The Hand on the Wall(18)

Stevie nodded absently. Of course, she had missed the event that triggered the gun. She was looking right at something but she couldn’t see it. Where do you look for someone who’s never really there. . . .

At some point, the gun placed in act one goes off, usually in the third act.

That was one of the most important parts of being a detective: keep your eye on the gun.





April 4, 1936


DOTTIE EPSTEIN DID NOT MEAN TO START WATCHING FRANCIS AND Eddie that day. She had been minding her business up in the high crook of a tree, bundled in a big brown sweater knitted for her by her aunt Gilda, a book open on her leg. The April weather meant that it was not warm, but the mountain was no longer frozen. You could be free in the space again, and it was good to be in the woods, out in the air. The tree was a perfect place to read, to spend some time with Jason and the Argonauts.

That’s where she happened to be, quiet and out of sight, when Francis and Eddie came by. They were close, tight, their heads almost together as they walked. (How did people walk like that, heads so close? It was fascinating to see, like something from the circus.) And there was something in the way they were walking—silent, smiling, quickly but not fast. It was a walk that suggested they did not want to be noticed.

Unlike the other rich girls, Francis was nice to Dottie. She wasn’t like Gertie van Coevorden, who looked at Dottie like she was a walking bag of rags, her eyes lingering on every patch in her clothes. (Dottie’s mother had worked so hard on sewing those patches in her coat. “Look, Dot, you can barely see the stitches! Look how good this thread matches up. I got it at Woolworth. Isn’t that a good match? I spent all night on it.”) Gertie unpicked Dottie’s mother’s seams, judging her whole family, her entire reason for being in one sweeping glance of her small, blue eyes. “Oh dear, Dottie!” she would say. “You must be so cold in that thing. Wool isn’t quite as warm as fur. I have an old one I can lend you.”

It might have been different if Gertie had actually lent her the fur. But that was part of it. They mentioned things, and they forgot. It was a tease.

Francis, however, was the real kind of nice—she left Dottie alone. That was all Dottie really wanted. When they did talk, which wasn’t often, it was about something good, like detective stories. Francis loved to read, almost as much as Dottie did, and her passion was crime. That was, in Dottie’s opinion, a noble interest. Francis also liked to sneak about. Dottie heard her moving around at night and would peek out her door to see Francis creeping down the hall, or sometimes going out the window.

It was this quality that caused Dottie to slip out of the tree, almost automatically, and loosely trail them. Perhaps, she thought, it was because of her uncle the policeman. “Sometimes, Dot,” he said, “you just know. Follow your instincts.”

Francis and Eddie went back, to the raw, wild part of the grounds, where thick tree cover was cut through with only the roughest paths. They wended back to the place where the rocks were still being worked off the face of the mountain. There were massive piles of stone, some of which looked like it was in the process of being broken down into smaller pieces for building materials. The path was extremely uneven, cutting up sharply. Dottie followed, as silently as she could, using the trees to pull herself up the rocky steps. Francis and Eddie were two flashes of color in the landscape, and then—they were gone.

Just like that. Gone. Gone in the trees and the rock and the brush.

Clearly, they had disappeared into one of Mr. Ellingham’s little hidey-holes, one Dottie herself had not yet found. She was filled with fear of discovery and the thrill of the mystery in equal measure. She considered going back to her reading spot, but she knew she would not be able to do it. So she backed up a few steps, to a point she knew they could not have vanished into, and tucked herself behind a tree.

She waited there for over two hours. She had actually gotten back into her book when she heard the crunch of their steps and ducked down just in time. They came out, whispering, laughing, hurrying. Francis had a book under her arm.

“Oh God, we’re so late,” Dottie heard Francis say.

“Once more, up against the tree, like an animal . . .”

“Eddie . . .” Francis pushed him off with a laugh and hurried on. In their sport, a few things fell from Francis’s book, small, the size of leaves. Once they had gone, Dottie went to the spot and picked them up. They were photographs. One was of Francis and Eddie posing. Dottie knew what they were doing at once—everyone had seen this pose before. It was like that famous photo of Bonnie and Clyde, the gangsters. Dottie was posed as Bonnie, holding what must have been a toy shotgun (or maybe it was a real shotgun from one of the crew?) directly at Eddie’s chest. Her arm was extended toward him, her fingertips not quite touching his shirt. Eddie had a strange half smile and wore a hat tipped back on his head, looking at her with longing. It was so much like the real photograph that the tiny differences stood out in deep relief. They were not Bonnie and Clyde but wanted to be so much that Dottie could feel it.

The other photograph was of Leonard Holmes Nair, the painter, standing on the green, brush in hand, looking perhaps a bit annoyed at the interruption. A painting of the Great House was on the easel in front of him. The photos were a bit sticky. Some glue seemed to be on the edges.

Dottie leaned against the tree and studied the images for several minutes, drinking them in. These shimmering clues into other people’s lives—they pointed the way for her. To where, she did not know.