The Vanishing Stair (Truly Devious, #2)(45)

“I assume you’ve read the Vorachek court transcript?”

“Of course,” Stevie said. That was one of the first things anyone interested in the case did. Fenton pulled out a bound copy with what looked like a hundred Post-it notes flagging from the side. She licked her thumb and opened it to a blue-noted page.

“Here,” she said. “Read from the highlighted lines.”

It was the testimony of Marion Nelson, the housemistress of Minerva. These were the lines Fenton had highlighted:

PROSECUTION: Miss Nelson, can you tell us when you first realized Dolores Epstein was missing?

MARION NELSON: It was right after nine that night.

PROSECUTION: Nine at night? Isn’t that late for a young girl to be out?

MN: Well, no, not at Ellingham. One of the precepts of the school is that the children have freedom to learn and explore. The school is—the school seemed—and generally is very safe. So they can read, play, experiment, study. Dottie was a voracious reader, and she would often hide away somewhere with a book. But generally, she would appear for supper.

PROSECUTION: And she did not?

MN: No.

PROSECUTION: When did you first learn that she was missing?

MN: When Mr. Ellingham’s men came to the door at dawn and told us to get the children packed and ready to leave.

“Now,” Fenton said, taking the transcript back and turning to a later page, to testimony from July 22, 1938, from Margo Fields, the local telephone operator who connected the ransom calls. Fenton had highlighted more lines:

PROSECUTION: Miss Fields, you were working at the telephone exchange in Burlington on April 13, 1936. Is this correct?

MARGO FIELDS: Yes. I was. Yes. At work. Yes.

PROSECUTION: How long have you been a telephone operator, Miss Fields?

MF: Six years this June. I started as soon as I left high school. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but there was an opening and I applied for it, and I got it and I’ve been doing it ever since.

PROSECUTION: What can you tell us about the telephone lines going to Ellingham Academy?

MF: Oh, there are a lot of them. There are seven lines going into the house, and then a lot of the buildings have their own telephones. There are sixteen lines going to the property in total.

PROSECUTION: Seven lines go into the main house?

MF: Yes. I didn’t know a house could have seven phone lines until Mr. Ellingham came along! Imagine, seven telephones in one house!

PROSECUTION: Can you tell us where the lines go?

MF: Well, one goes to Mr. Montgomery. He’s the butler. There’s one to the kitchen. There’s one to Mr. Mackenzie—he’s Mr. Ellingham’s secretary, one to Mrs. Ellingham, there’s a guest telephone, and a housekeeper’s telephone, and then, of course, there’s Mr. Ellingham’s telephone. Most of the calls to the house or going out of it go to Mr. Montgomery or Mr. Mackenzie or Mrs. Ellingham, unless there’s a party up there, then the calls come and go from all the phones all day. And the calls that go into Mr. Ellingham’s telephone—they come and go from all over!

PROSECUTION: Let’s go to the afternoon of April 13, Miss Fields. When do you get to work?

MF: Well, that day I was doing a shift starting at five p.m. I have lunch at Henry’s before I do that shift. So I sat down at my station at five p.m. and took over from Helen. Helen Woolman.

PROSECUTION: I’m entering into evidence exhibit 56A, Your Honor. Miss Fields, is this the logbook you use to record calls?

MF: It is.

PROSECUTION: Can you tell us about the telephone call you connected at seven fifteen that evening?

MF: Yes, I can. That phone call came from a telephone booth on College and Church Streets. They called Mr. Montgomery’s telephone. I don’t see many calls coming from telephone booths going to the Ellingham house, but that’s right by the market, so I thought it might be a delivery or some such. But I was curious, you know?

PROSECUTION: Can you describe the voice on the line?

MF: Rough. Very rough. With a strange way of speaking. He sounded like he was speaking through a tube or something. That telephone can have a funny connection, though.

PROSECUTION: Was there anything else about the voice? How was it strange?

MF: Oh, it had an accent.

PROSECUTION: What kind of accent?

MF: Not American. European, I think. My neighbor, Mrs. Czarnecki, from down the street, she’s from Warsaw, in Poland, and it sounded a bit like her, but not quite? I stayed on the line just long enough to hear Mr. Montgomery answer. I wish I’d hung on, but we don’t do that. Oh, I wish I had. You don’t know how I wish I had. I don’t know what I would have done.

PROSECUTION: How long did that call last?

MF: Five or six minutes.

PROSECUTION: What happened after that?

MF: The next call was outgoing. This was at seven forty-five. Mr. Mackenzie telephoned out and asked to be connected to . . . that would be George Marsh. That’s another common call. After that, Mr. Mackenzie called me back and asked me to make a special note of where all calls coming in and out of the house came from that evening. He sounded a bit funny, but he said something about Mr. Ellingham just needing to know for some business reason. And he asked where the previous call had come from, and I told him. I usually go on a half hour dinner break at seven in the evening, but I ate my sandwich at my station because Mr. Mackenzie had asked me to pay special attention, and we always take care of the Ellingham lines. He’s done so much for those children. I remember I had a cheese and tomato jam sandwich, and a call came in as soon as I took a bite.