In the Shadow of Lakecrest(76)

Shaky with nerves, I pulled on a silk robe and glanced at the clock. Nearly four in the morning. Hank would be arriving for work in a few hours. It wouldn’t be fair, asking him to risk his job for my sake. But he was the only person at Lakecrest who might be willing to help. I rushed to my dressing table and opened my jewelry box. It had been empty a year ago when Blanche gave it to me as a wedding present. Now it sparkled with gold and silver and glittering gemstones. Each piece was a token of Matthew’s love.

I’d put away money, too, after my illfated attempt to run home to Ma. A bill here and there taken from Matthew’s billfold or slipped out of the drawer where Hannah kept the household accounts. I flipped through the roll. Two hundred dollars, enough to cover at least a few months of Hank’s salary. I put the money in one pocket of my robe and a handful of diamond bracelets in the other. Hopefully it would be enough to convince him.

I crept back to my bedroom and stuck my head out the doorway. I heard footsteps and the distinctive creak of the front door opening. Matthew was leaving, which meant Hannah would be back upstairs any minute. I snuck out into the second-floor hallway, assessing each room I passed. Could I fit under one of the beds? Slip behind a thick curtain? I heard Hannah’s heels tapping up the marble stairs. She’d discover me instantly if I started rummaging around one of the guest rooms. The only way to gain more time was to keep going, up the service stairs to the third floor. I didn’t know which of the wooden steps were loose, and I cringed when one made a squeaky groan. My only advantage was that Hannah would be heading in the opposite direction, toward my bedroom. I had a few minutes before she started searching for me in earnest.

I’d been to the servants’ wing before, during those rainy days when I’d wandered around in search of Lakecrest’s secrets. It must have been bustling back in Obadiah and Cecily’s time. Now, the rooms were silent and deserted, Spartan spaces with two beds, one dresser, and little else. I kept going toward the attic that took up the other half of the top floor. In the daytime, it was relatively bright, with square windows set into the dormers, but now it was pitch black and almost impossible to navigate. I stumbled against an old rocking chair, sucking in my breath to avoid crying out when my toe twisted against the wood. I sank down on top of a trunk, panting. This momentary ache was nothing compared to the labor pains that would be assaulting me at any minute.

Though it was stifling hot and I was damp with sweat, I began to shiver. There’d be a search on for me by now. Hannah and Edna were the only ones at home—Gerta and Alice, like Hank, didn’t start work until eight—and it would take the two of them some time to check all the rooms on the first and second floors. But sooner or later, they’d come up here.

The sky began to lighten with the first hints of dawn, and I crept over to a window. To my great relief, there was a latch, and I was able to pull it open. Fresh air drifted in like a gift from God, and I stuck my face out to drink it in. It was going to be a beautiful sunrise; the sky over the lake was already tinted with pink and gold. Outside, the estate spread around me in all its late-summer beauty: lush trees and flower beds formed patterns of green and yellow and red around the swirling pathways. In the distance, I saw an enormous slab of bare earth where the Labyrinth had once stood. There was no rubble to mark the spot, not a single brick. Nothing to show it had ever existed.

For the first time, I saw a small building the Labyrinth had previously kept hidden. Modest, with only two windows and a sagging roof. Karel’s cottage, I guessed. Eerie, to think of him living there all those years, so close to Cecily’s body. The woman he’d killed? The woman he’d loved?

Possibly both.

With the attic gradually getting lighter, I was better able to search for a hiding place. I scoured the dusty piles of furniture and lamps and paintings, careful not to disturb anything that might make noise. I saw the trunk I’d gone through months ago, when I’d found the scrapbook of Cecily’s newspaper clippings. There hadn’t been anything else interesting inside, only stacks of musty bedding. I looked at the trunk and suddenly thought of Ma. It looked like the one she’d brought on her visit, the one with “O’Meara” painted on the front. I examined the trunk more closely and gently pushed aside the large mirror leaning against the back. There I saw what I’d hardly dared to hope for: the name Cecily Lemont.

It was hers. I flipped it open and saw the piles of cloth I’d tossed aside so carelessly before. I let one piece of fabric fall open and realized it was a dress, one of the white gowns Cecily and her acolytes must have worn for their ceremonies at the Temple. I searched through the stack; there were at least ten of them. Some had faint remnants of mud along the hem. There was a quilt, a few blankets—had these come from Cecily’s bed? I pawed through them, hoping to feel some lingering trace of her. But there was nothing.

From far away, I heard the thump of footsteps coming up the service stairs. What an idiot I’d been, wasting time on Cecily! I hurled everything back into the trunk and closed the top, then glanced frantically around the attic. I saw a grandfather clock wedged in a corner, one of its hands dangling off. Paintings leaned in a stack around it, and a few were big enough that I might be able to squeeze myself behind them.

Thud. Thud. The steps were pausing at each of the servants’ rooms. Getting closer. Trying not to let fear overwhelm my caution, I tiptoed to the clock and carefully leaned one of the paintings to the side. Wincing from the effort, I crouched down and crawled to the base of the clock, then pulled the canvases around me as a shelter. It wasn’t long afterward that I heard the floor across the room creaking. Someone had come in.