Page 67 of The Perfect Guests
“Oh, Mr. Meyer,” she says gently. “I’m so sorry. Right before the police arrived, Nina told us—” She hesitates. She has no idea how he’s going to take the news. Will he be devastated—or might he even be relieved?
“What is it?” Joe says.
Sadie swallows. “I’m afraid Nina said she’d found out she wasn’t Markus’s biological daughter. Roy Everett is her father...”
She keeps her eyes trained on the hunched old man in the armchair. He lifts his head and stares straight back at her. He looks neither angry nor surprised, merely confused.
“Come closer, will you?” he says. “What did you say your name was?”
Warily, she approaches his chair, and at a gesture from him, shecrouches so that he can get a good look at her face. His brow lowers, and his gaze grows sharper.
“All right,” he says. “Enough. Is this some sort of game?” And then he looks up, and Sadie realizes that Beth has come to stand beside her.
“Hendrik,” Beth says, “there’s a lot more you don’t know, I’m afraid.”
Hendrik’s eyes widen. “Nina? Is that you? But the police said...”
Beth shakes her head. “I’m not Nina. I never was. They found me in a children’s home, and they brought me here to act the part of Nina, to try to fool you. I suppose it was because she didn’t look like Markus... Oh, Hendrik, I’m so, so sorry.”
Sadie looks in shock from her mother back to Hendrik. He screws up his eyes, and Beth reaches out and touches him tentatively on the shoulder. For an awful moment, Sadie thinks he’s about to cry, but when he opens his eyes again, she realizes he’s laughing—bewildered, strained laughter, but laughter, nonetheless.
“Let me show you something,” he says. “Joe, help me up...”
Joe eases Hendrik to his feet, and Hendrik fumbles around in his pockets, eventually pulling out a battered leather wallet.
“Here it is.” Hendrik sits back down with a huff, and then he slides a photo from the wallet. It’s in color but faded. He passes it to Sadie.
Sadie frowns. “When was this taken?” She peers at it more closely, her heart knocking strangely.I don’t remember sitting for this.It looks so old-fashioned—was it for an audition? No, there’s nothing familiar about it—not the garden setting, not the blue checked dress, not the plaits...
She passes the photo to Beth and frowns at Hendrik. “It’s not me. Whoisit?”
“She was my wife,” Hendrik says. “Anneliese, Markus’s mother.This was taken when she was sixteen, when I first met her. And you’re her spitting image, my dear. You look even more like her than your mother did.” He eases back in the chair and switches his gaze to Beth. “Now, tell me again about this so-called game.”
With every minute that Hendrik is in the house, Leonora feels Raven Hall slipping more from her grasp. The way he looks at her with those piercing blue eyes. The way he looks at Beth...
“I’m Nina, sir,” Beth told him, when he arrived. And now she’s playing her violin for him. But Leonora can barely breathe; she’s waiting for Hendrik to leap up, to declare the whole performance a sham, to banish them all from this place forever.
She curls her fingers tightly in her lap so Hendrik won’t see them shaking. Why did she let Markus talk her into trying this? But then again... what other option did they have?
Beth lowers her violin, and—is it possible?—Hendrik is crying. He’s genuinely crying.
“That was beautiful, my child,” he says. “You remind me so much of your grandmother, Anneliese.”
Slowly, slowly, Leonora uncurls her fingers. Against all the odds, it seems their little game might just have worked.
Beth
Ican’t tear my eyes from the photo of Anneliese. The blue checked dress... the ribbons at the ends of her plaits... and her face—so eerily similar to Sadie’s. But how can this be? What does it mean?
I’m barely aware of Hendrik rising from his chair again. It’s not until he grasps my hand that I finally let the photo fall.
“Look at me,” he says, his voice raspy. “You remember the first time we met?”
I expect to see anger or disgust in his eyes, but it’s something else entirely—a mixture of confusion and concern. I can’t find my voice, but I nod.
“I recognized your outfit,” he says. “Markus had a copy of this photo, so Leonora would have seen it. I thought she must be trying to unsettle me, by dressing you up to look like Anneliese. It felt like a cruel trick.”
I shake my head. “That wasn’t the trick.”
