The Vanishing Stair (Truly Devious #2)(83)

“I do,” George Marsh said. “There’s some good trouble in you, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“Not at all, not at all. I appreciate it. I went to her school, spoke with her principal. I could tell he was both happy to be rid of her and heartbroken at the same time. You don’t get students like that every day. I remember the joy on her face when she arrived at the academy—when she went to my library and found out she could have any book she wanted. . . . George, I’m a rich man. I own a lot. But I’ll tell you something—the best money I ever spent was on Dottie Epstein’s books. I was feeding a mind. She was a tremendous kid.”

“What happened to her was terrible,” George Marsh said, nodding solemnly.

“Beyond terrible. Beyond terrible. So much was lost that day. That mind of hers. And you know, in the dome, when they found her, there was a copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. She had been reading it when it happened. So strange . . .”

Albert Ellingham paused, pulling the rope tight around his fingers for a moment before tying it off. The boat spun gently and rocked in position.

“You know,” Albert Ellingham said after a moment, “in that copy I saw she made a mark under a famous quote: ‘I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic.’ I got to thinking about this line she underlined. It wasn’t neat—it was scratched in, in pencil. Rough. Uneven. No other marks in the book. But who thinks about a mark in a student’s book? And I was so caught up with Iris and Alice. I was looking, like Watson, but I failed to observe. But something must have lodged in my mind. You know how your mind works on a problem? It ticks away in the background. That mark under that line. It bothered me.”

Albert Ellingham squinted a bit as the boat turned toward the setting sun.

“I went over to the library and I had a look through the books Dottie Epstein had checked out. Not a mark on them, George. I confirmed this with the librarian. She checked for things like that. You don’t get things past librarians. It could have been another student, of course, but as it turns out, Dottie liked that book so much that no one took it out but her. She had it constantly. I think many of the other students were used to having their own books and didn’t use the library quite like Dottie did. I went a bit further. I looked at the police report about what was found in the dome and basement. A pencil was found on the floor of the liquor room—it had rolled off to the side of the room. It was dull. One of the student pencils. They’re blue and have ‘Ellingham Academy’ written on the side. So, it’s reasonable to conclude that Dottie made that mark, and made it that day, in the dome. But why?”

“It could have been an accident,” George Marsh said. “She gets startled, or someone grabs her. She accidentally slashes the page with a pencil. . . .”

“No, I understand why you might think that, but no. An accidental mark wouldn’t have been so precise. This was deliberately underlined. I think Dottie Epstein was making an effort to send a message she was hoping I would understand. She was counting on me, and I let her down.”

“Albert,” George said, “you can’t do this to yourse—”

Albert Ellingham waved down this injunction.

“I appreciate what you’re trying to do, George, but it’s true. I understood Dottie. She was someone who played the game. Her uncle was with the New York City police, actually, like you. She claimed that she learned many of the techniques for breaking into places from him.”

Albert Ellingham chuckled a bit, and George Marsh smiled.

“Yes,” Albert Ellingham said, “she was a very clever girl, Dottie, and she didn’t go down without a fight. Oh, do me a favor. There’s a panel under your seat. Reach down between your legs and slide it to the left. Have a look inside.”

George Marsh bent down as instructed and slid the panel. Under his seat were tight bundles of dark sticks of explosive, firmly fastened to the body of the boat.

Albert Ellingham looked right at the sun.

“This boat is rigged,” he said calmly. “There’s four more like that one. I’ve just set the trip wire and it is connected to the rope around my hand. If I release it, we will both go up. I could have used a gun, but it’s too easy to get a gun away from someone, and I don’t like guns. Frankly, I couldn’t trust myself. My desire to shoot you is too strong. This requires me to have some self-control if I want to find out all I need to know. Your only option right now is to sit very still and tell me how it all happened.”





24


STEVIE SAT ON THE CONCRETE FLOOR OF THE CUPOLA, THE COLD seeping through the fabric of her jeans. Around her was a scatter of dried, dead flower petals. Many of the tributes were gone, but a stray card had escaped maintenance and their brooms and bags. It was a small piece of blue paper, the edges covered in a hand-glued rim of black glitter. The message on it was written in one of those fancy lettering styles that people who were really serious about their bullet journaling used. It read: NEVER SAY DEAD, NEVER STAY DEAD. LOVE FOREVER, MELODY.

Stevie set the paper down.

She had no proof, of course. She couldn’t take it to court. She could not immediately write a book—not that she knew how to write a book. She had seen Nate trying to write a book, and the process looked terrible. She had never actually worked out what she would do once she solved the case. Who did she tell? Did she shout it at the moon? Tweet it? Update her Facebook status to “crime solver”?