Brother and sister looked to one another for answers.
And now that she had knocked them off balance, Mallory continued, addressing Cleo. „Maybe it was something your daughter said to him? Is she here?“
„She’s not at home,“ said Lionel Winter.
Mallory understood his meaning. His niece was not at home to the police.
The detective pulled out a small notebook. „A few questions came up in our investigation. You had a younger sister who survived the massacre.“ She looked down at the notebook page. There was nothing written there. „Sally? Was that her name? I understand that she ran away from home.“
Cleo wore a frozen smile. „Oh, the dinner party. That’s what set Charles Butler off – all those stories.“ She spoke to Mallory, but would not look at her anymore. „Lionel and I were away at school when Sally left.“
„Yes,“ said the detective, „you’re always away when things happen in this house.“ She studied more blank pages in her notebook, then faced Lionel. „You fired Sally’s nurse shortly before the girl ran away?“
He nodded.
Mallory waited for him to fill in the silence with nervous explanations, but soon realized that this was not going to happen. He was simply tolerating her presence in the house. She went for the soft spot, moving her chair closer to his sister. She leaned toward Cleo Winter-Smyth. „But, ma’am, you said you weren’t here. Are you sure that Sally ran away? Who was looking after her if the nurse – “
„Our guardian.“ Lionel raised his voice. „He was looking after Sally that day. And yes, we’re quite sure that she ran away.“
While sister and brother were silently communing with one another, Mallory caught sight of Bitty Smyth’s reflection in a mirror that angled toward the grand staircase. The tiny woman was gripping the banister and shaking her head. Mallory pressed on with Cleo and Lionel. „So there must’ve been a report filed with Missing Persons. What year was that?“
Brother and sister were having identical reactions, and Mallory knew they were doing the math in their heads. This was the response of teenagers forced by a bartender to recall the date of a fictional birth on a fake driver’s license.
So much pressure counting backward.
Cleo fielded this one. „It was maybe fifty years ago.“ She turned to her brother. „Lionel?“
„Give or take a few years,“ he said. „Our guardian would have filed the report with the police.“
The detective appreciated guile. Prescient Lionel Winter had looked ahead to the next problem. When the police came back to tell him that no missing-person report had been found, then that bit of negligence could be blamed on a dead man, Uncle James.
Mallory added Sally Winter to the body count for Winter House. „That clears up most of my loose ends.“ She produced a yellow pad, the format for a murderer’s confession on a typical day in Special Crimes Unit. „If you could just write out the details and the dates in your own words. Then sign it – both of you.“
She waited out the minutes it took for Lionel’s terse written account of Sally Winter’s disappearance. Glancing at the mirror again, she caught sight of Bitty crouched below the banister rail on the second-floor landing – odd behavior for a lawyer. That little woman should be rushing down the stairs to caution her mother and her uncle against signing anything for the police.
Too late.
Lionel was done committing this small crime, the falsification of a police statement, and both signatures were on the page. Mallory read the carefully printed words. The faint erasure of numbers was barely visible in the margin. He had finally worked out a year that would match up with the dinner party conversation. „There’s something odd about this date. If Sally Winter ran away forty-eight years ago, she would ‘ve been just under ten years old. Now that’s odd. Most runaways are teenagers. I’ve never – “
„Sally might’ve wandered off,“ said Cleo. And she continued on in this classic mistake of explaining too much. „Our uncle wasn’t very good with children.“ The woman looked down at her folded hands, and the tone of her voice was more wistful now. „I had always hoped that some good Samaritan had found Sally – lost, maybe hurt. And maybe – “
Lionel Winter silenced his sister with one look.
„Right,“ said Mallory, not bothering to disguise a tone of disbelief. However, Cleo’s last words had the ring of something true. „Well, I’ll check it out with Missing Persons.“
The detective stood up and walked to the foot of the stairs, pretending to admire a large painting hanging high above her on the second-floor landing. Below it, Bitty Smyth was crouching behind the rail. Startled, the little woman slowly rose to a stand. Though there was an ocean of air between them, with Mallory’s every step forward, Bitty stepped back. In this fashion, the smaller woman was driven to the wall. She edged slowly toward the door of an open room and disappeared. The door closed softly.
How much had the little eavesdropper learned over all the years of growing up in this house? Was this how Bitty knew where to look for Nedda, a woman who had disappeared long before she was born? What other conversations had she overheard this way?
Mallory turned her attention to another large oil painting, as if she had needed this closer inspection of the two young men posed there. Charles Butler had described this portrait of the Winter brothers as a cartoon. She turned to face the curious stares of Cleo and Lionel, and then walked back to them, killing their hopes of a quick end to this interview. „Let’s talk about the day of the massacre.“
Lionel was the first to recover from that little bomb. „There’s no possible relevance to – “
„I’ll decide that. I don’t have much to work with. I can put in a request for the file and the evidence boxes, but the more I dig, the more chance of a leak to the news media. You want the reporters to know that Red Winter came home?“
A suddenly alarmed Cleo reached out to her brother, stopping just short of physical contact. On some level, a silent conversation was going on between them, for now Lionel nodded in agreement with some unvoiced pact, and his sister lost that frightened look in her eyes.
„Of course,“ said Lionel, addressing the detective, „we’ll do whatever we can to avoid publicity. When we were children, we couldn’t go anywhere without reporters chasing us. Once, Cleo was nearly trampled in the street. After that, we were sent away to school, and all our summers were spent in the Hamptons. It was years before my sister could live in this house without nightmares.“
Good.
Mallory was satisfied that, under the threat of headlines, they would not be insulating themselves with a battery of lawyers. „You survived the massacre, so I’m guessing you two weren’t in the house that day.“ She sat down again, crossing her legs, leaning back and making it clear that she had all day long to hurt them. „As I said before, you’re never home – when things happen here.“
Cleo stood up and crossed the room, heading for the stairs and moving in the manner of one who has lost her sight, hands gripping the furniture until she found the banister. She climbed the stairs as slowly as an invalid.
Mallory gripped the arms of her chair, as if preparing to pursue the woman, but this was only a threat of body language.
„Please let her go,“ said Lionel. „My sister was only five years old. She can’t remember the details of that day.“ He looked down at his folded hands. „And I can’t forget them. It was a pure accident that Cleo and I survived. We didn’t plan to be gone that Sunday. I had a fight with my father and stormed out of the house. I’d only walked a few blocks before I realized that little Cleo was following me. She was crying. My father’s temper always had that effect on her. I took her to the park for a Punch and Judy show. You know – the puppets? Then I hired a rowboat, and we drifted around the lake for another hour or so. Neither of us wanted to go home.“