The Hand on the Wall(31)

Flora went into the great hall, where Leonard Holmes Nair was sitting on a divan by the large fireplace. A novel dangled from his fingertips, but he didn’t seem to be reading. His focus was on the second-floor balcony.

“Something’s going on.” He nodded toward the balcony. “For the last few hours there’s been a trail of crates and boxes coming in. Albert’s supervised them all, and they all went to Alice’s room. Some of them were massive. I went to go see what they were but he shooed me away from the door. It’s the most excited I’ve seen him in ages. He was smiling.”

Flora sat next to her friend and looked up. This was a strange, not entirely welcome development. Albert Ellingham soon appeared, leaning over the rail.

“Flora, Leo, come see. Bring George. It’s ready.” Albert was almost giddy. “Come to Alice’s room.”

Flora had not been in Alice’s room since the kidnapping. It was perfectly kept. The lace curtains were drawn every morning and closed every night. Fresh sheets and blankets were regularly put on the bed. The stuffed animals waited in a line. The dolls were dusted and settled in their chairs. New clothes in larger sizes had been brought in every season to be ready for Alice’s reappearance. All of that, Flora knew about. But there was something else now, something that dominated the center of the room, almost filling it. It was a replica of the house she stood in—the Great House, rendered in miniature.

“It was made in Paris,” Albert said, walking around the house and looking in the windows. “I had it commissioned two years ago, and it’s finally arrived. Marvelous, isn’t it?”

Leo tried to mask his horror with a blank stare, but he wasn’t able to pull it off. Albert didn’t seem to notice. He went to the side of the massive toy house, flipped a latch, and swung it open. The interior of the Great House was spread out in front of them, like a patient on a surgical table, insides exposed.

“Look,” Albert said. “Look at the detail!”

There was the massive front hall, shrunk down, its stairs and marble fireplace faithfully re-created. Tiny crystal knobs gleamed on hand-sized doors. There was the morning room with its silk paper and French decor, the ballroom with its motley walls. In Albert’s office, the two tiny desks had stamp-like papers on them and telephones that Flora could have balanced on her thumbnail. Upstairs, the same—Iris’s dressing room in morning gray. Room after room, including the one they stood in now. The only thing the dollhouse missed was a miniature of itself.

“I had them work from photographs, and by God, what a job they’ve done. I told you, Leo. I said when she was born that I would get her the best dollhouse in the world.”

“You did,” Leo said, his voice sounding dry.

“What do you think, Flora?” Albert asked.

“It’s a marvel,” she said, fighting down the rising bile in the back of her throat.

“Yes.” Albert stood, his hands on his hips, regarding the sight as a whole. “Yes. Yes, it is.”

Something in his elevated manner suggested that this dollhouse would somehow change things. Alice was not here, but the dollhouse had come—and if the dollhouse had come, Alice must follow. Giddy, funhouse logic, distorted.

“You know,” he said, “I was building something quite wonderful for Iris as well, for her birthday. She was so enamored of what we saw in Germany, I thought . . . Well. It doesn’t matter now. What matters is that Alice’s gift is here.”

“You know, Albert,” Leo said, looking to Flora and Marsh for support, “I think this calls for a celebration. Why don’t we go downstairs and have something to eat? What do you say?”

“Yes,” Albert said. “I suppose I should eat something. Montgomery can scare me up a ham sandwich or two.”

He clapped Leo on the back to usher him from the room. Flora wanted to leave, but the presence of the dollhouse transfixed her. George was squatting, examining the small furniture from the office.

“Be there in a moment,” she said. “I want to look some more.”

“Do . . . do!” Albert said. “Look away!”

When Albert and Leo had gone, George Marsh straightened up and turned to Flora.

“Look at this,” he said, pointing at the top bedroom.

Sitting on the bed, neatly and in a row, were three china figures—one of Albert, one of Iris, and one of Alice, sitting between them.

“Dear God,” she said.

“Yeah. I wish I could set fire to this thing.”

He must have been feeling the same queasy strangeness, this mockery of reality. That must have been it—this warping—that made her speak so suddenly.

“Alice,” she said. “Do you know? Did they ever tell you?”

“Tell me what?” George replied.

Flora rubbed her hand across her brow.

“It’s a secret, but I thought you would know. They never said?”

“Said what?”

“She’s Albert and Iris’s child, but she’s . . .” Flora waved her hand in the air for a moment. “Iris didn’t give birth to her.”

“Who did?”

“Me,” she replied.

She waited a moment as this information made contact. George cocked his head.

“Think about when she was born, George,” Flora said. “Think. Four years ago.”