“That’s very nice of you, but I think I’m okay,” I say, repelled by the idea. It’s bad enough knowing what happened here. I don’t need details. “I was hoping to avoid those places.”
Jessie shrugs. “Fair enough. But how do you plan to avoid them when you don’t know where they are?”
A very good point. For all I know, a member of the Hope family could have been murdered in this very room. But that’s not the only reason I decide to take Jessie up on her offer. Between my father and Lenora, I’ve spent so much time with people who can’t—or won’t—talk back that I’ve forgotten how nice it feels to converse. Especially with someone under the age of sixty.
“Fine,” I say. “You can show me. And then I’ll know to never enter those rooms again.”
“Impossible,” Jessie says with an impish grin. “One of them isn’t a room.”
She sets off down the hall, going in the direction of the Grand Stairs. I follow, trying to keep quiet, even though Jessie’s rattling jewelry makes her sound like a one-woman wind chime as we pass Lenora’s room. Music drifts from behind the closed door of the room next to it. Something jazzy and old that takes me a moment to recognize: “Let’s Misbehave.”
Jessie lifts a finger to her lips and mouths, Mrs. Baker.
I slow my steps, moving on tiptoes. Even Jessie quiets down, walking with her arms outstretched to keep her bracelets from clattering. She stays that way until we reach the top of the Grand Stairs. I head down one side; Jessie uses the other.
“How do you like it here?” she says when we meet again on the landing.
“It’s a lot to take in.”
“Totally,” Jessie says. “But it’s not so bad. Have you met Carter yet?”
“Yeah. On my way in.”
“He’s, like, totally dreamy, right?”
“I guess,” I say, even though I’m in agreement there.
We stand in the shadow of the stained-glass window, its colors muted by the darkness outside. Directly beneath our feet, an unruly red splotch two shades darker than the surrounding carpet takes up most of the landing. Earlier today, I thought it was caused by light streaming through the stained glass. Standing on it now, though, I see it for what it is.
A bloodstain.
A big one.
I leap away from it, onto one of the lower steps, where I find another, smaller stain. And another on the step below that. Hopping to the foyer floor, I stare up at Jessie and say, “You could have warned me.”
“And miss that reaction? I don’t think so.”
She descends the rest of the stairs, stepping on several more bloodstains in the red carpet and making me notice a pattern to the splotches. It looks like someone bleeding profusely had tried coming up the Grand Stairs before being stopped at the landing.
“Evangeline Hope,” Jessie says, knowing exactly what I’m thinking. “It’s assumed she was stabbed in the foyer, tried to escape up the steps, and was stabbed again on the landing, where she bled out.”
I shudder and turn away, looking instead to the large front door leading to outside. “Why didn’t she try to leave?”
“No one knows,” Jessie says. “There’s a lot about that night that remains unknown.”
She starts moving down the hall on the right, the one that ends at the sunroom. We don’t make it that far. At the halfway point, just past Lenora’s portrait, Jessie stops at one of the hallway’s many closed doors. She pushes it open and flicks a switch just inside. Light floods the room, coming from both a green-glass fixture on the ceiling and matching sconces on the walls.
“The billiard room,” she announces with an enthusiasm usually reserved for tour guides who really, really love their job. “Where Winston Hope met his end.”
My first thought is that yes, this feels very much like a room where a man of Mr. Hope’s stature would die. The décor is brutish. Various antique firearms hang on the walls, along with the heads of animals that were probably killed by them. A lion. A bear. Several deer. A pair of matching leather armchairs sits atop a zebra pelt in front of a fireplace. On one wall is a rack of pool cues, although there’s no pool table to be seen. The only sign it was ever here is a rectangular path in the middle of the room where the floor has been worn down by well-heeled soles.
“What happened to the pool table?”
“Winston Hope died slumped over it,” Jessie says. “Since his throat was slit, I guess it was too bloody to salvage.”
I turn her way, startled. “The rhyme says he was stabbed.”
“Oh, he was,” Jessie says. “Once in the side, before his throat was slit. I guess that was too complicated to make rhyme.”
“How do you know so much about all of this?”
“Mostly Mary,” Jessie says. “She knows a lot about what happened that night. She’s, like, totally obsessed with the murders. I think it’s why she took the job, you know?”
I don’t. Other than my father’s house, this is the last place I want to be.
“Why did you take a job here?” I say.
Jessie gives a jewelry-rattling shrug. “This place seemed as good as any. I needed to do something, right? Work is work and money is money.”
Now that’s a sentiment I can get behind. I never thought I’d be a caregiver, just like I’m sure Jessie never thought she’d be cleaning a murder mansion. But it’s better than nothing, which is what I had before today.
With nothing more to be explored in the billiard room, we leave. Jessie cuts the lights and closes the door before taking me to the one across the hall from it.
“What’s in here?”
“A surprise,” Jessie says as she flicks on the lights, revealing a library. I take in the floor-to-ceiling shelves, a leather sofa, and two matching armchairs scooted next to a marble fireplace. On the mantel are three cloisonné vases in a matching pattern of ivory flowers and twisting blue vines. Behind them looms a large rectangle of wallpaper darker than the surrounding area.
“Did there used to be a painting there?”
“Yep,” Jessie says. “An original Winslow Homer, according to Archie. Mrs. Baker had to sell it years ago.”
I move to the mantel to get a better look at the vases. Hidden among the vines are tiny hummingbirds with little ruby dots for eyes. In the center of each ivory blossom is a circle of gold.
“Why didn’t she sell these, too?”
“Those are probably the last thing she’d sell,” Jessie says. “It might even be illegal. I think there are laws about selling dead people.”
I take a step away from the mantel, understanding my mistake. These aren’t vases. They’re urns. And inside are what remains of Winston, Evangeline, and Virginia Hope.
“Want to take a peek?” Jessie says.
“Definitely not. Have you?”
Jessie makes a face. “No way. It’s bad enough I have to dust them once a week.”
“I’m surprised they weren’t buried.”
“I guess it was easier to cremate them,” Jessie says. “It was more private. Kept the looky-loos away, at least. By then, Lenora probably knew everyone thought she did it.”
We’re near the door now, having both unconsciously drifted away from the urns. Being near them unsettles me. The problem isn’t what’s inside the urns. That’s just the dust and ash of three people. What bothers me is how those people died.
Tragically.
Violently.
On the landing of an opulent staircase, sprawled across a pool table, and in a place I haven’t seen yet but am sure Jessie will reveal next. To get it over with, I leave the library, with Jessie close behind. Back in the hallway, we pause at the portraits, three covered, one exposed. Although the hallway is dim, Lenora’s green eyes still gleam from the canvas, as if it’s been lit from the inside.
“Why do you think she did it?” I say.
“Maybe she didn’t,” Jessie says with a shrug. “I have a hunch it was Winston Hope himself. The murders took place the night of October 29, 1929. Black Tuesday. The stock market crashed, a bunch of rich guys lost millions, and the Great Depression began. That’s why not many people outside of Maine even know what happened here. Black Tuesday hijacked all the headlines. People were too worried about being poor to pay attention to Winston Hope and his dead family.”
I can’t blame them. As someone who is poor, I understand how it can eclipse all other concerns.
“I think Winston Hope knew he was about to lose everything,” Jessie continues. “Rather than live like the rest of us—which, let’s face it, totally sucks—he decided to end things. He offed his wife, then Virginia, then—” She mimes dragging a knife across her throat. “A good, old-fashioned murder-suicide.”
“But what about the stab wound in his side?” I say, before an even more logical question appears. “And why would he let Lenora live? And why wouldn’t she tell the police the truth?”
“And what happened to the knife?” Jessie adds. “Winston’s throat was slashed and Evangeline was stabbed multiple times, yet no murder weapon was ever found.”
“Which means it had to be Lenora. She killed them and tossed the knife.”
“That’s what most people seem to think.” Jessie tilts her head, studying the portrait as if she’s an art scholar. “And this painting does make her look capable of murder, doesn’t it?”