Edie looks up. “This is why Mint Benedict wanted us to read it. Grace Hadley was Jackson Benedict’s lover.”
Alessandra shrugs. “I always assumed that.”
“You did not,” Lizbet says.
“A chambermaid shacking up in the fourth-floor storage closet?” Alessandra says. “What did you think she was doing up there?”
Lizbet waves a hand. “Keep going, Edie.”
When I knocked, Grace cracked open the door, cautious as always. She was afraid that one night she would find Dahlia pointing a revolver at her forehead.
Grace knew Dahlia far better than I, as it turned out.
When I returned from Grace’s room, Dahlia was snoring and didn’t stir. I figured, as I did every night I spent with Grace, that I had gotten away with something.
I awoke in the middle of the night shrouded in a thick cloud of black smoke. The chintz armchair by the window was on fire, and fire was sprinting up the drapes. I called for Dahlia. I checked her dressing chamber; she was not to be found. I stepped into the hallway to find people shouting. Leroy Noonan, the hotel’s general manager, was intent on rushing me out.
I was thinking only of Grace. “I have to make sure she’s okay,” I said. Noonan, naturally, thought I was referring to Dahlia. He said, “She’s on the street, Mr. Benedict. Let’s go now, please, sir.” He hurried me toward the stairs but I fought him, saying, “I need to get to the fourth floor.”
“The fourth floor is on fire, sir, you cannot go up there.” Noonan is a big man, six foot four and nearly three hundred pounds; he could have thrown me over his shoulder and carried me out of the building. And that was what he would have to do, I decided, because I was determined to rescue Grace. I fought my way through the panicked stream of guests in their nightclothes to the bottom of the back stairway. But the entire stairwell was a fiery inferno. There would be no going up.
When I reached the street, I found Dahlia looking perfectly calm amidst the pandemonium. She had her silk robe belted neatly over her dressing gown, she had on her slippers, her hair was curled, she wore lipstick, she was smoking, and…she held our cat, Mittens. Something registered in me then, something I couldn’t bear to think. I searched through the mob for Grace. Was she here? Had she escaped? I didn’t see her. I told myself she would, naturally, be hiding because she had no good reason to be at the hotel at night. I approached the fire marshal, who assured me the fire was under control and everyone got out safely.
“Everyone?” I said. “Even the people on the fourth floor?”
“There was no one on the fourth floor,” he said. “We checked.”
He’d checked the fourth floor. Grace had escaped and now, I suspected, was lurking in the shadows somewhere.
I returned to Dahlia’s side. She said to me, “The girl didn’t get out. I locked her in from the outside.”
I grabbed Dahlia’s arm. “What have you done?” I said. I saw the orange ember at the end of her cigarette as an evil, glowing eye. “Did you set this fire, Dahlia?”
The cat wriggled free of Dahlia’s arms and jumped to the ground, despite its bad leg. “I wouldn’t say that too loudly. The insurance, Jack. If there’s no insurance, you’ll be ruined.” She put a finger across my lips. “Accidents happen.”
I wanted to rage against her but it only took a moment for me to realize that she was right. She had set the fire and locked Grace’s door—but I was the one who had set Grace up in the attic, kept her the same way that Dahlia kept the damn cat. If Grace had defied me, I would have had no choice but to fire her and make sure she didn’t find a job anywhere else on the island. I am responsible for the death of my beloved mistress, Grace Hadley.
—Jackson Floyd Benedict
When Edie stops reading, a hush comes over Lizbet’s office.
Finally, Alessandra speaks. “What a buzzkill.”
“No wonder Grace haunts the hotel,” Lizbet says. “I would too if I were her.”
Edie turns the page and finds it blank. “This is the only entry in the diary,” she says. Her eyebrows shoot up. “This is all he wanted us to know.”
29. Mosaic
Grace was hanging—literally, hanging—on Edie, reading Jack’s words, and it was even more cleansing and validating than she dreamed it might be. Dahlia set the fire, Dahlia locked the door so it wouldn’t open, but Jack was correct—ultimately, Grace’s presence in that room was his fault, and Dahlia’s infernal jealousy also his fault.
It’s a written confession, just like in the movies.
Lizbet puts the diary in the safe in her office. Tomorrow, she announces, she’ll show it to Jordan Randolph at the Nantucket Standard. Grace can only hope that he’ll write a follow-up article to the one published a century ago: “Crime Solved a Hundred Years Later! Grace Hadley Murdered by Hotel Owners!”
Grace feels lighter. There’s no anger weighing her down, no indignation shackling her to the hotel, no leaden angst. She’s free to go to her eternal rest. She’s taking the robe with her—but she leaves Lizbet’s Minnesota Twins cap on the Formica bar in the break room.
Let her wonder.
Grace finds the hatch to the widow’s walk open and when she ascends to the fresh afternoon air, just tinged with salt, she catches Lizbet and Mario leaning against the railing, sneaking in some kissing. Grace tests out her new buoyancy, rising above them and gazing down. It’s a whole new perspective. She can see the entire hotel. Edie and Alessandra are at the front desk. Alessandra is on the phone; Edie is checking in some guests. Zeke rolls a luggage trolley by and winks at Edie. Raoul is out front at the bell desk dealing with a guest who is checking in with an exotic bird, a hyacinth macaw. (Has word gotten out that although pets are technically forbidden at the hotel, exceptions will be made?) In the yoga studio, Grace watches Yolanda lead a class of perimenopausal women in a butterfly stretch. Over at the Blue Bar, Petey Casstevens is pressing fresh juices and refilling her garnishes. Beatriz is piping béchamel sauce into warm, airy gougères fresh from the oven. Octavia and Neves are cleaning room 108, and sure enough, Neves finds a pair of men’s boxers draped over the telephone, which makes Neves grimace and Octavia giggle. Chad and the new cleaner, Doris, are wheeling their housekeeping cart down the second-floor corridor. They stop at the brass porthole windows because it’s their day to be polished. Chad squirts solution onto a rag and starts buffing, and Grace thinks, That’s right, Long Shot, show her how it’s done! Doris isn’t quite the cleaner she thinks she is.
Doris says, “So Mr. Darling put the hotel on the market because Magda turned down his proposal?”
“Yes,” Chad says. “But that needs to stay our secret.”
And mine, Grace thinks.
At that very minute, Magda is in the housekeeping office on the phone with her accountants. Edie’s mother, Love, and Adam are walking up the front stairs; it’s time for the shift change.
“Welcome to the Hotel Na-antucket!” Adam sings out when he steps through the doors.