The Tale of Halcyon Crane (25 page)

“When she came to the house a few days later carrying a sick cat, I tried to send her away. I knew why she was really here. But she was too smart for me. She took it upon herself to find Charles in the barn.”

Iris’s eyes became black and cloudy at the thought of Amelia, which made me wonder: Had she been in love with Charles all those years? Yes, she had been his nanny, but she was barely a decade older. It was plausible. So I said, “Iris, you haven’t said much about yourself in your stories of this family. Did
you
ever marry?”

“Marry?” she spat. “My life was here, in this house, taking
care of the Hill family. There was neither time for nor thought of marriage for me.”

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”

“Never mind me. It wasn’t long before Charles and Amelia were married. She was a thin, slight woman with short dark hair and deep blue eyes. She liked to wear trousers, something many women of the time didn’t do, and she was quite athletic, enjoying golf and tennis and a walk with Charles and whatever animals happened to be on hand in the afternoons. When she came into this house as Charles’s wife, I let her know right away that I was head of the household staff. I told her what was what and how the house was run. I was the one who had taken care of him all of these years, I was the one who was here when Simeon died and poor Hannah lost her mind. I was the one who had cooked his meals and washed his clothes.”

I saw a fierce determination in Iris’s eyes then, and the familiar darkening that shrouded her face when she was angry. She
had
loved him. It sent a chill through me. I did not envy Amelia, coming into this house and facing Iris.

“Of course, everything changed,” Iris went on bitterly. “Our quiet, simple existence was obliterated. In the evenings, Charles used to enjoy reading in the study. I would bring him his tea and perhaps sit with him awhile, doing my needlepoint. All this ended when Amelia arrived. She was an overly talkative, grossly exuberant person. Charles became more outgoing than I had ever seen him, always laughing and smiling, especially when she was around. He was in love with her, anyone could see that.”

I heard the resignation in Iris’s voice.

“It was all a whirlwind of parties, dinners, travel, and people until the day she told him their lives were about to change yet again. I was busying myself making my mother’s cabbage rolls for dinner. I remember it plain as day.”

I could smell the simmering cabbage as she spoke, a curl of smoke rising from the heat of the stove.

“ ‘Oh, Iris,’ she said to me, as she rushed into the kitchen, breathless. ‘Do you know where my husband is?’ She was bursting with news, her eyes sparkling in anticipation. Of course, I knew immediately what it was.

“ ‘You are with child,’ I said to her matter-of-factly, stirring the rolls.

“She looked at me with wide eyes. ‘Yes! I am! I’ve just come from the doctor. How did you know?’

“Ridiculous girl. Any fool could’ve seen it. ‘Charles is in the barn,’ I told her, and watched her run out the back door. I did not see her fall.”

Iris stopped talking while a wicked smile crossed her face for just an instant, replaced quickly by a countenance of concern and caring.

“She fell?” I prodded. “Where, on the way to the barn? But it’s just flat ground between here and there.”

Iris shook her head as she continued her tale. “Somehow, she found her way to the cliff side.”

“You mean to tell me she fell from the cliff? How did that happen?”

“I have no idea,” Iris replied. “The last thing I heard, she was on her way to the barn to tell her husband she was with child.”

“She died?” Why did Iris’s stories, no matter how lovely and benign at the start, always seem to take a sinister turn?

“No,” Iris explained. “Remember, child, Amelia was your grandmother, Madlyn’s mother. She did not die at the bottom of the cliff that day. Charles found her. She was alive, but the baby had perished.

“After that, Charles treated his wife like a china doll, as you might expect. If I thought he doted on her before, it was nothing compared to the way he became. He expected me, along with the rest of the staff, to wait on her hand and foot. Which of course we did.” Iris sniffed at this; I could see her resentment bubbling just under the surface.

“Within a few months, she was on the nest again, so to speak.”

“That time, she carried the baby to full term, right? That was Madlyn?” But even as I said it, I knew I was wrong.

Iris shook her head. “All of Charles’s attentiveness wasn’t enough to stop her from tumbling down the stairs one night.”

“You’re kidding me. She fell again?”

“She did,” Iris confirmed, adding slyly, “It was the middle of the night, and apparently she had been sleepwalking. She fell down the front staircase. Accident-prone, that one.”

But I didn’t think Amelia was accident-prone. It seemed to me that someone or something had pushed her.
The girls?
As if that wasn’t dark enough, a darker thought crossed my mind. I saw an image of Iris creeping about at the top of the darkened stairway.

“Iris, you didn’t—” I was too afraid to finish the thought.

She silenced me with a harsh look and continued her tale.

“Amelia did a great deal of crying during those years after losing two babies. It was Charles who gave her the strength to keep going, to keep trying. If he hadn’t been so gentle and kind, your mother might never have been born.”

Iris set her teacup on the table with an air of finality. “I will come again tomorrow,” she said, after studying my face as though she was looking for something. “You were interested in hearing the stories of your greatgrandparents and your grandparents, to be sure, but I can see that you are much more anxious to hear about your mother.”

She gathered up her things, a tattered old purse and an umbrella, and was gone. It was an hour or so after she left that I realized. Iris had begun her tale where my vision in the sunroom had left off.

I
hopped onto the bike and rode down into town. Once the spell Iris was weaving with her storytelling was broken, I felt like some real-world companionship. I coasted to a stop in front of Jonah’s coffee shop.

“Hey.” He smiled at me as I walked into the otherwise empty shop. “Glad you’re here. I owe you a latte.”

“Sounds wonderful,” I said, climbing onto a counter stool, looking forward to a quiet chat with Jonah. I didn’t get my wish, however, because at that moment, a group of islanders entered the shop, ordered cappuccinos, and announced it was time for their weekly book club. I recognized many faces from the group I had encountered in Jonah’s shop my first day on the island. They were friendly to him, of course, but they gave me the same icy reception they had given me that first day: cold stares and whispered comments as they sat down and took out their copies of the latest book club selection.

I truly don’t know what it was about that day; perhaps after living with three ghosts, I was unafraid of this lot. I walked over and faced them.

“Hi, ladies,” I said, leaning down and putting my hands on their table. “In case there’s one person left on this island unaware of who I am, I’m your friend and new neighbor, Halcyon Crane. And I’m just wondering: Are you ever planning to treat me like a neighbor, or are you always going to stop talking and stare and whisper when I come into a room?” Silence from the group, as I expected. I continued. “Because it’s getting tiresome. I’m not sure how long I’m staying on this island, but it’ll be a while. I suggest you get used to it and start acting like human beings.”

With that I walked away from them, grinning from ear to ear.

“Nicely done.” Jonah laughed as he handed me a latte. Then he added, under his breath, “Call me after closing time, Hallie. There’s something more I’ve been wanting to tell you since the night we met for drinks, but I wasn’t sure . . . Like I said, it’s complicated.”

I nodded and walked out of the shop with my coffee. After a few steps I ran into Will.

“Hi.” He smiled at me and kissed my cheek. “I’ve just come from dropping some paperwork off at the police station. Care to take a look at what I picked up while I was there?”

He passed me a plastic bag. I peeked into it just long enough to see a folder with sutton, julie, 1979 written on the front.

“Will—” I started, but he silenced me with a kiss.

“I’ve gotta run right now, but I’ll come by the house later and we’ll look at this together.” He winked at me and then headed off down the street, toward his office. I put the bag
into the basket on my bike and started the long pedal up the hill to home.

I stared at that folder on my kitchen table for the rest of the afternoon, dreading what might be inside, but when Will arrived just before dinner, I knew it was time to face whatever it contained.

Before I opened it, Will shook his finger at me. “I just need to say this: Astonishingly enough, despite the fact that it’s sitting right here on this table, I never saw this file. And neither did you.”

“Understood,” I said, as I took the folder from him. Now was the time. I took a long sip of wine and opened it up.

The first thing I saw was an article reporting my death. On a yellowing tear sheet from the local newspaper, I read the headline under a photo of my father and me.

NOAH CRANE AND DAUGHTER HALCYON PRESUMED
DEAD IN KAYAK ACCIDENT

Island mathematics teacher Noah Crane, 37, and his daughter, Halcyon, 5, disappeared during a kayak excursion early Friday and are presumed dead.

Crane left his home on Hill Cliff early Friday with his daughter for a day of kayaking around the island. When they didn’t return by late that afternoon, his wife, Madlyn Crane, who is also the girl’s mother, became alarmed and alerted local authorities.

Police quickly organized a search party of some three
dozen islanders, all of whom used their own vessels—speedboats, kayaks, canoes—to scour the island shoreline in an attempt to find the missing boaters. The Grand Manitou Ferry Line also participated in the search.

Sheriff Chip Norton reported that islander Mira Finch spotted an overturned kayak near the Ring, a rock formation on the north side of the island that has long been a popular destination for kayakers and boaters. There was no sign of Crane or his daughter.

After searching the island’s coastline with no success, rescuers enlisted the aid of the Coast Guard and other vessels to patrol the waters between the island and the mainland. However, as day wore intonight, hopes dimmed of finding the boaters alive.

“We believe father and daughter may have been carried into the shipping lanes by the current, which is pretty strong on the north side of the island,” Norton stated. “We hoped we’d find them alive, but, after all this time in the water, if those folks haven’t drowned by now they’ve certainly succumbed to hypothermia. As a result, we’ve changed our focus from rescue to recovery.”

“Well, this sort of takes your breath away,” I said, after a moment of stunned silence. It’s not that I didn’t know this information; I knew full well that my father had faked our deaths. But reading it in the newspaper, there in black and white, made it real and tangible in a way it hadn’t been before.

“Did Mira ever mention to you that she was the one who found the kayak?” Will asked.

“No, she didn’t say anything at all about that day. Not a thing. I wonder why.”

Will looked at me and shrugged. “That’s a good question.”

“It must’ve been pretty emotional for her, finding that kayak.”

“Still, don’t you think the moment she discovered who you were she might have said something?” Will went on. “
I was part of the search party that looked for you. I was the one who found your kayak
—or words to that effect.”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” But I didn’t know what to think. Not really.

“The lawyer in me smells more to the story here,” he said, then backpedaled a bit. “Of course, the lawyer in me thinks there’s more to every story. It could be she just didn’t want to dredge up the past.”

I put the article aside and looked at the one beneath it. It was a longer story about my dad, Julie’s murder, and our deaths, and how the three might be connected.

“I’m not sure I want to read this,” I told Will.

“You said you wanted to know everything,” he said gently. “This is part of it, unfortunately. Remember, Hallie, it’s all in the past. Nothing here can hurt you now.”

He was right, of course. So I took a deep breath and began reading.

QUESTIONS SURROUND THE DEATH OF NOAH CRANE, DAUGHTER

The memorial service for Noah and Halcyon Crane took place last week, but questions remain about the exact nature of their deaths. Police have reason to believe the father and daughter died as a result of a murder-suicide.

At the time of his death, Noah Crane was under investigation for the island’s only murder in more than 50 years. Julie Sutton, 6, the daughter of island residents Frank and June Sutton, was found dead on the Crane property in July. Police initially believed it was an accident, but soon the evidence began pointing toward foul play.

The girl had apparently fallen from a third-floor window of the Crane home. Noah Crane, upon discovering the body, called the police. When they arrived, their investigation turned up several clues. The room from which the girl fell was in a state of general disarray, lamps broken, furniture knocked over, dishes cracked, indicating a struggle had occurred. The girl’s dress had been torn, presumably in the struggle, and there were marks on her neck consistent with strangulation.

“As we began piecing together the evidence of what happened that night, it started to look as though Mr. Crane was involved in this poor girl’s death,” said Sheriff Chip Norton, who headed up the investigation. Norton explained that Crane’s footprints were found around the girl’s body and his fingerprints were identified on the windowsill of the room where she fell. Strands of hair believed to be his were found in the girl’s closed fist, indicating that she fought with him before she died.

Crane maintained his innocence. The police were not able to bring the investigation of Julie Sutton’s murder to a conclusion before Crane’s death.

Crane’s wife, Madlyn, was off the island on business at the time of the incident. The only other witness to the event was Halcyon Crane, five years old. She never spoke another word
after that night. Her parents had taken her to psychiatrists on the mainland, but none could determine how or why the girl stopped speaking.

According to the American Psychiatric Association, it is not uncommon for children who have witnessed a crime or have been the victims of physical or emotional abuse to be struck mute as a result of the severe trauma involved.