The Vanishing Stair (Truly Devious #2)(71)

Albert Ellingham had paid a small fortune for the clock. It pleased him to look at it, so solid, so storied, the green the color of pine.

The wall of French doors that led out onto the patio and down to the garden was heavily curtained. Albert had been keeping the curtains closed since he had drained the lake. He could not bear to look at the hole in the ground, the one that looked like a grave. Today, though, he opened all of them wide, and the view rewarded his courage. The Vermont sky was a particularly perfect blue, and the trees all around painted in golds and reds. The fine days of the season would soon be over, and the snow would come to the mountain. There would not be many days like this.

Today was the day it had to happen.

There was much to be done. There were several objects on his desk, and they all required his attention: a pile of legal documents, a Western Union telegram slip, a copy of the collected stories of Sherlock Holmes, and a spool of wire.

The documents first.

He picked up one, freshly printed on legal parchment. He scanned it until he found the part that concerned him:

In addition to all other bequests, the amount of ten million dollars shall be held in trust for my daughter, Alice Madeline Ellingham. Should my daughter no longer be among the living, any person, persons, or organization that locates her earthly remains—provided it is established that they were in no way connected to her disappearance—shall receive this sum. If she is not located by her ninetieth birthday, these funds shall be released to be used for the Ellingham Academy in any way the board sees fit.

This bit had been finalized yesterday, and Robert Mackenzie had not been happy with it. Mackenzie brought it in, fresh from the lawyer, and then sat down opposite Albert and stared.

“What is it, Mackenzie?” he finally had to say. “Out with it.”

“I don’t like it. And you know why.”

“I do.”

“They’ll come out of the woodwork,” Mackenzie went on. “Every kind of two-bit scam artist in the world will descend on this place like a plague of locusts.”

“One of those locusts may know where my daughter is,” Albert Ellingham said.

“It’s unlikely. And how would we ever know which one?”

“Because I know something about my daughter that no one else knows,” he said. “I will know the truth.”

Mackenzie sank back into his chair and sighed.

“You think I’m an old fool,” Albert Ellingham said.

“You are neither old nor a fool. You are a father in grief and a very rich man. People will want to take advantage of you.”

“I have handled much more than that, Robert.”

“I know . . .”

“You are trying to protect me, because you have always kept my best interests at heart. But it is my money to do with as I see fit. And this is what is fit. It is your duty to get the statement written up, and I will print it in my paper starting next week.”

Albert Ellingham looked at the passage again. Mackenzie had a point, of course. By making this offer, he was opening himself up to every kind of flimflammery the world had on offer. Ten million dollars would have the greatest con artists on the planet beating a path to his door.

But it would also turn the entire world into his private detectives.

It was a risk, and Albert Ellingham was comfortable with risk. He had created himself from nothing, and he would take himself back to nothing quite happily if it meant seeing Alice again.

He put the documents back into the large folder, and placed it in his desk drawer.

Second, the Western Union slip. He had written it out earlier in the morning. The riddle had come to him several days before, but he had not yet been able to bring himself to commit it to paper until now, because that meant confronting the truth. How long had he known? Probably since he’d first read the copy of the book. He stared at the riddle for a moment and shoved it into his pocket. Then he drew The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes toward him. This particular copy belonged to the school library, and he had found it in the dome when he came to on that fateful evening of the kidnapping. At first, he thought nothing of it—there were too many other things going on that night. Surely, a guest of his had borrowed the book and read it; all of his guests were invited to use the school library for their pleasure reading. But then, as time went on and his thoughts cleared, he made inquiries into the book. No, no guests of his had taken out the book. Dolores Epstein had had possession of it almost exclusively.

Which is how he came to understand that Dolores had been coming to his little hideaway to read, and she had brought one of her favorite volumes that day.

Albert Ellingham had grown up in one of the poorest neighborhoods of New York City himself; perhaps that was why he felt such affection for little Dolores Epstein. He had worked as a news seller from the age of eight, collecting his pennies and nickels. More than once, he had spent a cold night sleeping in a doorway. He sometimes found shelter in the New York Public Library, where he had read Sherlock Holmes—read all the stories, committed many lines to heart.

He opened the book and searched for one that often figured into his thoughts. It was from a story called “The Boscombe Valley Mystery”: “There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.”

Indeed. This was so.

He had kept this book in his office, and it was by chance that he noticed the mark on the page. It was quite early in the volume, in A Study in Scarlet. This had been the thing that set his thoughts in motion. Dolores Epstein, that marvelous, brilliant girl, thinking until the end. To have her sharpness, her presence of mind . . .