“We’re going to boost you up again and I want you to cut the plastic over the window so we can get inside. When that’s done, if you can, clear the glass that’s still in the frame so we don’t cut ourselves climbing in.”
“What if they have motion sensors inside?” Schanno said.
“With Wellington wandering around like that? I’m betting they don’t. We’ve been lucky so far.”
Luck. There was that word again. My first visit to the island had been plagued by its opposite. I’d been stonewalled by Wellington, sucker-punched by Morrissey, and had come away without accomplishing anything worthwhile. Meloux’s presence made a difference. This expedition had been marked by good fortune. The sympathetic customs official. Trinky Pollard’s offer of help. The storm that had covered our approach. Relaxed security on the island. I’d known Meloux all my life, and one of the things I’d observed about the old Mide was that circumstance seemed to favor him. Luck? When I’d used that word before, he’d laughed at me. Not many candles shy of a hundred years, yet he was still powerful in ways beyond my understanding.
We lifted him and he cut through the plastic, which began to flap in the wind. I looked up from where I provided one of the stirrups for his feet and saw him set the knife on the windowsill and begin carefully to remove the fragments of glass remaining in the frame.
“It is done,” he said.
“Crawl inside, Henry. We’ll join you,” I told him.
Schanno went next, with a little help from me. Once inside, he reached down and gave me a hand up.
We found ourselves in a small, dark study that smelled musty even with the air drafting through from outside. I went to the door and opened it. The hallway beyond was dimly lit at the far end. I signaled and the others followed me. We crept toward the light, which turned out to be from the chandelier in the dining room. We turned left and went through a large room with a beautiful stone fireplace, a grand piano, stuffed leather chairs, and a long leather sofa. In one corner a standing lamp gave off a dim, cheerless light. Everything was neat and tidy. The top of the piano was propped open, as if ready to be played. The place had an airless, stuffy feel to it, however. Though sheets hadn’t been draped over the furniture here, the room felt more than just empty. It seemed abandoned. It made me think of a church deserted not only by its congregation but by its god. Given what I knew of Wellington, I suspected the man seldom haunted this part of his mansion.
We entered the stacks of newspapers and followed the maze of corridors that ran through them until we reached the staircase, where we paused. Upstairs, a light blinked out in the hallway. We waited. Another came on, dimmer, farther away.
I started up. Schanno and Meloux came after me. I looked for security cameras, but didn’t see any. I listened for some sound-a cough, a grumble, the squeak of a floorboard as he paced-but the man was like a ghost. All I heard was the hollow hammer of rain driven against the windowpanes.
Upstairs I stepped carefully into the hallway and looked in the direction the hall lights had indicated Wellington was moving. The hallway was empty. He’d probably gone into one of the many rooms, but which one? Had he finally retired for the night?
“He’s been wandering around upstairs all evening,” Schanno whispered. “He’ll be out again in a minute. Do we surprise him?”
“We don’t want to give him a heart attack,” I said. “But we also don’t want him locking himself away somewhere.”
“Why don’t we just slip into a room, crack the door, and wait for him to pass. Then we corner him before he can slip away.”
That sounded as good as anything. We went to the nearest door- it was unlocked-and we slipped inside. In the moment while light came in from the hallway with us, I saw that it was a large bedroom with a canopy four- poster. We closed the door, leaving it open just a crack, and waited.
A long two minutes passed. I thought about Henry, finally on the verge of meeting his son, and I wished I were happier for him, wished that the man he was about to meet would make him happy and proud. But Henry knew he was not here for that reason. He was here to heal his son.
The light at the end of the hallway went out. I hadn’t heard a door open or close. I leaned to the crack. The hallway was dark now. I listened for the sound of shuffling on carpet, breathing, anything that would tell me where Wellington was.
The light directly outside the room where we hid came on suddenly. I opened the door. The hallway was deserted. Wellington, it seemed, was truly a ghost after all.
Meloux said, “I do not understand.”
“A timer, Henry,” Schanno guessed. “The lights go on and off automatically. It’s a way of making it appear someone is here when they really aren’t.”
“My son is not here?” Meloux looked confused and disappointed.
Schanno said, “When you saw him before, where was he, Cork?”
I led them to the other end of the hallway, to the anteroom where I’d been given my mask, then I opened the door to Wellington’s sanitized inner sanctum. The bedroom was still glaring white, but Wellington wasn’t there. I opened one of the doors leading off the bedroom. A bathroom with a sunken tub, a shower, and a pedestal sink, all tastefully done in white and sea green marble tile with modern stainless-steel fixtures. There was a vanity as well, the mirror outlined with bright bulbs, the sort of thing I associated with wealthy women who spent a lot of time on their makeup.
Behind me, Schanno said, “Take a look at this.”
He came into the bathroom holding a white robe, the kind Wellington had been wearing when I saw him.
“Where’d you get that?”
“In the closet. Along with this.” He held up a pair of black silk pajamas on a wooden hanger. “About as night and day as you can get.” He looked around the bathroom. “Very nice. Anything interesting?”
“Check out the vanity.”
“Whoa,” Schanno said.
He was probably responding to the wig of long white hair draped over a wooden head-shaped stand on the vanity. I checked the drawers. Makeup, but not the kind most women wore. Theatrical stuff. Gum spirit, liquid latex, foundation, a creme color wheel, a contact lens case with brown-tinted lenses inside.
“Wellington’s, you think?” Schanno asked.
“If it is, he’s even stranger than I figured.”
Meloux stood in the bathroom doorway, looking lost. “What does it mean?”
“I’m not entirely sure, Henry. Let’s check the bedroom carefully.”
In the closet hung several of the white robes, but also dress shirts, a couple of Hawaiian numbers, and slacks. In a shoe rack were casual shoes, deck shoes, and three pairs of New Balance athletic shoes. The dresser held briefs, undershirts, socks, sweaters, sweat suits. In the drawer of the nightstand were a couple of paperback mystery novels and a wire-bound notebook. The notebook contained dialogue sketches, exchanges like those between characters in a play.
Edwina: You can’t mean that.
Gladstone: If you’d been paying attention, you’d have seen this coming.
(Edwina crumples in a faint.)
Gladstone: Your dramatics will do you no good, my dear.
I read a couple of pages; it didn’t get any better. Behind the last page of the notebook was a flyer, folded in half. I opened it and discovered an advertisement for a production at the Loghouse Theatre, a melodrama titled The Nightcap, written and directed by Preston Ellsworth and starring the same. The production ran from June 1 until August 31, at eight P.M. every night except Monday.
Henry breathed deeply, almost a sigh of relief, I thought. “It was not my son you saw here.”
“That’s a good guess, Henry.”
“But why this pretending?”
“The question of the day.”
“What now?” Schanno asked.
I looked at my watch. A few minutes before nine.
“How long does a play last?” I asked. “Couple of hours?”
“About that.”
