After Alice Fell(74)

My lids snap wide, though the room is dark. There’s something, prowling at the edge of my vision. Something rustling. A starched apron. Harriet Clough’s. A smell of lemon cake and chlorine bleach. Oily smoke and the fizzle of burning pages in the diaries Lionel took from Kitty Swain. The only way Alice spoke now burnt to char and ash.

Alice knew something she shouldn’t. And died for it.

But not before giving the gift of the slides. She must have finished them just before Lionel took her away. Not on the inventory list packed so neat with her belongings. Trusting me to find them. To trust her. To listen. To see.

I open the wardrobe, pull out a drawer, and rest my hand on a stocking. The glass slides slip across each other. Five slides. I smile, cupping my hand over them.

I had gambled: Two slides to catch Cathy out. The five others were Old Mother Hubbard.

Old Mother Hubbard

Went to the Cupboard,

To give the poor Dog a bone;

When she came there,

The Cupboard was bare,

And so the poor Dog had none.

But she’ll soon know I switched them. She’ll come for the real slides. She’ll come for me.

I watch. My view is the keyhole, and the world of the house flits across it, like the glass slides in Toby’s magic lantern. I see directly to the front door. On my right is Lionel’s office. He enters in the morning, sits and stews, then leaves through the kitchen door, also on my right. On my left is the staircase, the curio cabinet with glass ornaments and the hidden closet with the spring door that holds a broom, a bucket, dust rags, and a mop. Saoirse pops it open and takes out one or the other during the day, and when she sweeps, her skirts sway just like the broom bristles.

Very little light comes from the parlor on the left. The opening is muddy brown, as if the curtains are always drawn. At night Saoirse lights the sconces in the hall and the lamps in the parlor, then lugs herself up the stairs to light the rooms above. When she’s done, she takes the three short steps to the kitchen to start the evening meal.

Meals.

I am brought my food separately, though it is the same as Cathy and Lionel eat. Even a slice of ginger cake cut and set to its own plate. Not glass. Never glass.

Farther along, on the right, the dining room. There is lovely light in the dining room, and most of the day it brightens the hall and the thick wood door. Cathy wanders in and out, sometimes with an armful of flowers and sometimes poring over papers and tapping a pencil to her lip.

I press my lips to the metal lock plate on her third trek from the parlor to the dining room. “Where’s Toby?”

She lifts the corner to the page she’s reading and doesn’t stop on her path from parlor to dining room. “He’s in his room.”

“Let me out.”

Her step stutters. She looks into the dining room and then back to my door. “I can’t.” Her fingers bite into the sheaf of papers. She pulls them tight to her chest. “I really truly can’t, Marion.”

“You can’t keep me here.” I raise my voice. “Is this what you did to my sister?”

“Your sister knew how to get out.” But she stops, gives an angry jerk of her head, and returns to the parlor.

I dig my thumbnail along the doorframe. The columns of roses waver; the pattern is mismatched. A small square patch peels along the frame. I’ve seen it before, thought nothing of the penciled marks. I run my finger along the edge abutting the arch until my nail catches on a loose bit of it. Below is yellowed glue and plaster. The paper tears in a strip, straight up to the top of the frame and the turn in the arch.

There’s a ripple under the plaster. I dig and tear, but here the glue is thicker, and the plaster pulls away in a clump. The strip swings and thuds the door.

I freeze. But no one comes or calls out for me to be quiet. With a single rip, the paper is free. I stare down to the water jug. If I wet the paper it will come loose.

The chair wobbles as I clamber down, the seat corner knocking the wall.

Still no one.

I crouch, lay the stretch of paper to the rug, and dribble the rest of the water to the clump of plaster. I dig my finger to paper, curling it back. Bit by bit it emerges.

The plaster crumbles. A swath of fabric. Lemon yellow. A pattern of ferns. Each leaf like a saw’s edge.

Evidence: One hood. The knots still intact.

“Are you there?”

I jerk up, scuttling back from the voice that floats through the keyhole. My teeth chatter and my breath comes out as a moan. “Toby?”

The knob turns one way, then the other. I scramble for the candle, holding it out. He stares at me, then puts his lips to the lock plate. “I’m going to rescue you,” he whispers. He turns his head. Now it’s his pale cheek I see. Then his eye again and lashes so long they brush the plate. “Don’t be scared.”

My body crumples then, because I am scared, and I can’t stop the sob escaping through my fingers. I press my palm hard over my mouth and teeth, swallowing it back. “I’m not scared,” I say. “You don’t need to rescue me.”

Light pierces the keyhole. He’s left. Just the moon cutting through the front window. “Toby. Oh, please don’t go.”

A movement then, near my knees. Toby’s pushed his fingers just under the door and wriggles them. Slides them right and then left until I catch them in mine. He tugs at them, a motion that sends me to my stomach, cheek to floor. Then he pets the top of my hand.