Mystery

Tom yanked his handkerchief from his pocket and walked backward, erasing his tracks all the way to the door. Drops of sweat fell on the dull wood. They left shiny traces when he wiped them. He reached the threshold and backed out of the room and closed the door.

He went down the hall to his bathroom and splashed cold water on his face. He wanted to get out of the lodge—to run away. He looked up at his dripping face in the mirror and said, “Jeanine Thielman wrote those notes.” He dried his face and remembered tense Barbara Deane opening the door to the lodge on his first day in Eagle Lake; and remembered the relaxed, friendly Barbara Deane who had lied and lied when she served him dinner.

I know what it is to be unjustly accused.

I wasn’t his type, for one thing.

He walked slowly down the stairs, still afraid that she was going to walk in the front door. She would know in an instant what he had done, if she saw his face.

Tom collapsed on the couch. Barbara had not been unjustly accused, she had killed the policeman in the hospital by giving him the wrong medication; probably Maxwell Redwing had ordered her to kill him. Shady Mount Hospital was where the people who ran Mill Walk put its embarrassments when they wanted them to die. It was the most respectable hospital on the island, the safest place on Mill Walk for a discreet little murder: the Redwings went there themselves, didn’t they?

Tom’s grandfather believed in her innocence and saved her skin, got her out of Mill Walk, and parked her in the village of Eagle Lake. When Jeanine Thielman accused and threatened her, Barbara Deane had killed her.

Which meant that she had killed Anton Goetz too. Tom did not know how this had happened, but a strong young woman like Barbara Deane could have knocked down a cripple … maybe, Tom thought, Goetz had been blackmailing Barbara Deane. Maybe he had even seen her shoot Jeanine Thielman, and helped her hide the body in the lake. His mother had seen him moving through the woods, sneaking back to his lodge for the old curtains. After von Heilitz accused him of the murder, he had gone back to confront her, and she had killed him too. And ever since, she had lived quietly in the village of Eagle Lake. She had even gone on delivering babies.

He told himself to calm down when it occurred to him that Barbara Deane might have shot at him through the window, imagining that he had seen the notes at the bottom of the box.

But he knew one more thing Lamont von Heilitz did not, and it was the crucial fact in Jeanine Thielman’s murder: she had died because she had written those notes.

He was still trying to figure out what to do about the notes three hours later when someone began battering on his door. He jumped up from the couch and opened the door. Fritz Redwing nearly fell into the room. Sarah Spence gave him another push to move him out of the doorway. “Get inside, get out of the way,” she said. “We walked all the way around the lake to avoid being seen, let’s not blow it at the last minute.” She closed the door behind her and leaned against it, smiling at Tom. “I make all these clever plans for meetings in out of the way places at night, and when Tom Pasmore, who writes a letter a day to Lamont von Heilitz but never—checks—his—mailbox—finally works things out, he has me come to his house in broad daylight.”

“I’m sorry,” Tom said.

“Don’t you put those precious letters in the mailbox?”

“I just hand them to the mailman,” Tom said. “How do you know I write to him?”

“He’s your hero, isn’t he? The one who started you off playing detective? I saw how you looked when Hattie Bascombe talked about him.”

“Von Heilitz, von Heilitz,” Fritz said. “Why is everybody talking about him all of a sudden?”

Neither Tom nor Sarah bothered to look at him.

“I read your letters a million times,” Tom said.

“What letters?” Sarah asked. “I never wrote you any letters. I don’t have to write letters to boys. I can’t even imagine doing such a stupid thing.”

“Oh, great,” Fritz said.

“Didn’t I used to know you once? A long time ago? So much has happened in the meantime, it’s kind of vague.”

“ ‘In the meantime’—is that the period when you wrote me every day, and arranged meetings in out of the way places?”

“No, it’s the period in which I became betrothed,” she said. “Or was it betrothed to be betrothed? Meeting people in out of the way places is far, far behind me.”

“Should I just get out of here?” Fritz asked.

“Betrothed to be betrothed,” Tom said. “That’s kind of an interesting condition.”

“I thought of it as a delaying action. Or do I mean withholding action?” She pushed herself away from the door. “Aren’t you going to hug me, or something?”

“Me?” Tom put his hand on his chest. “I’m just someone you sort of used to know.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” she said. “I’m very particular about who I used to know.”