Danger in a Red Dress (7 page)

Hot with fury, Mrs. Manly turned on her. “Even my father said it was my fault. Because obviously Nathan had what it takes to create a baby. He screwed all those girls, fathered all those bastards—” As if she remembered Hannah’s objection to the word, she stopped herself.

But Hannah heard her heavy breathing, saw the way she gritted her teeth and held herself so stiffly. Hannah slid down a step, started on the next shelf, and said gently, “At least he acknowledged and supported the children. At least he was honorable enough to do that.”

“Nathan wasn’t being
honorable
.” Mrs. Manly wheeled herself to her night table, slammed open a drawer, pulled out a snowy-white handkerchief, and blotted the sweat from her upper lip. “He didn’t know the meaning of the word. He was strutting like a bantam cock, crowing and smug. He had
sons
. Lots of
sons
.”

“But you did conceive.” Hannah slid down another step. She wasn’t done with the second shelf from the top, but Mrs. Manly’s appearance alarmed her.

The woman was red-faced, almost apoplectic. “After years of hell, of taking hormones to stimulate my ovaries to produce eggs. Do you know what happens when they do that to you? Weight gain, abdominal pain, nausea . . . not to mention I miscarried twice. I spent the pregnancy on complete bed rest. And do you know what I got for my pains? Carrick.” She spat the name. “My son, Carrick.”

Well. That answered any questions Hannah had about the relationship between mother and son. “Did . . . did Carrick’s birth make your husband happy?”

“Yes. But then, he always was jubilant when one of his children was born. Another son to prove his manhood . . .” The bright red color receded from Mrs. Manly’s face, and she smiled, a superior lift of her lips. “After Carrick, there were no more sons for him.”

“What?”
Hannah stood perched on the ladder, and stared at her employer.

“Not long after Carrick was born, Nathan was walking through Central Park, returning from his girlfriend’s house. Right there in broad daylight, he was mugged and beaten. One testicle was crushed beyond repair; they had to amputate. The other . . .” Mrs. Manly
tsk
ed in mock sorrow. “When he recovered, he discovered he was no longer the man he had once been.”

Had Hannah imagined it, or had Mrs. Manly just obliquely confessed to arranging the beating of her own husband?

“He changed then. He didn’t have the affairs, but he didn’t stay home, either. He visited his sons. He spent time at the business he’d built in Pennsylvania. And he started looking beyond . . .” Mrs. Manly was looking beyond, too, staring into space as if she could see her absent husband. She whispered, “I should have seen it coming.” She switched her attention to Hannah so swiftly Hannah’s head spun. “Bring me
Ulysses
by James Joyce.”

Hannah gaped at her.

“Hurry, girl. We haven’t got all day. It’s on the fourth shelf, the middle shelf, a leather-bound hard-cover, tan with black lettering.”

Hannah searched. “You like
Ulysses
?” She found it jutting out from among the paperbacks, put her finger on the spine, and tugged.

Nothing happened.

“I read it in college lit.” Hannah tugged again. “Personally, I found it one of the most obvious attempts of an English teacher to get his students to commit suicide from sheer boredom.”

“Grip it and
pull
,” Mrs. Manly directed.

Hannah wrapped her hand around
Ulysses
and
pulled
. The book popped loose with an audible
sproing
. . . and the wall moved.

No, not the wall, the bookcase. Hannah jumped back. She stared as, slowly, the polished wood, the heavy tomes, the gargoyles swung on a pivot to reveal a black hole behind the wall. Hand over her heart, she said, “My God. There
is
a secret passage.”

“Yes. There is. How did you hear about it?” Mrs. Manly asked.

“Carrick said there was rumored to be one, but that he’d never found it.” Hannah slid a foot inside, then her head, then her body and looked around.

She stood on a narrow landing, with stairs going up one way and down the other. Light slipped in from some unknown source—an unseen window, or a skylight—and illuminated dust and cobwebs. Across the way, another part of the wall was cut at a forty-five-degree angle.

“I never told Carrick about it. By the time he was old enough, I didn’t trust him.” Mrs. Manly’s voice sounded nearer, much nearer.

Hannah turned to face her. “There’s another entrance across the way?”

Mrs. Manly sat in her wheelchair. “Bright girl. In the bedroom next to mine, there’s another bookcase. Every bookcase that leads to the passage is set at an angle, and somewhere on the shelves, there’s a copy of
Ulysses
by James Joyce. Remove that, and it opens.”

Diabolical. Mrs. Manly was diabolical. “Where does the passage go?”

“It leads from the attic to the basement, and from there, into a cave and onto the beach. Pull
Ulysses
loose, and you can step inside, shut yourself in, and escape.”

Hannah pushed the bookcase shut and replaced the book in exactly the right spot. “Escape what?”

“Whatever monster is chasing you.”

Hannah remembered all the things Carrick had done and said, all of the trials Mrs. Manly had suffered, and she felt dread creep up her spine on tiny spiderlike feet. “So there actually are secrets?”

“Some I know. Others I only suspect.” Mrs. Manly pushed herself toward the door. “But I know we’ve got trouble, girl. Big trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“The house is watching us.”

 

Gabriel caught a glimpse of movement on the monitor. In the corridor outside Mrs. Manly’s room, two figures, the young woman and the wheelchair-bound elderly lady, maneuvered their way into the elevator and disappeared.

He turned to the next monitor. The elevator door opened on the ground floor, and they exited. Hannah Grey grasped the handles of the wheelchair and pushed Mrs. Manly into the dining room. Another monitor picked them up as she settled Mrs. Manly into her place and went down the stairs toward the kitchen.

He’d placed cameras well. He had a complete view of the corridor, a solid view of the foyer, the elevator and dining room.

While Mrs. Manly and Hannah Grey were occupied, he needed to organize one more very important camera setup.

Gathering his equipment, he sprinted out of the bedroom he occupied in the north wing, and headed for Mrs. Manly’s suite. Before they returned from breakfast, he would have everything in place.

He intended to watch Hannah Grey every minute: while she worked, while she slept, while she was at leisure, and while she plotted. He intended to listen in on every conversation, monitor every phone call, learn what she liked and what she hated, who her friends were and why she had collected so many enemies. When he was through with Miss Hannah Grey, he would know everything about her—and she wouldn’t know he even existed.

EIGHT

Hannah ate breakfast and worried.

Should she leave Balfour House? As Mrs. Manly had promised, she made her call to the New Hampshire governor. Hannah had been cleared of all wrongdoing and her accreditation had been reinstated. If she could quit this job now, she could walk away from Mrs. Manly and never look back. And she should.

But she
owed
Mrs. Manly. More important than that, she would leave the old woman alone, with the Balfour Halloween party half planned and a son who grew increasingly troublesome. Mrs. Manly never backed down from a fight, but their arguments left her weary and sad.

Had there been a brief time when Hannah had admired Carrick Manly? She barely remembered that now; now she wondered why he thought his mother knew anything about his father ’s fortune, what he expected to gain from the knowledge . . . and what he would do to get his hands on the information.

If Hannah were smart, she would run. She would save herself from this house of secret passageways, with eyes that watched and judged and criticized. She’d already learned the hard way what happened when she stayed with a patient in a dysfunctional family situation. The reward of knowing she was doing the right thing wasn’t worth the trouble afterward. Not even Mr. Dresser ’s inheritance had eased the anxiety and heartache of losing her reputation as a nurse and a woman, and the worst part was—it was her own fault. She should have kept her mouth shut about being
friends
with old Mr. Dresser.

She looked up at Mrs. Manly.

The old woman’s broad jowls sagged, her small mouth turned down, and she ate with an intensity that made the silver fork clatter against the thin china.

Mrs. Manly wasn’t lovable. She wasn’t kind. Right now, Hannah was probably the only person in the world who even liked her. Yet Hannah couldn’t abandon her to a government inquest, a humiliatingly public rehash of a lousy marriage, and a bevy of accusations that could, all too easily, result in prison time.

Hannah put her elbows on the table and her head in her hands.

“So.” Mrs. Manly didn’t stop eating as she shot the question at Hannah. “Are you going to stay?”

Hannah lifted her head and looked at her. “Yes.”

“I figured. You’re not the kind who runs from trouble.”

“I could learn.”

“In my experience, the ones with the morals can’t permanently shake them, no matter how hard they try.” Mrs. Manly peered up over her black-rimmed glasses. “Are you done eating?”

Hannah looked down at her cold toast. “Yes.”

“Let’s go.”

As she did every morning after breakfast, Hannah moved Mrs. Manly from the table into the foyer, and stopped. “Before we work on the party, shall we go for a walk?”

“No. No! My God, don’t you ever give up?” Mrs. Manly’s voice rose. “I am not going for a walk and you cannot bully me into exercising. Just leave me alone. I am so sick of you and your constant pushing and prodding!”

Hannah comprehended the strain on Mrs. Manly, the fears that drove her to confide in Hannah, the bigger fear that she’d made a mistake. She knew what changes loneliness and pain had wrought in a woman already wounded by life. She’d seen her snap before.

But Hannah had been raised by a mother who had taught her to hold her head high and never, ever allow anyone to denigrate her. Moreover Hannah knew better than to allow Mrs. Manly to bully her. Mrs. Manly took unfair advantage of perceived weakness.

Taking her hands away from the wheelchair, Hannah stepped away. “As you wish.”

She walked toward the stairway, had her foot on the first step, when Mrs. Manly called, “Girl! You! Hannah! Don’t leave me here.”

Hannah continued up the stairs.

“Hannah. Don’t you dare leave me here!”

Hannah kept climbing.

“Oh, all right. Hannah, I’m sorry.”

Hannah paused. Turned. Looked down at her patient. Mrs. Manly looked mulishly rebellious. “I apologized. Hurry up! I need to use the facilities!”

Hannah didn’t move.

“Please.
Please
come and get me and take me upstairs. I don’t want to sit here.” She shrugged her shoulders apprehensively. “I feel exposed.”

Hannah glanced around as if uneasy, then hurried down the stairs. Gripping the handles on the wheelchair, she pushed her patient toward the elevator. “Do you really have to go?”

“No, I just knew you wouldn’t leave me to sit there if I was in need,” Mrs. Manly muttered.

Wow. Gabriel sat back in his chair. That little scene had shown all too clearly the influence Hannah had over Mrs. Manly. The old lady had cracked under the strain of dealing with Hannah’s mistreatment, and with nothing more than a turned back, Hannah had whipped her into shape.

“Next time you need a whipping boy, let me put through a call to Jeff Dresser, hmm?” Hannah sounded exasperated.

Mrs. Manly brayed with laughter. “Yes, or I’ll call that little worm Nelson.”

Interesting. Mrs. Manly didn’t like the butler. Gabriel hadn’t been impressed either, but Carrick had assured Gabriel that Nelson was his best ally. Certainly Nelson had put himself out to make sure Gabriel was comfortable in his little makeshift office, and he knew everything about Mrs. Manly—her habits, her mannerisms, and the changes that had occurred since Hannah Grey came into the household. He did not like Hannah Grey, and he made no bones about her bad influence on Mrs. Manly. In that, he and Carrick agreed.

Gabriel watched the bank of monitors as Hannah pushed Mrs. Manly directly to her bedroom suite.

Good. Mrs. Manly looked tired, she would want to rest, and the ensuing activity would be an effective test of Gabriel’s placement of the cameras and microphones. He could watch Hannah bully and coerce her, get the evidence Carrick needed to fire her with just cause, and maybe, just maybe, get the information about the missing Manly fortune.

Personally, Gabriel thought Carrick was kidding himself there. If Melinda Manly knew anything about the fortune, she would have accessed it somehow, if only to pay for the upkeep on this museum of a house. Gabriel glanced around at the bedroom where he had set up his equipment, and noted the tired drapes, the faded rug, the moth-eaten bedspread. The dresser where he’d placed his laptop was a massive piece of nineteenth-century walnut art, but the maids had run the vacuum cleaner into the legs so many times they were chipped, and some long-grown kid had carved his name into the trim. The whole place smelled musty, as if it hadn’t been opened in years—and this was only a single room among dozens like it. He didn’t know Mrs. Manly, not yet, anyway, but what he’d seen on the monitor had shown a woman proud of her heritage.

Yeah, she would have used the money for Balfour House.

Hannah was of average height, slender to the point of looking fragile. She lifted Mrs. Manly out of the wheelchair and helped her into bed, and Gabriel realized the frailty was deceptive. She adjusted Mrs. Manly’s pillows and covers, tested her blood sugar, then prepared an injection and handed the needle to Mrs. Manly.