Even to my own ears my protest didn’t sound very convincing. I hadn’t been in Beaufort very long, but even in such a short space of time I was finding it difficult reconciling the woman who’d sat in Mr. Williams’s office crying with the woman who’d willingly gone out in a boat, crossed a large swing bridge in a car, and worn a dress that showed more leg than some bathing suits.
I flipped on the light switch when we reached the top, then adjusted the air conditioner to a lower temperature and a higher fan speed. I still kept it on all day, but had compromised my need for cool air with my New England need to not be a spendthrift by keeping it on the “economy” mode when I wasn’t up there. Still, Deborah plucked at her blouse, trying to fan herself, drops of perspiration forming on her upper lip.
“It must have been unbearable for Edith up here during the hotter months. I don’t know how she could have stood it.”
I looked at Gibbes, knowing we were both thinking about why. What was it about her life that made escaping into a scorching attic to make tableaux of crime scenes seem like a welcome alternative?
Deborah looked up. “It’s a sound roof, at least. It would have been a bad thing if it leaked. Imagine the mildew on the cardboard boxes.” She spotted the sea-glass table first and walked toward it.
Sticking a hand in one of the baskets of glass, she swirled them around with her fingers like a witch making a potion. “For a long time I thought Edith made her wind chimes to hide what she really did up here—from Calhoun. But she continued to make them even after he died, so I guess she probably had another reason.”
She peered out one of the attic windows and smiled. “We’ve had a few bad storms—like Hugo back in ’eighty-nine. Edith had to pull every one of her wind chimes inside so they wouldn’t become projectiles, but she always put them out again. I’m glad to see you’re honoring her by keeping them hanging.”
I felt Gibbes’s gaze on me, but didn’t turn around. I didn’t have the heart to tell Deborah that the only reason the wind chimes were still there was because I hadn’t yet found a ladder tall enough to reach them.
Her gaze scanned the room, finally resting on the makeshift shelves against the far wall. Recognizing what sat on the shelves, she walked directly to the first one and leaned down to see it more closely. It was a 1950s kitchen, not unlike the one downstairs, with a lifelike apple pie sitting on a windowsill, the real glass window cracked half-open. Four bright red apple-shaped place mats sat on the round table, tiny silverware and cups filled with clear cellophane in their correct spots. A braided rug lay in front of the sink, which was half-filled with what looked like soapy water.
The only indication that there was something wrong in this idyllic scene was the back half of a woman, dressed in navy blue pumps, a floral dress, and an apron, protruding from the open stove door.
“Ah, yes,” Deborah said. “I remember this one. A case from Greenville, I think. I remember the woman was pregnant.” She straightened, a crooked smile on her face. “It wasn’t her husband’s. But it wasn’t he who killed her.” Pointing to the open window, she said, “Her lover thought he was being so clever coming in through the kitchen window, carefully removing the apple pie, and then replacing it so it appeared to be a suicide. He strangled her with the ties to her apron before putting it back on her.”
Gibbes shoved his hands in his pockets, his eyebrows raised. “But any amateur knows that an autopsy would reveal that she’d died of strangulation and not gas.”
“Yes, well, this was in the days before CSI, when the average person didn’t necessarily know the nuances of murder.”
I stepped closer, no longer as afraid of the boxes as I’d been before I knew what they were. Peering inside, I felt like Gulliver in Lilliput, examining a tiny world I was part of but wasn’t.
“The knobs on the stove move, and there are replicas of all the food items from the real refrigerator inside the model,” Deborah explained. “Edith was very good. I think Frances Glessner Lee would have been very proud to call her a protégée.”
“I’m glad she had this for herself. She must have found it very fulfilling personally, especially since . . .” I stopped, unsure where my train of thought was taking me, and unwilling to share it with anybody.
“Especially since what?” Gibbes asked.
I stepped back, pretending to study the shelves. “She seemed to do a lot of sneaking around so that her husband wasn’t aware of what she was doing. I find it rather sad that she lived such a solitary life even though she was married and had a child. And two grandsons.”
“My grandfather died long before I was born, and my grandmother never talked about him. But I don’t think it was a happy marriage,” Gibbes said.
I felt him looking at me but couldn’t meet his eyes. “Why do you say that?”