In the Shadow of Lakecrest(34)

“Rather delish, isn’t he?” Marjorie said. “I’m not sure how he figured into Aunt Cecily’s raging orgies—or whatever went on out here—but I feel sorry for him, stuck here all alone.”

She walked over to the statue and ran her palm along the figure’s muscular arm. The icy marble made her hand tremble.

“Aunt Cecily used to call me Artemis and Matthew Apollo. Do you know the story?”

I shook my head.

“She was the goddess of the hunt, and he was the god of light. The divine twins.”

Marjorie said the phrase with a smirk, but it struck me as an apt description. She and her brother did have an aura that set them apart from ordinary folks, something more than good looks or the elegant crispness of their voices. They carried themselves with an easy, serene aloofness that seemed at times otherworldly.

“Were you and Matthew very alike as children?” I asked.

“Were we ever!” Marjorie said. “Sometimes it felt like I could read Matts’s mind.” She glanced at me, smiling. “Don’t worry. I can’t anymore. The secrets of your married life are safe.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” I was so prim that I might have been Hannah herself.

Marjorie laughed. “I have a feeling you aren’t the prissy little miss everyone thinks you are. No girl could keep Matthew’s interest for more than a few weeks before you came along. You must have a few tricks up your sleeve.”

“I love him,” I said defiantly.

“Do you?” she asked, as if I’d just declared a belief in unicorns or fairies. I remembered Matthew telling me how mothers had pushed their daughters at him. He’d never had to pursue anyone, and his loyalty had never been tested. Was he capable of sticking out a marriage through thick and thin? I wasn’t sure.

“You don’t have to pretend with me,” Marjorie said. “I know what you’re up to.”

For one terrifying moment, I thought she’d figured it out and that I’d be revealed for who I really was.

“You’re out here because you want to solve the great family mystery, don’t you?” she asked. “The fate of Cecily Lemont! Tempting, I know. But it’s a waste of time.”

Relief washed over me. “Why?” I asked.

“Because there’s no answer.”

Marjorie’s bitter tone took me aback. She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a cigarette. She smoked with an elegant grace that made the puffs of white an extension of herself, a billowing caress that swirled around her slender body and framed the angles of her face.

“I loved Aunt Cecily, I really did. She was quite magical. She could turn an afternoon at the beach into a pirate adventure, and before long, you’d be digging like crazy for a hidden chest of gold. But there were other times . . . times she’d stay in bed, refuse meals. I’d take up her tea, and she wouldn’t say a word when I walked in or even look at me! It was cruel.”

I thought of Matthew, skulking away to the office after supper, as he’d done off and on for weeks. The door was ajar one night, wide enough for me to peek inside and see Matthew at his desk, head in hands. Not a paper in sight. I’d tiptoed away, feeling helpless.

“There was one time I’ll always remember,” Marjorie went on. “Not long before she vanished, Aunt Cecily had a terrible fight with my father. She was shrieking like a madwoman, and I thought she really had gone bonkers. She locked herself in her room and stayed there for two days. I knocked and knocked and begged to come in, but she never answered.”

Matthew had told me something similar, about Cecily acting odd around the time of her disappearance. But he’d said nothing about a fight with Jasper, and Mabel had made it sound as if he tolerated Cecily’s activities.

“When I heard Aunt Cecily was gone, I was sad, of course,” Marjorie was saying, “but it was also a relief. I spent so much time worrying about her. It’s very hard on a child, living with that kind of uncertainty.”

“I know.”

It came out unthinkingly, and Marjorie gave me a curious look. For a moment, I thought she was going to ask me what I meant. Anyone else would have. But Marjorie wasn’t much interested in stories that didn’t center on her.

“Come this way,” she said. “I want to show you something.”

Marjorie led me through an opening in the opposite direction from where we’d walked in. A shadowy ribbon of cigarette smoke floated alongside us as we turned enough corners to make me thoroughly confused. After a few minutes of what felt like aimless wandering, Marjorie stopped in the middle of a passage that looked as if it stretched the entire width of the Labyrinth.

“It’s here somewhere,” she mumbled, stepping aside and running her hands along the wall. She pushed and prodded, then let out a self-satisfied grunt as she pried one of the bricks loose.

“Can’t have a maze without a secret passageway.” She pulled out the brick and nodded toward the empty space where it had once sat. “There’s a hook in here, and once you unlatch it . . . presto!”

A section of the wall swung out, away from us, and I could see the wintery gray expanse of water beyond. We stepped outside, onto a promontory overlooking the lake. The vegetation here was nearly knee-high, but looking down the hill abutting the shore, I could see the remains of a trail leading downward.