Part three
An over-abundance of thoughts kept Trixie awake that night and it was later than usual when she arose the next morning. She rushed through her morning routine and was hurrying towards the eating area when she came across William Heffernan. He smiled and held out the folder.
“All done. And I’ve arranged to have breakfast here, so I can hear Ivy’s response for myself, if she’s up to it.” He waved her ahead of him. “Let’s see how she is.”
Ivy was already seated at the table with a woman that Trixie did not know. William noticed this and effected introductions, giving the woman’s name as Elaine and mentioning that she did a similar job to Sarah, though at different times.
“And how are you this morning, Ivy?” he asked.
“Well, thank you,” was the polite reply, which gave no indication as to the old lady’s current state of mind.
Elaine came to the rescue. “You’re doing very well this morning, aren’t you, Ivy? Today is going to be a good day; I can tell.”
“I’m very glad to hear that,” William commented. “Ivy, you remember that I asked Trixie to help us with the problem of the things you wrote in your last will? She’s found something that might answer our questions.”
“Found it? Here in the house?” Ivy’s pale, thin eyebrows rose. “Wherever could she have found something?”
“In the attic,” Trixie explained. As a look akin to horror sprang up on the old face, she hastened to explain. “You told me that I could look, remember? And I’m sure I told you that my mother wouldn’t mind.” She glanced sideways at William, who looked puzzled by that last statement, but did not interrupt. “Ivy, I think you found the entrance to the attic when you visited Myrtle’s room on her birthday. I also think you found something that Myrtle had hidden there.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t have done that,” the old lady answered, eyes wide. “Mother always said that an attic was no place for a lady. I should have stayed away.”
Trixie smiled and tried to be reassuring. “I think you only went up for a little while. It will be okay.” She watched Ivy’s expression, looking for hints to her thoughts. “I was thinking that I could show you some of the things that I found. It might help you to remember.”
“Remember? What do I need to remember?” Distress was clear on her face.
“Why you left such a large legacy to the descendants of someone called Calvin Ellis,” William explained in a gentle voice. “You know that we’ve been trying to find that out for some time.”
“I don’t want to remember,” Ivy moaned. “I think I’ve forgotten it on purpose.”
Trixie took pity on her and relented. “It doesn’t matter, Ivy. You don’t have to remember, if you don’t want to. I won’t tell you what I found, if it upsets you.”
“Did you find Father’s watch?” Ivy asked, brightening considerably. “It was a lovely one. I wish I could see it again. I always loved to look at it when I was small.”
“I’ll look for it today, if you’d like,” Trixie offered. “Is there anything else you’re missing that might be up there?”
Ivy’s eyes widened. “I don’t want you to get into trouble with your mother. You should never disobey your mother. Terrible things happen to girls who don’t listen to their mothers.”
“I won’t get into trouble,” Trixie promised. “You can even call my mother and check, if you’d like.”
“Oh, no. Mother never let us use the telephone. Long distance calls are so expensive.” She paused, a reflective look on her face. “Of course, it didn’t matter much. I never knew anyone far away. We always stayed here, where we belonged.”
Seeing the futility in any further questions, Trixie dropped the subject. She had a brief conversation with William after breakfast.
“I don’t suppose we could expect anything else,” he commenting, though he seemed just as disappointed as Trixie. “That mother of theirs still has her clutches on poor Ivy and she’s still living in fear of her.” He sighed. “If you get the chance, you might try again from a different angle. Just drop a little bit of information into the conversation and see where she takes it. That might be less stressful than any talk of the attic.”
Trixie nodded. “She told me the other day that her mother forbade even the mention of the attic, and she keeps saying that bad things happen to girls who disobey their mother. She must have been so frightened when she went up there.”
“I’ve heard her say words to that effect many times and I’ve always wondered what she meant by it,” he mused.
Trixie gulped. “Well, actually, I kind of have an idea of that … but you told me not to tell you what I read in the diaries and that was probably the worst part of all.”
He paused, looking wary. “I’ll admit that I’m very curious, but that does sound terribly ominous. It was something very wrong?”
She nodded. “Illegal, I’m pretty sure, and definitely immoral. And, when it was over, Fern was dead.”
“She didn’t die at her own hand? I always thought that she might have.” He looked slightly sick.
Trixie shook her head. “Myrtle didn’t think so. She thought it was her mother’s fault, but that her mother didn’t intend that exact result. She also thought that Fern really wanted to live and really didn’t want her mother to do the thing that she did.”
He nodded. “They were harsh times, in some ways.”
“Yes, and Ivy’s mother was a harsh woman, from what I can make out.” Trixie grimaced. “I think I’m going to call my mother and thank her for being so understanding.”
“That sounds like a good idea.” He glanced at his watch. “Now, you have plenty to do and so do I. I’ll see about engaging someone to do research. Let me know when you have the other things ready that I asked you for last night. I would give Ivy a little time to recover from that ordeal, so maybe you could get to the boxes in the attic instead. I hope that won’t be too terrible a job.”
Trixie shook her head. “No, I’m looking forward to it. I’ve found fascinating things in attics in the past.”
William smiled. “Well, have fun then. I’ll speak to you later.”
After seeing him out, Trixie headed for the attic. She did not even notice that she took the stairs more quickly than she had even the day before. To her, it still seemed unbearably slow. Arriving at the top of the house, she looked around for a few moments, pondering where to start and how to track where she had searched. She soon chose a spot, deciding to begin next to the stairs and work her way around the room, leaving the area she had already searched until last.
Without hesitation, she began looking through the first box. It contained a miscellany of objects, poorly packed, and she soon came to the conclusion that Cornelia had gone around the house and dumped objects in as she came across them. Myrtle, unsentimental soul that she was, must have never thought it important to repack them. Some things appeared to have belonged to Silas and some of them to Fern. Nothing in the first box appeared to have any significance to Trixie. She was certain that these items had meant something to Ivy and her sisters, but whatever meaning they had held was now lost.
She continued searching, finding household items, stationary and clothing. Several things she discovered were either so badly damaged or so unfamiliar that she could not identify them, or guess their purpose. Box after box contained nothing that was of any help.
More than half-way through the search, Trixie at last had something to show for her effort. In one large and decrepit trunk, she found a beautiful pocket watch, complete with chain. Its surface was intricately engraved. It was tarnished, and bore signs of wear on some of the edges, but was otherwise in very good condition. With a small amount of effort, Trixie managed to open the front and see the clock face. She snapped it shut and looked for how to open the back.
When it, too, had opened, she saw some initials engraved inside. At first glance, it appeared to say SEC, but a closer inspection showed that an alteration had been made. Trixie took it over to the light and rubbed a finger across the letters in a futile attempt to make them clearer. Was it her imagination, or was the C slightly more deeply engraved than the E? And was the S unusually shaped and containing some extra lines? She was by no means certain, but Trixie thought that the engraving had originally been of the letters CE.
She carefully set it aside and continued through the boxes and trunks. After a few more, a change occurred and she began to wonder whether she had exhausted the supply of boxes left here by Cornelia and wandered into some things left by Myrtle, or perhaps by a previous occupant of the house. The things in these boxes were much more neatly packed and some of them seemed somewhat newer, suggesting the former explanation. She held up a blue, full-skirted dress that looked to her like something from the fifties, then put it back.
These boxes were not yielding anything of note, either. She was almost ready to give up in disgust when she came across something strange. The last box to search was pushed back further than the others. In fact, this was the box that Trixie had found the missing items behind. It was more battered than the others and looked as if it had been kicked several times. Inside, its contents were even more strange. Everything inside seemed to have been deliberately damaged. Papers were crushed into balls. Garments were torn. Some items seemed to have been stamped on, or had holes poked through them. A silver-backed comb was broken in half, its metal rim mangled.
With a growing sense of distaste, Trixie began to deduce the owner of the items. She thought back over the different rooms one level below. The daughters’ rooms, with the exception of Ivy’s, still contained large amounts of personal belongings – clothing, jewellery, books and papers, mementoes and personal care items. She also thought of Cornelia’s room, which was the most bare of all, with little remaining other than the furnishings and a few things with Cornelia’s name on them. None of these items could be directly linked to an owner, but something told Trixie that Cornelia was the one.
Had Myrtle done this? From her diary, Trixie had thought Myrtle to be a calm and rational woman, who thought things through before she acted. The petty destruction inside the box hinted at malice and seemed out of character.
Frowning, Trixie went back to the diaries and tried to find the one in which Cornelia’s death was mentioned. She had a feeling that she might have missed something the first time that she read it. Now that she knew what to look for, she found it easily.
‘December 24, 1980
‘Today was Mother’s funeral. I needed to do some cleaning up in her room early this morning. Several damaged things had to be taken away so that it would be neat and clean in there. Neither Viola or Ivy seems to have thought of this. Or, perhaps only one of them had been in there.’
Having seen the evidence, the meaning was clear enough to Trixie: Myrtle knew that one of her sisters had done the damage, but was not sure which one, or whether it was both in collusion. Why she had chosen to hide the damaged items in the attic and not throw them away was something of a mystery, however.
With that point settled, it was time for her to go over the ground that she had already covered. She had brought with her some of the self-adhesive flags that she often used while studying and set to work on flagging the appropriate diary pages. She piled the books that she wanted to one side, next to the pocket watch. When this task was finished, she began a more generalised search, looking for any items that she had not yet seen, or any further hiding places.
Only one thing came to light: a crumpled scrap of paper with Myrtle’s handwriting on it, which had slipped behind the shelves that held the diaries. Trixie smoothed it out and read it. It contained only a few words.
‘Mr. Butler. New Haven, CT. Father’s profile. Strange coincidence? Maybe I’m losing my mind.’
On the reverse side to this cryptic note was a receipt for undergarments from a local department store. The date on it was January 24th, 1975. Trixie crinkled her brow at the hand-written record of a purchase that was almost as cryptic as the part Myrtle had written and turned it back to the note. After a moment’s consideration, she found the same date in the diaries, but learned little from the exercise. A day or two after that time, Myrtle had met a man by the name of Butler, who was visiting from New Haven, but she made no more comment about him than that.
Trixie tucked the paper inside the cover of one of the diaries in her pile and picked all of them up. Her steps were slow as she returned to her room, deep in thought. While the rest of the family were coming into focus, Silas remained a mysterious figure in the background. This was, perhaps, natural. A little calculation allowed her to find that he had been dead for a few months more than ninety years. Putting the amount of time into a number drew the focus to another point: Ivy, perhaps the only living person who had known him, had only been about six at the time of his death. Trixie thought back to things and people she had known at the age of six and came to the conclusion that memories of that time were not reliable.
She locked away the diaries that she had brought downstairs and went to see whether Ivy was up to talking at the moment. The door to her suite was open, which Trixie took to be a good sign. She tapped on the door and was greeted by Elaine, who smiled in welcome.
“Come in,” she urged. “Ivy’s been agitated all morning, waiting to see if you found her father’s watch. Did you?”
Trixie held it up. “I think this is it. I wanted to show it to her and see if it helped her to remember anything else.”
“She’s through this way,” Elaine explained, ushering Trixie through another door.
She found herself in a small room fitted out as a bedroom. The elderly lady was lying on the bed with a blanket across her legs, but she looked wide awake. At Trixie’s entrance, she sat straight up.
“Did you find it? Is it here?”
“I think so,” Trixie answered, handing it over. “I looked inside the back and found some initials: SEC.”
A beautific smile graced the old face. “This is it. Oh, thank you so much. I am so glad to see it again.”
Trixie stood back and observed as Ivy examined the watch. Her fingers traced the patterns and felt each link of the chain. A slight frown appeared on Ivy’s face, however, as she tried to open it.
“Let me,” Trixie offered, reaching out to squeeze the catch. “I found it a bit stiff, but it opens up just fine.”
“Yes,” Ivy breathed. “Yes, this is it.” She frowned once more. “Now, where is the writing? I can’t see it anywhere.”
Trixie clicked the front cover of the watch closed and opened the back instead. “Here are the initials. I kind of wondered, though, whether it belonged first to someone else. It kind of looks like it’s been altered.”
Ivy shook her head. “I don’t think so. Father brought this with him from California, you know. They must be very careless over there, making mistakes like that. Mother always said it was a dreadful place and that Father should never have gone there. She always told us to stay well away from Californians.”
“Your father didn’t have any friends there that he wanted to keep in touch with?”
The old lady’s eyes widened. “Oh, no. They were dreadful people. Mother said so.” Her focus returned to the watch. “Now, where was that writing?”
For a moment, Trixie frowned. “You mean, there was some writing other than the initials?”
“Yes, that’s what I said.” For her next words, the old voice turned plaintive. “Can you find it for me, please? Can you read it to me?”
Trixie took the watch and began to examine it. Inside the front cover, something was engraved around the edge of the case. The letters were so worn that in places it was almost illegible, but a few moments examination allowed her to read the whole from the context. ‘Now abideth faith, hope, charity.’ Ivy’s eyes filled with tears as she read it out.
“Yes. That’s it. I remember.”
“Did your father read that to you when you were little?” Trixie asked, smiling at the thought.
“He didn’t read it often, but he used to tell me to rub my fingers over it for luck. Almost every time I saw it open I was allowed to rub the words for luck.” She smiled sadly. “I missed doing that when he was gone. Mother didn’t want to see Father’s things and she put them all away.”
“I suppose that’s why it’s so worn,” Trixie commented. “I can hardly read the words from all that rubbing.”
Ivy looked thoughtful. “Maybe if I’d kept rubbing they might have disappeared altogether.”
“Probably,” Trixie agreed. She was almost certain that had been the idea behind the custom but did not want to burden Ivy with that idea. “Does it remind you of anything else?”
For a moment, Ivy stared at the watch. “Yes. I remember his pipe and the smell of the tobacco. I remember Mother telling us how much better it would be without all that smoke in the house, but I missed it when he was gone. I remember the way he used to stamp around the house when he was angry. And I remember the night that he died and Myrtle telling me to go to bed like a good girl and that everything would be all right. It wasn’t. It was never all right ever again.”
Before Trixie could think of anything to say to that, Ivy had launched into another reminiscence.
“I did something very naughty, once. Mother always warned us about talking to strange men, but this one was so nice. He was old and thin and wrinkly and I thought he couldn’t hurt a fly.” She smiled in reminiscence. “I wandered away from Mother while we were shopping. I don’t remember the name of the store. It was near our old house in Hartford. I was playing out of sight of Mother and the man came and talked to me. He looked sad, I think. He asked me if my father had a watch like this one and I said that he did, but I hadn’t seen it since he died and that all of his things had gone away. He looked even more sad, then, and he told me to be a good girl and obey my mother. Olive found me just then and took me back to Mother. I still remember the sad man, though.”
Elaine entered in time to hear the end of the story. “It’s time for me to go, Ivy. Sarah’s here to help you now, and it will soon be time for your lunch.”
“Thank you, dear. Do be careful on your way out. I think we might be in for some snow.”
“Of course,” Elaine replied, hiding a smile. “I’ll be very careful.”
Sarah entered the room and greeted Ivy, adding to Trixie in a low voice, “The air conditioning confuses her so that she can’t remember if it’s summer or winter. If she says something like that, we generally don’t correct her. She almost never leaves the house, so it doesn’t really matter.”
Trixie nodded and turned her attention back to Ivy, who was smiling at the watch and gently stroking its surface. The expression on her face was so deeply introspective that Trixie decided not to push for further information at that moment. She excused herself – unnoticed by Ivy – and went to her room to ponder the sad man and his place in the story.
Through the rest of that day, Trixie had little success in talking to Ivy. The old lady was uncommunicative, wanting only to look at and feel the watch. Sarah confided that she thought another stretch of bad days was on its way and warned Trixie to be prepared for that. William dropped by in the afternoon to collect the diaries that Trixie had marked for copying, but nothing else of note occurred and Trixie began to get bored.
As the afternoon faded away, she decided to go for a walk around the neighbourhood and stretch her legs. The muscles in her broken leg were still noticeably weaker than those in her other leg and she wanted that rectified as quickly as possible. As she walked, she kept on the lookout for older people who might have known the family in days gone by. These were few and far between. She encountered a number of people who were walking their dogs, but few other pedestrians.
Circling back towards the house, she noticed someone standing outside and looking up at the building. Her steps slowed to observe him a little longer before she approached. The figure was a man of perhaps fifty years old, dressed casually. He glanced in her direction and then began walking away from her. Trixie watched him until he disappeared into the yard of a house some two or three doors down the street, then she returned to her room, wondering if there had been any significance to the incident.
Checking her email, she was pleased to find one from Mart, telling her that he and Dan would be dropping by for a visit late on the following day, a Friday, en route to the summer camp at which they would be working. He also asked whether she knew of anywhere they could stay overnight cheaply in her vicinity. As she knew very little about the area, she put a call through to William and explained the situation.
“Ivy wouldn’t like it if she knew there were young men in the house,” he mused.
“That’s not what I’m asking,” Trixie objected. “I know I can’t bring them here. I was going to meet them somewhere else.”
“Let me finish.” There was amusement in his voice. “I was going to say that Ivy usually stays in her room in the evenings anyway, I think, and is too deaf to notice much of anything happening outside. If you can vouch for their good behaviour while in the house, I will speak to Sarah and let her know what’s going on. May I suggest that you spend the early part of the evening out – say, until at least half-past eight – and then you can bring the two of them back to the house. Since you mentioned that they won’t mind roughing it, I’m sure you can find a spare room somewhere that they can use. They can spend the money they’d have paid on a room on some food and maybe a movie or something. How would that be?”
“That would be great,” she replied, with enthusiasm. “Thanks, William. You’re the best.”
In the morning, Ivy had regressed into the past, just as Sarah had predicted. Her face lit up with delight as she caught sight of Trixie and, rather like the last time, greeted her as an old friend.
“Oh, Edith! How lovely to see you after all this time.”
Trixie sighed in resignation. “It’s lovely to see you, too, Ivy.”
“And how is Philip?”
“No better and no worse,” she answered, having learned from the last time – or so she thought.
Ivy frowned. “Really? What’s happened to him?”
“I have no idea,” Trixie muttered. More loudly, she asked, “What was the last that you heard of him?”
“That the doctors were mistaken, of course, and that he would soon be all better. Were they right the first time, after all?”
“Oh, no. It’s just that he’s as well as can be expected at this point,” Trixie replied, looking desperately for a way to change the subject. “And how are you?”
“You know, I don’t really feel myself today. I do hope I’m not coming down with a cold.” Ivy frowned for a moment, then shook her head. “It’s so lovely to see you. I think of you and little Philip often, you know.”
“Thank you. We don’t see each other often enough, do we?”
“No, we don’t. It was such a terrible shame that you had to move away. I wonder you don’t move back since your poor husband died.” Ivy paused, frowning. “But that’s not right, is it? I don’t think your husband did die.”
“Never mind,” Elaine soothed. “Come and have some breakfast. It will make you feel better.”
“I have it all wrong, don’t I?” Ivy continued, unheeding. “What is your married name, Edith? I can’t seem to remember.”
“Breakfast time, Ivy,” Elaine repeated, guiding her charge with a firm hand. “I wonder what we’ll be having today.”
The old lady obstinately kept to her train of thought, only keeping moving in a physical sense because she had little choice. “I know that I got a letter from someone in that place where you live – where was it again, dear? – telling me that someone had died. How tactless of me to forget who it was!”
“Nobody has died near me lately,” Trixie assured her, trying to be cheerful. “You must be thinking of someone else.”
“That must be it,” Ivy replied, though she did not sound convinced. “And how is poor Philip?”
Trixie sighed and hedged her bets. “Just the same.”
“Oh, that’s something, I suppose.”
Elaine guided the old lady into her chair and the conversation ground to a stop. Trixie was not willing to say anything more in case it set Ivy off again on the matter of Edith and the person who had died. Every so often, Ivy would ask a question about someone that Trixie had never heard of and be dissatisfied with the answer she received. At the end of the meal, Elaine took the old lady off for a rest.
“We’ll have some quiet time and you’ll feel better afterwards,” she told Ivy. “Come and sit in your room for a while.”
“That sounds like a very good idea,” Ivy agreed. “It was so lovely to see you, Edith. Please, do call again.”
“I will,” Trixie answered, feeling distinctly uncomfortable.
The words on the watch are a quote from 1 Corinthians chapter 13, the first half of verse 13, from the King James Version of the Bible.