Then the L again.
Then the E.
“A little?” I say, making sure it’s what she meant.
Rather than return the planchette to the yes, Lenora taps it twice against the board.
“What was she like?”
Lenora slides the planchette again, spelling out a word with a meaning that needs no confirmation.
nasty
“Then why is Mrs. Baker giving her money every month?” I look to the Ouija board, where the planchette remains still beneath Lenora’s hand. “Did you know she was doing that?”
This time, Lenora spells out her answer.
yes
“How long has it been going on?”
Beneath the letters, a row of numbers is centered on the Ouija board, going from zero to nine. Lenora jerks the planchette to four of them, forming a telltale year.
1929
Because I was never good at math, it takes me a minute to add it all up in my head. The figure I come up with boggles my mind. Since 1929, Berniece Mayhew has been paid more than six hundred thousand dollars.
“Why?” I say, too stunned to phrase it any better than that.
Lenora returns the planchette to the letters, falling into the same kind of rhythm as when she used the typewriter. In roughly the same time it would have taken her to type it, she’s spelled out her answer.
because she knows
I still don’t understand. “Knows what?”
Lenora keeps the planchette sliding.
about that night
I nod. There’s only one night she could be referring to.
“What about that night?”
Lenora keeps the planchette moving, skipping from one letter to another to another.
she
The planchette continues to slide. Down to one of the last letters on the second row, then up to the first one in the first row, then back down to the second.
was
I keep my gaze fixed on the Ouija board, too afraid of missing a letter that I don’t even blink.
here
My heart thuds once against my rib cage.
Berniece Mayhew was at Hope’s End that night.
Not just before and after the murders, but during them.
By the start of October, I had reached the point where I could no longer hide my condition, even with the help of Archie and Miss Baker. My body had changed too much to merely blame on weight gain. Soon anyone who looked at me would know I was pregnant.
Without another way to keep it a secret, Miss Baker suggested I take a cue from my mother and stay in bed. Reluctantly, that’s what I did. Anyone who came into my room and saw me propped up on pillows and covered by ample blankets wouldn’t know I was pregnant.
My excuse for taking to my bed--exhaustion brought about by extreme nervousness--was also inspired by my mother. Everyone believed it. Like mother, like daughter. Even clueless Dr. Walden had no trouble thinking it was the truth. Rather than examine me, he simply provided a bottle of laudanum and told me to sip it regularly to ease my delicate condition. I poured the foul liquid down the sink as soon as I was alone. I might have been acting like my mother, but I certainly had no plan to become her.
For a restless girl like me who lost every time my father forced us to play the game in which he locked us in our rooms, I shockingly had no trouble spending most of my time in bed. Very quickly, I learned how to lay very still, sometimes for hours, while my mind roamed the world, going wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted.
Often, I’d put my hands on my stomach and whisper to the child growing inside it about all the things I had planned for us and all the places we would go. Paris, of course, but other, more adventurous locales. Jungles and mountains and tropical islands with water that shimmered like sapphires.
I thought of it as nothing more than daydreaming, but Archie, whose curious nature compelled him to read about such things, said I was practicing meditation.
“What’s that?” I asked him on one of the rare times he could sneak into my room.
“Disassociating the mind from the body,” he replied, which didn’t clear up much.
Still, I had ample time to let my mind wander. Few people came to see me. My mother was bedridden herself, and my father, overwhelmed by business woes I knew very little about, had taken to spending more time in Boston. Even Archie’s visits grew scarce as the weeks passed.
The only two people I saw on a regular basis were Miss Baker, who brought me meals and made sure I ate every bite, and my sister, who seemed to revel in discussing her social life, including all the things she was doing, people she was seeing, and places she was going.
“Peter and I are going on a picnic,” she said the day before everything changed, even though none of us knew it yet. “I do wish you could join us.”
She didn’t mean it, of course. It was simply her way of making sure I knew she had the carefree existence I could only long for. Little did she know that I was doing fine. I had someone who loved me, his child growing inside me, and a happy family in my future.
Or so I told myself.
But doubt had crept in, and no amount of daydreaming--or meditation--could keep it at bay.
The truth was that Ricky hadn’t once checked in on me in the three weeks since I had been forced to fake being an invalid. He knew it was a ruse to hide the pregnancy, for I made sure to tell him.
Day after day, week after week, I asked Miss Baker, who by then knew Ricky’s identity, if he had come around trying to see me. And day after day, week after week, I was told no.
“I’m sure it’s very difficult for him to sneak away,” Miss Baker said each time I asked.
Of that, I had no doubt. What bothered me was that he didn’t even seem to be attempting to check on me. My patience eventually wore thin, as did my certainty that Ricky truly loved me and wanted this child as much as I did.
Fueled in part by my sister’s flaunting of her robust social life, I chose that night to sneak out and see him. The doubt had become too much to bear.
When Miss Baker arrived with dinner that evening, I pleaded with her to locate Ricky and tell him I would meet him on the terrace at midnight. It was the only time I could leave my room without being seen. Reluctantly, she agreed.
At the stroke of midnight, after I was certain everyone else had gone to bed, I crept downstairs into the kitchen, on my way to the terrace. I was halfway across the kitchen when I realized I wasn’t alone.
Berniece was also there. Although she pretended to busy herself with late-night work, it was clear she had been waiting for me.
“I knew it,” she said when she saw my rounded stomach. “Well, you’re one apple that didn’t fall far from the tree.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” I replied, trying to muster anger when all I felt was pure fear.
Berniece sneered. “That you’re a whore. Just like every other member of your family.”
I was so stunned I couldn’t speak. I knew what the servants said about us behind our backs, of course. I just thought they valued their jobs too much to say it to my face. Not Berniece, apparently.
“You honestly think I don’t know what’s going on?” she said. “My husband sneaking out at odd hours, hardly paying any attention to me, looking like he’d rather die than touch me. I’ve known for months. It’s not the first time it’s happened.”
She glared at me, as if everything about me repulsed her.
“What do you intend to do about it?” I said, which I’m sure sounded like a challenge to Berniece even though it wasn’t. I was intensely curious--not to mention frightened--of her next move.
“I intend to get rich,” she said. “I’ll stay silent and look the other way if you and your family pay up.”
I stayed completely still, stunned. “How much?”
“Fifty thousand dollars should be enough,” she said before tacking on a threat I was certain she’d carry out. “For now. You have until tomorrow night to think it over.”
Immediately, I began to panic.
Tomorrow.
That wasn’t much time. Not nearly enough to plan our escape. But escape was the only option. Of that, I had no doubt.
I burst from the kitchen, running outside to the terrace, where Ricky waited in the shadows. I hushed him before he could say a word, worried that Berniece had followed me out.
“Not here,” I whispered before whisking him away to the first floor of the garage, where the gleaming Packards my father owned but never drove were kept. We climbed into the back seat of one of them, hiding from the rest of the world.
“Will you tell me what’s going on?” Ricky said.
“She knows,” I blurted out. “Berniece knows. And she wants money or she’s going to tell my father. But telling my father is the only way to get the money.”
“How much does she want?” Ricky said, his voice more curious than angry.
“Fifty thousand dollars.” I wanted to sob. The situation was so dire that I had no idea what to do. No matter what we chose, the decision would irrevocably change my life. “What are we going to do?”
Ricky had the only answer.
“Run away,” he said. “Tomorrow night.”
THIRTY-FOUR