this is information about activities these people want hidden. Maybe it’s tax fraud or something. Whatever the case, my dad has this information on them, and then his campaign gets a ton of money. That’s blackmail.”
“And these people?” Vi said, breathless. “They’re the worst people you can imagine. This guy here”—she pointed at a line on the spreadsheet—“is almost singlehandedly responsible for the cover-up of a major oil spill.”
“Major, major oil spill,” said Hunter.
“This is how he did it,” David said, almost to himself. “He never had enough money to start his presidential campaign, and then it all comes rolling in as soon as he gets this material. And there’s no way this stuff was obtained legally. He’s getting information about things that are probably crimes, and he’s using it to power his campaign. Crimes to power crimes.”
“This is a treasure trove,” Vi said. “If you sent this stuff to a Dropbox for any media outlet, you could blow this all wide open. If we release this stuff, we could take down some of the worst people out there today.”
The Hand on the Wall Page 18
