Page 29 of Murder Will Out
Willow had never been in such a wonderful room in her life.
She walked around slowly, taking in the generations of paintings and photos. The clothing and hairstyles reflected every decade from the late 1700s through to maybe the 1950s. A photo in an ornate oval frame showed a couple standing arm in arm; another photo contained two lanky young men, like mirror images of one another, grinning rakishly at the camera from opposite sides of achessboard. Farther down, a small painting caught her eye, of a broad-shouldered man in a dark blue lobster dory with the nameSusannahpainted into the bow—her low-tech lobsterman, when his boat was new.
In one of the larger paintings, she recognized Efric and Andrew Cameron, the couple from the wedding photo she had found in Catherine’s library archive. In this image, they were surrounded by children; Willow realized the artist had caught far more than the stiff elegance one might expect of the typical family portrait. The elegantly dressed mother in the high-backed chair showed a hint of frazzled desperation as a pair of identical toddler boys—would they grow up to be the young men at the chessboard?—tried to escape from her lap. Behind the chair, the father figure stood tall and stiff, his hand on his wife’s shoulder, looking both paternal and powerful; next to him stood an older boy, perhaps sixteen, equally stiff, as though attempting to look exactly like his father. A small plaque beside the painting read:Andrew and Efric Cameron, and their children Andrew Jr., Donal, and Dougal. And Annabel. 1897.
The teenage boy was no doubt Andrew Jr., which meant the babies had to be Donal and Dougal. But—Willow looked at the painting again, puzzled—where was Annabel?
She felt her face break into a smile when she saw, in the background of the painting, a pair of small bare feet peeking out from beneath the window curtains, a set of small fingers at the side of the curtain, and the hint of a face peeking around the edge from the shadows.
A childhood memory slammed hard into Willow’s mind: Her parents, hosting some holiday in their home, had demanded that she remain in the big room where everyone talked and clinked their dishes and silverware, conversations layering over one another, tangling and jangling in her brain. Willow hated it, had always hated it; as the minutes dragged on, she had moved slowly backward to the edges of the gathering, then to the wall, then tothe curtain, and then behind it. She had stayed there, perched on the windowsill like Jane Eyre, warm and unnoticed and silently swathed in the heavy velvet, until an adult found her and abruptly yanked the curtain back. Everyone had laughed, and the moment, though never repeated, became a joke to retell every year, about Willow and her antisocial nature. She had laughed too, of course; that was what one did, and no one bothered to notice the bleakness in her eyes as she did so.
You and I would get along well, Annabel, she thought.In fact, I’d very much like to meet you.
She gave a little pinched shriek as the library door suddenly slammed shut behind her; heart in her throat, she whirled to face it just in time to see the bolt turn—with no hand to turn it—and hear it settle with a hardthunkinto place.
A familiar voice spoke from the center of the room. “Good afternoon, Miss Stone. Thank you for joining us.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The fireplace, cold and shadowed but a moment ago, now crackled merrily, sending warm light into the room. Joel Drummond sat calmly on the hearthstone, peering through narrow spectacles at the ledger on his lap and scratching away in it with an ancient fountain pen.
He eyed her over the top of his glasses, then closed the ledger and put it beside him on the hearth, setting the pen precisely in its center. Willow walked slowly across the library, moving, with each step, farther from the safe and rational island outside and closer to… she didn’t know what.
Joel’s dark, implacable eyes followed her as she approached. He did not speak, only waited.
Later, Willow would think,It would be easier if he were transparent, or had some ectoplasmic aura rising from him, or, I don’t know, sparkled.But the man before her looked so absurdlynormalthat her brain could hardly compute his existence. Normal, except for his old eyes that seemed to see everything.
“Are you… real?” she heard herself asking, wincing as her voice cracked a little.
The corner of his mouth quirked, the faint shadow of a smile. “It would seem so.”
Her heart was thudding so hard she was sure he could hear it. “I saw a photo. Taken in 1880. Of… you.”
Joel tilted his head curiously. “Did you? Which one?”
“Efric and Andrew Cameron’s wedding.”
He nodded. “Ah yes. That was one of the earliest family photos; Andrew was very proud of it.”
Another long silence; she struggled for what to say next, and he waited.
Once she found her voice again, the questions tumbled out. “But how… how are you here?Whyare you here?” She paused. “Why amIhere?”
He nodded as though she had asked him to tell her about the weather. “Three excellent questions. With very different answers.” He unfolded himself from his seat on the hearth and began pacing slowly back and forth, his hands behind his back. “Thehowis… complicated. We do not fully understand ourselves the mechanics behind our presence here, and no one gave us a guidebook.”
“A guidebookwouldhave been helpful,” said the elderly black-bonneted woman sitting on the divan, fingers swiftly feeding yarn through her knitting needles.
Willow started; the woman had not appeared, exactly; she simplywas.
“Remember? Like that ghost story film Effie let us watch about the nice young couple who died on the little bridge,” she said, eyes flicking up and down from her knitting, to Joel, to Willow, and back down again.
Her sister, sitting next to her on the couch where a second ago there had been no one, picked up the story. “Yes, I remember—but they neglected to read it, and they had so much trouble with thatvulgarlittle striped man in the attic—”
“Ladies, please,” Joel said, clearly irritated; the women gaveeach other a knowing look and returned to their knitting with studied innocence.
Willow looked in bewilderment from one woman to the other and then back to Joel. She was either losing it or this was real.
How could this be real?
