Maplecroft

by Cherie Priest

  “You . . . you did?”

  The explanation tumbled out. He’d been keeping it bottled up tight, and once the seal was broken, there was no stopping him. “An investigator was sent from Boston, and he requested that I accompany him on his rounds. A fine man, name of ‘Wolf,’ if you can imagine anything more fitting . . . and he’d asked specifically to see the bodies.”

  He leaned forward in a conspiratorial manner, so I could scarcely stop myself from doing the same. “Given that the case is now a criminal one, or at least a suspicious one, I was pleased to have been included . . . I’ll admit I was frankly curious and also . . . also, frankly frightened. Matthew had been unwell, you see, and I had worried for his . . .” He hesitated.

  “For his safety?” I asked, somewhat boldly, in my own opinion. But the doctor seemed to require a prompt. While he considered how much to share, I added, “I should tell you, I’ve heard rumors. Gossip says he’d been tied to the bed.”

  Seabury’s eyes met mine, and they were filled with turmoil. “For his own safety, yes. And his godparents’ safety as well. He’d become restless, yet unresponsive. Something was wrong,” he concluded with great conviction. “Wrong in a sense greater than any mere malady might explain. And it reminded me of nothing so much as your stepmother, Abigail.”

  He said that last part too quickly, so fast that the words ran together.

  My mouth was hanging open. I closed it. “You saw her. The night before.” I recalled it all too well, how she’d fled the house and run across the street. I’d been terrified that she’d go on a rampage herself, inflicting heaven-knew-what harm on whomever she encountered.

  “Yes. I saw her. And whatever had gone . . . wrong . . .” He selected the same word again, and deployed it carefully. “It was not unlike the change that had overtaken Matthew. I did not know how to treat Abigail, and I did not know how to treat that young man, either.” He held up his hands and looked at them, and looked at me again with that awful uncertainty radiating from his face. “I do not know what I am up against, and I do not think that it is natural. I do not think that it will stop with the Hamiltons.”

  A shiver ran up and down my spine, and I did my best to keep from breaking out into a wide, ridiculous smile. It was awful news! A terrifying prospect! An outrageous proposition, suggesting that the whole town was in danger of falling prey to this unnatural malaise!

  A smile would’ve been grossly inappropriate, so I swallowed it down, and instead I reached for his hands. He didn’t know what to do with them. They were flapping about, and I caught them in my own. In other circumstances, it would’ve been a forward gesture of something unseemly, but this was a unique case. I needed his attention, and we needed to trust one another—or at least believe one another.

  His hands were large and dry, and they shook very slightly.

  I met his eyes, and with all the calm I could muster, I asked, “Tell me, Doctor . . . did you speak with Ebenezer Hamilton, before they took him to Boston?”

  He nodded. “I did.”

  “And did he tell you something impossible? Something that can’t be remotely true?”

  He nodded again. “Yet the corpses suggest that his explanation must be true. Or true enough, if you wish to believe that the trauma has unhinged his mind, and what he shared was only some distorted fraction of what really happened.”

  I took a long, slow breath through my nose, and sat back against the divan. I rubbed at my eyes, and again I tried to shake off the feeling of euphoria. This was nothing to be euphoric about, but my sensibilities betrayed me. I’d carried the knowledge around too long, and carried it all but alone. To clarify matters, I said, “You believe his impossible story, but in believing him, you risk your own sanity. Is this more or less the situation?”

  Miserably, he bobbed his head. “I saw the shop, and the scene of the crime. I can’t imagine an alternate theory with regard to what occurred, but the story is so outlandish that I don’t dare admit that I’ve given it any credence at all.”

  “Did Matthew kill his godmother?”

  “Yes,” he confirmed.

  “And Ebenezer killed Matthew, in an attempt to save his wife?”

  “That is also correct. But I’m afraid they’ll either commit him or hang him, depending on what he tells the authorities. I want to speak up for him. I want to defend him—”

  “As you defended me?” I interjected. I didn’t mean to.

  He was silent, and then he said, “As I defended you.”

  I gathered my wits and my strength, and with all the courage I could muster I said bluntly, “You knew I was not innocent.”

  Just as bluntly in return, he replied, “I feared that you weren’t, and I feared that no one would believe a plea of self-defense. But I saw her . . . ,” he said, and his eyes went far away. “I saw what she’d become, or what she was becoming. That’s what it is, isn’t it? Some kind of . . . change. No one would’ve believed you.”

  My voice caught in my throat. I said, “Oh God . . . Doctor. All this time, and you . . . ?”

  The heavy tread of Nance’s feet on the stairs stopped me cold. I finished up by saying only, “Nance doesn’t know. We mustn’t speak of it in front of her. Not yet. Not now.”

  “But we will, won’t we?”

  “Later,” I promised. I swore it again. “Later. Tomorrow afternoon? I’ll find some errand for Nance and chase her out of the house.”

  I rose, and smiled primly, politely. He rose, too, and gathered his bags.

  When Nance appeared in the parlor, the doctor was on his way out the door with a nod in her direction, and some murmured pleasantry about meeting her. She responded in kind, halfheartedly and without any real interest in the matter. She didn’t care to pretend. She was interested in our conversation, and what it had entailed.

  As soon as the door was shut behind him, the pantomime was over.

  She demanded to know. “What the hell is going on, Lizbeth?”

  “Nothing serious. Just a small question for the doctor. A private one, if you don’t mind.”

  “You’re lying. Not about the private bit, but you’re keeping something from me—and I doubt it’s a medical issue.”

  “I’m keeping a number of things from you,” I said with attempted gaiety. It almost rang true, for I was still so charmed at the prospect of a helpful friend to share the burden of my research. I felt light-headed and all but delirious, stunned and yet energized.

  From a practical standpoint, it was almost too much to hope for. Emma was helpful in her way, of course, but her condition prevented her from any firsthand investigation by my side; and her relation to me kept her from participating in the community, where the very best information was likely to be gleaned. Doctor Seabury, on the other hand, had no such difficulties—and he was an educated, informed, respected man whose profession gained him access to even the most closely guarded secrets.

  But Nance didn’t need to hear any of this.

  “Lizbeth . . .” She nearly whined. The look I flashed in return suggested she should take a different approach. She did so, trying to mirror my lightness, the casualness of my dismissal. “So now we’re keeping things from one another? Such as what?”

  But just this once, I was the better actress between the two of us.

  I didn’t want to fight. I only wanted to distract her, and I knew precisely how to do so. “Such as . . . how the greens I ordered from McKamey’s disagreed with me terribly, or how my eyes water at garlic, besides onions. And how my knees grow weak whenever you’re present, my love.”

  “You’ve told me that one already,” she replied sulkily, but it wasn’t a pure sulk. A little flattery goes a long way with her, and I’m not above it.

  “I’ll likely say it again, at some point during your visit.” I took her hands and gave her a quick kiss, an act which required me to stand on my tiptoes. “Now, how is Emma? Is she settled comfortably?”

  “Took her own sweet time about getting that way, but yes,
she’s fine.”

  “You must be patient. Depending on the weather and her lungs, she finds it difficult to move as swiftly as you or I.”

  “I still can’t imagine why she asked my help. You’re the patient one,” she said with a sigh.

  A hasty lie sprang to mind, and I liked it, so I let it past my lips. “I suggested it. I thought you two ought to spend some time together once in a while. I truly believe that with a better acquaintance, you could become great friends.”

  “I don’t know . . . ,” she said dubiously. “We’re terribly different.”

  “But you have some terribly wonderful things in common.”

  “Just you,” she said with a wink. Then she took me by the hand and lured me back into the kitchen, and I thought I was in for a round of tea or perhaps something more engaging . . . and then I realized that I was wrong.

  “Lizbeth, your sister is out of the way for now, and the doctor is gone . . . so there should be no visitors.” Nance leaned against the cellar door, bouncing coquettishly against it with her bottom. “Why don’t you show me what’s downstairs? There’s privacy and darkness, and just you . . . and me.”

  The joy that had positively flooded my heart . . . now evaporated with her prettily phrased petition. I believe my face might’ve gone all but green. “Dearest, no,” I said slowly. “There’s nothing romantic about the cellar at all.”

  “Just dust and wine and bugs, or so you’d have me think. Show me,” she insisted, and it wasn’t just another whine. It bore all the hallmarks of a demand.

  I was running out of ways to defer the exploration, and I knew it, and it was awful because every excuse was a lie—but a lie that might save her life, or her soul. “Darling, I’m not even sure where the key is right now. Off the top of my head . . . it might be in the odds-and-ends basket by the back door . . .”

  “No,” she said with steel in her eyes. “I already checked.”

  “You . . . you checked? You went looking for the key?”

  “I found several keys, stashed here and there. In drawers, and atop tables. None of them fit this lock.”

  The key was safely around my neck, as always. But the fact that she’d gone looking for it chilled me to my core. “Why are you so determined to see it?”

  “Because you’re so determined to keep it from me. It must be terribly interesting, if you’re so certain I shouldn’t go anywhere near it.”

  “Rather the opposite,” I said with a shrug, wandering to the sink and placing my hands along the cool enamel surface. I reached for the teakettle in order to have something to do, some meaningless task to distract myself—but she took it away and set it down on the counter.

  “So it’s a dull, safe, unremarkable place?”

  “Entirely.”

  “Prove it.”

  “I don’t have to,” I said, digging in my heels. I’m at least as stubborn as she is, after all. “I don’t like going down there. It’s damp and cold, and all the wood is eaten up by rot. Every time I descend the stairs, I’m halfway convinced they’ll shatter out from under me. Mildew and mold, all the way through.”

  “Doesn’t sound very safe to me.”

  “Oh, stop it. You know what I mean.” I moved away from her again, and she followed me again—staying very close to me, her eyes never leaving my face. I hated it, because it meant she’d been touched by the things down there, or called by them, and I was no longer dealing merely with a woman I adored but who could be a tad insistent.

  I was confronted by a woman who’d acquired a compulsion.

  And I hated it because she was looming over me, and I could not shake the feeling that it was deliberate. She was intimidating me, using her size against me. Using her height to tell me, without any words, that she could wrestle me into submission if she felt the need, and she was feeling all kinds of needs right now.

  I didn’t know if she could best me in a fight or not. I’m smaller, yes, but more compact. And in the previous two years, I’d learned a great deal about violence, and my capacity for it. “Nance,” I whispered, and she was hovering so close that my breath tickled her eyelashes. “You’re beginning to worry me.”

  “Worry you?” She cocked her head.

  I swallowed, and leaned back away from her as far as the counter would allow. “I think you’re trying to frighten me, and I don’t like it.”

  My direct accusation broke the spell, or cracked it sufficiently that she withdrew, a look of honest horror on her face. She blinked quickly, repeatedly, like someone awakening from an engrossing dream. “Frighten you? Lizbeth . . . whatever are you going on about? I’m doing no such thing.”

  I released a breath I hadn’t noticed I was holding, and when I did so, my corset stays stretched against the fabric of my dress. Apparently it was a big breath. Apparently I’d held it hard.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, apologizing almost by reflex. “I didn’t mean to imply . . . it’s only that you’ve been so insistent, and I don’t understand. You were so strange the other day, when I found you here and the tea was cold . . .”

  It was easy to ramble and sound as if I fretted in earnest, when I stuck so close to the truth.

  “It was only cold tea,” she promised, but she kept her distance still. “Nothing more. I was distracted.”

  “I called your name, and you didn’t hear me. Over and over I called it . . . and you were standing there, beside that stupid door,” I spit out, directing my sorrow and anger at the cellar and its contents. It was either that or I must point it toward myself.

  “It’s only a door,” she breathed, abashed and innocent once more. “And you won’t let me past it, so I wonder, that’s all. I want to see what you don’t want to show me. I want you to trust me.”

  “It’s nothing to do with trust,” I assured her, though as I spoke the words I knew they were wrong. It did come down to trust, didn’t it? I couldn’t trust her to visit without snooping for keys, trying to circumvent me.

  “Then why?” she pleaded, leaning against the counter and half sitting upon it.

  “Can’t I have a single secret? Just one?”

  “But why do you need one?”

  “I’ll make you a deal,” I said. “One small bargain between lovers—people do it all the time; they ask that one thing be off-limits.”

  Quickly, as if she’d been waiting for such a moment, she snapped, “And in such a bargain, you wouldn’t choose your parents?”

  I was honestly stunned. What little discussion we’d entertained with regard to their deaths, it’d all come down to the easiest lie—they were killed by my half brother, or so I professed to believe. And she professed to believe that I was telling the truth.

  Were we both lying? To ourselves, and each other at the same time?

  “Is that . . . ,” I began to ask, and then adjusted my approach. “Do I hear doubt in your voice? Or accusation?”

  “Given the circumstances, you might as well conflate the two.”

  “All right then, I’ll answer your question: No, I would not place my parents’ death off-limits in any bargain between us. We’ve already had that conversation, and whatever else you’d like to hear, I’d be happy to share.” I’d lied that lie enough. It had almost become the truth, or a fiction vastly better than the truth—because my half brother had vanished, and there was no proving anything with regard to his involvement. Or lack thereof.

  Wherever he was, whatever he was doing . . . he sure as hell didn’t care what I said about him.

  “Then why the cellar?”

  “If I told you that, we couldn’t call it part of the bargain, could we? Now what would you like to place off-limits? What subject must I avoid at all costs, that you can withhold explanation until the day we die?”

  She frowned. Puzzled, I think. She was thinking, considering, trying to figure out something she hadn’t shared already. For the most part, she was an open book. If she had any secrets at all, she hid them well—behind a wall of information, chattered wit
hout apparent restraint, delivered at the slightest hint of permission or interest.

  “I’ll think of something,” she decided.

  “But you agree to the bargain? Leave me the cellar, and you’ll stop hunting for keys?”

  “I’ll leave you the cellar. And stop looking for keys,” she vowed.

  I want to believe her. Desperately, painfully, with all my heart. But that’s only what I want, and not what I think.

  Nance O’Neil

  APRIL 22, 1894

  I have the key.

  Do I regret my trickery? Not at all. How can I regret the measures I’ve taken to protect and assist my beloved? I know she needs help. Whatever she’s hiding down there, it’s more than she can manage alone. I am confident of this. I am at peace with this. And I will do what needs to be done.

  Now that I’ve begun, I must follow through to the end, mustn’t I?

  She might see it as a great betrayal. I don’t know. For all her silly talk of “bargains” and promises, there’s no good reason to believe that she doesn’t secretly want me to push onward toward the truth. Some people can’t bear to answer some questions, but that doesn’t mean they don’t want anyone to know the answers. I’m not sure what mechanism this is, or what drive; I don’t know why some people just can’t say what they mean, say what they want, and be done with it.

  But I am here to help!

  She needs me more than she knows. Whatever she’s engaged in, or fighting against, or keeping so secret, she can’t keep it that way all by herself. That might be the root of it all—she knows it’s too big for her to handle alone, and Emma is no help at all, no matter what she says about the old woman’s books and notes and letters.

  To hell with books and notes and letters.

  Sometimes you need a hand instead.

  • • •

  Something just dawned on me: Emma must think the doctor might prove helpful to Lizbeth, with this weird undertaking she hides beneath the house. Seabury, that’s his name. Seems like a nice old gentleman, and he’s kind enough to Lizbeth—which I appreciate, given how the rest of this wretched little town will have nothing to do with her.