Walking the Labyrinth (24 page)

“Lydia died in 1913,” Callan said. “After Neesa came to the United States.”

“I don’t know what this family’s capable of,” Molly said. She looked squarely at Callan, but he didn’t flinch. “Maybe Neesa killed her from the United States somehow.”

“So you think Neesa’s a killer? Your great-great-grandmother?” Callan asked. “And your aunt Fentrice? Is she a killer too?”

Could she be? Surely Molly would have guessed something, surely Fentrice would have let something slip, given something away. But the timing was right: Thorne had disappeared the same year the family had gone to England, the year Fentrice might have read Emily’s book. “I don’t know,” Molly said again. “I don’t know who anyone is anymore.”

“That’s certainly true,” Callan said. “I think that woman at the door, the one who interrupted our dinner—I think she was Fentrice.”

“What?” Molly asked, astonished.

“Sure. She used to love to disguise herself. She might have followed you here. You said there were pages missing from Neesa’s journal. Maybe she thought you took them, maybe she wants them back.”

“But why did she leave the family in the first place?” Molly asked. “What happened between you and her?”

“I don’t know what she’s told you,” Callan said gently, “but I’m certain she didn’t give you the whole story about the family. She was vain, she wanted the spotlight and would think up outrageous schemes to get it. I think she hated Thorne, her nearest rival, more than anything—hated her, and loved her too, of course.”

“I got some of that from your diary,” Molly said. “But Fentrice never told me anything, just that she’d been in a magic act when she was younger. She said you were dead, that I didn’t have any other family.”

“We never got along, she and I. She always wanted to be the most important person in the act, to be in control at all times. It was even worse than what I wrote in the diary. And when she couldn’t get control she left.” Callan paused. “And then she had you, to raise as her own when your parents died. You were just a child, you were someone she could control. But if that was her at the door—well, now she’s seen that you’re here with me. And if I know her she’ll be furious about it. To her it would seem as if you’ve changed sides, you’ve betrayed her. I’d be careful if I were you, Molly—you could be in danger.”

“Danger? What do you mean?”

Callan said nothing. She had been lucky to get as much as she had from him, Molly thought, the first straight answers to her questions since she had come here. Could he be right, could that have been Fentrice at the door? The woman, whoever she was, had seemed familiar. What would Fentrice do now?

As if in answer a wild wind swept through the room, toppling candlesticks and napkin holders and glasses. Molly grabbed for her water glass before it could spill to the floor. “Was that—was that Fentrice?” she asked, setting the glass back on the table.

Callan shrugged.

Later, back in her room, she took out her letter to John. “I said before that Fentrice never told me Callan was still alive,” she wrote. “Now it looks as if there’s a lot of things she didn’t tell me—how she felt about Callan and Thorne, what she did in England when she disappeared for those few days. You were right—she is a liar. I’ve caught her out in too many lies to have any illusions on that score.

“But does that make her a murderer? Lots of people lie, but how many of them could kill someone? Still, what happened to Thorne? That’s what we keep coming back to, isn’t it?

“I guess I’m not going to send this letter after all. If Fentrice did kill Thorne I don’t want to be the one to tell you. I couldn’t bear seeing her go through the courts, go to jail, knowing that I was the one who had sent her there.

“Well, but she’s probably innocent. Writing this in the safety of my room I find I can’t really believe she could have done anything so horrible. This is my aunt after all, the woman who plays bridge with her friends once a week, who works in her garden, who bakes the world’s greatest peach pie, with peaches she grows herself. When some brat in the third grade told me she was a witch and I came home crying, she was the one who wiped my nose, who told me how brave I was to stand up for her. I love her, and I know that she genuinely loves me. She doesn’t seem very warm, but there’s a lot of feeling beneath that prim starched surface she shows to the world. She could not have done what Callan said she did.

“No—let’s be honest here. I was the one who thought she might be a murderer. I was the one who accused her of reading Emily’s book and learning how to dispose of someone. So what do I really think? Was I telling the truth a moment ago when I wrote that I thought she was probably innocent?

“I don’t know. I just don’t know. All I know is that the thought of her killing someone makes me feel sick. It’s as if I had never really known anyone, or anything, as if my entire life up to now has been a lie. I don’t think I’ve ever been as miserable as I am this moment.

“Remember when I said that I have no secrets, in the restaurant at the airport while we were waiting for our plane? That seems so long ago now, back in a more innocent time. Since then I’ve learned that everyone has secrets, that no one’s perfect. I wish my secret had turned out to be something less dreadful, that, for example, Fentrice was really my mother, even though she’s much too old for that to be true.

“If I find out anything more I’ll write it down. But my appetite for discovery, for being a private investigator, has completely gone. It’ll be a while before I go prowling around the house and the woods again, looking for clues. You can’t make someone explore the labyrinth if she doesn’t want to.”

Despite her last words Molly wandered through the house the next few afternoons. She told herself that she was looking for something to read or someone to talk to, but the house itself held a kind of fascination for her.
Everything here turns out to be something else,
she thought.
Tables are trees, lamps are stars. A mysterious old woman who comes to the door is really my aunt Fentrice
.

As if the thought had conjured her up Molly rounded a corner and saw the old woman through an open doorway. It was a shock coming upon her; Molly’s heart began to race, her pulse pounded in her ears. She forced herself to step inside the room. “Who are you?” she asked.

They were in Callan’s study, Molly saw, and the woman was rifling through the drawers of Callan’s desk. She did not pause to answer Molly’s question. “Are you my aunt Fentrice?” Molly asked.

“Huh!” the woman said. She opened another drawer.

“Callan says that’s who you are. Does he know you’re here? What are you looking for?”

“I told you. Fentrice’s book.”

“What book?”

“You know what book.”

“Emily’s confession?”

The woman straightened. “Yes, Emily’s confession. Where is it?”

“It’s at Tantilly, where it belongs. And it isn’t Fentrice’s at all. Emily gave it to Dorothy Westingate.”

“Don’t be so pious. You weren’t above a little theft yourself. What did you do with those pages?”

“I didn’t do anything with them. Someone named Joseph Ottig tore them out. What was in them?”

“Huh!” the woman said again. She turned back to the open drawer and lifted out a box of staples, another box of paper clips, a green stone, a handful of coins.

“I’m going to get Callan,” Molly said.

“Good—I could use his help here. And what do you think he’ll say when I tell him what you did in England? Stealing, interfering with a police investigation—”

“I don’t care what he says.”

“No? He’ll throw you out of the house. Your education here will come to an end, that’s for sure.” She stooped to pull open the bottom drawer.

“Who are you?” Molly asked again. “Are you Fentrice? What happened to Thorne? Where is she?”

The woman straightened. She glared at Molly so fiercely that Molly took half a step backward. “Thorne isn’t dead, whatever that wicked man Callan tells you. So don’t you go thinking those evil thoughts about your aunt Fentrice. You owe her more than you’ll ever know.”

“But—”

“Don’t ask questions!” The wind rose again, fiercer than before. Papers and books blew off Callan’s desk; a paperweight clanged loudly against the wall. Chairs skittered sideways. Something struck Molly hard in the shoulder. She covered her eyes with her hands.

The storm subsided. She opened her eyes. The woman was gone.

Molly and Alex took leftovers from the kitchen and went out to the woods for a picnic. The sun was breaking from the clouds; it looked as if the heat of a week ago, after a spring of long rains, had been a true herald of summer.

“Tell me about the magic act, the Endicott Family,” Molly said. “Are you touring this year?”

Alex said nothing for a while. Because his thick mustache covered his mouth he always seemed to be smiling; Molly had come to realize that she could have no idea what he was really thinking. “We’ll be leaving in about a week,” he said finally.

“A week?” Molly was surprised at how sad she felt to hear it. Everyone at Callan’s house seemed to spend their time surprising and exasperating her, but they were her family, after all. What would she do when they left? How would she get answers to her questions? She found she missed them already: Callan’s cooking, Corrig’s pranks, the company of the cousins. “Did you grow up here?” she asked. “What was it like?”

“It was fun, actually. Different from all the other kids at school. My brother Matt and my cousins, we were all sort of snobbish about our family. Kept to ourselves more than we should have, I guess. I wish I could have seen my parents more, though.”

Someone screamed from up ahead.

“What was that?” Alex said.

“I don’t know.” Molly broke into a run and Alex followed her through the trees. “Help!” the screamer shouted. “Help!”

The meadow on their right had turned to quicksand. Someone floundered in the mud, arms and legs thrashing. It was Matt.

Molly held a branch out to him. Alex knelt beside her, and when Matt grabbed it he helped her hold on. Together they pulled Matt to safety.

“Who did this?” Alex asked. “Was it Corrig?”

Matt was shivering too hard to speak. He shook his head. Alex draped the picnic blanket over him.

“No, not Corrig,” Matt said finally. “He would never do anything to hurt us. I nearly—I nearly drowned.”

“Well then, who was it?” Alex said impatiently. “What happened?”

“It was that old lady we see around the house sometimes. The one with the blue shawl, who goes through the books in the library. She asked me—” A great shiver went through him. “She asked me where Fentrice’s book was. I said I didn’t know. She said she’d make me tell her.”

Molly put her hand to her mouth. Alex and Matt didn’t seem to notice. “You think she would have killed you?” Alex said. “For a book?”

“Yes,” Matt said. “Yes, I do.”

“Callan claims she’s Fentrice,” Alex said. “In disguise.”

“My aunt is not a murderer,” Molly said, with more conviction than she felt.

“No?” Matt said. “Then what happened to Thorne? That’s what you came here to find out, isn’t it? Callan’s got to stop giving this woman the run of the house. She’s dangerous.”

“If I know Callan, he’ll welcome her with open arms,” Alex said. “Then he’ll trap her into revealing herself.”

“By that time one of us could be dead,” Matt said. “No, I’m going to talk to him, tell him what that crazy woman did today.”

“You know what he’ll say, don’t you?” Alex said. Matt shook his head. “He’ll say, What have you learned?”

Verey’s old question
, Molly thought.
So they still ask it among themselves
.

“I’ll tell him I learned to stay away from lunatic women in blue shawls,” Matt said, wiping the mud from his clothes.

As Alex had predicted, Callan did nothing. They all came upon the woman from time to time, rummaging through the pots in the kitchen, taking down books in the library, digging in the garden with her bare hands. “Why doesn’t Callan just call the police?” Molly asked. “At the very least he should put a lock on the front door.”

“Callan’s a lot smarter than you think,” Alex said. “He won’t let anything happen to us.”

But that evening, when Molly went back to her room after dinner, she found the old woman going through her desk drawers. “Get out of my room,” Molly said.

The woman turned. She held Molly’s letter to John in one hand. “Why do you write these lies to this man?” she asked. “Hasn’t he done us enough damage?”

“What do you mean, us?” Molly said. “I still don’t know who you are. But you seem to know all about me—you even know who John is.”

“Of course I know him. I never trusted him—his eyes are too close together.”

“You are Fentrice, then. That’s what Fentrice said—what you said—when you met John.”

“I’m not Fentrice.”

“How do I know that? How do I know you aren’t lying to me? Again.”

“I’ve never lied to you.”

Molly sighed. Somehow she felt that the woman was telling the truth. Fentrice would be incapable of drowning anyone. Hell, her aunt’s innate politeness would even keep her from coming into a house uninvited.

I should be able to figure out who she is,
Molly thought.
Everyone in my family had the Gift. She’d familiar, but she’s not Fentrice. Not a relative, I think. But she’s met John
… “Lila?” she said.

The woman shrieked like a siren. She spun around several times. Her face blurred, but Molly thought she could make out the housekeeper’s face, smell the familiar cigarette smoke. Then she disappeared.

Someone knocked at Molly’s door. She stared at the place where the old woman had been. A wisp of dirty gray smoke fell slowly through the air. The knock came again. She went to open the door.

“Molly?” Callan said. “What have you learned?”

“I learned who that woman is,” Molly said. She felt an enormous relief. “She isn’t Fentrice. She’s the housekeeper, Lila. Fentrice is innocent. She never killed anyone.”

“Then why did she send her housekeeper here?” Callan asked.

“She didn’t send her. Lila came herself.”

“Are you sure of that?”