Moonlight Becomes You

Latham Manor, the one that got him banished from the place. Bateman was the last person to admit seeing Maggie yesterday, he reasoned. She had spoken to Detective Haggerty later, but no one had reported seeing her.

Had anyone thought about that? Neil wondered. Had anyone checked to confirm Earl Bateman’s story that he had gone directly to Providence after he left the museum yesterday afternoon?

“This is Mother’s apartment,” Sarah Cushing said. She tapped, waited for the invitation to enter, then opened the door.

Now fully dressed, Mrs. Letitia Bainbridge was seated in a wing chair. She waved Neil in and pointed to the chair nearest her. “From what Sarah tells me, you seem to be Maggie’s young man. You must be so worried. We all are. How can we help?”

Having deduced that Sarah Cushing had to be nearly seventy, Neil realized that this bright-eyed, clear-voiced woman had to be around ninety or more. She looked as if she missed nothing. Let her tell me something that will help, he prayed.

“Mrs. Bainbridge, I hope I won’t upset you by being absolutely frank with you. For reasons I don’t understand as yet, Maggie had begun to be very suspicious about some of the recent deaths in this residence. We know that only yesterday morning she looked up the obituaries of six different women, five of whom had resided here, and who died recently. Those five women died in their sleep, unattended, and none of them had close relatives.”

“Dear God!” Sarah Cushing’s voice was shocked.

Letitia Bainbridge did not flinch. “Are you talking about neglect or murder?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Neil said. “I just know that Maggie started an investigation that’s already leading to an order for the exhumation of at least two of the dead women, and now she’s disappeared. And I’ve just learned that Dr. Lane has been fired.”

“I just found out that too, Mother,” Sarah Cushing said. “But everyone thinks it’s because of the bookkeeper.”

“What about Nurse Markey?” Mrs. Bainbridge asked her daughter. “Is that why the police questioned her? I mean because of the deaths?”

“Nobody is sure, but she’s mighty upset. And, of course, so is Mrs. Lane. I hear that the two of them are closeted in Markey’s office.”

“Oh, those two are always whispering together,” Letitia Bainbridge said dismissively. “I can’t imagine what they have to say to each other. Markey may be terribly annoying, but at least she has a brain. The other one is as empty-headed as they get.”

This isn’t getting me anywhere, Neil thought. “Mrs. Bainbridge,” he said, “I can only stay a minute longer. There’s one other thing I’d like to ask you. Were you at the lecture Professor Bateman gave here? The one that apparently caused such an uproar?”

“No.” Mrs. Bainbridge shot a look at her daughter. “That was another day when Sarah insisted I rest, so I missed all the excitement. But Sarah was there.”

“I can assure you, Mother, that you wouldn’t have enjoyed being handed one of those bells and being told to pretend you were buried alive,” Sarah Cushing said spiritedly. “Let me tell you exactly what happened, Mr. Stephens.”

Bateman has to be crazy, Neil thought as he listened to her version of the events.

“I was so upset that I gave that man a real tongue-lashing and nearly threw the box with those appalling bells after him,” Sarah Cushing continued. “At first he seemed embarrassed and contrite, but then a look came over his face that almost frightened me. I think he must have a fearful temper. And, of course, Nurse Markey had the gall to defend him! I spoke to her about it later, and she was quite impudent. She told me that Professor Bateman had been so upset that he said he now feared he wouldn’t be able to stand the sight of the bells, which apparently had cost him quite a bit of money.”

“I’m still sorry I wasn’t there,” Mrs. Bainbridge said. “And as far as Nurse Markey goes,” she continued reflectively, “in perfect fairness, many of the residents here consider her an excellent nurse. I just find her to be nosy and pushy and intrusive, and I want her kept away from me whenever possible.” She paused, then said, “Mr. Stephens, this may sound ridiculous, but I think that whatever his faults and shortcomings, Dr. Lane is a very kind man, and I’m a pretty good judge of character.”

A half-hour later, Neil and his father drove to Maggie’s house. Dolores Stephens was already there. She looked at her son and reached up and took his face between her hands. “We’re going to find her,” she said firmly.

Unable to speak, Neil nodded.

“Where’s the key, Dolores?” Robert Stephens demanded.

“Right here.”

The key fit the new lock on the back door, and as they walked into the kitchen, Neil thought, it all started right here, when Maggie’s stepmother was murdered.

The kitchen was neat. There were no dishes in the sink. He opened the dishwasher; inside were a few cups and saucers, along with three or four small plates. “I wonder if she had dinner out last night,” he said.

“Or made a sandwich,” his mother suggested. She had opened the refrigerator and seen a supply of cold cuts. She pointed to several knives in the utensils basket of the dishwasher.

“There’s no message pad near the phone,” Robert Stephens said. “We knew she was worried about something,” he snapped. “I’m so damn mad at myself. I wish to God that when I came back here yesterday, I had bullied her into staying with us.”

The dining room and living room both were orderly. Neil studied the vase of roses on the coffee table, wondering who had sent them. Probably Liam Payne, he thought. She mentioned him at dinner. Neil had only met Payne a few times, but he could have been the guy Neil had glimpsed leaving Maggie’s Friday night.

Upstairs, the smallest bedroom contained the evidence of Maggie’s packing up her stepmother’s personal effects: Neatly tagged bags of clothing, purses, lingerie, and shoes were piled there. The bedroom she had used initially was the same as when they had fixed the window locks.

They went into the master bedroom. “Looks to me as though Maggie planned to stay in here last night,” Robert Stephens observed, pointing to the freshly made bed.

Without answering, Neil started upstairs to the studio. The light that he had noticed last night, when he parked outside waiting for Maggie to come home, was still on, pointed toward a picture tacked to the bulletin board. Neil remembered that the picture had not been there Sunday afternoon.

He started across the room, then stopped. A chill ran through his body.

On the refectory table, in the glare of the spotlight, he saw two metal bells.

As surely as he knew that night followed day, he knew that these were two of the bells that Earl Bateman had used in his infamous lecture at Latham Manor-the bells that had been whisked away, never to be seen again.

85

Her hand ached and was covered with dirt. She had continued to move the string steadily back and forth, hoping to keep the tube open, but now no more dirt seemed to be falling through the air vent. The water had stopped trickling down, too.

She couldn’t hear the beating of the rain anymore either. Was it getting colder, or was it just that the dampness inside the coffin was so chilling? she wondered.

But she was actually starting to feel warm, even too warm.

I’m getting a fever, Maggie thought drowsily.

She was so lightheaded. The vent is sealed, she thought. There can’t be much oxygen left.

“One… two… three.. . four…”

Now she was whispering the numbers aloud, trying to force herself to stay awake, to start calling out again when she reached five hundred.

What difference would it make if he came back and heard her? What more could he do than he already had