Riley had disappeared around the corner. I closed the door behind me and followed her down a narrow hall that ran toward the front of the building.
The room I entered had three windows, all of them facing High Street. Heavy drapes hung lopsided from their rods but were open enough to let in light. To the left were two sofas with faded print covers, and to the right an alcove, a square area between the front wall of the building and the wall of the stairwell. A round table and several straight-back chairs filled that space. A silk lamp with fringe hung from the ceiling.
Mrs. Riley sat down at the table, facing into the room, and gestured to a seat across from her. I perched on it nervously, tucking my hands under my legs.
“You have questions,” she said.
I nodded. “I’m not sure where to begin.”
“Strange things have been happening at the house.” Her voice was low, almost soothing. “What kind of things?”
“Well, objects are being moved. The Bible, for instance. It was missing from its shelf in the kitchen, and Grandmother became convinced that someone had stolen it. Later, I spotted it in the library. Instead of being glad I found it, she was angry and kept staring at the spot it had occupied.”
“Which was on a library shelf,” Mrs. Riley said.
“Yes, just to the left of the fireplace.”
The psychic’s head lifted slightly. “Tell me more.”
Feeling a little more comfortable, I rested my hands on the table. “This morning we found that a picture had been moved from the front parlor to the music room. Grandmother started getting weird again-paranoid, as if someone were doing this to her, as if Z were doing it.
“A painting,” she repeated.
“A landscape,” I said. “A picture of a mill.”
Mrs. Riley didn’t make a sound, but I saw the buttons on her dress move and catch the light as if she had quickly sucked in a breath.
“Yesterday a clock was missing from Grandmother’s desk.”
“A small clock. . an old one,” she murmured.
“Yes. It has a picture painted on its face, roses and-”
“Was it found on the hall table?”
I blinked. “How did you know?”
She sat back in her chair. “That is where it used to be kept. The Bible always sat on a shelf by the library’s hearth.
The mill painting hung over the Chinese chest in the music room.”
“You mean things are being moved back to where they were years ago? To where they were when you worked there?”
She nodded her head slowly, rhythmically.
“But then why would Grandmother blame me? How would I know where those things were kept? I don’t see how Matt would know, either, unless Grandmother told him.”
Mrs. Riley’s eyes closed, then drifted open again. She looked past me as if she were looking into another world.
She stared for so long I turned around to see what was there. Nothing extraordinary-a flowered sofa, a table piled with Baggies, her herbal stuff.
“The clock belonged to Avril,” Mrs. Riley said. “She insisted on placing it in the hall. She hated the big grandfather clock.”
“I don’t blame her,” I remarked. “It’s like a guard stationed on the landing, watching you come in and out. You can hear it tolling wherever you are in the house.”
“Avril called it the big bully. She would reset the small clock to whatever time she wanted it to be. Her parents played along, allowing her to come home long after she was supposed to. I’m surprised your grandmother didn’t throw out that wretched little clock.”
“It’s an antique.”
“What’s one more antique?” Mrs. Riley said. “Helen has money to burn.”
“Maybe she keeps it because it reminds her of Avril.”
“That’s precisely why she would throw it out.”
I was surprised by the bitterness in Mrs. Riley’s voice.
“Did you work there when Avril was alive?” I asked.
“I was the personal maid of both girls.”
“But you must have been their age.”
“A year older than Avril,” she replied, “two years older than Helen.”
That couldn’t have been easy, I thought, especially if Avril acted like a princess. “What were they like, my grandmother and Avril?”
Mrs. Riley took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Avril was pretty, popular, and spoiled. She was always into something and got too much attention from her parents.
Poor, serious Helen got almost nothing.
“That doesn’t sound fair.”
“Helen was a good girl. She read a lot and always kept her room neat. It was nothing for me to pick up after her. But Avril! She didn’t care where she threw things, and her room was small and crowded. She insisted on sleeping in the back wing.”
“The back wing?” I sat up a little straighter.
“Oh, I knew what she was up to, even if her parents didn’t.
She could get in and out of the house by way of the kitchen roof.”
I put my hand over my mouth. Avril had slept in the room where I’d awakened, where Alice had seen the ghost.
“What is it?” Mrs. Riley asked, “Nothing.”
The pupils of her eyes were like dark pins tacking me to the wall; she wouldn’t let me go until I gave a better answer.
“I’ve been in that room,” I said at last. “It has roses on the wallpaper.”
“Avril adored roses. She wanted them in vases, in her hair, in bouquets brought by her boyfriends, and she always got what she wanted. Poor Helen grew terribly jealous and angry. I didn’t blame her, not after Avril stole Thomas.”
“But my grandfather was Thomas,” I said, puzzled.
Mrs. Riley nodded, her eyes long, dark slits, as if focusing on a distant memory. “He was Helen’s beau first-at least publicly. There were other girls, many others. Money is what made up Thomas’s mind.”
It wasn’t a flattering picture of my mother’s father, but I had come for the truth.
“He was a young cabinetmaker from Philadelphia, an apprentice hired to do repair work at Scarborough House,” Mrs. Riley continued. “Thomas was talented but had no money. He switched his affections from Helen to Avril, who, as the oldest, was supposed to inherit Scarborough House.
When Avril died, everything became Helen’s. Everything including Thomas.”
I sat back in my chair thinking about how Grandmother must have felt, dumped, then picked up again, second choice. Still, it happened so long ago. “I don’t understand why any of this would matter to her now, but something has set her off, and it seems connected to Avril.”
“Some wounds heal, others fester,” Mrs. Riley replied.
“Have you seen the ghost at Scarborough House?” I asked.
“No. Not long after Avril died, I married and left the house.
I have never been invited back.”
“Is it possible that my grandmother thinks she is being haunted by the ghost of her dead sister?”
Mrs. Riley ran her gnarled hands over the table, touching it with just the tips of her fingers, as if she were
