The Fate of Mercy Alban (8 page)

I shone the light to the floor looking for footprints but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary there. Just my imagination, then.

We reached the end of the hall, where narrow spiral stairs led either up to the third floor or down to the first floor and basement beyond it.

I started up the stairs but then thought better of it. There was always an air of taboo about the house’s third floor. Even as kids, my brothers and I didn’t play up there. We knew that generations of Albans had grown up on the third floor in the nursery, and it felt as though something—one of them, perhaps?—didn’t want us up there. It felt that same way now, as though walking up those stairs was unwise and going down was the safer path. I didn’t think too long before heading down.

The stairway was even more narrow than I remembered—barely wide enough for a person to fit through. “Careful,” I told Amity, pointing at a broken step.

On the first floor, the passageways ran around each of the main rooms and were lined with peepholes, each with its own cover that could be slid on or off, so undetected lurkers could easily spy on the people who happened to be in our parlor, salon, library, living room, and dining room. My brothers and I used to haunt these halls when my parents had dinner parties. We loved listening in on the hushed conversations of those who thought they were speaking in private. With our ears to the walls, we heard about all manner of affairs and alliances, secrets and scandals. We were privy to political intrigue and upsets, business strategies and tactics, even the odd criminal alibi or two.

I took a quick breath in when I saw it: the same slim trail along the dusty wall. What could it possibly be?

I motioned toward one of the peepholes and slid open the cover. Amity brushed off the dust on the wall around it and then put her eye to the hole.

“It’s Jane!” she whispered, her face a mix of delight and devilishness. “She’s setting out the crystal glasses and wine decanter. What for?”

“The minister is coming to dinner,” I whispered back to her.

“Groan,” she mouthed, with a mock grimace. I squeezed her arm and we walked on.

At the far end of the passageway that ran behind the grand living room walls, we came upon another stairway that led, I knew, down to a false basement room. This hidden room was adjacent to the main basement that held the furnace and other equipment needed to run the house and the grounds, along with a dark-paneled studio that contained leather armchairs, a long bar, a fireplace, a billiard table, and a dart board.

This main basement room had always been called Scotch and Cigars, because generations of Alban men would retire down there after dinner for those two indulgences and to discuss politics or the day’s events, or to simply play billiards or darts in the company of friends while the women took tea in the parlor.

Amity might or might not have seen this main room in earlier visits to the house—it was accessible via the main stairway—but the false basement room would be the one I knew would interest my daughter.

A mirror image of Scotch and Cigars, it was a hidden, secluded lair for those same generations of Albans who needed to evade the law or other pursuers, or to conceal all manner of illegal substances—liquor during Prohibition, I suspected, thinking back to David Coleville’s letter—or to otherwise hide what they didn’t want seen in the light of day. There was even a daybed, a refrigerator, and a bathroom for those who needed to hide out for an extended period of time. When Jane discovered my brothers and me playing there one afternoon, she gave us strict orders to stay out of the room on pain of the severest punishments.

Just a bit farther down the passageway from the false basement room was a series of tunnels leading outside—one went directly to the lakeshore (for speedy getaways by boat, we always thought), one into the gardens, another led toward the back of the house, and still another found its way toward the cemetery beyond. It was as though John James Alban had wanted the ability to flee in any direction if necessary, and I had no doubt that in a family as wealthy and potentially scandalous as mine, it had been necessary often.

“Wait until you see this,” I said to Amity as we reached the door to this secret room. I put my hand on its center and pushed the groaning door open into the darkness.

The beams of both of our flashlights illuminated the room’s interior, resting on leather armchairs and sofas, alighting on walls and floorboards.

I noticed she was squinting, trying to make out something in the darkness. “Mom,” she said in a harsh whisper, grabbing my arm. “Look.”

As I stood there straining to see what she was seeing, a feeling of tangible dread seeped out of the room and surrounded me, settling on my skin and taking hold. Something was not right here.

I felt along the wall for the light switch and flipped it, illuminating the room in a yellowish glow. And I saw it then, the thing that had caught my daughter’s eye. On the daybed, a pillow and a blanket were strewn on top of the quilt, not so unusual for a daybed, but it looked mussed, as though somebody had been sitting or lying there … recently. On the end table, a glass of water. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw, or thought I saw, movement in the doorway to the bathroom. A dark shape shifting.

I grabbed my daughter’s arm and pulled her back into the passageway, slamming the door shut behind us.

“Move, honey, move!” I shouted as I pushed her along the corridor to the narrow staircase leading upstairs. We pounded upward, my heart racing, until we reached the hidden doorway to the living room. I popped it open and pushed Amity inside, through the hanging tapestry, slamming the door shut behind us and finally leaning on it to catch my breath.

“Mom, was that …?” Amity’s words stopped short, her eyes imploring mine for answers.

“I don’t know,” I said to her, grasping her arm again and hurrying us out of the room and into the foyer. “You just stay close.” I called out for Jane, who came scurrying out of the kitchen carrying a silver candlestick. Her smile faded when she saw the look on my face. “What is it, miss? What’s happened?”

“Jane, we might have an intruder in the house,” I said. “There was somebody in the false basement room.”

Jane squinted at me. “Whatever are you talking about, child?”

I tried again, slower this time. “I was showing Amity the passageways.”

She clucked and shook her head. “Not that again. Why all the children in this house gravitate toward those infernal passageways, I’ll never know.”

“Just listen.” I put my hand up. “We went down to the false basement, turned on the light, and … Somebody had been in there, Jane. Slept there, maybe. We saw a pillow and a blanket, even a glass of water.”

“I thought I saw something, or someone, move in the darkness,” Amity said, her voice cracking.

“I did, too, honey,” I said, draping an arm across her shoulders and pulling her close.

Jane crossed her arms in front of her chest as her mouth straightened into a thin line. “That’s simply impossible,” she said. “Nobody apart from family even knows that room exists.”

I looked from Jane to Amity and back again. “I think we should call the police.”

“It just can’t be, lass.” Jane shook her head. “There’s no way anyone could’ve gotten into the house, much less stumbled upon that hidden room. There’s a reason it’s hidden—your family didn’t want anyone to know it was there.”

“I know, Jane. I know it sounds ridiculous, but the fact is, Amity and I both saw evidence that somebody had been there. Recently.” I turned around and marched toward the door to the passageways. “Come on. We’ll show you.”

“Seriously?” Amity stood right where she was. “We’re going back down there?”

I hesitated for a moment and then smiled at my daughter. “I want to know if we really saw what I thought we saw. If somebody is down there, what’s he going to do against three strong women?”

With Jane brandishing the heavy candlestick and Amity and I wielding our flashlights, we made our way through the hidden door, down the rickety staircase, and through the door leading into the false basement room. I flipped on the light, and Amity gasped, her hands flying to her mouth, at what we all saw: Nothing. No blanket. No pillow. No water glass. It was all gone.

“Mom,” Amity said to me, her eyes wide. “I know we saw what we saw down here.”

I nodded, staring into the room, as though, if I looked closer, I would be able to discern what happened to the items we had seen there just moments before.

“It’s just your eyes playing tricks on you,” Jane said, patting me on the shoulder. “Not to worry. You were all worked up with your secret passageways and false rooms and …”

“No!” Amity interrupted, walking farther into the room and holding her arms wide. “I know what we saw. It was here, and now it’s gone.”

I approached my daughter and took her by the hand. “Let’s go upstairs,” I said, slowly pulling her toward the door. “I don’t like this.”

Jane and Amity crouched through the doorway, but I stayed where I was for a moment, looking at the table where the glass of water had been. The other furniture in the room was covered by a thin layer of dust, but that table was wiped clean.

Back in the main part of the house, Amity curled up in an overstuffed chair with her arms wrapped around her bent knees, while I paced, my mind racing in several directions at once. I knew what we had seen. It had been there, and then it wasn’t. But how …?

A thought hit me, one I didn’t have any intention of sharing with my daughter. Did whoever was in the false basement room hear us when we told Jane about what we had seen? Was he in the passageways spying on us when we were here in the living room?

I looked at my daughter, who suddenly seemed very much a child, curled up as she was, and I felt a sense of utter vulnerability, a barrage of questions running through my mind. Why would someone hole up in our basement? How did whomever it was learn of the existence of the passageways? And, worse, how long had he been there? With access to those passageways, he had access to the house and very easily might have entered our rooms while we were sleeping. That thought made me shudder.

“I’m calling the police,” I announced, crossing the room to the telephone sitting on one of the end tables.

“Are you sure that’s wise?” Jane asked, smoothing her apron and slightly shaking her head. “I didn’t see—”

“I know you didn’t, but we did,” I interrupted, irritated by this household’s age-old tendency to close ranks. As I held the receiver in my hand, I continued: “The fact that the evidence disappeared so quickly is even more troubling, frankly. That tells me someone not only
was
here but
is
here, and heard what we were saying.”

“He could be watching us right now,” Amity added, wrapping her arms tighter around her knees.

That did it. “Jane, ring for Mr. Jameson and the lads. I want all the secret doors in this house locked from the inside, every one of them. And all the peepholes need to be covered, too. It has to be done right now. If anyone is or has been in the passageways, I don’t want him getting into the interior of the house or spying on us.”

And just as quick as that, the indecision and paralysis I’d been feeling since I’d been back at Alban House vanished. I was the head of the household, like it or not, and as uncomfortable as I had been in that role since I arrived, it now seemed to slip over me like a second skin. It was up to me to make sure this house and the people in it were safe and secure.

Jane gave a quick nod and rushed off into the kitchen, where the somewhat complicated buzzer system was located. Each room in the house and the buildings on the grounds had been wired with a buzzer, which would ring in the kitchen, illuminating the location on a map grid. That way, family could summon staff from wherever they were in the house. And it worked both ways; the kitchen could buzz the rest of the house as well. It was revolutionary technology more than a century ago when the house was built, and it still functioned today.

As Jane was ringing for her husband, I dialed the police station. But before blurting out the nature of my call to just any officer who answered the phone, a bit of Jane’s—and this household’s—tradition of privacy and discretion seeped into my thinking.

“Chief Bellamy, please,” I heard myself saying. “This is Grace Alban.”

A moment later, my mother’s old, dear friend was on the line.

“Gracie!” he said, his mellow, fluid voice erasing the years since I had last heard it. “It’s so good to talk to you. I’m sorry it isn’t under more pleasant circumstances.”

“It’s good to talk to you, Chief.”

“I suppose you’re calling to go over security for the funeral,” he said. “It’s a damned shame, Gracie. A damned shame.”

“Thank you,” I said, clearing my throat. “Actually, we probably will need security for the funeral, but that isn’t what I’m calling about.”

“Oh?” he said, the concern reverberating from his end of the line to mine.

And I told him the whole story, how we had seen evidence of someone staying in the basement (I didn’t say “false basement”) and how, when we went back a few moments later, it was gone.