The Fate of Mercy Alban (15 page)

I was still clutching the letters in one hand, and I quickly scanned the envelopes. The last one, the one describing Coleville’s unpublished manuscript, was gone.

“I know what they were looking for,” I said, my voice dropping to a low whisper as I scanned the walls, wondering if whoever did this was still lurking behind them. “It was something very valuable, but not jewelry. Let’s go into the solarium.” Holding Matthew’s gaze and putting an arm around my daughter’s shoulders, I explained: “It’s the only room in the house that doesn’t have hidden passageways running through the walls. I’ve got something to tell you.”

The rain was still coming down, hitting the windows and roof of the solarium in bursts, creating a sheen of opaqueness through which the gardens and the lake beyond seemed distorted and strange, a world of illusion and fantasy. Amity and I settled onto the sofa farthest away from the door, Matthew took the armchair next to us. They both were looking at me with the same expression of expectancy—waiting for whatever it was I had to say.

Jane had made her way downstairs and had followed us into the solarium, carrying a tray of teacups and a pot. As she began to pour, I said to her: “You should hear this, too. Why don’t you pour yourself a cup and join us?” It was then I noticed she had indeed brought four cups.

I unfolded the first letter and smoothed it onto the coffee table between us, a stalling gesture while I thought about exactly how to say what I had to say.

“We all know that the writer David Coleville was a good friend of my father’s and that he killed himself here at Alban House during a summer party in 1956. What some of you may not know, and what I just found out a few days ago, is that he also visited here the summer before, in 1955.”

The room was oddly silent but for the patter of the rain, as though everyone was holding their breath.

“I found these letters—
we
found these letters, Amity and I, in my mother’s closet the first day we arrived,” I went on, looking at my daughter. “I told you, honey, that I didn’t know who they were from, but I found out. They were from David Coleville.”

Amity and Matthew exchanged puzzled glances. “We read some of his stories in journalism class,” Amity said. “He wrote to Grandma?” I smiled at her then, noticing how much she suddenly resembled my mother and her familiar worried expression.

“He did. He wrote to Grandma. They met, here at Alban House, the summer before he killed himself. They wrote letters to each other that whole year while he was in Boston and she was here. The letters don’t say much, they’re newsy accounts of his life, the classes he taught that year, his writing. But they did say one thing loud and clear. David Coleville and my mother were very much in love.”

“Are you saying that you think these old letters have to do with the break-ins?” Matthew asked.

“I do,” I said. “One of them was what was stolen. And it’s not just the letters themselves but what they contain that’s valuable—worth stealing, in other words. But there’s something else, too. I just have a feeling, deep down, that it’s all connected.”

Matthew, Amity, and Jane were looking at me with quizzical looks on their faces.

I tried to clarify. “Look at what has happened: my mom’s death on the
very day
she was going to talk to a reporter about the night David Coleville killed himself and Aunt Fate disappeared, a night that has been shrouded in family secrecy for fifty years. Then we found letters from Coleville just a few days after that. Then our house was broken into, multiple times, and one of those letters was stolen. And now this reporter—who just happens to be the very person Mom was going to talk to on the day she died—shows up with Aunt Fate, the very person who disappeared on the night Coleville died. The same thread is running through all of it. It just has to be.”

I noticed Jane’s hand shaking as she lifted the teacup to her lips. Her face was pale, her eyes red with grief.

“In order to get to the bottom of what’s happening now, we have to understand what happened that night,” I concluded.

Jane set her teacup down with a clatter and cleared her throat.

I turned to her. “You were here that summer, Jane, isn’t that right?” I asked her.

She nodded. “Aye,” she said, a faraway look in her eyes. “I was here. I was a young girl, about the same age as your mother and your aunt Fate. Already married to my Mr. Jameson. My mother ran this house in those days.”

“Did you know, Jane? Did you know that my mother and David Coleville were in love before she married my father?”

Jane held my gaze, her eyes steeled. “Aye.” She looked out the window into another place and time. “It was no secret. Your mother practically lived here at this house when she was a girl, growing up. She was like a daughter to mister and missus, so she was. And wee Fate, she doted upon her. Those two girls were thick as thieves. Fate loved her like a sister, so she did. And lucky for it. After Miss Mercy passed on, Adele was the only sister Miss Fate had.”

I squinted at Jane. I had never heard of a Mercy. “Who did you say passed on?”

Jane’s eyes opened wide and she stared at me, taking in a silent gasp and holding it. She raised a hand to her cheek. I got the impression she was backpedaling, trying to think of a way to take back the words that had just come out of her mouth.

“Jane?”

She sighed and sat back, resting her head on the back of the chair and raising her eyes to the ceiling. A lone tear trickled down her cheek.

“Mercy was the sister,” she said finally. “Fate and Johnny’s sister. It’s time you knew.”

My mouth dropped open. How many more bombshells were going to burst over my head today?

“My parents never spoke of her, not even once,” I said.

“Mercy left this earth as a very young child,” Jane said, clearing her throat and straightening the apron in her lap. “That’s one reason your mother was so welcome here. She brought life and laughter back into this house when it was sorely needed. Mrs. Alban, your grandmother Charity, nearly went mad with grief for her daughter. Miss Adele helped her heal, so she did. She helped all of us.”

So my father had a sister who had died young. Another Alban mystery, another Alban body unearthed. I wondered what else I would dig up under the shroud of secrecy that surrounded my family’s history.

I’d ask Jane all about my doomed aunt Mercy some other time. It wasn’t important to what was happening at that moment and I didn’t want to get sidetracked. I wanted to talk about the question at hand—my mother and David Coleville and the night he died.

“I know Mom and Fate were the best of friends,” I pressed on, drawing Jane back into the present. “But what I was asking was, did you know Mom and David Coleville were in love, and—” I stopped and looked from Matthew to Amity, who, for once, was rapt by what I was saying. “Did you know they planned to marry? Was that common knowledge back then?”

“Wait a minute,” Amity interrupted, leaning forward and putting her hand on my arm. “Grandma was going to
marry
David Coleville?”

I nodded. “That’s what it said in the letters. He was coming back here that summer of 1956 to marry her.”

Matthew whistled, long and low, and pushed his back against his chair with a thud.

I looked to Jane and continued. “But she married my father shortly after that summer. In October of that year, if I’m remembering their anniversary right. Is that why Coleville killed himself? Because she spurned him when he had come back here to marry her? She had obviously fallen in love with my dad, and—”

Jane’s lips formed into a tight line. “No, child. No. Everybody knew how much Miss Adele loved David Coleville, and how much he loved her. Why, she and Missus Charity were chattering about it all that year, how the wedding would be held right here at Alban House. It was like Charity was her own mother. And Mr. Alban, don’t you know, he was going to pay for the whole thing. Plans were already in the works. The dress was bought, the menu decided on. The staff was buzzing about it the day Mr. Coleville arrived that summer. We knew we’d have a wedding to throw by the time August rolled around.”

“But why?” I shot back. “Given all that, why would he have killed himself? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Jane held my gaze for a long time. “Suicide never makes any sense, it’s simply a tragedy through and through,” she said.

And then she stood up, clattering the tray in front of her. “I’m afraid it’s time I checked on Miss Fate.”

Of course. In all the commotion, I had nearly forgotten that I had an ancient aunt sleeping on the chaise in the library. Whatever was I going to do with her?

“Jane, will you make a note to call the hospital tomorrow morning?” I asked her. “I want to speak with her doctors about any medication she should be taking. We also need to get her seen here, so please call Dr. Johnson’s office and make that happen sooner rather than later.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, suddenly feeling the weight of the world. If this was what it was like to be the head of Alban House, maybe I didn’t want to stay here after all.

“So what happened?” Amity picked up the thread of our conversation after Jane slipped out of the room. “Grandma was going to marry this guy, he winds up dead, and she gets married to Grandpa instead? That’s just too weird.”

I shook my head. “I know. I was thinking the same thing. What possible reason would Coleville have had to take his own life?”

Matthew leaned forward, his voice dropping low. “What if he didn’t?”

I held his gaze, and I could feel a tingling working its way up my spine. “What do you mean?”

“Well, suicide on the eve of his wedding doesn’t make any sense, right? What if he didn’t kill himself?”

“You mean … murder? Who would want to kill him? Why?” But even as I said the words, I knew.

“Oh my God,” I whispered. “He really might have been murdered. There’s something else about those letters, something you don’t know.” I paused for a moment before continuing. “And it could explain a lot of things. It’s what our thief—whoever broke into the house and rifled through our rooms—was looking for. And it could also be the reason David Coleville is dead.”

Both of them leaned in toward me. “Our thief stole the last letter Coleville wrote to Mom before coming here that summer. It had some pretty explosive things to say about the Alban family.”

Amity squinted at me. “Like what?”

“Criminal things,” I said, my voice dropping low. “Things that I’m sure the Albans wouldn’t have wanted to come to light. Illegal activities during Prohibition, that sort of stuff. Apparently David Coleville had done some research into the family’s past.”

“Wait a minute,” Matthew interjected. “Why would your thief have wanted that information? I mean, it’s not like anybody is concerned now about people running liquor during Prohibition. It was so long ago that it’s almost romantic when you think about it. Nobody cares about that stuff now.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head and leaning forward. “The letter said that during the first summer he spent here at Alban House, David Coleville started writing a novel. It was a thinly veiled account of that first summer he spent here, and it dredged up all sorts of unsavory information about the family. The letter also said he sent my mother a copy of the manuscript! I’m sure that’s ultimately what our thief is looking for.”

“Are you saying he might have been killed because of what was in that book?” Matthew said.

I didn’t much like that idea because it pointed to a member of my own family. But it certainly made sense. “A book by Coleville would’ve been a bestseller, and if it was full of dirt about this family, it’s certainly possible he was killed because of it.”

Matthew and Amity were silent for a moment. “I think I get what you’re saying,” my daughter said finally. “It’s like two generations, two crimes, one reason.”

I nodded. “We don’t know for sure that he was murdered. But he might have been. And that manuscript is as good a reason as any. He was messing with a very powerful family.”

“Right,” Amity said. “But what I don’t get is, what’s so important about it now? Why would someone have broken in here now to get it?”

Matthew answered her question. “A half century after Coleville’s death, finding the novel everyone was anticipating before he died and bringing it to the world—I can’t imagine how much that manuscript would be worth today.”

“Millions?” Amity said.

“I’m not sure about millions, honey,” I said. “But at any rate, it would be worth a lot.”

Amity opened her eyes wide. “Whoa.”

“Whoa is right.” I smiled at her. “I’d been planning to look for it after the funeral. He sent it to Grandma, and considering the fact that she kept his letters, it still could be among her things.”

“If your thief didn’t get to it first,” Matthew said, his eyes narrowing. “Actually, Grace, I’ve been wondering if you and Amity should move into a hotel. It’s sort of a romantic notion, looking for an undiscovered manuscript by a literary giant, but we can’t forget that someone else is looking for it, too. And he’s already broken into this house more than once.”

I let his remark sink in for a moment before responding. “No,” I said. “I was away from this house for too long. I’m not going to let some thief run me out of it again. This is my home, and if I’ve got to have an armed guard in every one of its forty rooms to be safe, then that’s what I’m going to do. But I’m not leaving.”