It was heavy, highly ornamented with inlay, but the heaviness was of the wood itself; nothing rattled when he shook the box. He set it down on the desk, took a breath, and opened the hinged top.
She was going to tell me anyhow, he thought.
He looked in and saw a small pile of newspaper clippings instead of the old letters he had expected. He reached in for the one on top and read the headline before he got it out of the box. NURSE SUSPECTED IN OFFICER’S DEATH. The article had been clipped from the front page of the Eyewitness. He took out the second: SHOULD THIS WOMAN BE CHARGED? Beneath the headline was a picture of twenty-year-old Barbara Deane, barely recognizable, in a white uniform and a starched cap. ONLY PERSON TO HAVE ACCESS WAS NURSE DEANE, said the next headline. Tom blushed—he felt as if he had walked into her room and found her naked. There were other articles below these, and all of them accused Barbara Deane of murder. He barely looked at them—maybe Lamont von Heilitz would have read them, but Tom felt that he had already gone far enough.
He leaned over to replace the articles and saw two sheets of yellowing notepaper folded at the bottom of the box, nearly the same shade as the wood. He touched them, afraid that they might crumble, and felt stiff creamy paper. He picked them up, put down the little heap of clippings, and unfolded the sheets of notepaper on top of them.
I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE, AND YOU HAVE TO BE STOPPED, read the first. The ink had turned the brown of dried blood, but the large printed capitals shouted louder than the headlines on the old copies of the Eyewitness. He set it down and opened the second. His throat was dry, and his heart pounded. THIS HAS GONE ON TOO LONG YOU WILL PAY FOR YOUR SIN.
Tom dropped the yellowing piece of paper into the box as if it had stung him. He swallowed. He reached back in and picked it up again. The T’s had been crossed with a faintly curved line, and the S’s slanted. A woman had written the notes, and he knew who she was.
He felt absolutely afraid for a second, as if Barbara Deane were about to rush through the door, screaming at him. I know what you are. He slid the two notes together with shaking hands and placed them carefully on the bottom of the box. Then he laid the clippings on top of them and closed the box. He picked up the box and realized that he did not know if it had faced forward or backward. Sweat broke out on his forehead. He carried the box to the closet and stepped inside. Tom put it on the shelf and slid it far down. He thought he remembered that it had been all the way against the closet walclass="underline" which way had it faced? He wiped his forehead on his arm and turned the box around, then around again. The house creaked, and his heart tried to jump out of his chest. He slid the box snugly against the wall, facing forward, stepped away, and closed the closet door. Then he wondered if it really had been closed all the way. He opened it and closed it again, then opened it an inch. He groaned, and shut it.
He turned around and saw his dusty footprints on the wooden floor, stamped as clearly as Fritz’s on the track.
Tom yanked his handkerchief from his pocket and walked backward, erasing his tracks all the way to the door. Drops of sweat fell on the dull wood. They left shiny traces when he wiped them. He reached the threshold and backed out of the room and closed the door.
He went down the hall to his bathroom and splashed cold water on his face. He wanted to get out of the lodge—to run away. He looked up at his dripping face in the mirror and said, “Jeanine Thielman wrote those notes.” He dried his face and remembered tense Barbara Deane opening the door to the lodge on his first day in Eagle Lake; and remembered the relaxed, friendly Barbara Deane who had lied and lied when she served him dinner.
I know what it is to be unjustly accused.
I wasn’t his type, for one thing.
He walked slowly down the stairs, still afraid that she was going to walk in the front door. She would know in an instant what he had done, if she saw his face.
Tom collapsed on the couch. Barbara had not been unjustly accused, she had killed the policeman in the hospital by giving him the wrong medication; probably Maxwell Redwing had ordered her to kill him. Shady Mount Hospital was where the people who ran Mill Walk put its embarrassments when they wanted them to die. It was the most respectable hospital on the island, the safest place on Mill Walk for a discreet little murder: the Redwings went there themselves, didn’t they?
Tom’s grandfather believed in her innocence and saved her skin, got her out of Mill Walk, and parked her in the village of Eagle Lake. When Jeanine Thielman accused and threatened her, Barbara Deane had killed her.
Which meant that she had killed Anton Goetz too. Tom did not know how this had happened, but a strong young woman like Barbara Deane could have knocked down a cripple … maybe, Tom thought, Goetz had been blackmailing Barbara Deane. Maybe he had even seen her shoot Jeanine Thielman, and helped her hide the body in the lake. His mother had seen him moving through the woods, sneaking back to his lodge for the old curtains. After von Heilitz accused him of the murder, he had gone back to confront her, and she had killed him too. And ever since, she had lived quietly in the village of Eagle Lake. She had even gone on delivering babies.
He told himself to calm down when it occurred to him that Barbara Deane might have shot at him through the window, imagining that he had seen the notes at the bottom of the box.
But he knew one more thing Lamont von Heilitz did not, and it was the crucial fact in Jeanine Thielman’s murder: she had died because she had written those notes.
He was still trying to figure out what to do about the notes three hours later when someone began battering on his door. He jumped up from the couch and opened the door. Fritz Redwing nearly fell into the room. Sarah Spence gave him another push to move him out of the doorway. “Get inside, get out of the way,” she said. “We walked all the way around the lake to avoid being seen, let’s not blow it at the last minute.” She closed the door behind her and leaned against it, smiling at Tom. “I make all these clever plans for meetings in out of the way places at night, and when Tom Pasmore, who writes a letter a day to Lamont von Heilitz but never—checks—his—mailbox—finally works things out, he has me come to his house in broad daylight.”
“I’m sorry,” Tom said.
“Don’t you put those precious letters in the mailbox?”
“I just hand them to the mailman,” Tom said. “How do you know I write to him?”
“He’s your hero, isn’t he? The one who started you off playing detective? I saw how you looked when Hattie Bascombe talked about him.”
“Von Heilitz, von Heilitz,” Fritz said. “Why is everybody talking about him all of a sudden?”
Neither Tom nor Sarah bothered to look at him.
“I read your letters a million times,” Tom said.
“What letters?” Sarah asked. “I never wrote you any letters. I don’t have to write letters to boys. I can’t even imagine doing such a stupid thing.”
“Oh, great,” Fritz said.
“Didn’t I used to know you once? A long time ago? So much has happened in the meantime, it’s kind of vague.”
“ ‘In the meantime’—is that the period when you wrote me every day, and arranged meetings in out of the way places?”
“No, it’s the period in which I became betrothed,” she said. “Or was it betrothed to be betrothed? Meeting people in out of the way places is far, far behind me.”