VanDamm before, he would know everything about her from simply seeing this place. While her room at the boardinghouse had been stark and impersonal, this one was hers entirely. The furniture was white with gold leaf accents, everything curved and delicate and graceful and completely feminine. The drapes and the coverlet on the bed and the canopy over it were all a pale rose and of some kind of rich material. The wallpaper depicted scenes of young maidens frolicking gaily. In one corner sat a doll’s house. Frank walked over to examine it more closely, and he saw it was furnished with remarkable attention to detail, even to the curtains on the windows. Everything was all arranged, just so, and the tiny doll family were seated around the dining room table. They even had real china dishes and a maid to serve them. Next to the house stood a chest, and when Frank lifted the lid, he found toys inside. Some dolls, worn from years of playing, the paint of their faces almost rubbed off and their clothes ragged from use. A top. A life-sized tea set. Everything had a neglected air about it, as if it hadn’t been used in some time, but Frank couldn’t help noticing the things were still here, near at hand, as if their owner hadn’t quite been ready to part with them yet. As if the owner hadn’t been ready to leave her childhood just yet.
Frank had been thinking of Alicia VanDamm as a young woman. She was pregnant, after all, so she most certainly had a lover, but now he was struck with how recently she had taken that step into adulthood. So recently that her toys were still here in her room, as if she wanted to be able to maintain her ties with the world of childhood while also trying her hand at being an adult.
Frank glanced around again, trying to imagine what kind of a person Alicia VanDamm must have been. Her room spoke of innocence. And purity. Neither of which applied to Alicia VanDamm. Something was out of kilter here, and Frank needed to find out what.
And more importantly, why.
He started his search of the room and conducted it systematically, going through each drawer and cupboard carefully so as not to disturb the contents. Mrs. Hightower would probably know what he’d done, but at least she wouldn’t be able to complain he’d left things in a mess. And of course if he didn’t leave things in a mess, he could always deny he’d searched the room at all. He reached beneath the mattress and checked under the chair bottoms and behind each piece of furniture. Behind and under every drawer. He even took each of the books off the shelf and shook them out. Examining every possible hiding place. He had no idea what he was looking for, of course. A diary naming her killer would have been just the thing, but naturally, he didn’t find one.
Nor did he find anything else. No love letters from the father of her child. No secret messages. Nothing. He’d looked in every possible hiding place, even checking beneath the rugs and tapping on the wall and floor for possible hidden compartments. But if what he failed to find disturbed him, what he did find disturbed him even more: The girl who had lived in this room was still in every way a child. The books on the shelf were mostly lesson books with a few volumes of nursery rhymes and stories. Even the clothes she’d left behind were decidedly juvenile. No scheming seductress had lived here, at least not from any evidence Frank could discover. If he hadn’t known about her condition, he might actually have believed Mrs. Hightower’s description of Alicia as having been an angel.
But even angels fell, as he remembered from his catechism lessons. Now he’d have to find out how this one had.
Mrs. Hightower had been more than reluctant for the other servants to leave their tasks, but once again Frank was able to intimidate her into accommodating him. He only hoped he wasn’t around when she found out VanDamm hadn’t given his permission for any of this.
One by one the other servants paraded through the small back parlor she had given him to use. And one by one they insisted they knew nothing of why Miss Alicia had run away or even how she had accomplished it. Either Mrs. Hightower had instructed them or else they really had no knowledge. Frank was very much afraid it was the latter.
But finally his patience was rewarded. When he’d gone through a half-dozen or so of the people who knew nothing, suddenly, he found a girl who knew everything. And even more than everything. She knew Alicia.
She was a chambermaid, Mrs. Hightower informed him, a pretty girl with bright cinnamon-colored eyes and lots of auburn curls peeking out from beneath her cap. Her name, she told him, was Lizzie.
“Short for Elizabeth, don’t you know? But nobody ever calls me that, now me Mum’s passed on. She only called it when she was that mad at me, too. I always knowed when she was gonna give me a thrashing, ’cause she’d say, Miss Elizabeth, get yourself in here right now!”
Frank had to bite his lip to keep from grinning in triumph. Instead, he settled back, ready to play his part. “Well, now, Lizzie, I’m trying to find out if anybody knows how Miss Alicia got away from the house the night she left.”
For a moment, he thought she was going to be all right, but then her lower lip began to quiver and her eyes flooded with tears, and in the next instant, she was sobbing into her apron. Actually, Frank had been expecting this reaction from someone long before now. He’d been a little disturbed that the other servants had seemed so unmoved by Alicia’s death. This probably meant they hadn’t been very close to her, but this girl had. Her tears betrayed that closeness. He waited patiently, knowing his patience would be amply rewarded, until she had sniffled her way back to coherence again.
“Oh, I’m that sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to cry thataway. Mrs. Hightower would have me hide, but when I think about poor Miss Alicia…”
“You knew her well, I guess,” Frank ventured.
“I was her maid for two years, her personal lady’s maid, but when she comes out here this time, Mrs. Hightower, she tells me, Lizzie, she says, Miss Alicia won’t be needing a maid anymore, so we’ll make you a chambermaid. A
Frank assured her he could not. “Why didn’t she need a maid?”
“I’m sure I don’t know! Oh, Mrs. Hightower would do for her, help her get dressed and such, but she was the only one ever went near her. None of the rest of us could so much as speak to her, not even me, and I’d been with her for two years!”
Frank had a pretty good idea why the servants were being kept away from Alicia, but he didn’t want to share his thoughts with Lizzie.
“Then I guess you wouldn’t have any idea how she could’ve gotten out of the house the night she disappeared.”
“Oh, cor, she probably walked right out the front door, don’t you know. No reason why she shouldn’t, is there?”
“I don’t know, is there?” Frank countered, very interested indeed in this theory.
“Not at all. The servants, we all sleep on the third floor, even me since I’m not allowed to do for Miss Alicia anymore. If she wanted to go out, there was nobody to stop her or even to hear her. The front door was locked, but the key’s right beside it, so she could just open it and walk out, bold as you please. I mean, there’s no reason to hide the key. Who’d think about anybody inside getting out? The locks is to keep people on the outside from getting in, ain’t they?”
Frank had to agree that they were. “So none of the servants would have known her plans? Couldn’t anybody have helped her get away?”
“Oh, no, sir. It’s worth your job to disobey Mrs. Hightower, and none of us even spoke to Miss Alicia since she’s been here this time. Oh, except Harvey, of course.”
Frank felt a rush of excitement, but he managed not to betray himself to Lizzie so he wouldn’t frighten her. “Who’s Harvey?”
“He’s the groom. He’d take her riding every day, or nearly every day. That girl loved to ride, she did. And she loved that horse of hers even more. I never could understand it. She’d always smell like the stable when she got back, and I’d have to pour her a bath and…” Lizzie’s voice caught, and she covered her mouth. Her eyes filled with tears again, but she managed to keep her composure this time.
“You must miss her,” Frank said kindly.
Lizzie lifted her chin and swallowed her tears. “I been missing her for a while,” she said, angry now. “It was so strange, like she was prisoner here… except I guess she wasn’t really, or else they would’ve kept her locked up. Then she’d still be here, wouldn’t she?”
“Unless they didn’t think she had any way of escaping,” Frank suggested.
“That’s true enough,” Lizzie allowed. “And Lord knows, she didn’t. I mean, who would help her get away? You’d be turned out without a reference.”
