Mystery

Tom wandered out of the bedroom. He looked out the window at the end of the hallway into a tangle of rough green leaves and horizontal branches. Beyond them were more leaves and branches, and beyond these yet more, and then still more, until the clear empty air over the track. He turned around and walked to the staircase and looked down. If Fritz did manage to bring Sarah to him—if he could get her alone, if her parents allowed her out of their sight, and if she agreed to go—they would not arrive for hours. He walked down the hall to Barbara Deane’s door, hesitated, and pushed it open.

She had something hidden on a shelf too, something she had examined on his first day at the lake and once after that. He had heard it sliding out of its hiding place, and the heavy thunk as she put it on her desk. If he found letters from Glendenning Upshaw, he told himself, he would put them back unread.

Tom went quickly into her bedroom, walked around the bed, and opened the closet door. A neat row of dresses, skirts, and blouses, mainly in dark colors, hung from a wooden pole. Above the clothes was a white wooden shelf, and down at the far end of the shelf, barely visible in the darkness of the closet, a wooden box with inlaid flags of a lighter shade. Tom stepped into the closet and reached for the box. Barbara Deane would have had to wedge herself behind the sliding door and strain up on tiptoe to touch it. Tom pulled it toward him, got it off the shelf, and backed out of the closet.

It was heavy, highly ornamented with inlay, but the heaviness was of the wood itself; nothing rattled when he shook the box. He set it down on the desk, took a breath, and opened the hinged top.

She was going to tell me anyhow, he thought.

He looked in and saw a small pile of newspaper clippings instead of the old letters he had expected. He reached in for the one on top and read the headline before he got it out of the box. NURSE SUSPECTED IN OFFICER’S DEATH. The article had been clipped from the front page of the Eyewitness. He took out the second: SHOULD THIS WOMAN BE CHARGED? Beneath the headline was a picture of twenty-year-old Barbara Deane, barely recognizable, in a white uniform and a starched cap. ONLY PERSON TO HAVE ACCESS WAS NURSE DEANE, said the next headline. Tom blushed—he felt as if he had walked into her room and found her naked. There were other articles below these, and all of them accused Barbara Deane of murder. He barely looked at them—maybe Lamont von Heilitz would have read them, but Tom felt that he had already gone far enough.

He leaned over to replace the articles and saw two sheets of yellowing notepaper folded at the bottom of the box, nearly the same shade as the wood. He touched them, afraid that they might crumble, and felt stiff creamy paper. He picked them up, put down the little heap of clippings, and unfolded the sheets of notepaper on top of them.

I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE, AND YOU HAVE TO BE STOPPED, read the first. The ink had turned the brown of dried blood, but the large printed capitals shouted louder than the headlines on the old copies of the Eyewitness. He set it down and opened the second. His throat was dry, and his heart pounded. THIS HAS GONE ON TOO LONG YOU WILL PAY FOR YOUR SIN.

Tom dropped the yellowing piece of paper into the box as if it had stung him. He swallowed. He reached back in and picked it up again. The T’s had been crossed with a faintly curved line, and the S’s slanted. A woman had written the notes, and he knew who she was.

He felt absolutely afraid for a second, as if Barbara Deane were about to rush through the door, screaming at him. I know what you are. He slid the two notes together with shaking hands and placed them carefully on the bottom of the box. Then he laid the clippings on top of them and closed the box. He picked up the box and realized that he did not know if it had faced forward or backward. Sweat broke out on his forehead. He carried the box to the closet and stepped inside. Tom put it on the shelf and slid it far down. He thought he remembered that it had been all the way against the closet wall: which way had it faced? He wiped his forehead on his arm and turned the box around, then around again. The house creaked, and his heart tried to jump out of his chest. He slid the box snugly against the wall, facing forward, stepped away, and closed the closet door. Then he wondered if it really had been closed all the way. He opened it and closed it again, then opened it an inch. He groaned, and shut it.

He turned around and saw his dusty footprints on the wooden floor, stamped as clearly as Fritz’s on the track.