“Alone . . . chaperone.”
Her head bobs in time to the music, her hands undulate in the air, and her singing gets louder.
“Can get . . . number.”
She plops down at the dressing table and yanks the same drawer I’d opened minutes earlier, pulling out a tube of lipstick.
“World’s . . . slumber . . . misbehave!”
Eyeing her reflection in the mirror, Mrs. Baker swipes the tube across her bottom lip, her unsteady hand smearing it outside the lip line. She wipes it with her thumb, making it worse. A crimson streak now runs halfway to her cheek. Mrs. Baker chuckles softly to herself, leans forward, stares at her drunken reflection.
Something in the mirror suddenly catches her attention. I can tell by the way her gaze darts from her reflection to just over her right shoulder.
The armoire.
Mrs. Baker turns away from the mirror and faces it. From my point of view, it appears as if she’s looking right at me. I hold my breath, unable to do anything but watch.
As Mrs. Baker sets the lipstick atop the dressing table.
As she stands.
As she takes an uneven step toward the armoire.
Her second step is steadier. The third even more so. Like she’s sobering up with each consecutive stride. By the time she’s in front of the armoire, all traces of drunkenness are gone. It’s now the usual stern, stone-cold-sober version of Mrs. Baker who reaches out.
Touches the armoire doors.
Prepares to throw them open.
I shrink against the interior wall, knowing that in one second I’ll be caught, fired, sent back to a house where my father thinks I killed my mother. But just before Mrs. Baker can pull the armoire doors open, the record player suddenly skips.
The music is replaced by a loud, low groan. It sounds through the entire house, starting at the first floor and moving upward, gaining volume as it goes.
I know what it is.
Mrs. Baker does, too, for her face darkens with concern.
The groan is followed by a crack, a clatter, and several sudden, sharp jerks. It sounds like something’s smashing into the house. Inside the armoire, I’m jostled like a body in a coffin that’s just been dropped. One of the doors flies open, exposing me being knocked back and forth behind Mrs. Baker’s long black dresses.
But she’s no longer there to see me. Instead, she’s throwing open the bedroom door and peering into the hall, one withered hand gripping the wall for support as all of Hope’s End bucks and heaves.
As quickly as it started, everything stops.
The noise.
The movement.
All is silent and still.
Mrs. Baker disappears into the hallway, off to investigate what just happened and where. Others in the house are doing the same. I hear footfalls overhead and the sound of someone thundering down the service stairs.
I stay huddled in a corner of the armoire, my heart beating a hundred times per minute. Above me, Mrs. Baker’s dresses still sway on the rack. I wait until they’ve settled before crawling out of the armoire and hurrying to Lenora’s room. She’s awake, of course, her expression alarmed and her good hand clenched around the call button. Through our adjoining door, I hear the buzz of the alarm and see the red light filling my room.
“I’m here,” I say. “Are you okay?”
Lenora drops the call button and taps twice on the bedspread. Her gaze then flicks to the far corner of the room, where someone stands, unnoticed by me until just now.
Archie.
He has the curtains pulled back and is looking out the window toward the terrace. “Looks like it’s down there,” he says.
“What is?”
Archie finally turns to face me. “The damage. We should go see what happened.”
I already know what happened. Hope’s End just got a bit closer to tumbling into the ocean.
“What are you doing in Lenora’s room?” I say.
Archie and I look at each other with wary suspicion. It reminds me of a movie I watched with my mother when she was sick. Two cat burglars who interrupted each other while trying to rob the same mansion are forced to choose if they should work together or alone. They ultimately decide to trust each other. Archie makes a similar decision.
“I was saying goodnight.”
“Since when do you say goodnight to Lenora?”
“Ever since Miss Hope first took ill,” Archie says. “Every night, I make sure to stop by and see how she’s doing.”
“Let’s walk,” I say.
What I really mean is that I want to talk where Lenora can’t hear us. Archie nods and follows me into the hallway, where the tilt of the house is noticeably more pronounced. Just when I had gotten used to it, too.
“Every night?” I say. “You told me you and Lenora were no longer close.”
“I said it wasn’t like it used to be,” Archie says. “And that’s the truth. It’s evolved over the years. Just because I don’t make a show of it doesn’t mean I don’t care about Miss Hope. We’re both on the same side, Kit. We’re both here to watch over her. We just go about it in different ways.”
“Why haven’t I seen you visit her before?”
“Because it’s kind of our little secret. Something kept just between me and Miss Hope. I’m sure you understand.”
Archie pauses, as if he now wants me to share one of my secrets. I decline. Because that movie about the cat burglars who decided to trust each other? It ends with one betraying the other. I’m not about to let the same thing happen to me.
“How late do you visit?”
“Usually a little after Miss Hope goes to bed and a little before I do the same.”
We descend the service stairs slowly, our shoes crunching over bits of plaster that have fallen from the walls.
“Ever visit her in the middle of the night?”
“No,” Archie says. “An early riser like me can’t afford to stay up that late.”
He sounds honest enough that I almost believe him. Then again, Archie also sounded honest when he lied about knowing Lenora had a baby. Right now, I suspect there’s a seventy-five percent chance he’s telling the truth. Using that math, I conclude that Archie was the gray blur I saw at Lenora’s window my first night here.
I’m less sure about him causing the middle-of-the-night noises in Lenora’s room.
Or the shadow I watched pass the adjoining door.
Or the typewritten message Lenora blamed on Virginia.
“Do you know if anyone else sneaks into Lenora’s room at night on a regular basis?”
“I doubt it,” Archie says with a vagueness that drops the truth-o-meter to fifty percent. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”
“And I’m certain it’s something.” I stop halfway down the steps. “What aren’t you telling me? When I told all of you Lenora said her sister—her dead sister—was in her room typing, you didn’t seem surprised. Why is that?”
“Because it was outlandish,” Archie says.
“Or maybe because something like that has happened before over the years.”
Archie attempts to descend another step, but I block his way, standing with my arms outstretched and both palms against the stairwell’s cracked walls.
“Was Lenora telling the truth?”
I should feel ridiculous for even thinking it, let alone saying it aloud. But Archie’s reaction—a flinch, followed by a deliberate masking of his features—tells me I’m on to something.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about this place,” he says as he gently removes one of my hands from the wall and sidesteps past me. “Things you’re better off not knowing.”
“So it’s true?” I say. “Virginia’s ghost is really haunting Hope’s End?”
Archie makes a point of not looking at me as he continues down the steps. “Haunting’s not the right word. But, yes, her presence can be felt here. At Hope’s End, the past is always present.”
I follow him to the bottom of the stairwell and into the kitchen, which appears mostly unharmed. Just a few fallen pots and pans and a broken jar on the floor. In the dining room, a large fissure has appeared above the fireplace mantel, zigging toward the ceiling. Both sets of French doors are open, letting in brisk night air and the hushed voices of everyone else already outside.
Archie and I step onto the terrace, where Mrs. Baker, Carter, and Jessie all press against the side of the house. At first, I don’t understand why.
Then I see it.
Littering the terrace are more tiles from the roof plus a pile of bricks that I assume is the remains of a toppled chimney. Running through it all, about five feet from the house, is a fault line that stretches from one side of the terrace to the other.
One step over that line could send the cliff, the terrace, and, perhaps, all of Hope’s End tumbling into the sea.
THIRTY-THREE