Lillian checked with Helen, who shrugged.
Miss Winnie was waking up just as Lillian and Veronica approached. Lillian drew up a chair while Veronica remained standing, a little off to the side.
“Miss Winnie. Do you remember me?” Lillian asked.
“No.” She coughed several times, her breathing wet and heavy. “Who are you?”
“I was Miss Helen’s private secretary, around the time that Mr. Frick passed away. Do you remember?”
Miss Winnie nodded but didn’t smile. Her eyes flicked back and forth between Lillian and Veronica, then settled on Lillian. “You were the pretty one. I remember.”
“It turns out I don’t live far from here. Some coincidence, right?”
“Well, that’s nice. Why are you here? Who is this, your daughter?”
Veronica held out her hand to Miss Winnie. “I’m a friend, my name’s Veronica. We came to visit someone we know who lives here, and then Lillian realized she knew you.”
Miss Winnie studied Lillian’s features, like she was analyzing an artist’s canvas. “You’re not as pretty anymore.”
“Neither are you.”
Miss Winnie laughed. “Never was. But now you’re pretty in a different way.”
“Thank you.”
A nurse wandered through, and Lillian remained silent after she’d passed. Miss Winnie spoke first. “That was a terrible time.”
Lillian nodded but didn’t answer, hoping her silence would draw Miss Winnie out.
Her strategy worked. After a moment or two, Miss Winnie let out a thick sigh. “The rich think they’re protected, that they have magical powers, when in fact they’re only mere mortals, like the rest of us. Bodies break down, betray you. People you love die. Children die.”
Earlier, when Helen revealed that Miss Winnie had been Martha’s nursemaid, Lillian had vaguely remembered being told that her first day at the house, as Miss Helen gave her an orientation. At the time, it hadn’t seemed important, not when Lillian was still in shock at having landed the job of private secretary. “You must have seen a lot during your time working for the family, including Martha’s decline.”
Miss Winnie threw out a suspicious glance. “They don’t like me talking about that.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Frick are gone now.”
“True. Long gone. Can’t believe I’m still kicking.”
“Why didn’t they want you to talk about it?”
“Because I knew the truth.”
“What truth?”
Miss Winnie clamped her lips shut and looked away.
“The death of Martha was painful for the entire family, I’m sure,” said Lillian. “No parent should have to go through that. How awful for them.”
“Bah!” A darkness spread over the woman’s features. “You weren’t there when Mr. Frick was forcing the poor child to ride a bike, to be like a normal girl. Urging her on, even though she was obviously in pain. It used to make my blood boil. If they’d taken me to Europe with them instead of hiring some foreign girl to watch over her, it would have never happened in the first place. And later, if they’d listened to me when I insisted that something was wrong, we might have saved her.”
“Why did you stay on, then, after Martha’s death?”
“Someone had to take care of Mrs. Frick, poor woman. She wasn’t strong. She had no one to lean on.” Her face grew pinched. “I don’t want to talk about this. I don’t want to talk to you anymore. Nurse!”
Suddenly, Veronica, who had shifted off to the side, spoke so quietly that even Lillian had to strain to hear her. “We found the missing cameo. After all these years.”
Miss Winnie’s neck snapped to the left, and she began to rotate in her chair, then just as quickly caught herself, facing forward again. At first, Lillian was annoyed at Veronica for injecting herself into the conversation, but then she realized what the girl had done. From where Veronica stood, Miss Winnie couldn’t have heard her or read her lips. Yet the effect was like a bomb going off.
Smart girl, that Veronica. She’d picked up on what Lillian had said earlier, about how she’d tested Miss Winnie in a similar manner right before she’d fled.
“What was that?” said Miss Winnie, craning her neck around in an exaggerated attempt to hide her initial response.
Lillian held up the cameo, and then placed it in Miss Winnie’s hand. “You remember this, don’t you?”
Miss Winnie examined it, turning it over. She didn’t open the back, but gave it a little shake. The diamond inside offered up a light rattle. “Martha’s cameo. Yes. I remember it. Why are you showing it to me? Give it to Miss Helen, she’ll be quite happy.”
She hadn’t asked where it was found, the most obvious question. That, along with her sharp sense of hearing, confirmed that Lillian’s suspicions were correct. After all this time.
“Do you want to know where it was discovered?” she asked Miss Winnie.
“Fine. Sure. Where was it discovered?”
“I think you know already since you’re the one who put it there.”
Miss Winnie let out a breath, then glared at Lillian. “How dare that man be laid to rest with Martha’s cameo.”
“So you were there.”
“Yes, I was. I was in the gallery with one of the maids, helping to get everything ready to receive the mourners. I’d stepped into the enamels room to check that it was tidy, and heard you and Miss Helen approach, overheard everything you said. After you left, I snatched that thing right out of his cold, dead hand. I didn’t want it for myself, I just didn’t want him to have it.”
“But why didn’t you take it with you?”
“I was unsure what to do with it, how to dispose of it, when I remembered the compartments behind the panels. That was where Mr. Frick kept the lock of Martha’s hair, before his study was moved to make room for the enamels.”
“The lock of hair that you and he drank to on the anniversary of her death?” asked Lillian.
“I told you about that, did I? Yes. They’d unscrewed the knobs, but I used a hairpin to pry one of the doors open and tossed the cameo inside.”
“But then you let me take the blame for it,” said Lillian.
Miss Winnie didn’t meet her eye. “I didn’t mean for that to happen. I didn’t know the Magnolia diamond was inside until I heard Miss Helen getting upset.”
“You’re not deaf,” said Veronica. A statement, not a question.
“No, not even at my age, now. I can hear perfectly fine.” Miss Winnie puffed with pride. “Everything else is shot, but my ears are good.”
“So why did you pretend?” asked Lillian.
“It made it easier to sit for hours with Mrs. Frick. How she would go on and on, about her ailments, about the terrible injustices against her. I sympathized to a point, but she knew nothing of how hard life could be in the real world. I’d come from true poverty, was put to work at the age of thirteen, and spent most of my time fetching tonics and administering salves for a woman who ate too much marzipan and then complained of indigestion, who found sunny days a personal affront. I began to notice that my false infirmity made people more willing to speak freely around me. I would hear things I shouldn’t. Oh, people dismissed me as a batty idiot, but I was always listening, always.”
She regarded Lillian. “I felt guilty at what happened to you, shouldering the blame, but you were an interloper, coming in, getting in everyone’s good graces. I never trusted you. And then that business with Helen’s suitor. I knew you were a bad apple. So pretty, had to lord it over Miss Helen, who never had a chance. I did what was best for her, for the family.”
The sharp sting of guilt over Lillian’s dalliance with Mr. Danforth hadn’t lessened over the years. But she kept on. “Like leaving a water glass out for Mr. Frick after putting a sleeping draft in it?”