Page 75 of Murder Will Out
Willow climbed the staircase to the second floor, moving slowly and nursing her lingering aches and bruises. The last time she had looked here, she had been sure she had found the lever that should have opened the hidden hallway, but it had not worked. Her suspicion that Annabel simply hadn’t wanted her there that day was borne out when today it opened easily, revealing the passage to the little garret bedroom.
She made her way to the sunny chamber and sat down at the heavy secretary desk.
Sue’s desk had been full of secrets, and those secrets had changed Willow’s life. Now she wanted a look at Annabel’s.
“Okay, Annabel,” she said. “Anything else you can show me?” She began her search.
The lever was tucked under the desk; when she found it and shifted it, a whole section flipped and clicked into place, revealing a heavy manual typewriter.
There was a single sheet of paper in it with three typed lines of text:
at last words of truth are drawn from the depths of the heart and the mask torn off reality remains --Lucretius
And then, a little farther down the page:
took you long enough
Willow grinned. Of course. Who else could it have been? “So, there you are. Nice to meet you, Abel R. Douglas. Novelist andnote writer.” Then her eye was caught by something tucked beside the typewriter.
A bundle of yellowing envelopes, tied with a string of faded green yarn.
A few hourslater, Catherine and Willow sat together at a sunny front table in the village library. Catherine untied the yarn and gazed down at the pile of letters. She looked up at Willow, who nodded.
“These were Annabel’s? From her son?” Catherine asked in a hushed voice.
Willow nodded.
“And she wrote the novels? All of them?”
Willow nodded again.
Catherine opened one of the letters and skimmed it, then another. “I figured. I suspected Annabel had to be our mysterious author as soon as you told me about the books hidden in her chest.”
Willow looked surprised. “What about them?”
“She had books by both Brontë sisters, Louisa May Alcott, and George Eliot in there?” Catherine gently laid down the first two letters and retrieved a third.
Willow nodded. “Yes, and one other I can’t quite remember, something with a phantom.”
“I’d bet it wasA Phantom Loverby Vernon Lee.” A satisfied smile spread across Catherine’s face. “A veritable who’s who of women writers who first published under male pseudonyms.”
Willow blinked, and then burst out laughing. “I didn’t even think of that, but it seems very like her.”
Catherine nodded, still reading the letters. “These are… beautiful. And so sad.”
“I found them in Annabel’s desk with her typewriter, in a concealed compartment—not even very concealed; I just didn’t knowto look for it. They’re Douglas’s letters from the front, the ones he wrote while he was at war.”
Catherine looked up, her eyes shining. “Like the novel,” she said, a little breathless.
“Except for this one.” Willow extricated the final envelope from the bottom of the pile, pulled out a letter, and handed it to Catherine.
Catherine scanned the letter. “It’s from her. From his wife. The nurse.” She looked back up at Willow in wonder. “It’s real. The story.” She ran her finger over the stack of letters. “You’ve read these? It happened in life the way it did in the book?”
“It’s real,” Willow said. “Douglasdidget married to an army nurse he met overseas, and the hospitalwasdestroyed within a few days of his departure.”
“The baby,” Catherine murmured. “It was a girl.” Then she scanned down to the signature at the bottom of the page. “The mother signs her name as Annemarie. No last name.” She looked up at Willow. “Do we have any idea where she settled?”
Willow shook her head. “No return address. She could be anywhere.”
