George Gale nodded.
“About a month ago Dora hosted a family reunion, here at Gale Castle,” he said, looking calmly into Molly's eyes. “Mother's in pretty good shape for a woman her age, but she has certain health problems and is aware that she won't be around forever. She wanted to meet her heirs.”
“Atherton left all his money to a trust that takes care of all of Mama's expenses,” explained Russell. “That's the whole problem: that bastard Atherton, still trying to control everyone from the grave. When Mama dies, the trust is going to be split up in equal portions among all the Gales.”
“Then this doesn't affect us at all,” said Molly. “Our grandmother was disinherited years ago.”
“Well, she was reinherited,” said Russell, freshening his drink. “Atherton's will named all bloodline Gales as beneficiaries. The trust will be split among all Atherton's natural descendants and all the natural descendants of his sister and three brothers. I've been over the language with my lawyer a hundred times, so believe me, I know.”
Molly took a deep breath. Could it be true? The thought that Grandma might have really been forgiven almost brought tears to Molly's eyes. If only she had lived. To be vindicated for the emerald ring would have made her so happy, Molly knew. And any money she inherited, no matter how little, would have made a real difference in her life.
“The family had all gone their separate ways years ago,” explained George. “Of Atherton's siblings only Barnaby had stayed on Gale Island. He'd married one of the island girls when he was in his sixties and had Jimmy. Grant went to South America. Melville and his family moved to California. Louise, the youngest, married a Texan and settled in Corpus Christi.”
“They were the knob kings,” said Russell wistfully. “Had the biggest knob factory in the Southwest. If you've ever turned on a toaster oven, you've probably twisted one of Louise's knobs.”
“Mother contacted everyone and flew them all up here firstclass,” continued George. “Of the original siblings only Louise was still alive, but everyone else's descendants came, along with their wives, children, grandchildren, even Melville's two great-greatgrandkids. For three days, all the living Gales were together for the first time, here on Gale island.”
“All except Margaret and her line,” said Russell. “Mama tried to find her but couldn't. Henry even put some private detective on the case, who turned up a record of Margaret's marriage in New York City fifty years ago like you said, but lost her shortly after
that. We all figured she must be dead. Why else wouldn't there be any driver's license, credit cards, or telephone number for her anywhere in the United States?”
Molly felt the blood rush to her face. Margaret Jellinek was dead, but Molly still felt protective of her. And proud. How could she explain to these people that her grandmother was too poor to have a car or credit or even a phone in her own name?
“It was a lovely reunion,” said George Gale, getting back to his story. “Good food, good talkââmost of the folks didn't know much about their heritage at all.”
“George is the unofficial family historian,” said Russell, “so he was the one who had to explain to everyone how they were related to Atherton and to one another, if you can appreciate the irony in that.”
“At the end of the three days we ended with a luncheon set out in Dora's rose garden in the back,” said George, pointedly ignoring his stepbrother's comment. “Mother gave a little speech about the responsibilities of wealth, about how she hoped that everyone would find the same satisfaction in giving that she had. Giving is very dear to Mother's heart. She's on the board of directors of three national charitiesâincluding the one Russell works forâand does volunteer work up here for a dozen others. She wanted to exert as much influence as she could to see that the Gale fortune does some good in years to come, after she's gone.”
“Not that there was going to be much left for everyone to inherit once the taxes and attorney fees were paid and the trust was divvied up twenty-two ways,” said Russell.
“It would still have come to at least a few million dollars per person, the way I figure,” said George. “Maybe more.”
“A few million dollars!” exclaimed Molly.
Russell waved the air contemptuously.
“Like I said, not a lot of money. What's it going to yield you these days after taxes? Barely enough to make ends meet down in my neck of the woods, let alone get you started in philanthropy.”
“Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick,” said George.
“You mean you're finally admitting that you don't like being paid in roosters and promises?” said Russell with a sneer.
George didn't answer.
“You see, dear grandniece, George pretends he doesn't care about money, but really he's just as unhappy as I am that Atherton cut the two of us out of the will.”
“I thought you said all of Atherton's descendants participated,” said Molly.
“All bloodline descendants, all naturally born Gales,” said Russell. “I was an embarrassing reminder that Mama had had a life before she met Atherton and was elevated to Galedom. And old George here was bought and paid for as a baby. Atherton had expected him to be a big strong man and go into the family business, not waste his life healing ordinary sick people. Your grandmother, I'll bet, could tell you something about the price of disloyalty in this family.”
Molly found that she was clenching the sides of the sofa so hard her knuckles hurt. So money was what all this was aboutâlots and lots of money. And if what George and Russell were saying was true, then Molly and Nell might be entitled to inherit a few millions dollars apiece. That might not seem much to Russell, but to Molly it was a fortune.
“Anyway,” said George, pointedly raising his voice, “the reunion was over. Limousines arrived to take everyone over to the airport in Montpelier. Mother had chartered a special plane to take everyone to Boston from where they could catch their connecting
flights back home. Not much flies out of here direct. Fifteen minutes after takeoff, the charter went down over the mountains, killing everyone on board.”
“Oh, my God,” whispered Molly, involuntarily raising her hand to her chest. “What happened?”
“There were thunderstorms in the area that day,” said George. “The investigators' preliminary report says that the plane was probably struck by lightning.”
“The federal aviation people were all over the place,” said Russell, chewing on an ice cube. “The FBI got involved, tooâyou can't assume anything these days, what with terrorists and all. The plane's wreckage was strewn over a square mile. If you ask me, they're never going to be able to say for sure what happened.”
“Just days after bringing them all together,” said George, “Mother had to bury practically her entire familyâat least what they could find of them. Twenty-one Gales, ranging in age from Louise at eighty-nine to Melville's granddaughter's three-monthold baby. In fact, every Gale who had come in for the reunion was suddenly dead.”
“All except Jimmy,” said Russell.
“Jimmy Gale is Barnaby's only son,” explained George. “He still lives here on the Island, which is why he wasn't on the plane.”
“My God,” said Molly again, her mind reeling.
She had thought that she and Nell were safe. She had thought they had left death behind them in Pelletreau. Now twenty-one more bodies had been added to the count. Twenty-one heirs to the Gale Trust had died in a plane crash. Another had died with a pillow on her chest in a nursing home. And two more would have died if Molly and Nell had been in Pelletreau to flip on the lights at their house. Had the evil that lay behind everything been here in Vermont all along? Had they walked right into the monster's lair?
“That was why Mother was so upset when you told her who you were,” George went on. “For reasons painfully fresh in her mind, Mother just wasn't expecting to meet any more Gales in this lifetime.”
“Jimmy's going to be pretty upset, too, I'll bet,” said Russell, with an unpleasant chuckle. “You'll meet him tonight. You know he'll be here for dinner, George?”
“What a treat for us all.”
“Still hate him, don't you?”
“I don't hate anybody,” said George Gale.
“You see, Molly,” snickered Russell, “Jimmy used to call George a faggot gook and beat the crap out of him when they were kids, so George actually has good reason to hate Jimmy. The rest of us just hate him on general principle.”
George Gale frowned at his stepbrother but didn't speak.
“Since the funerals Jimmy's been pretty damned pleased with himself,” chuckled Russell. “Thought he was going to be the sole heir to the Gale trust. Thought he was going to get the whole boodle. Now he's going to have to share all that lovely money with you two girls.”
“Shut up, Russell,” George finally said in a soft voice.
“Why should I shut up, George? It's the truth. It's not like we're going to get a nickel. And frankly I could use some of that money just as much as you. I'm the one with the three ex-wives to support, remember?”
“We've done pretty well for ourselves over the years. You know we've got nothing to complain about.”
“Well, I suppose that's true,” conceded Russell. “I just hope Mama's going to be okay about having two new Gales to worry about all of a sudden. Who knows what she's going to do?”
“She's going to love them,” said a little voice from the doorway to the room. There stood Dora Gale, her lip quivering, her
eyes huge and watery behind her thick glasses. In back of her, looking thoroughly unhappy, were the woman called McCormick and Henry Troutwig, the tall, gray-faced lawyer.
Molly rose to her feet automatically, as did Russell and George. Nell sat where she was, regarding the scene with an opaque expression.
“Mrs. Galeâ” began Molly, but Dora Gale cut her off by walking over and enveloping Molly to the extent she could with her childlike arms.
“Welcome to your family, girls,” the old lady said in a hushed little voice, reaching out and taking Nell's hand in her own. “Welcome home.”
“Anybody want more quail?” barked Mrs. McCormick, rising from the table, a mahogany three-pedestal George III antique.
“No more for me,” said Russell, licking his fork and taking a final sip of wine. A chorus of additional no-thank-yous ran around the room.
“I'll tell Ruby and Mrs. Prin to set up dessert and coffee in the library,” said McCormick, heading for the kitchen door. “If it's all right with you, ma'am.”
“That would be very kind of you, Mrs. McCormick,” said Dora Gale in her childlike little voice. “And please thank them for a lovely dinner.”
“Yep,” said McCormick, exiting.
Setting an additional two places for Molly and Nell at tonight's dinner had presented no apparent problem. Perhaps the Gale kitchen always kept extra coquilles St. Jacques, braces of quail, and associated side dishes on hand in case unexpected guests dropped by.
The food had been beautiful to look at and plentiful, but Molly had barely tasted anything. Too many questions raced through her mind. Were they really the heirs to a fortune? Could it be a coincidence that practically the entire Gale family had died in a plane crash a week before Margaret Jellinek had died, too? And what about the deadly explosion at Enchanted Cottage Antiques? How could these events not be related? What was going on?
There was no time to sort out any answers, however, amid the flurry of dinner conversation and the visual stimulation of the table.
Everything in sight was something to make an antique dealer salivate, from the Coalport china to the French silver salts to the Dutch floral paintings on the damasked walls of the dining room. Even the flatware was stunning. Molly had never had to cope with so many expensive spoons, knives and forks during an actual meal (the capital letter
M
beneath the maker's mark on the reverse of each Tiffany “Japanese” pattern spoon and fork told Molly that the set had been made between 1869 and 1891). And when a maid brought out crystal finger bowls, Molly almost let out a squeal. She had sold such things over the years in her shop, but had never dreamed she would actually have occasion to use one. The pride Molly had taken in their suitcases full of smalls suddenly seemed silly.
The family gathering into which Molly and Nell had stumbled was in honor of Russell Bowslater, who was returning to Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. Russell had flown in for the ill-fated family reunion a month ago and had rearranged his summer plans so that he could stay on with Dora after the plane carrying the Gales had crashed. Congress would soon resume, however, and Russell had to be getting back.
Tonight was the first time George Gale had returned to Gale Castle since the funerals. He was something of a workaholic, according
to the othersâwhich was why this dinner was on a Tuesday. The other six days a week George was on call at the hospital in Hadawoken, New Hampshire, where he lived alone (he had never been married) and practiced pediatric medicine. Though Hadawoken was only about an hour's drive away, apparently George's visits to his former home were few and far between.
Henry Troutwig, on the other hand, was a frequent guest at Gale Castle. The morticianlike attorney had been spending even more time with Dora since the tragedy, lending “moral support.”
James “Jimmy” Gale, the cousin George had told them about, who lived on the island and who, apart from Molly and Nell, was now the sole surviving Gale heir, had not shown up. His absence hadn't appeared to upset anybody very much, however. In addition to being disliked by everyone except Dora (who seemed to be one step behind Mother Teresa in her acceptance of others), Jimmy Gale was notoriously unreliable.
The dinner conversation had begun politely with the weather, wandered to the problems of squeezing contributions out of healthy people for dread diseases (the charity Russell worked for was Cancer Answer and the answer apparently was money) before finally settling onto the questions in which everyone was most interested. What had happened to Margaret Gale? How had Evangeline O'Hara Cole died? What work did Molly and Nell do and what had brought them to Vermont?
The best course of action, Molly decided, was just to play along until she could figure out what to do. She had tried to put the best face on everything, speaking proudly of her grandmother's Broadway career and just saying that Margaret Jellinek had tired of the stage and had chosen to lead a quiet life in Pelletreau. As for themselves, they recently had decided to relocate and were taking advantage of this buying trip to scout locations for a new antique shop (which was in fact true).
There was no way to minimize what had happened to their mother. Molly simply said that it had been an unsolved murder, and that Nell had seen everything, resulting in her condition. The table had fallen silent. Dora put a prim hand to her lips. Russell and George exchanged surprised glances. Only Mrs. McCormick, Dora Gale's nurse and companion, had been unimpressed.
“Is she dangerous?” McCormick had asked bluntly.
“Of course not,” Molly had replied.
“There was that boy in Titcomb who didn't talk, either. Killed his parents with a meat ax last spring.”
“Nell is perfectly all right, except for not being able to talk,” said Molly, glancing at her sister.
Nell had recovered from her earlier episode but was very subdued. Still, her natural grace showed through her timidity and seemed to touch everyone. George Gale had smiled at Nell often throughout the meal and even the garrulous Russell Bowslater had taken pains to try to include her in his endless anecdotes.
Dora Gale presided at her table with an old-fashioned graciousness that had made Molly feel more comfortable than she would have imagined possible considering the circumstances. No one had said anything about the plane crash and the deaths of all the Gales, and Dora gave no evidence of any self-pity or unhappiness.
Molly kept wanting to rush over and give the old woman a big hug, she was so adorable, so prim and proper and cute. Atherton Gale's second wife had a funny little voice and the kind of manners that are usually only exhibited by good little girls at imaginary tea parties. Her faded blue eyes still twinkled despite her age and all that had recently befallen her.
Dora, like the others, had seemed fascinated by Molly's silent sister. She was continually tossing questions and tidbits of conversation Nell's way, trying to draw her out the way one does with a
shy child. Nell had returned the interest, often staring at Dora with a puzzled expression of unconcealed curiosity, but then her gaze would wander off, and she would be lost to the conversation again.
Henry Troutwig, the forbidding old attorney, had been cold and uncommunicative throughout the dinner that had now concluded.
“You really mustn't mind Mrs. McCormick,” said Dora, after the hawk-faced nurse had disappeared into the kitchen to arrange for dessert. “She has a prickly manner, I know, but it conceals a gentle soul. Mrs. McCormick took care of Atherton during his final illness. She was such a help that I asked her to stay on after his death. She has been wonderful to me, and we have a lot in common. She's a widow, too. Her own husband died many years ago.”
Dora rose from her chair. Standing, she was no taller than she had been seated.
“Shall we retire to the library?” she said.
“I really should be getting along, Mother,” said George, who had come over to hold Dora's chair when she stood. “I'm six miles behind on my paperwork.”
“Oh, please stay a little while longer, George,” Dora implored, taking his arm. “I hardly ever get to see you anymore. And it's not every day that you get to meet two beautiful young women.”
“All right,” said George, smiling at Molly. “I guess I can stay a bit longer.”
“Thank you, dear,” said Dora. “It's so nice to have us all together. I don't know how many more occasions like this I'll be around to enjoy.”
“Don't say such things, Dora,” said Henry Troutwig, who had barely uttered two words in the past hour. “You'll be with us for a long, long time.”
“Thank you, Henry,” said Dora. “We'll see.”
The library was on the other side of the living room and almost as big. A fireplace occupied one wall, the other three were lined with brass grilled bookcases full of leather bound volumes, hundreds of them. “Bindings,” as such books were called in the trade, were cheap enough to be sold by the yard to decorators. These, however, looked to Molly like actual first editions.
Coffee and an assortment of pies, cakes, and chocolates were set up and waiting for them when they arrived, along with the surly Mrs. McCormick. They served themselves and found places in comfortable old (as in English Regency) library furniture. Dora situated herself between Molly and Nell on a leatherbound sofa.
“I'm so happy our girls have come home,” she said, giving them each a gentle pat on the knee.
“Good pie,” said Russell, shoveling a piece into his face. “I'm surely going to miss all this when I get back to Washington and resume my bachelor ways. Fund-raising dinners always leave you feeling wanting. You should come down and visit me sometime, George. Two single men, out on the townâwe could have a hell of a good time.”
“I'll think about that, Russell,” said George in a voice that indicated that he wouldn't.
“How long do you and your sister plan to be in the area?” asked Henry Troutwig in his flat New England dialect, looking down his huge nose at Molly like some kind of gigantic owl.
“We're really just passing through.”
“Wouldn't you consider staying for a while?” asked Dora. “You said at dinner that you didn't have any immediate plans. It's going to be terribly lonely here again when Russell leaves.”
“No, we couldn't possibly.”
“I know you're polite girls and don't want to impose,” Dora went on in an intense, earnest voice, “but at my age I'm allowed
to be selfish and ask for what I want. I really wish you both would stay here at Gale Castle with me awhile. Please, my dear?”
“Well we'd like to, of course, but ⦔
“Then it's settled, and I won't hear another word. You can have your own room in the west wing. You'll have all the privacy you could want and there's plenty to doâgardening, there's the badminton net and the pool in back. We can even surf the Internet on the new computer that Russell bought me. You're determined to make me into a techno-babe, aren't you, Russell?”
“Aw, Mama,” said Russell, his bald head blushing beet red.
“Mrs. McCormick, will you be kind enough to have Ruby make up one of the big rooms in the west wing before she leaves for the evening?”
“Can't I at least finish my damn piece of pie?” said McCormick, her fork in midair.
“Oh, I'm terribly sorry,” said Dora, raising a hand to her mouth. “Of course finish your pie. Where are my manners?”
“Very neatly done,” said Henry Troutwig to Molly in a voice as dry as dust.
“Excuse me?” said Molly.
“The way you've already insinuated your way into the family. A few hours ago nobody even knew you existed. Now you've arranged for a bedroom.”
“Henry, please,” said Dora, her kind round face registering dismay. “Molly and Nell are my family. They are my guests.”
“I'm sorry, Dora, but this is all just a little too pat for me. These two showing up from nowhere like this. Now, when you're most vulnerable. And when the payoff is the largest.”
“See, I told you so,” said Russell to George. “We saw their credentials, Henry. Everything looked pretty good.”
“Not good enough for me,” said the attorney. “I intend to
put my investigator, Mr. Puttridge, on the case by the morning. We'll see what he has to say.”
“Henry, I forbid you to make trouble for these girls.”
“Please, Mrs. Gale,” said Molly. “Please don't get upset again. There's nothing anyone will find about us but the truth.”
“Thank you, Molly,” said Dora, reaching over and taking Molly's hand, a pained smile returning to her face. “I appreciate your concern. But I won't have you embarrassed in my home. And let's not have any more of this âMrs. Gale' business. I'm just plain Dora.”
“Even if they are who they say they are, Dora,” said Troutwig, making a sniffing sound, “remember the kind of people they're coming from. It was no secret that Atherton's daughter Margaret was a tramp and a common thief.”
“That's not true,” said Molly, rising from her seat.
“She stole a valuable ring from her mother so she could run off with some nobody. I've heard the story from a dozen people who knew Atherton well.”
“Well, I have news for you, Henry Troutwig,” said Dora, before Molly could respond. “Felicity Gale was my best friend and she told me the whole story of that ring the year before she died. Felicity gave it to Margaret along with her blessing. When Atherton and I started seeing each other after Felicity's death, he told me that Felicity had lied about Margaret, about him, about a lot of things. I believed Atherton, but it wasn't long before I learned who the real liar was. If I had trusted Felicity I could have saved myself many years of unhappiness.”