A shiver of foreboding ran through Henrietta’s body as she looked at the wholesome-looking young man, and Celia alone on the road with him for hours.
“Is that a promise, Johnny?”
“I swear to you, ma’am, on my grandmother’s grave, that I’ll protect her from any harm. You can rest easy.”
Henrietta nodded uneasily. She knew there was nothing she could do. There was no way she could forbid Celia from doing whatever she wanted, especially not on a—most probably—baseless feeling.
“Drive carefully then,” she said, and, holding to the rails, she climbed the front steps and entered the house. George Baxter’s house.
Chapter 64. George Baxter’s house
It was strange. Her familiar home, one in which she had lived half of her life was suddenly not really hers anymore. This was another person’s home, and a woman she had never heard of before had cried in the attic night after night before she had disappeared forever.
She passed Alfred in the kitchen and said a curt hello, and then she passed Celia coming down from her bedroom with her backpack, and she gave the girl a big, worried hug.
“Nothing is the same anymore, my child. So, you have to promise me that you’ll be prudent and take good care of yourself.”
Celia shed a quick tear and hugged her.
“Please don’t worry, mom,” she said. “Johnny will take care of me. He knows about the murders and swore that he would never let anyone hurt me.”
Henrietta nodded and kept on walking up the stairs. Celia had come and gone randomly ever since she had started college a few towns over, always needing to come back home periodically, to see her family, her room, and her friends. She wasn’t the kind of kid who had wanted to get away from her parents, as far as she could.
So, Henrietta kept on climbing the stairs. After a loud bye, y’all echoed up to where she was standing, and after the front door was vigorously slammed, the house became as quiet as a mausoleum. All the snow that had fallen the night before muted the sounds that usually came from outside, the honking of the horns, the sirens of police cars, the ambulances.
Upstairs, in the attic, all was as it had been left by her lodger, over two weeks earlier. Even the last tray of food had been forgotten on the small side table. In a daze, Henrietta looked at it. The remnants of breakfast had begun decaying on the plate, and the last sip of coffee had dried up, leaving a rim of hardened foam, greenish, like rotting puke.
She stood in front of the closed door, uncomfortable at the thought of intruding, even though she had been inside before, in secret. But today was different. Today she had the permission to go inside and—like a voyeur—examine the lodger’s belongings, touch them and smell them if she wanted.
And look for a clue.
Her hand went up to the doorknob, and she hesitated. The house was so very quiet, and the sense of foreboding so strong. But there was no point in waiting. She would have to go in, sooner or later.
When was it that she had been there, uninvited? Must have been over a month ago. She turned the handle and entered.
She found the room organized, the bed made, and the rough table turned into a desk, a sleek laptop sitting opened, the keyboard covered in dust. A pile of books sat next to the laptop, including her Bible, neatly closed with a dozen or so strips of paper marking pages.
Other than that, everything was the same, except for a photograph, obviously a new one, on the fireplace, of the lodger and the young woman—his young sister—smiling at the camera. The frame seemed expensive, and so did the laptop, as well as the fancy leather boots by the door, and everything else in the room.
She marveled at how easily she had been fooled and wondered if she was still living in the lie. Was George Baxter still deceiving her? Could he be the murderer after all? If he was so clever, he would have the ability to fool the local police, who were obviously not so bright. And within a few days, he would be allowed to walk out of his prison cell, free to kill again. What would happen then?
In the overwhelming silence, she walked around, worried, thinking about clues, touching his things. What would a clue be? What would it look like?
Chapter 65. The Clue
The floorboards creaked under her feet and scattered little motes of dust floated in the air. A weak winter sun poured through the windows, creating an ambiance of silence and loneliness. Whatever had happened in this attic so many years ago, it had left a ghost of sorrow and sadness behind.
She thought of the lodger’s mom, young and troubled about something, walking around in the attic, crying with despair. She thought of the creaking of the floorboards. Did her family, did the children, the husband, hear her pace? Did anyone think to come and check on her?
Maybe only little George had cared enough or had noticed enough. She imagined him a young child, standing quietly by the door—feeling troubled—his ear against the thin wood, listening, trying to understand what was wrong, why his mother was crying.
But it was the mom that she had to try to understand, not the child. Whatever happened to her, whatever had made her cry and eventually disappear, it was here, in this place that she had allowed herself to weep silently, perhaps behind her husband’s back, up here where the children couldn’t hear her cry.
Henrietta walked about, pretending to be her. I’m distraught, she told herself. I pace up and down the attic in despair because I have a problem that nobody must know about. I don’t tell my husband. Why? Because it will hurt his feelings, like an affair? Or because it can ruin him? Or am I scared of someone? I’m crying because I have a terrible secret that I can’t share with anyone, not even my own husband. Is it my husband that I’m scared of? And if I have a terrible secret, do I have something that must be hidden?
Henrietta continued pacing. The armoire. If I had to hide something, it would be in the armoire. Everyone knows that armoires have hidden spaces.
Henrietta had heard from her grandmothers that before banks existed, people of means had hid their valuables like jewelry, extra money, or secret papers, in cleverly concealed hiding spaces inside the furniture, or behind secret panels that nobody else knew about.
The armoire in the attic—that had once been quite dilapidated from old age—shone with freshly-applied wood oil, revealing that it was still quite lovely. It must have been George Baxter that had lovingly polished it to a shine.
She walked over to the cabinet and passed her hands over it, caressing the lovely workmanship, wondering where a secret panel could be hidden. When Alfred and she had bought the house, it had already been there, old and fragile-looking, probably not worth moving—they had thought—so that they had left it there, where it was. Would it have been in the same place when George Baxter had been a little boy? Was it in this precious armoire that the lodger’s mother had hidden her secrets?
There was only one way to find out. Henrietta rolled up her sleeves and got to work. She measured, she pressed, she poked and prodded, but the armoire seemingly had no hidden secrets.
Frustrated, she sat down on the edge of the bed. She tried to think back. All the rest of the furniture in the attic had been hers: the antique table and chair, the night table, the bed that Alfred had carried up from downstairs. She had brought all of them with her when she had gotten married. And the attic had been empty then. Only the armoire had come from the previous owners.
But that was not quite true, was it? A distant memory popped up in her mind. There used to be a chair, a sitting chair, a comfortable, plush, well-stuffed dark blue armchair, when they had first moved in. And where was that chair now? She didn’t remember them ever having thrown it out.
As she gave it some thought, she walked over to the window and watched the traffic for a while, and the people crossing the street, jaywalking as usual, and the hot dog vendor under the big tree at the entrance of the park. And then she noticed that one figure, completely bundled in some nondescript dark gray coat and beanie hat, leaning against the lamppost, was staring up toward the win
dow where she stood.
Henrietta jumped back and clutched her throat. Was that man watching her house? Was he watching her?
She stepped out from behind the curtain and slowly approached the window. She peeked out from the corner of it and quickly looked at the lamppost, but the man wasn’t there anymore.
What did that mean? Was he gone, or had he never been there?
With a big sigh, she went back to her previous thoughts about the dark blue chair. If it wasn’t in the attic, where could it be?
Then, she remembered. It was downstairs.
The story under the attic was abandoned after her mother-in-law died there. By a silent general consensus, everything had been left as it was once her body was carried away, and studiously avoided ever since.
The horrible woman had ruled her empire from that floor, terrorizing everyone who ever made the mistake of trying to be nice to her. Henrietta rarely visited her mother-in-law who never forgot to tell her how her Alfie had married down. Never mind that it had been her, Henrietta’s inheritance money that had purchased the house. She still insisted that her useless son deserved someone better. So, very quickly, Henrietta got out of the habit of trying to befriend her and avoided the old woman at all costs.
She descended the one flight of stairs and crossed the hallway, turning on the chandelier and the other lights as she went. It was an abysmally large and creepy place, and she hated it. The old woman’s walker was still propped against one wall, and her things, her knick-knacks filled every inch of space on top of tables, in corners, her hated multicolored sofa pillows that were rotting away, eaten by the dust, her smell. In all the years, her smell had never gone away. No wonder she had avoided coming up here like the plague.
It was at that moment that Henrietta grasped the full scope of the unhappiness of those long-gone years. When things needed to be done, she had done them without complaining. When ugliness needed to be confronted, she had dealt with it graciously, without dwelling upon it too deeply, and slowly, all the unkindness and hostility had dried up her soul and turned her into this bitter, short-tempered, disappointed woman.
What happened to the fun-loving friendly young woman who had moved into this house, ready to be happy and raise a family of her own? Well, her mother-in-law happened. She moved in with them when she got sick and spent the rest of her life turning Henrietta’s youth into a living hell. The old woman had delighted in causing pain and discord. Sitting in that nasty wheelchair, day in and day out, with her words her most brutal weapon, she had perfected the art of inflicting verbal pain.
And with that, it dawned on Henrietta that Alfred had never stood up against his mother to defend her. The truth hit her as if someone had punched her. Alfred, the coward, had never defended her against that monster. He had allowed the abuse to go on around him for years, all the while he continued to read his books and his newspapers like nothing was wrong. Ignoring her suffering.
Henrietta stood in front of the closed door, fighting back the nausea that had taken hold of her. She turned the knob, but the door was stuck. She pushed it with her shoulders, over and over again, until it banged open. A weak light filtered through the rotting curtains. This had been the long-suffering maid’s room. She shuddered with disgust. Everything was covered in cobwebs and dust, but the bed had been made—and abandoned—and the trash can was empty. There was no dark blue armchair.
She pushed open the second door and recoiled with a pang of bad memories. This had been the woman’s bedroom. From here she had governed the unhappy people around her with insults, yells, and threats. Her IV Fluids stand still stood there, undaunted—as a forever reminder of a presence gone but not forgotten—and her pictures, completely covered with dust, sat on the mantel. There was no dark blue chair, and she quickly closed the door behind her.
In the back were the sitting room area, a bathroom, and a makeshift kitchen. She went straight to the sitting room and looked around. It was dark back there. The drapes had been a thick velvet with lining and—although now falling apart—they threw the room into a disconcerting penumbra full of hostile shadows. She put her hand on the light switch and turned it, but nothing happened. When she looked up at the overhead lamp, she saw that the lightbulb was missing.
She hated stepping into the dark room, but she hated the thought of going over to the window and touching the rotting drapes even more. She stood there, undecided, fighting the urge to just leave everything and forget about it. But there was that promise.
She glanced from where she stood by the door and looked around. There was one armchair covered in a faded, dirty quilt in the middle of the room, facing the wall where once a television set had stood.
Henrietta sighed. She knew she was going to walk over to it, but she didn’t want to. But she knew she was going to do it anyway.
She pulled the quilt off with one hand while she held the other hand in front of her mouth and nose. The place stunk of rot and decay, of humidity and dead people. But she immediately recognized the dark blue chair. Stains of old food and probably body fluids were spread on the seat, and she shied away from touching it. It was in this chair that the old woman had died and hadn’t been discovered for a couple of days when the maid had come back from her weekend off.
The thought was unbearable, but yet it was in this seat that she had wanted to sit, perhaps to communicate with George Baxter’s mother on some sort of emotional level.
Try as she might, though, she didn’t have the stomach to sit on the soiled seat, so she thought that it would help to flip the pillow. The other side might be cleaner. At least there was no dust on the chair as it had been covered by the quilt that now lay in a rotting heap next to her.
With revulsion, with hands shaking so badly that she could barely control them, she grabbed the edge of the pillow and moved to flip it, when she realized that there was a lump on the underside of the pillow that had no business being there. She stopped.
She pondered about that for a minute or two, not so anxious to touch the repulsive thing again. But finally, there was no point to anything if she was unwilling to investigate, so she unzipped the side of the pillow with her fingertips, and after swallowing hard and pushing herself to ignore the unbearable disgust, she put her hand inside to see if there was anything there.
Her hand encountered resistance, and she pulled and pulled until a pack of papers came out from the inside of the pillow. Something that had been living inside the pillow cover bit her, and she shrieked and jumped back. All the papers that had been hidden in the underside of the cover landed at her feet.
She stared at her hand where a red welt was already forming on her bruised skin. She was going to have to disinfect that. Then, overwhelmed with the feeling that she might have found something important, she picked the scattered papers off the floor, and she quickly left the room.
Chapter 66. Chasing Oscar
Charlie and Alfred lay in wait at the entrance to the park. A bitterly cold wind whistled through the trees. There had been news of an early spring, and some warmer weather, that never materialized. Thus, Alfred rubbed his hands hoping unsuccessfully to warm them up. Charlie, younger and in better physical condition, wasn’t impressed by the weather nor did he have much compassion for the older man who wouldn’t stop complaining.
Ever since Alfred had told him about Oscar, he had been intrigued. Oscar was a wild card. An unexpectedly rough man with an extraordinarily high education, who had—regardless—gone to seed.
“Tell me again what you know about Oscar,” Charlie asked.
“Nothing really. He’s lived here almost as long as we have. Well, maybe not that long. He was married once. There are pictures of a woman on the mantel in his living room.”
“A redhead?”
“I don’t remember. I didn’t look at them closely.”
“What else, Alfred?”
“Well, I think he was either in jail or an institution for a while, but he doesn’t like to talk about that. Not that I’
ve ever asked.”
“But stories, Alfred. Do you have any stories about him?”
“What do you mean? Like, stories that will make him look guilty? Maybe. I don’t remember. But I think he told me once that he almost beat a man to death over an argument. But that was years ago.”
“So, you don’t actually think he’s guilty?”
“I don’t know, Charlie. Quit pestering me and go home if you don’t want to do this.”
“All right, then. But what am I doing here, again?”
“You're here so that you can come with me when I follow him. I think he’s going to the Hunting Lodge. I see him head that way almost every day. It’s just too suspicious.”
“And what are you going to do? Confront him? Or just spy on him?”
“I don’t know yet. I wish you didn’t ask so many questions.”
“I’m asking, Alfred, because not a month ago, you were convinced that your lodger was the killer, and you convinced me to talk my friend the Captain into arresting him.”
“And good riddance.”
“Okay, but was he guilty? Or did you simply want to get rid of him?”
“Hush. Look. There he goes.”
Oscar, covered in a large, dark coat and a winter sock hat, had indeed just passed them. It was obvious that he was on some sort of secret mission. He looked to one side and then the other, and he slid behind some bushes without noticing that Charlie and Alfred were watching.
Without saying a word, the men followed at a safe distance. Oscar was in a hurry, and he walked hunched over, looking from time to time, to one side or the other.
Any time Oscar stopped, they jumped behind a tree and waited, for Oscar must have suspected that he was being followed because he would stop randomly and wait, sniffing the air like a hound dog, looking around as if he were being paranoid.
Charlie was mighty put out. He would have much preferred to be home, watching something on the TV, nice and warm by the heater, instead of this inclement weather that was just getting worse.
The Stranger in the Attic Page 13
