“You don’t have to fear,” came a voice.
A woman’s voice.
Carolyn knew it was Beatrice.
She turned around. David stood behind her, his eyes blazing.
“Love,” Carolyn said.
“Love,” came Beatrice’s voice.
Carolyn woke up then. It was morning. She had no idea what the dream had meant, and still had no clue what the visitation the night before indicated. She showered and dressed, and headed downstairs for breakfast. Pouring herself a cup of coffee, she took a seat at the table. Already there were Paula and Chelsea. Seeing them gave Carolyn the answer. She understood then what Beatrice had been trying to tell her.
“She won’t let him kill a woman,” Carolyn said out loud.
Paula and Chelsea turned to look at her.
“Beatrice appeared to me last night,” Carolyn told them. “I believe she was trying to tell us that she will do what she can to protect us. She’s probably been trying all along, but she was only successful once before. With Jeanette.”
“Well, that’s crazy,” Chelsea said. “Because the way Jeanette came out of that room, I wouldn’t say she was protected very well.”
“But still,” Carolyn said. “Jeanette didn’t die.”
Paula set down her coffee and looked over at her gravely. “Then further discussion is pointless. Let’s just forget the lottery. I volunteer to spend the night myself.”
“I’m not sure we can do that,” Carolyn said.
“If a woman has a better chance of survival than a man, then I volunteer.”
Carolyn looked from Paula over to Chelsea, who blanched.
“No,” Carolyn said. “I think we’d risk another slaughter if we don’t follow the way the lottery has always been done.”
“Who set these rules?” Paula wanted to know. “All these years, we’ve been like sheep. Herded along, never asking why.”
“You’re right, Paula,” Carolyn agreed. “And it’s time we started asking why.”
Paula smiled wryly. “And do you think Beatrice is going to tell you?”
“I think she’s trying to. I think last night she was trying to give me a clue. About why this all happened. How it all began.”
“And what did the clue tell you?” Chelsea asked.
“I think it all goes back to the love of a woman,” Carolyn said. “All of this is about a woman’s love.” She paused. “Beatrice’s love.”
“Her love for whom?” Paula asked.
“I’m not sure.” Carolyn looked at each of them. “But that’s precisely what I have to find out.”
Chapter Twenty-two
Douglas watched as Carolyn flipped open her laptop and hit the power button. A deep bong inside the machine resonated. They were sitting in the study as rain cascaded against the walls of the house, great sweeping sheets of it. The sun hadn’t appeared all day, hidden by a scrim of dark gray haze.
“It struck me last night that none of the previous investigators would have had access to these particular records,” Carolyn said as she inserted an Internet-connecting device into the back of her laptop. For all its elegance, Uncle Howie’s house had no wireless connection.
“What records do you mean?” Douglas asked, taking a seat beside Carolyn at the long oaken table, peering around to look at her computer screen.
“The United States census of 1930,” she told him. “The government releases census records every seventy-two years. The last time the lottery was held, these records weren’t yet available.”
She was tapping furiously on her keypad. Douglas watched with a keen interest as she accessed a site, then typed in her password. A search screen appeared.
“So,” she said, “we simply check for Desmond Young in Youngsport, Maine.”
She keyed in the particulars.
“And voilà!” she cried. “There they are!”
On the screen was a digitized image of a census page, consisting of a list of handwritten names in the left column, each followed by various particulars: age, place of birth, occupation, whether married or single, whether they owned a radio…
Carolyn zoomed in so they could easily read the entry for the Youngs.
“Okay, here we can see exactly who was living in this house in 1930,” she said as Douglas read along.
Outside the rain and wind continued to pound the house as Carolyn catalogued the Young family of eighty years earlier.
“Head of household, Desmond Young,” she read. “He was fifty years old, and his occupation was listed as ‘financier.’ And after this is his wife Hannah, age forty-six.”
“Look at all those children they had,” Douglas observed.
They fell quiet. Douglas was quite sure Carolyn was thinking the same thing he was. That most of those children would be dead that same year, taken in the first of the family slaughters.
“Douglas Young,” Carolyn read, pointing to a name on the screen.
Douglas swallowed hard. “That’s my great-grandfather,” he said. “The first of the Douglas Youngs to die in that room.”
He saw that he was listed with his wife and four children: Francis, David, Douglas, and Cynthia. The younger Douglas was this generation Douglas’s grandfather. He was two years old at the time of this census. Fifty years later, he, too, would die in that room.
Carolyn was reading the names of the rest of Desmond Young’s children. “Samuel, Margaret, Howard…” She paused. “There’s your Uncle Howie right there. A strapping lad of eighteen years old, before tragedy struck.”
Douglas nodded.
“And finally there were the children, Jacob and Timothy.” Carolyn sighed. “A few months after this was taken, this family would be practically wiped out.”
“But what are the rest of the names?” Douglas asked.
Carolyn smiled. “That’s the real reason I wanted to see this record. Who else was living in this house in 1930?”
They both peered in at the screen to make out the names.
“Look!” Douglas shouted. “Clement Rittenhouse! That must be Clem!”
“Yes,” Carolyn said excitedly. “‘Age: twenty-nine. Occupation: gardener.’ And look. It says here he couldn’t read or write.”
“So he was just a dumb old brute,” Douglas said. “Probably easily manipulated.”
“And look!” Carolyn exclaimed. “Beatrice! It’s Beatrice! Her last name was Swan!”
“Beatrice Swan,” Douglas said.
“‘Age: nineteen,’” Carolyn said, her voice becoming sad. “She was so young. ‘Occupation: servant.’ She was single, born in Maine. And unlike Clem, she was literate.”
“There’s no baby listed with her,” Douglas observed.
Carolyn shook her head. “No. The child wouldn’t have been born yet. The census was taken in April. Harry Noons said that Beatrice didn’t have her baby until the late spring. But she would certainly have been pregnant at the time this was taken.”
With her cursor she hit a link to take them to the next page of the census. After it had loaded, she said, “Damn.”
“What?” Douglas asked.
“That’s it. That’s the entire list of the household. There was no one else living here.”
“Who were you hoping to find?” he asked.
Carolyn sighed. “Whoever else may have been involved in the events of that night. Remember that Diana picked up on another presence-and she said that presence was the force that really controlled the room. It’s not Clem, and it’s not Beatrice. I was hoping to find a name of someone else living in the house at that time.”
“So who could this other force be?”
Carolyn stood, pacing a little bit. “It could be anyone. A day servant perhaps. Remember Harry Noons worked on the estate, but unlike Beatrice and Clem, he didn’t live here. Surely there were others like him, any one of whom might have been involved in what happened that night, and be the force that still holds this family in its power.”