The Vanishing Stair (Truly Devious, #2)(46)

PROSECUTION: What can you tell us about the other calls?

MF: All right. I’ve recorded here that at 8:03 p.m., there was an incoming call from New York City that went to Mrs. Ellingham’s personal telephone. That was unanswered. I didn’t know why then, but I do now, of course. That was from a Manhattan exchange—a line I saw often. I think it’s a friend of hers.

PROSECUTION: That call was identified as being from Mrs. Rose Peabody, and she was a friend of Mrs. Ellingham.

MF: Yes, there was nothing really new about that call. Now, the next call, that was incoming from another telephone booth, which was odd. This was at 8:47. This was a telephone by the gasoline station as you go out on Route Two. Do you know the one? That call was to Mr. Mackenzie’s line. Now, this was the same strange voice as the first call, I’m sure of it. Very rough. I stayed on long enough to hear Mr. Mackenzie pick it up. There was another call at 9:50 to Mrs. Ellingham’s line, the same number from New York City, Mrs. Peabody, and it went unanswered. I went off duty at midnight and I called Mr. Mackenzie to tell him so and I read off the information to him.

PROSECUTION: Those were the only calls?

MF: Yes.

PROSECUTION: Coming in, going out, even between the buildings?

MF: Some days the Ellingham lines are very busy, but the evenings are generally quieter, and I think Mr. Ellingham was in town that day, so his phones were quieter. So it wasn’t that odd.

PROSECUTION: The voice you heard. Could you identify it if you heard it again?

MF: I . . . think I could? I might. It was a strange voice. There was something wrong with it.

PROSECUTION: Something wrong?

MF: I can’t explain it.

PROSECUTION: But you think you would know it?

MF: I think I might?

PROSECUTION: Your Honor, I’d like to ask the defendant, Mr. Anton Vorachek, to read something out loud.

DEFENSE: Objection, Your Honor.

JUDGE LADSKY: I’ll allow it.

PROSECUTION: Mr. Vorachek, I’ve written something on this piece of paper. I’d just like you to read it in your normal speaking voice.

ANTON VORACHEK: I am not an actor. I won’t be in your play.

JUDGE LADSKY: You are out of order, Mr. . . .

ANTON VORACHEK: This court is a farce! You are all puppets of the capitalist state!

JUDGE LADSKY: Mr. Vorachek! I am on the verge of having you removed from the courtroom.

PROSECUTION: Your Honor, that may be enough for my purposes. Miss Fields, you’ve just heard Mr. Vorachek’s voice. Was that the voice you heard?

MF: Oh, voices are strange. You hear so many of them down the lines and you pick up little things and you think you can pick them apart, but then they all go back together again. I just got the feeling that this person . . . didn’t want to be understood? It was such a terrible night. I didn’t know that then, of course, but after. But . . . yes. I think, maybe yes.

PROSECUTION: No further questions, Your Honor.

Stevie knew better than to say, “What about it?” She looked to Fenton for a clue as to where this was going.

“She says that there were no other calls from nine fifty to midnight,” Fenton said. “And Miss Nelson says that she found out about the kidnapping in the morning. So, I did a little checking.”

There was a pile of yellow legal pads on the corner of the desk. She sorted through the stack until she got the one she wanted.

“I told you I had some new information,” Fenton said. “I talked to a lot of people. I got some very interesting, very important information. One of the people I found was Gertie van Coevorden. Gertie van Coevorden was—”

“A student from Minerva,” she said.

“Right. A very rich one, one who liked to talk about that night to anyone who would listen. I interviewed her and recorded it and transcribed it. Here’s what she said: ‘It was a terrible night, so foggy. We were all of us gathered in the common room. We were all such good friends in Minerva, and we cared about each other so much. Dottie hadn’t come home and we were all so worried about her. Dottie was one of my dearest friends. Something was wrong, and I kept saying to Miss Nelson, our housemistress, that someone should be looking for her. I was thinking about doing it myself, but then the phone rang upstairs. Miss Nelson went to answer it. It was right before ten in the evening because there was a radio program we liked to listen to that came on at ten o’clock. But Miss Nelson made us all go to bed, and she started acting very strange.’”

Fenton looked up from the pad.

“There’s no mention of connecting a phone call at ten o’clock,” Fenton said. “So then I look again at what Margo Fields actually says. Prosecution: Coming in, going out, even between the buildings? And Margo Fields doesn’t say, yeah, that’s right. She says something totally different. She says, ‘Some days the Ellingham lines are very busy, but the evenings are generally quieter, and I think Mr. Ellingham was in town that day, so his phones were quieter. So it wasn’t that odd.’ Which is not actually an answer. So what do we have?”

“A discrepancy,” Stevie said. “Gertie van Coevorden says that there was a call and the records say there wasn’t.”

“And we have a telephone operator who is being evasive on the stand. She isn’t lying if she moves around the topic. So, which story is correct, do you think? Gertie van Coevorden with her phone call, or the evasive phone operator?”