Mrs. Frick looked up at her daughter, then over at her son. “I do remember, but he’s been so ill . . .” She trailed off and turned to the lawyer. “What does this one say?”
“This one,” he answered, “is the only one. Let me make that perfectly clear.” He began reading in a monotone, perhaps hoping to offset the volatile effect the document might produce.
Mr. Childs interrupted after only one page. “Summarize it, please. Get to the point.”
Mr. Smith cleared his throat. “Very well. According to the will, Mrs. Frick receives life tenancy of One East Seventieth Street and the Eagle Rock residence, as well as one million dollars outright and five million dollars in trust.”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Mr. Childs. “A paltry sum.”
Mr. Smith didn’t answer, just waited for Mr. Childs to settle. Mrs. Frick stayed mute, although her hands clenched and unclenched in her lap.
“Mr. Childs will receive one million outright and two million in trust.”
“No! What?” Mr. Childs cried out, and his wife went pale.
Miss Helen bit her lip as she tended to do when she was excited. “What else?”
“For you, Miss Helen, there will be five million outright, title to Eagle Rock and its contents upon your mother’s death, title to the Pittsburgh mansion, and, um, several million in securities.”
Mr. Childs pulled his lips back, baring his teeth. “Good God. How much, total, does my sister get?”
“Thirty-eight million dollars.”
Even Lillian was shocked at that. The unevenness of the distribution was cruel. Mr. Frick’s wife and son were being punished, it appeared. Yet for most of her life, Miss Helen had acted as her father’s confidante, more than her mother, and certainly more than her brother. So perhaps this was her reward.
Mr. Childs rose. “Mr. Smith, I demand to see his revised will. Not this one. This one is invalid.”
Mr. Smith tapped an index finger on the document. “This is it, I’m afraid. He did reach out to me in late November, and I assumed it was to go over his final requests. But then he fell ill, and asked to postpone it.”
“That’s not right! What will people say when they see that the younger sister, who doesn’t even have an heir, who is worthless, gets everything?”
“Worthless?” Miss Helen looked down her nose at Mr. Childs. “They will say Father knew what he was doing, and that he knew that I would carry on his legacy as he wished, not waste his money on fossils and rocks.”
Mr. Childs glanced over at his wife, who gave a tiny shake of her head.
“Don’t,” she said quietly. “Not now. We don’t know for sure yet.”
“What’s that?” asked Miss Helen. “You can contest the will if you like, but Mr. Smith says Papsie didn’t draw up another one.”
“Because you made sure he couldn’t.” Mr. Childs rose and began pacing the room, his words punctuated with a finger that he jabbed in Miss Helen’s direction. “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to bring this up, but circumstances have forced me to.”
“Bring up what, my dear?” said Mrs. Frick.
“The nurse approached me the morning he died. She said she noticed a faint film of residue, much like when a sleeping draft is added to water, in the bottom of his drinking glass. The one that Helen gave him right before he stopped breathing.”
Miss Helen laughed. “That’s ridiculous. I gave him water. I knew he’d been given a draft already several hours earlier.”
“The nurse came to me, concerned that you’d administered another.”
Miss Helen looked over at Lillian, as if for confirmation. “It was a glass of water. I remember seeing it by the sink. You gave it to me.”
All eyes turned to Lillian.
“Yes. I remember.” She pictured the glass, three-quarters full, perched on the edge of the sink. A simple glass of water. “I picked it up from the edge of the sink and gave it to you.”
Lillian remembered the way Mr. Frick had gone limp not long after drinking from the glass. Miss Helen was probably replaying the moment in her own mind as well.
“If there was a sleeping draft in it, then the nurse made a mistake,” Miss Helen insisted, her face flushing with anger. “A deadly one. I’ll have her license revoked if that’s so, I’ll have her tossed in jail.”
“The nurse said she didn’t leave any draft out for him,” answered Mr. Childs. “Which was why she was so worried when she noticed the residue. She told me he passed away soon after he’d taken it.”
“How dare you!” Miss Helen shuddered. “I would never do such a thing. I thought it was water. Besides—” She turned to Lillian.
“It was Miss Lilly who went into the bathroom before me.”
Chapter Seventeen
1966
What the hell are you doing in my house?”
The screeching woman came to a sudden halt ten feet away from Veronica and Joshua, just as a chunk of snow slid off the skylight with a crash. In the morning light, Veronica could see that she was dressed like a Sicilian widow, in a black blazer, a long black skirt, and chunky black oxfords on her feet. The only touch of color was a green silk scarf tied in a knot at the base of her throat. She stood unsteadily, a dark figure against the white marble of their surroundings. Her hair was piled in a bun at the back of her head, several frizzy tendrils escaping behind her ears. The skin on her face was mottled with age, the eyelids layered with folds, the lips thin and straight. And eyes as blue as robins’ eggs.
“Who are you?” she demanded, shifting her weight from foot to foot, like an elderly lightweight boxer.
This wasn’t a prowler, a ghost, or the police. Only a barmy old lady.
Joshua stepped closer and Veronica moved with him. But the woman misread their approach as an attack and burst forward again, screaming, hands held out in front of her, palms flat. Before they could move out of the way, she was on them.
Joshua barely registered her touch, but Veronica, wearing the damned kitten heels, was unable to brace herself. She stepped back to stop from falling, but something banged into the backs of her knees, and before she knew it, she’d landed right on her bottom.
In the fountain.
It was only filled a couple of inches with water, but the shock of cold and wet, along with the humiliation of the unladylike position she was in, her feet hanging over the lip of the fountain, knees wide, was more than she could take. Who was this screaming banshee, and how dare she? “Get me out!”
Joshua grabbed her by her arms and helped her back to her feet. The water had soaked through her jeans and was now dripping onto the marble floor.
“That was absolutely unnecessary,” Veronica sputtered.
The old lady didn’t seem bothered in the slightest. “What the hell are you doing in my house?”
“I was trying to answer you,” said Joshua, “when you came at us. I’m an intern here, Joshua Lawrence. This is Veronica. She’s a model who worked at a photo shoot here two days ago.”
The woman sniffed at them. “Right. I heard the board approved that. Wouldn’t have happened if I were still involved, I can tell you that. Is it still going on? You think this is some kind of nightclub, don’t you?”
“No. We both got locked in. We’re waiting for Sam to arrive and let us out.”
The mention of the security guard’s name calmed her slightly.
“Are you locked in as well, Miss Helen?” asked Joshua.
So this was the infamously difficult Miss Helen. It was hard to imagine this woman planting clues for a lover around the house, or writing those coy lines of verse. Maybe they had it all wrong.
“Good God, no, I didn’t lock myself in,” Miss Helen said. “Why would I be so stupid as to do that? I stayed over next door in the library; only an idiot would try to drive in this snow. Last night I noticed lights flickering in here and figured it was the night watchman. Then, just now, I remembered that we haven’t had a night watchman since 1931, which meant something nefarious was going on. I came down to investigate.”