Part eight
Some time later, Ivy was admitted for overnight observation. The doctor was not sure what had caused her turn, but the evidence suggested that it had not been another stroke. She had some bruising on one side of her body from the fall and a bump on the side of her head, but luckily had not broken any bones.
Once Ivy was peacefully asleep, William drove Trixie back to the house. He went inside with her to speak to the other staff and let them know what was happening, then returned to Trixie to give her further instructions. They met in the staff rest area.
“I’ve given everyone else the night off,” he told her. “Will you be all right here by yourself?”
“Of course,” Trixie answered. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
He smiled. “Some people don’t like to be alone. If you’re happy to stay, then I won’t worry. You can bolt the doors from the inside, if you want to, when everyone else has left. That way, no one can get in without asking, even if they have a key.”
“I might do that later.” She hesitated. “I haven’t been in the kitchen before. I guess there’ll be something there to eat? Or do I need to go out?”
William’s face indicated his displeasure. “I’ve spoken with Maria. She insists that you should stay out of the kitchen, but I assured her that you would not leave a mess. I intend to check that there’s something there for you before I go.”
“I’ll manage,” she promised, “and I’ll leave everything as I found it, too. I’ve spent enough time at home cleaning up that I know how it’s done.”
“Thank you. I’m sure it will be fine.” He glanced around the room. “You might like to spend some time in Ivy’s suite. I’ll be sure to leave the door open. You mentioned a lost photograph, didn’t you?”
Trixie nodded. “Now would be a good time to look for it for her, while I won’t be disturbing her. I’m glad you mentioned that; I’d forgotten all about it.”
“You have plenty to get on with, don’t you? Even if it takes another day or two for her to return.”
“Yes,” she answered, “but if it’s that long, I think I might need to go and visit her each day. She was so frightened.”
“You’re very kind,” he told her. “I’m glad that you’re caring for her, even if that’s not what you were supposed to be doing.”
Trixie shrugged, feeling helpless to explain, but making an attempt anyway. “She seems so frail, like she needs people to look after her. And it’s been distressing to her, trying to remember things; I don’t like upsetting her and I want to make it right.”
“Well, the sooner we can find these answers, the sooner we can stop upsetting her.” He frowned. “I wonder, sometimes, if this is the right thing to do. Maybe it would have been better to leave it until after she was gone. When we made the decision, she was sure that she wanted to know, but I don’t think she’s been receptive to hearing the things that have been found out at any time since.”
“I don’t know that I’d be happy to learn these things about my own family.” Trixie paused a moment, trying to imagine how that would feel. “It probably hurts to think that people you loved kept secrets from you, and that some of those things happened in your own family.”
“You haven’t told her, have you, what you read in the diaries?” He both looked and sounded anxious.
She shook her head. “I told my brother and my friend Dan a few things when they were here, but I asked them not to repeat them. Even if they did, they don’t know anyone in the local area except me, so it wouldn’t get back to her. The way that Mart was reinventing the stories, I doubt you’d recognise one if you heard it. I might not even recognise it!” She sobered. “I wouldn’t tell Ivy those things. Some of them she might have known of her own knowledge, but some were just Myrtle’s interpretations and they might have been wrong. It isn’t worth upsetting her for unprovable theories.”
He looked away from her for a moment, seeming to struggle with something. He must have made a decision because he looked back at Trixie, an unreadable expression on his face.
“I know I told you that I didn’t want to hear about the things from the diaries, but there’s one question that I would like answered.” He looked her straight in the eye. “Can you do that for me, please?”
She nodded. “So long as the answer is actually in there. There were some things – like what was wrong with Rosemary – that aren’t spelled out.”
“Rosemary? No, I wasn’t wondering about her. I don’t know what it was that killed her, but I imagine it was the kind of thing that ladies of that generation wouldn’t speak about.” He shook his head. “I was thinking of something Ivy once said. She told me that murder had been committed in this house. I can’t help but wonder who was murdered and how Ivy knew.”
Trixie paused, thinking. “In this house? Are you sure that’s what she said?”
“Is there more than one murder to choose from?” he asked, alarmed.
Trixie could have kicked herself for giving away that point. “Myrtle didn’t think that Fern’s death was exactly murder, but I guess you might think of it that way,” she hedged, hoping he would not notice that she had not answered his question directly. “Of the people who died in this house, or at least while they lived here, Myrtle kind of suggests that Rosemary’s was a natural death. Next was Olive, right? She didn’t think Olive was murdered.”
“But suicide. Yes, I knew that. I know that’s not the official verdict, but everyone knew.”
“If the victim was Myrtle herself, or Viola, who died after her, that wouldn’t be in the diaries. To the best of my knowledge, that only leaves their mother.”
William nodded. “And was she murdered?”
Trixie paused, trying to find the right words. “Yes, she was. By Myrtle. Suffocated in her sleep with a plastic bag.”
He sagged with relief. “I should have asked you sooner. For years, I’ve worried about that, and thought that maybe Ivy killed her mother and all this time it was Myrtle, who was already dead at the time that I first heard about it.”
“Maybe Ivy saw what Myrtle had done,” Trixie suggested. “There would have been a number of hours between when Myrtle put the bag there and when she took it away again. Ivy might have discovered the body and not done anything about it. And, if that’s what happened, she probably knew that it was Myrtle and that it was okay to say something because Myrtle was beyond being punished.”
“In an earthly manner, yes,” he answered. “Divine justice might have been waiting for her.”
Trixie shivered.
“When you get to my age, you have to think about those things,” he told her. “Divine justice might be waiting for me, soon, too. But never mind that now. I’m just going to check that everything is in order here and I’ll be out of your way.”
“Thanks for everything,” she told him. “I won’t make a mess; I promise.”
“I know by now that I can trust you, Trixie. If you have any trouble, I’m only a phone call away.”
She thanked him once again and he went off to tidy up the last few loose ends. Trixie remembered what she had been doing before the drama began and went to her room to collect her laptop and phone. She met William in the eating area and he was carrying a plate.
“Maria had already cooked for this evening, so you might as well eat it while it’s hot.” He set the plate down on the table. “She’s just cleaning up in the kitchen and then she’ll be on her way. Sarah’s already gone and Elaine won’t be in. There are eggs and bacon in the refrigerator, if you want to cook them for your breakfast tomorrow, and bread for toasting, and fruit and juice. Oh, and here is the spare set of master keys to the house, just in case Maria tries to lock you out of the kitchen. It has a door to the outside, as well as the one that opens into here.”
“Thanks, William. I’m sure I’ll be fine,” Trixie assured him.
“I’m sure you will. I’ll probably talk to you tomorrow.”
They said their goodbyes and he departed. Trixie set the laptop on the table next to her and reread Jim’s email as she ate. She wrote a quick reply, commiserating with him over his run of bad luck and expressing her hope that things would improve. She avoided any reference to the one enigmatic paragraph that she had been agonising over earlier.
When she had finished eating, she took her plate and cutlery to the kitchen and washed them. A quick peek in the refrigerator and pantry told her there was plenty to eat, if she cared to prepare it. She soon found where everything went and left the kitchen looking clean and tidy.
Judging that it was not a good time to try calling her mother again, she put her things back in her room and went upstairs to look for the attic entrance that Ivy had mentioned. She was not at all sure that it was real, but she felt compelled to check for herself. She spent some time comparing the outside dimensions of the room to the inside, finding that there was only one possible wall in which something could be concealed: the one closest to the stairs.
On first inspection, there seemed to be nothing to find. The wall was flat and featureless, with no opportunities for concealment. One glance behind the door, however, revealed the secret and Trixie had to wonder why she had not noticed before. The answer to that, of course, was that whenever she had been in the room the door had been open, completely concealing the entrance. Its door was set flat in the wall, with only a keyhole and no handle of any kind. It appeared to be locked and Trixie wracked her brain, trying to think of anywhere that she had seen a key that might fit.
A rapid search of the room was all it took. She found a small key she had noticed on an earlier search and fitted it into the lock. It moved stiffly, but the hidden door swung open. From what she could see inside, it was easy to guess how this entrance had come about. The wall opposite the doorway had once been decorated with wallpaper, which now hung in yellowed shreds. At the time that Cornelia had the original attic entrance sealed up, she must also have carved off a few feet from one side of her room to add another. It stood to reason that the wall across the attic must have been made at the same time.
Not stopping to ponder the logistics any longer, Trixie headed up the stairs, flashlight in hand. She emerged at the top of the stairs to find some of her deductions confirmed. There were no windows into this section of the ceiling cavity, so the only light was that which she carried. Most of this side of the barrier was bare. Her wildest imaginations of the terrible secret Ivy alluded to had included all sorts of images, from human bodies stuffed in trunks through to written confessions to long-forgotten crimes. There appeared to be neither. There were no trunks; nor were there any books or papers that she could see. Instead, there was a scant amount of small furniture items.
At one side, a plain wooden chair stood next to a small table. An oil lamp sat in one corner of the table, but it held nothing else but dust. Trixie examined all three closely, but found nothing of note. Beside the table, a spindly set of open shelves held a few bottles and jars. None held anything sinister; one contained a selection of rusty nails and screws, another some old paper clips and the rest were empty. The collection was rounded out by an old clock, which sat on the floor. When Trixie picked it up to examine it, she found that it was only the case and the movement was missing.
Frowning, she made another round of the small room, looking for anything which might be interpreted as holding a secret, no matter by how far a stretch. Again, she came up blank. She searched the rafters and crawled across the floor, but to no avail. There was nothing there of any description which hinted at a secret, terrible or otherwise.
Dusty and frustrated, she descended the stairs, feeling the need for a drink of water and somewhere well-lit in which to sit and think. She reached the bottom and reached out to push the door, which had closed. It did not move. Pushing harder, she found it fastened. She shone her light onto the lock mechanism and saw that the bolt was drawn across. Luckily for her, it was a simple lock, such as might be found on a closet, and it simply caught against the door frame, rather than sliding into a cavity. She could see the bolt and pressed on it with her fingers. For a few moments, she felt no give and was beginning to despair of the effort, but as she changed the position of her fingers, it shot back and the door swung open.
Torn between anger and relief, Trixie went on a search all through the house, looking for someone who might have locked her in and cursing herself for not bolting all the doors as William had suggested. She tore through the other bedrooms and the other half of the attic, finding no evidence of another person. All was as it should be, including the windows. Downstairs was much the same. She spared herself a small amount of congratulations for having habitually locked her bedroom.
Trixie soon came to the conclusion that the person who had locked her in the attic was long gone. She made a belated tour of the ground level of the house and secured every door and window from the inside. She was certain, now, that she was alone in the house. Someone had been here earlier, though, and it bothered her to think that they knew where she had been. Perhaps she had been too late to protect the secret that Ivy had charged her with protecting.
As she began to wonder what it could have been that Ivy’s mother hid up there, she remembered her intention to call her own mother. A glance at her watch told her that this would be a better time, so she grabbed her phone and made herself comfortable in the staff rest area as she put the call through.
“Hi Moms,” she greeted, when her mother answered.
“Oh, hello Trixie. I was just about to call you back. Is something wrong?”
“No, everything’s fine,” she answered, deciding that the small fib was justified. “I just wanted to ask you a question. I learned a bit more about Ivy’s friend Edith today and just wondered if your mother’s maiden name was Walsh, by any chance.”
“I’m sorry, Trixie; it wasn’t,” Helen answered. “It was Monash.”
Trixie frowned, disappointed that her theory was not holding up. “I guess that’s that, then. And I was getting to be so sure that she was my great-grandmother. I even found out that they lived in Croton-on-Hudson.”
“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “That doesn’t tally, either. My mother grew up in Pennsylvania. I thought you knew that.”
“I think I kind of did,” Trixie answered, “only I got a bit confused with Dad’s family.”
“I hope you’re not too upset, sweetheart. The chances of you being related to her friend were pretty slim.”
Trixie smiled. “She thinks I’m her friend, so I guess I am her friend, whether I’m related to her Edith or not.”
“That’s very true.”
Talk turned to other subjects, but soon Trixie felt that she had to go. She had another aim for the unexpected time alone in the house and did not want to waste any of it. She put the phone away and went into Ivy’s suite, ready to search for the missing photograph and for anything else that might catch her attention.
Feeling uneasy, Trixie went back to the same drawers she had looked through earlier and checked through them again. She peeked at the letters she found there, seeing plenty from both Edith and Ruby. Edith’s, of course, stopped much earlier. In Edith’s bundle was also one from a friend of hers in Croton-on-Hudson, telling Ivy of Edith’s passing. It tore at Trixie’s heart to see that it was tear-stained.
She set all of these aside without reading any more. Somehow, they seemed much more personal than Myrtle’s diaries. From the date of the last letter in Ruby’s bundle, she had also been gone for nearly twenty years – a similar amount of time as Myrtle. It seemed irrational to read every word in those diaries without a thought, but to baulk at these letters. Still, that was how Trixie felt and she could not change it. She put everything back in the drawers and began looking for somewhere else the photograph might be.
Poking here and there, she found stack after stack of papers. One drawer contained nothing but mementoes from weddings, christenings, funerals and the like. At the bottom of the drawer, there was a mixture of different types, but closer to the top it was exclusively funerals. She found one from Viola’s funeral, which did indeed have a photograph of her printed in it. Trixie felt sure that she now knew what she was looking for, as she could not recall having seen that one before.
In another room, a drawer contained important documents. There were birth certificates for all of the sisters and deaths for four of them and their mother. Both Fern’s death certificate and Silas’s were notably absent. Also absent were birth certificates for the parents and their marriage licence. On reflection, Trixie decided that this may be due to the age of those documents and that they predated the move to this house. The conviction she had at first felt that there was some significance in the missing documents faded away.
She was about to move on to another location, but something held her back. With another surge of guilt, Trixie relieved her curiosity by glancing at Rosemary’s death certificate and reading her cause of death. As William had predicted, it appeared that Rosemary had suffered from an illness that many older people might consider unmentionable – cancer of the cervix. This explained Ivy’s and Myrtle’s reluctance to put a name to it, but did nothing to advance the case in any way.
That question settled, she tried the next drawer down. Right at the top of the pile was the missing photograph. She picked it up and placed it on the top of the chest of drawers she was currently searching. For a few moments, she stood looking down into the open drawer, torn as to what to do next. It was true that her task was complete, but it was also true that she was supposed to be looking for clues to other matters. She reminded herself that Ivy had encouraged her to look and had showed no reluctance for her to see anything that might be in her suite, and that William had particularly told her to come in here while Ivy was away. The next thought was that Ivy could hardly remember anything of importance and could have left anything in one of these drawers, including things she wanted no one to see.
The last thought decided her. Even if it meant that she found Ivy’s secrets, it was worth continuing her search. Ivy had entrusted her with protecting her deepest secrets and that was what she needed to do. She continued searching the drawers.
By the time she had gone through all of the papers in that room, she was frustrated and tired of the sight of them. Perhaps many of these things had some significance to Ivy, but to Trixie most of them were just plain dull. She moved on to Ivy’s bedroom and peeked in the different drawers there but still found nothing of interest. She was about to call it a night and go to bed when she noticed a built-in closet that she had not checked.
Next to Ivy’s bathroom was a linen closet and only a quick glance had assured Trixie that it held nothing of interest. What she had failed to notice was that there was another, smaller, closet above it, filling in the space up to the ceiling. She grabbed a chair and climbed onto it to have a look.
Her first impression was that it was empty. Standing on tiptoes, however, she could see the edge of something pale sticking up a short distance. She reached up and felt what was there, searching with her fingers to find the edge. Scrabbling a little, she manage to get her fingers under what felt like a manilla folder. Taking care not to let any of its contents slide out, she lifted it down.
Leaving the closet door open, she sat down on the chair she had used and began to examine her find. To her amazement, the first thing she saw inside was another report from the genealogist. She skimmed through it, seeing that the woman had managed to trace both Ivy’s half-sisters and the elder one’s descendants and the descendants of Calvin Ellis. It mentioned an attached family tree, but Trixie saw at once that the corner of the document was torn and that nothing was attached. Further, the report cut off in mid-sentence. She rifled through the rest of the file but did not find the rest of it. She also knew that she had not seen it in any of the places she had searched.
A rapid examination of the other papers in the folder showed that all of them dealt in some way with the matter of Silas’s first family or dealings with Calvin Ellis. Knowing, now, that someone had deliberately hidden these things and, worse, taken some of them away gave Trixie a determination to make sure that no other stones were left unturned. With that in mind, she made an even more thorough examination of Ivy’s suite, but found little for her effort.
Then, she started on some other, more out of the way places around the house. Midnight had passed before she stopped, certain now that the house had given her all of the clues that it could. Anything else that might have been here was now lost, she was convinced.
As she collapsed into her bed, tired in body but with her mind awhir with thoughts, she reflected on the identity of the person who had hidden the papers and their motivation in putting them in that particular location. She wondered who was most likely to have chosen such an action. By the time sleep claimed her, she had drawn some definite conclusions.
Trixie arose a little later than usual in the morning, owing to her late night, and was fixing herself some breakfast when her phone rang. Picking it up, she found that the caller was William.
“Good morning,” he greeted. “How are you this morning?”
“Great! You?”
“Just fine, thank you. I’ve got an update on Ivy for you, and I wanted to see if you had any success yesterday afternoon.”
“How is she?” Trixie asked, not noting the second part of the statement. She knew, after all, what she had been doing, but knew nothing of Ivy.
He sighed. “Not well. There have been complications overnight and they’re keeping her a little longer. I’m afraid that she won’t live to see one hundred, like she says that she will. She seems very frail at the moment.”
“That’s too bad. Should I go and visit her?”
“If you’d like to. I have the visiting hours written down somewhere … here they are.” He read them out to her and she found a pencil and paper to write them down, along with Ivy’s ward and room details.
“I’ll go as soon as visiting hours start,” she promised. “I hope it will make her feel a little better.”
“You haven’t told me about your progress,” he reminded her. “How did you go yesterday?”
“Well, I found the photo. I found the place Ivy mentioned to me, too, but I couldn’t find what she’d asked me to protect.” Briefly, she outlined the conversation and her findings in the attic. “I also found something in Ivy’s suite that I want you to see. I think it’s more evidence that someone in the house wants to suppress the exact things we’re trying to find.”
“Can I come over now? Would that be convenient?”
Trixie felt a blush rising. “Well, I’m just making my breakfast now. I stayed up rather late last night …”
“Searching?”
“I wanted to–”
“How late?” he interrupted.
She mumbled the time so low that he could not make it out.
“Could you repeat that in a louder voice, please. Us old people have trouble hearing sometimes.”
“Really, William, it’s not important.”
“Trixie.”
“Okay! It was a quarter to one. But that’s nothing to some of the nights I stayed up studying. It’s not important.”
He chuckled. “Fine. If you insist. I’ll let you off any criticism I might have made about making breakfast at quarter to ten in the morning.”
“I don’t think it would have been this late, except I lay awake a few hours thinking about what this means. I think I’ve got most of it figured out, but we’re going to need Lisa’s help to prove it.”
“You can tell me all about it when I get there. I’ll give you half an hour – is that enough?”
“Yes, but I might still be in the kitchen, cleaning up.”
“Fine. I’ll see you then.”
They ended their call and Trixie finished her preparations. As she was eating, she went over her arguments in her mind, knowing that she would need to be clear and accurate when she expounded her theory to William. By the time she was finished, she was sure that the things she had deduced last night still made sense.
As she had predicted, she was still washing up when he arrived. He offered to dry and had taken up the tea towel before she had time to object. Between the two of them, they soon had the kitchen cleaned up. Trixie picked up the papers from her room on the way past as they went to the staff rest area to sit and she explained where she had found them. He examined the papers in silence for some time.
“You’ve searched everywhere for the missing pages?” he asked. “You can’t find them?”
“I think they’ve been destroyed,” she answered. “I think this page would have been, too – and all of these others – if there had been time. My theory is that the person who hid them had thought they were safe up there, that no one would find them and that they could smuggle them out at any time if needed, but that at some point they changed their mind. I think that point was yesterday, after Ivy collapsed.”
William drew a breath. “Then, you think that the person who did it was someone in the house at that time?”
Trixie hesitated. This was the crucial point. “We already knew that someone inside the house wasn’t happy about me investigating – and not just Reba and her generalised suspicions.”
“Yes, but this narrows the field, doesn’t it?” He seemed distressed.
“Well …” She drew a breath and admitted the full extent of her misadventure of the day before. “Actually, I think the destruction happened after Ivy went to hospital and the reason that the person ran out of time was that I found a way out of the attic after they locked me in.” She gave him a sheepish smile. “I didn’t take your advice about bolting the doors until after that happened. I didn’t think it would be a problem that early; I thought I’d do it later.”
He took several calming breaths before he spoke. “You do have a nose for trouble, don’t you, Trixie?”
She nodded. “Yeah, I do. But compared to some of the other trouble I’ve been in, this is pretty mild. My parents would have been pleased with this level of trouble when I was younger, believe me!”
“I won’t ask. I have a feeling that I would regret knowing.” He glanced at his watch. “Would you like a lift to the hospital? It’s nearly visiting hours.”
She readily agreed and went to gather a few things. William took possession of the folder, with the intention of copying its contents and giving them to Lisa. He had mentioned an intention to do that while Trixie sat with Ivy. They shortly left the house and Trixie was dropped off at the hospital, where she found Ivy’s bed without trouble.
“Edith!” the old lady called in a feeble voice. “Edith!”
“I’m here,” Trixie answered, taking the frail hand that reached out to her. “How are you feeling?”
“Oh, Edith! Did you find it?”
Trixie hesitated, wondering exactly what she was supposed to have found. “Did I find what?”
The elderly voice dropped into a loud whisper. “Mother’s secret place. Did you find it?”
She nodded. “I found the door and the key to open it. I went up there, but I couldn’t find anything you would want to keep hidden. There was hardly anything there.”
“So terrible,” Ivy whispered. “You have to find it for me. Please!”
“You’ll have to tell me what it is,” Trixie coaxed, squeezing the hand she still held. “I can’t find it if I don’t know what it is.”
A grave look crossed the old face. “You’ll know when you see it, dear. You can’t mistake it.”
The mental images that filled Trixie’s mind were just as terrible as those she had considered before, but she still had no idea where to start. “Please, can you give me a clue? I don’t know what to look for and I’m afraid that you’ve moved it to somewhere else and forgotten that’s what you’ve done.”
“Why should I do that?” Ivy’s voice sounded dismissive. She pulled her hand away. “You’re just pretending that you’ll do what I say. This is the business with Harold all over again.”
“No, it’s not. This is nothing like it,” Trixie answered, though she had no idea what ‘the business with Harold’ had been.
“It is. You said back then that it wouldn’t matter that you were marrying Harold; that you would still see me and you’d write, but you didn’t. You stopped visiting and you stopped writing.” She frowned. “You won’t do this for me, either.”
Trixie wanted to say, ‘I stopped visiting and writing because I died,’ but the extreme wrongness of the statement caused her to hesitate.
“See! You can’t even deny it.” Ivy seemed agitated now. “You won’t find it and keep it safe for me. You’ll just say that you have and everyone will know.”
“Please, Ivy, calm down,” Trixie urged. “I’m sorry for those other things. They were out of my control. I’m doing everything I can to help you now; I just don’t know what you’re asking me to find.”
“Harold did this. Harold took you away and I hardly saw you again.” There was an anger in Ivy’s face now. “This is Harold’s fault.”
Trixie shook her head. “If your mother hadn’t been such a controlling old dragon, you might have had a life of your own and then you wouldn’t have missed me so much!”
As soon as the words were out, she bitterly regretted them. The anger faded from Ivy’s face and was replaced by a look of resignation.
“You never liked Mother, did you?”
“I always wanted better for you than you were getting.” Trixie hoped that Edith really had felt that way and in that moment was almost certain that she had. “I always thought that she was holding you back.”
Ivy nodded. “You don’t have to tell me. I always knew.”
The deep sadness in the old lady’s voice touched Trixie and she felt compelled to do something about it. “Please tell me what it is that you want protected. I really do want to help you, but I can’t if you don’t give me more to go on.”
“Such a small thing,” Ivy murmured, seeming to address someone on the other side of the room. “So small and yet it meant so much.”
Trixie sat and pondered those words for a time, not realising until later that Ivy had drifted off to sleep. She waited by the bed for her to awaken, but she did not. At the time that William had suggested that he pick her up, she went outside and met him. Her fretful expression was enough to make him enquire as to what was wrong.
“I kind of had an argument with Ivy … or, maybe Edith had an argument with Ivy. That’s the second time that’s happened, where I end up saying something that I think Edith might have said, only I have no idea if it’s what she really would have said, or only what I’m thinking I’d say if I was Edith.” She sighed. “I got her calmed down again, but for a while she was really angry with me – or Edith. I’m not sure which.”
“It can be very hard to deal with people when their memory is not what it should be,” he answered. “Try not to take it to heart.”
She nodded and lapsed into silence.
William let her stew for only a few minutes before he commented, “Lisa was very happy to receive those papers. She told me that she’d made a lot of progress and was building a very solid case to support the first researcher’s conclusions.”
Something about that statement brought a sudden thought to Trixie. “Has anyone tried contacting the first researcher?”
He nodded and pulled the car in front of the house. “She died a few years ago and the family got rid of all of the records of her paid research.”
She nodded, only a little disappointed. “I don’t suppose it matters. I’m pretty sure I know who is responsible for the things at the house and how she’s related.”
“That’s not what you told me earlier,” he retorted. “You told me the field was still wide open.”
“Well, with regards to the documents being destroyed yesterday, I don’t think there’s any reason to rule people out on the basis of whether they were in the house at the time, and in that respect, it is still wide open, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t know which of them it is.”
He frowned. “I’ll pretend that I understood that convoluted statement.”
She made a gesture of frustration, not knowing how to express herself better. “I just know. I can’t prove it, but I’m hoping that Lisa will.”
“So, what is it that you’re saying has happened here?” he asked. “I want to make this clear.”
Trixie took a deep breath. “I think that someone who was working in the house one day came across a document – the same report that was in the folder I found last night.”
“Wait! Step back a bit. Where do you propose that she found it?”
She shrugged. “That depends. Did you or someone else look through Ivy’s things right after she had her stroke?”
He shook his head. “It was months before I knew that there was a problem with the will.”
“That makes it easy, then.” She took a moment to think it through, then nodded. “I think that Myrtle kept the first and third reports of the genealogist with her diaries. The second report distressed her enough that she put it out of sight, along with the collaborating evidence. Just before her stroke, Ivy stumbled upon the attic room and read the reports that were in plain sight. She took the third report – which named all of the descendants, both living and dead – and placed it with her important papers in her room.”
“Which would have been easy to find if she had died of the stroke,” he mused, rubbing his chin. “Yes, that sounds logical and in character with all concerned. What do you propose happened next.”
“Well, Ivy had her stroke and, I guess, started having people come in to care for her.”
“Yes, that’s correct. While she was in hospital, she asked me to have some alterations done to the house for her and to get movers to shift her belongings into them. When she came out of hospital, she needed someone in the house with her, so I hired some people to stay with her.”
“Now, at some time after that, but before you found the problem with the will, one of those people found the report and read it – and she recognised her own name.”
“But–” he began, then broke off.
“She took the documents and hid them in the unused top closet. She probably searched everywhere else, looking for other evidence and that’s probably how all of those other papers got up there. She didn’t find the entrance to the attic, though, so she couldn’t hide the things that were up there. When I came and started searching, she started getting frightened and doing strange things as a result.”
“But … I can hardly believe it. What you’re saying points very strongly in one direction. There’s only one person that seems to fit in with this theory and … well, why should she do it, anyway?”
Trixie shrugged. “That’s part of the problem. If I’m right, then this person is trying to stop you from finding her and the reason you’re wanting to find her is so that Ivy can leave something to her when she dies. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me … but then, this person is not really acting in a rational way, either. She’s scared and she’s making silly mistakes.”
He nodded, looking upset. “I guess the only way to find out is to ask her and until we have some evidence I don’t think I want to do that.”
Trixie agreed with that idea and said so. “Ivy’s not in any danger from this woman. She’s cared for her well all this time; she just doesn’t want her connection known, for some reason.”
“You won’t say anything to her, either, if you see her?”
She shook her head. “No, of course not. She’s shown that she’s a bit irrational when alarmed and I don’t need to deal with that kind of thing. I’m going to let her go on thinking she’s getting away with it.”
“Okay. We’ll wait for Lisa’s report, then, and see if there are any familiar names on it.” He smiled. “You take the rest of the day off, okay? I think you worked enough for today last night.”
“I’ve just got one thing to do first. Ivy eventually gave me a little clue to what she wanted protected, so I’m going up to take another look in the attic.”
He glanced heavenwards. “Please, be careful Trixie!”
She grinned. “I will.”
Thanking him for the lift, she got out of the car and went into the house. This time, she made sure not only to bolt the door after her, but to make a tour of the rest of the house before setting foot on the attic stairs. She reached the top without incident and went straight to the set of shelves. Carefully, she inspected each of the bottles and jars, confirming that only two of them had anything inside. These, she carried down into the light. She took them into her room and locked the door, feeling paranoid for doing so, but somehow justified in her actions. She also glanced under the bed, inside the closet and into the shower stall of the adjoining bathroom, but found nothing untoward.
Satisfied that she was alone, she took two sheets of paper and tipped a jar out onto each. A moment’s inspection showed that the paper-clips did not hide anything of worth, so she tipped them back into their container. Among the nails and screws in the other jar were a variety of small objects. Trixie scooped them up a few at a time and dropped the ones she did not want onto the other sheet of paper. Picture hooks, springs and nuts and bolts piled up, along with a variety of similar items. Soon, one paper held these and the other a varied selection of nails and screws – plus a small object wrapped in paper.
This had been almost invisible among the largely metallic items, as it had picked up a covering of dirt and rust. As soon as Trixie touched it, she knew that this was what she sought. With gentle fingers she unwrapped it and revealed a diamond engagement ring. Inside, she could see an engraving: THS+REC 12-12-36.
For a long moment, Trixie stared at the ring. In a way, it reminded her of another ring, which she had not seen in several years. That ring had been the solution to a puzzle; it had weighed down a runaway’s note; it had secured her brother’s car when he had selflessly given up the money to buy it. Years before, however, it had been the symbol of love between a couple; and it had been a painful reminder of love lost.
Trixie wondered what history this ring held. REC was surely Rosemary Everett-Cooper, but the identity of THS was a mystery that Trixie thought she could not solve. She wondered what had happened to him and why the ring was here and not returned to him. There could be no good answer to that question. She yearned to know the story of Rosemary’s lost love, but could not think of a way to find out; there had certainly not been a mention in any of the diaries, so perhaps Myrtle never knew about it.
Setting that problem aside as unsolvable, she turned her mind to Ivy’s words and tried to reconcile them with what she had found. While the ring was nothing like the dead body she had half-expected to find after hearing Ivy’s initial request, it did fit the definition of a terrible secret, when seen from Ivy’s point of view. She hoped that she would have the chance to ask Ivy about it, as she may know more of the story.
Frowning, she carefully tucked the ring into a safe place, then took the two jars back to the attic. The investigation, from her point of view, was now at a stand-still. She had nothing left to do inside the house and, until Ivy recovered, nothing more to talk about. In her own mind, she was certain of the identity of the person who wanted the enquiry stopped, but she now relied on someone else to find the evidence to prove it.
Trixie began to struggle with a deep feeling of dissatisfaction. She went and prepared some lunch for herself and ate it absent-mindedly. She had almost finished the work that she was being employed to do; this did not bode well for the rest of her summer. She had also made little to no progress on the personal problems which had come into such sharp focus in the time she had been here. In short, she had not done herself any favours.
From that low point, she could only go up and her natural tendency was to be positive, so her thoughts began to change. That this job had given her new insights into old problems there was no doubt. For that she felt that it was worth every minute. She had also helped William, who had little chance of solving the problem on his own, and who needed protection against the more ugly truths that were to be found in this house. He knew that there were terrible secrets, but he also knew that there was no need for him to learn them. In a way, Trixie envied him his restraint – in his place, she would not have been so wise.
Still thinking little of what she was doing, she cleaned up the mess she had made and wandered back to her room. By force of habit, she checked her email, but nothing there held her attention. She checked her phone, as well, just in case she had missed any calls or messages, but there were none. She remembered that William had told her to take the rest of the day off, but could not think of anything that she wanted to do, or anywhere she could go.
Shaking herself of this unprofitable frame of mind, she picked up her keys and went outside for a walk. At least it would get her out of the house and perhaps she could be free of the oppressive atmosphere that she was beginning to feel there.
When she returned, half an hour later, it was with a much calmer frame of mind. She reflected, as she entered the house, that she must have been spending too much time indoors lately. Even though it was rather hot outside and she had been forced to stick to the side of the street where there was the most shade, she felt much better than she had earlier. She resolved not to make the same mistake in future.