“I could kill you now,” she said. She was standing between me and the door, the knife still in her hand. “Nobody knows about this place but me now that the master is dead. Plenty of cubbyholes to hide a body.”
“My husband knows where I was going,” I said, trying to sound calmer than I felt. “And I don’t know why you’d want to kill me. I told you I meant no harm.”
“It doesn’t matter what you meant, the harm has been done. They’ll find out about her and then it will be all over for the poor little thing.”
“Why should it be?”
“Because they’ll send her back.” She sounded close to tears. “After all I’ve done for her all these years to keep her from harm.”
“You called her Kathleen,” I said slowly. “She’s not Colleen?”
“Colleen is dead,” she said flatly. “You knew that. You’ve seen her grave.”
“Then who is she?”
“Kathleen’s her name. She was Colleen’s twin.”
“Colleen had a twin sister? Then why is she kept up here rather than with her family?”
She leaned closer to me. “Because she killed Colleen. She pushed her sister over the cliff.”
“But she was four years old. She couldn’t have known what she was doing.”
“I’m afraid she knew, all right. She was observed, you see. Creeping up behind her sister and then giving her that awful push. She was always the strange one, poor little thing. Colleen was the most adorable little girl you could ever imagine—blonde curls, blue eyes, dimples, and a disposition to match. Everybody adored her. And Kathleen, well she had the same features but without the prettiness, if you know what I mean, and her hair was mousy while her sister’s was golden, and she was sullen and stubborn and withdrawn. She hung back when Colleen ran into your arms. How do I put it—she simply wasn’t as lovable.”
“So you think she got rid of her more lovable twin?” I asked.
“I know she did.”
“What did she say about it? Was she sorry? Did she think it was an accident?”
“We don’t know. At that moment she stopped speaking. I don’t believe she remembers a thing about it, and she’s even forgotten she had a twin. It’s as if she blotted the whole thing from her mind. As you can see she calls that doll Colleen and she speaks to it in gibberish, but that’s the only time she speaks. Not a word to me although she may nod now and then.”
“So whose decision was it to have her locked away up here?” I asked.
“After it happened her mother was fearful for her little boy and for the one she was expecting. She didn’t want Kathleen in the same house anymore. So it was agreed she’d be put in an institution for the mentally impaired. They found one in the Connecticut countryside and off she was shipped. It was agreed that she’d never be mentioned again.”
“That’s terrible—a four-year-old child condemned because she was jealous of her popular twin and did something stupid on impulse.”
She shrugged. “You have to understand how they all adored Colleen. Miss Irene and Mr. Archie doted on her. And so did the master. She was the light of his life. But he was a fair man, a just man. Miss Irene couldn’t bring herself to visit her daughter, in fact a doctor told her that it would be more disturbing for the child to see her family. But Alderman Hannan, he went up to see her, and he was horrified. This place was supposed to be a humane institution and they were paying well for the privilege of keeping her there, but he said the patients were treated like animals. They were like animals—unkempt, crawling around on the floor, stealing each other’s food. He saw Kathleen retreating further and further into herself, giving up on life. He knew if he left her there any longer she’d die. So he had these rooms built secretly within the tower. He made them soundproof and a stair going up within the walls. I’m the only one who has the key and knows the way in.”
She paused, breathing heavily, and she toyed with the knife in her hand. For a moment I wondered if she was still considering using it on me and I glanced around for something to defend myself with.
“Didn’t her parents ever want to check on her?” I asked after a silence.
“They believed that the alderman visited her regularly—which he did, of course—and reported back to them. But if you ask me, I think they preferred not to be reminded of her.”
“How do you manage to keep her a secret?” I asked.
“Most of the year it’s no problem,” she said. “It’s only me and Kathleen and she’s been an easy child until recently.”
“What happens when the family is here?”
“Then I change her routine,” she said. “I give her medicine to make her sleep all day and then she’s up at night.”