I think I know who the killer is. And he hates Blackbrook kids.
She swallowed. “You don’t think—”
“That Rusty killed the headmaster and skipped town?” Mustard shook his head, then stopped, obviously regretting the motion. “No.”
“But doesn’t it make sense?” she asked. “I mean, more sense than—” More sense than that she had a stalker who had tracked her down out here in the wilderness, broke into the house, stabbed her head of school, and then mopped up all the blood and shut the door on the corpse . . . only to leave before seeing the object of his obsession at all?
Oh, crap. She’d told Scarlett her secret for nothing, hadn’t she?
Orchid felt like a moron.
“More sense than what?” Mustard asked. “Than that the school’s star tennis player stabbed Boddy over not letting her skip school to watch a tournament? Yeah, sure. I guess. But in the end, I think it’s like Mrs. White said—someone came in here thinking they could case the joint, ran into Mr. Boddy, and stabbed him. Just a simple home invasion gone wrong. I bet if we go into the conservatory, we can find whatever window he forced entry through.” Mustard thought for a second. “You know, it is a little weird that Boddy heard him all the way across the house, but maybe the headmaster was up making sure everyone was in the bed they were supposed to be in when he caught him.”
Orchid pounced on that. “That’s just it, though! Vaughn and I discovered that Boddy hadn’t been stabbed in the conservatory. There are splatters of blood all down the hall and even into the conservatory. We think he might have been stabbed in the hall, and then either stumbled into the conservatory or was dragged there. And then the killer tried to mop up the blood so no one would see.”
Mustard listened, horror blooming on his face. “Is that why the tarp was pulled down this morning? To flood the hall and help wash away the blood?” He tried to sit up more, then winced. “I mopped today too! I helped destroy evidence!”
“So have I,” argued Orchid. “And doesn’t it seem like if someone tried to clean up the mess, it’s much less likely it was a looter who found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, and much more likely that it was someone in this house . . . trying to hide what they did. Someone who really knows how to clean up after themselves.”
Mustard was breathing hard. “And you think Rusty Nayler stabbed the headmaster in the middle of the night? Why?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Maybe they got in a fight.”
“I can’t imagine what about,” Mustard said. “I spent a good hour hanging out with them last night while you were getting your hair braided. They were just talking about the damage and the cleanup.”
“Maybe Headmaster Boddy was pushing too hard for quick repairs,” said Orchid.
“Not at all. If anything, he seemed really chill. Rusty was talking about starting as soon as the tide went down on the science lab, but Boddy told him not to rush and to focus on the student dorms. Which I guess makes sense, as we’re going to need housing for the kids, but most science classes can meet in other rooms, at least to start.”
The wind howled again. Screamed, really. A very human scream.
Mustard and Orchid stopped talking and looked at each other.
“That sounds like it’s coming from outside,” she said.
“No,” said Mustard. “Closer.” He looked at the mantel. “Do you know about the secret passage?”
“No. I mean—rumors. But, wait—you said you’d found one, right?”
“Yeah. Me and Finn.”
“Where?” she asked.
“In the conservatory. And the lounge.” Mustard waved his hand in that general direction. “Sort of . . . connecting them.”
The wind screamed again. It sounded like a woman.
It also sounded really close. Far too close to be coming from the conservatory, the lounge, or points in between.
“We can’t just sit here,” said Orchid. Or maybe Mustard couldn’t do anything but sit there. Maybe he was still too dizzy to move. “We have to find the source of that sound. What if it’s Mrs. White and she’s hurt?” What if someone was hurting her?
“Maybe there’s another secret passage,” he said.
“Sure,” said Orchid. “Because if you’re going to put one secret passage in a house, why not put one in every room?” The more secret passages you have, the more women you can torture, right?
“The entrance to the last one was in the fireplace,” said Mustard. “Are there any—carvings—on the mantel anywhere?”
“What kind of carvings?”
Mustard grimaced. “Um . . . naked men? Naked men wearing maple leaves?”
Orchid gave him a skeptical look. “Are you talking about the naked man on the mantle in the lounge? He’s tiny. How is that an entrance to anything?”
“It wasn’t. It was the, um, way to open it.” He gestured vaguely at his lap.
Orchid blinked at him. “Okay, then.” She stood and crossed to the mantel, but it was just smooth, curved wood. “Well, this mantel’s pretty plain. There’s no anatomy carved in it at all.” Tall bookshelves graced either side of the fireplace along the wall, lined with knickknacks and mementos from Tudor House’s past. No naked men there, either.
“Okay.” Mustard seemed to be thinking. “Look for something that doesn’t belong—loose paneling, a seam where there shouldn’t be one, a hinge . . .”
He still hadn’t gotten off the sofa. Orchid’s breath was coming in fast pants as her fingers tripped across each object and book on the shelf, jiggling them in turn to see if they were the magical switch that would open the secret door. Even if she found this passage, was she supposed to go down there alone to where a killer might be torturing Mrs. White? Ten minutes earlier, she hadn’t even wanted to sit in the kitchen alone.
Her fingers snagged on something and she looked. A book, stuck, perhaps, to the varnish from years of disuse. She tugged again, but it didn’t move. She looked closer. The cover was leather, with a gold embossed maple leaf on the spine, but no title or author. She put her hand along the top edge and felt not the edges of bound pages but smooth wood, and a small indentation, inside of which lay . . .
A switch. She pulled it, and a section of the bookcase shifted ever so slightly, like a door swinging on its hinges. Swallowing, she pushed the door open. Beyond lay a sweep of stone wall and a curving set of stairs heading down into blackness.
Orchid’s breath caught in her throat. “A secret passage . . .” She whirled to look at Mustard, who was struggling to stand.
“I’m coming. Just give me a minute.”
She gasped. “No way. You can barely walk.”
“You want to go down there alone?”
“No,” she admitted, “but let’s be honest, what choice do I have?” Mustard would only be a liability down there. If he fainted, there was no way she’d be able to carry him. She looked around and grabbed a poker from the fireplace set. “At least I have a weapon.”
“Get me the tongs or the shovel or something,” Mustard said. “In case someone else comes.”
That seemed fair. She fetched him his own iron, delivering it to him on the sofa, and Mustard tossed her his headlamp.
“Don’t forget a light.”
Right. She put the headlamp on and, shouldering the fireplace poker, returned to the entrance to the secret passage.
Okay. She could do this. She was Orchid McKee, and she was strong, and she was smart, and she was about to walk into a pitch-black passageway in search of a screaming woman.
This was nuts.
“Go!” Mustard hissed at her back. “Before it’s too late.”
She went.
Within three steps, the curvature of the stair caused the firelight from the room above to fade almost to nothingness. Her headlamp illuminated nothing but an empty passageway for several feet. It was cold down here, and damp, and the plain stone walls were close and rough. After walking for a few more yards downhill, the passage
veered up again, and turned to the left.
Here, Orchid stopped and forced herself to take several deep calming breaths. She couldn’t hear anything over the roar of blood in her ears. She wasn’t sure if she should call out to the screaming woman.
She especially wasn’t sure what it meant that whoever it was seemed to have stopped screaming.
She checked behind her, but there was nothing back there but darkness. She couldn’t even see where she’d entered from.
Why couldn’t this be like the passages in some adventure movie, lined with quaint oil lamps? She’d even take a couple of tiki torches. But now, this was a horror film, and she was the character who stupidly went into the basement alone.
What was that? There were sounds. Just around the corner—thumps and squeals and sobs.
Oh no. Mrs. White! She was coming.
She turned the corner and stopped dead.
Before her was a tiny, stone-walled chamber. In a few places along the wall, her headlamp caught the glint of metal pipes and shelving.
And on the floor, squinting up at her and writhing, bound hand and foot, with a rag covering her mouth so all Orchid could hear of her shouts was high-pitched mumbling, lay Kayla. Beside her, unconscious, but otherwise in the same condition, lay Karlee.
She dropped the poker and rushed over, pulling the gag off Kayla first.
“Who did this to you?”
“I don’t know!”
Of course not. Thanks, Kayla.
She yanked on the ties binding the girl’s wrists, but they didn’t come undone. “What do you mean you don’t know?”
“I mean it! Karlee and I were ready to leave, remember? And then Vaughn stopped us. And then—” Her voice caught on a sob. “Then I was in the dark, and all tied up. I thought I’d been kidnapped. Then I thought maybe I’d been killed. I’d been killed and death was just blackness and not being able to move. Forever . . .” She started sobbing, hard.
Orchid wrestled with the impossible knots for another minute, then gave up. She swung her head around the room, looking for something she might cut the rope with.
This place definitely looked like the lair of a killer. The shelves were lined with cans bearing no labels, canvas bags filled with mystery items, and boxes marked ammo. From hooks on the wall glinted the metal butt of a hunting rifle and a small silver revolver in a case.
No scissors. Maybe she could loosen the knot with the edge of the fireplace poker. She retrieved it from the ground and turned back to Karlee. “Okay—”
But there was another light in the room now. At the top of a previously unseen set of stairs stood Mrs. White, holding a lantern and looking more disappointed than appalled.
Orchid dropped the poker. “Mrs. White!” At least she was okay.
Mrs. White clucked her tongue at Orchid. “Oh, dear. What happened here?” Then she came farther down the steps and set the lantern on the table. In the brighter light, Orchid could see that Karlee’s scalp was wet with blood. She also saw the wrench and pipe the girls had been wielding, abandoned in a corner alongside their backpacks.
Mrs. White knelt down to touch Kayla’s bonds. “Are you all right?” she asked in a tone that made Orchid want to weep with relief. Finally, there was a grown-up here who could handle matters.
But when the girl nodded, Mrs. White merely patted her on the head, then reached down, grabbed the gag, and shoved it back into Kayla’s mouth.
Kayla let out a muffled scream.
“Mrs. White!” Orchid shouted.
“You’re right. It’s not really keeping her quiet, is it?” The woman turned and she had, in her hand, a combat knife, just like the one that had killed Headmaster Boddy.
Oh.
The realization hit Orchid with the force of a winter storm.
Mrs. White killed Headmaster Boddy.
She tried to sprint toward the passageway, but Mrs. White cut her off, backing Orchid toward the corner of the room farthest from the exits. On the ground, Kayla whimpered. Beside her, Karlee began to stir.
“Please, Orchid,” Mrs. White said, her eyes wide, her voice desperate. “Don’t make this difficult. I’ve already had a terrible day.”
“Mrs. White,” she cried. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “Nothing makes any sense. All I ever wanted was just to stay here, and to keep my secrets secret. Surely you know what that’s like.”
Orchid’s breath caught in her throat. She wanted to make a run for it, but what about the other two girls?
“It’s getting out of hand,” Mrs. White said. “I didn’t plan any of this.”
“Okay,” said Orchid inanely. “Then just let us go?”
The look on the older woman’s face was enough to break Orchid’s heart. “I’m afraid it’s too late for that, though. If only you hadn’t gone into the conservatory this morning. All I needed was a few more hours to hide the body down here . . .”
“Mrs. White—” Orchid gasped.
And then, out of the darkness came a lumbering form. Mustard crashed into Mrs. White from behind, knocking her to the ground. The knife went clattering out of her hand and skidded across the floor.
“Quick!” Mustard called. “Help me!”
From underneath him came a muffled squeak. “I think you’ve got it handled. Get off of me, you giant oaf.”
Kayla squealed a muffled protest.
Orchid grabbed the knife in one hand and the poker in the other. “Okay, let her up.”
Mustard rolled off Mrs. White, but she didn’t spring up and attack. No, she scuttled against the wall and laid there, panting deep shuddering breaths that soon turned into racking sobs.
Mustard pushed himself to his feet. Orchid, unsure of what to do, handed him the knife.
“I’m glad you came, after all,” she said.
“Yeah, well, we’ll see how long I can stay upright. I feel like I’m going to pass out any second.”
“That would be the sleeping pills,” said Mrs. White from the floor.
“What?” Mustard snapped.
“I gave you sleeping pills instead of painkillers. You were noticing a bit too much.” She looked at the floor, dejected. “I should have drugged all your dinners.”
Kayla spit out her gag and started squealing again. “Oh my God. We’re going to sue this school for everything it’s got! Oh my God, you have no idea.”
Mrs. White glanced over at Kayla. “I think I had the right idea with the gag.”
Orchid shook her head in disbelief. “You killed Headmaster Boddy.”
Mrs. White squeezed her eyes shut and drew her knees up to her chest. “I guess I did.”
“Why?”
The woman’s narrow shoulders raised. “I don’t know. Even now, I don’t know. It doesn’t seem real, does it? We were fighting—we were fighting about that stupid window. He said it didn’t matter if we fixed it or not. In four months, this house would be gone.”
“Gone?” Orchid’s eyes narrowed.
“Some new development.” Mrs. White curled even farther into herself. “He didn’t care that I’d lived here my whole life. He didn’t care that this was my whole life. Blackbrook boys are the worst.”
Beside her, Mustard was undoing the bonds on Karlee. “Her head is still bleeding,” he said. “We need some first aid.”
“I’m so sorry about that,” said Mrs. White. “I wasn’t thinking. I saw them in my secret space and I just flipped. Like I said, things have really been spinning out of my control this evening.”
“You could have killed us!” Kayla cried.
“You did kill Boddy,” Orchid said. She hadn’t lowered her poker.
“I know.” There were oceans of regret in Mrs. White’s cracking voice. “I wasn’t thinking when I stabbed Brian, either. I just— I couldn’t bear to lose it.”
There was a pounding overhead.
“Let us in!” Scarlett’s voice. “It’s locked!”
Orchid heard the kitchen door op
ening.
Mrs. White didn’t so much as look up from the ground. “You know, we still had the occasional drill in these shelters when I was a student here. In case the world ended. In case of attack.”
“Look!” Finn’s voice. “Another secret passage!”
“We were supposed to be safe down here,” she said.
Feet echoed on the stairs and Finn appeared at the entryway, with Scarlett and Beth right on his heels. Their eyes went wide as they witnessed the scene before them.
Scarlett gasped. “Is everyone okay? What happened?”
Tears flowed down Mrs. White’s face as Vaughn, too, appeared at the door to the secret passage. In his hand, he held Orchid’s keys, but he didn’t look at anyone but Mrs. White.
“Vaughn,” she sobbed. “I’m so sorry. Please tell her I’m so sorry.”
And then she put her head down on her knees, and wept.
27
Mustard
Mustard had never been much of a fan of coffee, but as it was the only thing keeping him awake, he was more than happy to down pot after pot as the night went on. He wasn’t willing to take his eyes off Mrs. White.
They’d put her in an armchair in the study, and on Mustard’s insistence, they’d tied her feet to the rungs of the chair.
“Is this absolutely necessary?” Vaughn had asked.
“She drugged me,” said Mustard. “She knocked Karlee unconscious. And, in case you’re forgetting, she killed a man last night.”
“I’m not forgetting,” said Vaughn. “I just don’t think she’s a flight risk.”
“No,” agreed Mrs. White. “I’m not a flight risk.”
Mustard sat across from her, in the hardest, most uncomfortable chair he could find, hoping it would also help keep him awake. The others wandered in and out with reports on how Karlee was recovering, or with fresh infusions of caffeine, but he wasn’t going to take his eyes off the killer until she was in police custody.
His father might even be proud of him again.
At one point, Scarlett came in with Plum to confirm Mrs. White’s story about the imminent demolition of Tudor House.
“We saw it all right there on Boddy’s computer in his office,” Finn said. “They want to knock it down in the spring to make way for a new science building.”
In the Hall with the Knife Page 20
