Mrs. Riley didn’t make a sound, but I saw the buttons on her dress move and catch the light as if she had quickly sucked in a breath.
“Yesterday a clock was missing from Grandmother’s desk.”
“A small clock. . an old one,” she murmured.
“Yes. It has a picture painted on its face, roses and-”
“Was it found on the hall table?”
I blinked. “How did you know?”
She sat back in her chair. “That is where it used to be kept. The Bible always sat on a shelf by the library’s hearth.
The mill painting hung over the Chinese chest in the music room.”
“You mean things are being moved back to where they were years ago? To where they were when you worked there?”
She nodded her head slowly, rhythmically.
“But then why would Grandmother blame me? How would I know where those things were kept? I don’t see how Matt would know, either, unless Grandmother told him.”
Mrs. Riley’s eyes closed, then drifted open again. She looked past me as if she were looking into another world.
She stared for so long I turned around to see what was there. Nothing extraordinary-a flowered sofa, a table piled with Baggies, her herbal stuff.
“The clock belonged to Avril,” Mrs. Riley said. “She insisted on placing it in the hall. She hated the big grandfather clock.”
“I don’t blame her,” I remarked. “It’s like a guard stationed on the landing, watching you come in and out. You can hear it tolling wherever you are in the house.”
“Avril called it the big bully. She would reset the small clock to whatever time she wanted it to be. Her parents played along, allowing her to come home long after she was supposed to. I’m surprised your grandmother didn’t throw out that wretched little clock.”
“It’s an antique.”
“What’s one more antique?” Mrs. Riley said. “Helen has money to burn.”
“Maybe she keeps it because it reminds her of Avril.”
“That’s precisely why she would throw it out.”
I was surprised by the bitterness in Mrs. Riley’s voice.
“Did you work there when Avril was alive?” I asked.
“I was the personal maid of both girls.”
“But you must have been their age.”
“A year older than Avril,” she replied, “two years older than Helen.”
That couldn’t have been easy, I thought, especially if Avril acted like a princess. “What were they like, my grandmother and Avril?”
Mrs. Riley took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Avril was pretty, popular, and spoiled. She was always into something and got too much attention from her parents.
Poor, serious Helen got almost nothing.
“That doesn’t sound fair.”
“Helen was a good girl. She read a lot and always kept her room neat. It was nothing for me to pick up after her. But Avril! She didn’t care where she threw things, and her room was small and crowded. She insisted on sleeping in the back wing.”
“The back wing?” I sat up a little straighter.
“Oh, I knew what she was up to, even if her parents didn’t.
She could get in and out of the house by way of the kitchen roof.”
I put my hand over my mouth. Avril had slept in the room where I’d awakened, where Alice had seen the ghost.
“What is it?” Mrs. Riley asked, “Nothing.”
The pupils of her eyes were like dark pins tacking me to the wall; she wouldn’t let me go until I gave a better answer.
“I’ve been in that room,” I said at last. “It has roses on the wallpaper.”
“Avril adored roses. She wanted them in vases, in her hair, in bouquets brought by her boyfriends, and she always got what she wanted. Poor Helen grew terribly jealous and angry. I didn’t blame her, not after Avril stole Thomas.”
“But my grandfather was Thomas,” I said, puzzled.
Mrs. Riley nodded, her eyes long, dark slits, as if focusing on a distant memory. “He was Helen’s beau first-at least publicly. There were other girls, many others. Money is what made up Thomas’s mind.”
It wasn’t a flattering picture of my mother’s father, but I had come for the truth.
“He was a young cabinetmaker from Philadelphia, an apprentice hired to do repair work at Scarborough House,” Mrs. Riley continued. “Thomas was talented but had no money. He switched his affections from Helen to Avril, who, as the oldest, was supposed to inherit Scarborough House.
When Avril died, everything became Helen’s. Everything including Thomas.”
I sat back in my chair thinking about how Grandmother must have felt, dumped, then picked up again, second choice. Still, it happened so long ago. “I don’t understand why any of this would matter to her now, but something has set her off, and it seems connected to Avril.”
“Some wounds heal, others fester,” Mrs. Riley replied.
“Have you seen the ghost at Scarborough House?” I asked.
“No. Not long after Avril died, I married and left the house.
I have never been invited back.”
“Is it possible that my grandmother thinks she is being haunted by the ghost of her dead sister?”
Mrs. Riley ran her gnarled hands over the table, touching it with just the tips of her fingers, as if she were using a Ouija board.
“Why do you say thinks?” she asked. “Because you don’t believe it’s possible?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t. Can a ghost move things?”
“Yes,” she replied.
“Can a ghost”-l hesitated-“lead a person somewhere, guide a person to a room or place?”
“Certainly you have heard accounts of ghosts revealing where they’ve hidden valuables,” she said.
“How did Avril die?”
Mrs. Riley studied me long and hard. “Do you want the real story, or the one the family told?”
“Both.”
“According to the family doctor, according to what Mr. and Mrs. Scarborough wanted him to say, it was an allergic reaction.”
“To what?”
“Redcreep. It grows here on the Shore. Since colonial times, girls and women have used mixtures of it as a beauty potion. It dilates the eyes, brings color into the cheeks. They found a bottle on Avril’s bureau.”
“And the real story?” I asked.
“It was an overdose. Avril, like a lot of girls back then, had taken redcreep before. She wasn’t allergic to it. She was sneaking out to see Thomas that night-Helen and I both knew it-and wanted to look pretty. She became ill at the mill, which was their secret meeting place. Thomas rushed her to the doctor, but she died on the way. An overdose of redcreep. Even good things can harm you if too much is taken at one time. So typical of Avril,” she added, “always wanting to do more, try more, have more, always flaunting limits.
“The family did not want a cause like ’overdose’ to be listed in the paper. That would make Avril responsible, and she never got blamed for anything. Of course, the Scarboroughs had their way, as money always does.”
Mrs. Riley rested her chin on her hands. Her voice sounded tired, as if the bitter edge I’d heard earlier had turned, and all she could feel now was the flat of the knife.
“I guess that’s most of my questions,” I said. “How much should I pay you?”
“There is no charge for today,” she replied, rising with me.
“Really, I planned to,” I told her, but she refused the money and led the way to the door.
“I would send your grandmother my regards,” she said, opening the door to downstairs, “but I doubt that would please her. It would be best not to mention that you saw me today.”
“Why?”
“It’s free advice, girl,” she replied. “Take it or leave it.”
“Thanks,” I said, and took a step down, which was a good thing since she closed the door on my heel.