In the Shadow of Lakecrest(42)
“What are you doing?”
I looked up and saw Hannah staring at the mess of papers around me. Appalled.
“I . . . I was curious,” I stammered, “to know more about the family’s history.”
“So you decided to go through our confidential papers?”
Honestly, she was acting like she’d caught me digging around in her jewelry box. My last name’s Lemont, I wanted to say. Don’t I have a right to know what’s going on? But I held back and summoned a meek, helpless expression. “I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“Oh, bosh. You knew exactly what you were doing. Sneaking around behind my back. I’m on to you, my dear. And I can make things very unpleasant if you stir up trouble.”
Hannah had often made me feel self-conscious or irritated. But I’ll always remember the way she glared at me that afternoon, full of self-righteous fury, because it was the first time I truly felt scared.
Drip. Drip. The sound kept mocking me, in my bathroom, in the morning room, in the halls. The dankness seemed to have settled into my very bones, and my throat grew raspy from a cough I couldn’t shake. Lakecrest was a Frankenstein’s monster of architectural castoffs, and the miserable weather seemed to bring it to life. The windows rattled and groaned with the wind, and steam hissed from the bedroom radiators in a steady, eerie shriek. The house’s damp, moldy odor, as inescapable as the leaking water, added to the overall impression of decay, as if the building was rotting away from the inside.
The gloomy library was one of my least favorite places in the house, but at least it was warm. There were no windows to let in a draft, just shelf after shelf of dusty books. Though I’d never felt like curling up and reading on its moth-eaten couch, I found myself lingering there one afternoon, as I searched for another book of Lemont family lore to read with Hannah.
The library was one of the least-used rooms in the house, so it was a surprise to hear footsteps approaching as I was crouched in a corner, examining a shelf near the floor. I’d just pulled out an intriguing volume titled The Ways of Madness, written by Dr. Martin Rieger himself, when I looked up to see who’d come in. Edna was halfway through the room before she saw me. She stopped abruptly, sending dishes clattering on the tray in her hands. I stared, eyebrows raised.
“Mrs. Lemont.” She said the name crisply when she spoke to Hannah, but with me, she dragged it out grudgingly. As if I didn’t deserve it.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“It’s nothing to do with you,” Edna muttered.
“Oh no?” I usually bent over backward to be polite to the servants, as people who haven’t been raised with help often do. But not that day. My voice was terse. “I do live here.”
“You’d better speak to the senior Mrs. Lemont,” Edna said, turning aside.
I reached out and put my hand against the tray to stop her. “It’s Mr. Matthew you should be worried about, not her. If he were to find out you were up to any funny business . . .”
It was enough. Edna had been raised in the real world, just like me. She knew when alliances needed to shift.
“All right, then,” she said gruffly. “But she doesn’t need to know I’ve told you.”
I slipped the book into my sweater and cinched my belt tight to secure it, watching as Edna walked around the couch to the back of the room. She tapped a foot against the bottom of a bookshelf, and it swung outward with a creak, revealing a set of wooden steps. Of course, I thought. Obadiah would have insisted his mansion be built with a hidden room or two.
Edna clicked a switch at the top of the stairs, and a dim light filtered upward. I walked down into a narrow, cramped chamber that smelled of wet dirt; the only thing I could see was a dark-gray metal door. A root cellar? Edna nudged past me and pulled a key from her apron pocket. She unlocked the door and pushed it open, then stepped back so I could enter first.
It was a prison cell, or what I’d always imaged one would look like. A single bed sat lengthwise against the wall, with a porcelain chamber pot peeking out from underneath. A wooden chair had been tipped sideways onto the floor. Next to the door was a small table covered with bottles that gave off a tangy, medicinal smell. I saw a figure on the bed, nearly covered by a thin gray blanket. Not moving. I took a step forward, then two. That’s when I realized the person lying in front of me was Marjorie.
She seemed to have aged a dozen years. Matted chunks of hair clung to her cheeks, and her skin had a sick, grayish tint. Her eyes stared at me, blank.
“Kate,” she said. No emotion.
It took me a few seconds to find my voice. “What happened?”
Marjorie erupted with a sharp, barking laugh that echoed against the walls.
I turned around to look at Edna, standing in the doorway. “What’s going on?”
She walked past me without answering. She picked up the knocked-over chair and retrieved a bowl and cup from the floor. Both tin, I noted. Unbreakable. She set down a fresh, identical set of dishes next to the bed, then poured out a spoonful of dark-pink liquid from one of the dozen bottles clustered on the table. Marjorie gulped the medicine down with a wince.
Her duty completed, Edna said she’d wait outside. After she’d closed the door forcefully behind her, I pulled the chair over to the bed and sat down.
“I don’t understand. Your mother told me you were in Palm Beach.”