Turning, she ripped open the desk drawers and began shufflingthrough whatever she could find—straight-faced photos and old letters, clippings from the town newspaper, even some handwritten receipts. As she was rifling through a pile of random papers, a folded bit of buttery newsprint dropped to the floor. Cordelia stooped to retrieve it, carefully laying it open across the broad desk. A grayscale photograph of the house instantly caught her eye. Before the long porch stood a stern woman with broad shoulders and thick arms, her white pinafore and nurse’s cap crisp. It was fromThe Bellwick Courant, dated August 1937.
The headline screamedHeiress Dies in Fatal Fall. Cordelia felt her stomach drop. It was the suicide Gordon mentioned, and it confirmed Mr. Togers’ account of their great-great-aunt’s battle with depression. Several large water stains blurred the text. Cordelia read what she could. The heiress was listed asMorna E Bone, aged 33 years.She quickly came to realize the woman in the picture had been Morna’s nurse, a Martha somebody—the rest of her name obscured.
The nurse described Morna as “deeply disturbed,” “given to fits,” and “unable to speak.” She’d been in the tower with her at the time she jumped, apparently trying to stop her. But it was the nurse’s depiction of Morna killing her own pets and drawing “unnatural things with their blood” that chilled Cordelia to the bone, the message of the bats cloaked in a newly sinister layer.
This was worse than Morna’s being a littlemelancholy,as Togers had referred to it. Her aunt was seriously unbalanced, a truly broken woman capable of violence. Cordelia felt sorry for her, but more than that, she felt a growing alarm over her encounters with Morna’s ghost. If she was trapped here, confused and deranged, what might she think of Cordelia and Eustace’s presence? How might she act out, this woman who had even turned on her own beloved animals?
She snapped a picture of the article and folded it up as she’d found it, returning it to the drawer. Turning to the bookshelves,she noticed a series of handwritten ledgers dating all the way back to the late 1800s. Their marbled covers were worn at the edges. They detailed the expenses of the property, from quarts of vinegar to bushels of oats to pairs of shoes. Other ledgers accounted for investments of the family—early bonds and their dividends, businesses acquired and sold. Cordelia marveled at the exhaustive means by which her ancestors had recorded their debts and assets. But none of them gave her the answers she was looking for.
Eustace stood in the doorway, a wooden spoon in one hand. She surveyed the piles of books and documents Cordelia had stacked around the room. “What on earth are you doing?”
“Investigating,” Cordelia answered. “Like you said we should. There’s something here.”
“What, exactly?”
“I don’t know,” she told her, glancing up. “But I’ll know it when I find it.”
Gordon peeked in. “I’m here to treat the pond. I’ll be in the solarium if either of you need me.”
Cordelia turned. A morning shower had dampened his hair and shirt, little droplets caught in the glossy strands, making her knees want to buckle. “Wait. Before you get to that, I need you to take care of the bathroom door and repaint that bedroom upstairs—something cheery this time, yellow or white.”
A surprise text from Molly had come through last night with the mold contractor’s whopping invoice, which she currently had no way to pay. Thinking on her feet, she asked Molly to dig up a contact for a reputable appraiser and auction house nearby. Maybe she could unburden the Bone estate of a couple of its treasures, make a payment of good faith to Busy to get him off her neighbor’s tail and tide the mold remediators over so she could sell her house in Texas. She didn’t need contractors breathing down her neck along with everyone else. But she didn’t wantto give the appraiser any reason to lowball her. If he got so much as a whiff of desperation, she couldn’t trust a word he said. The house needed to be in tip-top shape.
“Cheery?” Gordon repeated.
Cordelia stopped pilfering to meet his gaze. “Yes. To brighten things up a bit. Cover up the blood at the very least.”
He pulled a face. “I know what you mean. It’s just, your aunt didn’t like anyone making cha—”
“My aunt isn’t here anymore,” Cordelia said adamantly, last night’s dream causing her to be firmer than intended. She refused to let her gaze linger on his warm eyes or the way his shirt stuck to his skin. “It’s up to us to update the image of this place and our family. Now, are you capable or do I need to call someone in?”
Gordon looked wounded, and Cordelia realized that yesterday they’d nearly felt like friends, and now she was treating him like an employee, and not a very valued one.
“What I mean—” she tried to say.
But Gordon didn’t stay to hear the rest. “Consider it done,” he said curtly as he left the room.
“What was all that?” Eustace asked, crossing her arms.
“Nothing.” Cordelia sighed. “I’m just a little tired after yesterday.”
Cordelia could feel her head beginning to throb. The dream from last night, the scowling portrait, the confrontation with Gordon—they felt like bricks pressing down on her. She reached for the pill bottle in her pocket.
“Another one?” Eustace asked.
“It’s not bad,” Cordelia told her.Not yet.She turned back to the books and ledgers on the shelves, the papers strewn across the desk. “Why do you think he didn’t tell us?”
“Who?” Eustace asked.
“Mr. Togers. You heard Dr. Mabee—there’s supposed to besome kind of arrangement. One he should have filled us in on. So why didn’t he say anything? Let us risk getting sick or hurt or worse?”
Eustace sighed. “He’s an attorney, not a doctor. I highly doubt he knows why the arrangement exists. He probably thinks our aunt is a hypochondriac from a long line of hypochondriacs who are spoiled and lazy and can pay a doctor to come running at their every whim.”
Cordelia leaned against the desk. “Maybe you’re right.” Remembering the article, Cordelia passed Eustace her phone. “Here, look at this.”
Eustace studied the picture, zooming in to read the legible parts, then handed the phone back. “You found that in here?”
“Aunt Augusta was in my dream last night,” she confided. “Just like we saw her in the crypt. And she led me here, tothisroom, before she vanished.”
