The Ghost Orchid (24 page)

As David brushes past me, I look down at the ancient iron padlock. A thick crust of vermilion rust has grown over it, distorting the original shape and welding the case to the shackle. “It doesn’t look like anyone’s touched this in decades,” I say, cupping the lock in my hand. The instant my flesh touches the iron I smell blood. I try to draw back my hand, but the lock sticks to my palm, the rust turning into a viscous paste that runs through my fingers and puddles on the floor by my feet until there’s nothing left in my hand but a wet, sticky stain. And then, the lock melted, the door creaks slowly open, letting in the cold white attic light, which touches a ladder-back chair and, like liquid glass poured into a mold, fills the chair with the shape of a little girl who lifts the glassy shimmer of her head up and looks straight at me out of two black holes where her eyes should be.

“El—” David has come to stand behind me, but he’s unable to finish even my name before the light drains out of the girl, leaving an empty husk that wavers for a second and then vanishes. I turn to David, afraid that he won’t have seen it, but when I see the color drained from
his
face, I realize it’s all the more horrifying that he has.

“Something horrible happened here,” I say, scanning the four narrow beds against the wall, afraid that the children’s bodies will swell into shape beneath the lumpy counterpanes. David doesn’t answer. He’s entered the storage room and knelt by the chair. He picks up a strand of rope that’s tied to the rungs of the chair back and holds up its frayed end for me to see. The rope, hacked at with a knife, is stained with blood.

David unties the bloodstained rope from the chair and holds it out to me, but I find I’m unable to touch it. Even several feet away I can smell the blood again. A wave of nausea passes over me, and I lurch toward the windows to get some air, but when I push one open, the air that comes in is sharp with ice particles that feel like needles on my face. I close it and am just turning away when a motion down in the garden catches my attention. It’s Bethesda making her way down the hill through the deep snow wearing only a cardigan, thermal leggings, and her green rubber boots. And then, some twenty feet behind her, is Nat, also underdressed in flannel shirt, jeans, and the moccasins he wears around the house as slippers.

“We have to go after them,” I hear David say from behind me. “If they get disoriented out there, they could get hypothermia at these temperatures. Here”—David reaches into an open trunk and pulls out an old hunting jacket and a woolen cloak and two pairs of old hunting boots—“we don’t have time to get our things.” He heads down the steps, and I follow him, pausing only a moment to look over my shoulder at the door to the storage closet. It’s closed again, but whether it was David who closed it or not, I’m not sure.

When we step out onto the terrace, we’re assaulted by a fierce, icy wind. The snow is coming down heavier than before and the wind is sweeping it into drifts that come halfway up the balustrade.

“How are we ever going to find them?” I ask, looking at the deep snow from the terrace. “The wind has swept away their footprints.”

“All Bethesda talks about these days is the children’s cemetery,” David says. “She’s made diagrams of it and lists of the birth and death dates of all the children. I bet she found some discrepancy and decided to go down to check it out.”

I can’t help but wonder when David has seen these diagrams and lists, but I don’t say anything. Instead I step off the terrace and sink to my knees in snow.

“We probably should have snowshoes,” David says, “but there’s no time. Can you still find that path you took us down that day? There might be less snow under the trees.”

Although I haven’t been on the path since the day Zalman broke his leg, I have no trouble finding it. Maybe because I follow it every night in my dreams. David is right—there is less snow under the ilexes. In fact, it almost seems as if a path has been shoveled through the snow. The thick hedges muffle the wind as well, letting in only playful gusts that stir the powdery snow, swirling it into patterns beneath my feet.

“I bet you can’t wait to get to all of this with your clippers,” I say to David, who’s walking so close behind me that I can hear his breath at my ear.

“I don’t know,” he says. “To tell you the truth, I really love how a garden looks when it’s overgrown like this. Of course, don’t tell the Garden Conservancy I said that.”

I remember sensing back in the fall that David felt this way, but I had forgotten about it.

“This garden especially,” he goes on. “I have this feeling like it
should
be overgrown—that nature should be allowed to claim it back. Maybe it’s because of how it was hewn out of the woods and the money for it came from Latham’s lumber business. I can’t help but picture all the trees that were cut down to make it. I know that might sound sentimental—”

“No,” I say, “I know exactly what you mean. It’s something else, too. It’s what Aurora built it for—as a shrine to the memory of her dead children—such an elaborate shrine, it’s as if their spirits are trapped in it.” I picture the girl tied to the chair in the attic room, her hollow eyes, and the girl I saw crouched beneath the hedge in the maze . . . and then I see, about ten feet ahead of us, a crumpled form under a light dusting of snow. David rushes forward and I follow him, arriving in time to see Nat’s face as David turns him over. There’s a gash on his forehead and a circle of blood spreading out beneath his head on the snow.

I hear someone muttering, “I don’t understand, I don’t understand,” in a childish voice, over and over again. At first I think the words are in my head, but when David picks up his head and listens, I realize they’re coming from farther up the path. There, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the path, is Bethesda. She’s been sitting there long enough for snow to drift over her legs. “I was only playing. It was only a snowball I threw.” She holds up a snowball to show us, but as I walk toward her, I see it’s not a snowball but one of the white rocks.

“Explain again why you were going down to the children’s cemetery,” David asks that night in the library after dinner. He’s standing in front of the fireplace, his elbow on the mantel, with a glass of scotch in one hand, still wearing the checked hunting jacket he found in the attic, which fits him as if it were made for him. Nat, his head copiously bandaged, watches enviously every time David lifts the glass to his lips. The doctor at the emergency room (“You writers are pretty accident-prone up there,” he commented to us while stitching Nat’s head) said absolutely no alcohol for forty-eight hours.

Bethesda, who is sitting on the footstool of Nat’s chair, takes a deep breath and goes through her story once again. “I was working at my desk when a gust of wind struck my window so hard it broke the glass. Then the wind blew the drapes up and all my papers came unpinned. I was chasing them around the room when I noticed one was stuck to the glass, just above where it was broken. I was afraid it would fly out the window, so I went over to get it . . .” Bethesda pauses, and I realize that she’s paused every time she’s gotten to this part of the story.

“You saw something at the window, didn’t you?” I ask.

“It was nothing,” she says. “It was just my reflection. But I thought . . .”

“You thought it was a face,” I say.

Bethesda nods and takes a large gulp of her scotch, glancing at Nat guiltily as she does. “Yes, it looked like a face etched in frost. It scared the hell out of me. Then I took down the paper and looked at it—”

“Good old Bethesda,” Nat says, “you wouldn’t let a little ghost sighting get in the way of your research.” There’s a note of bitterness in Nat’s voice that I haven’t heard him use before toward Bethesda. Maybe it’s from being given a concussion and a gash requiring five stitches.

“Well, it turned out to be important,” Bethesda says, pulling a sheet of paper from her pocket. “See, it’s a death certificate for Alice Latham dated April ninth, 1883.”

“But isn’t Alice the little girl who disappeared in 1893 and was never found?” David asks.

“This could be a different Alice,” I say. “There were several duplicate names in the children’s cemetery.”

“But no ‘Alice,’ ” Bethesda says. “I’m sure of it—or almost sure. That’s why I wanted to go down to the cemetery and look. Then I got lost on the path and when I heard someone behind me I thought . . . I don’t know . . . I thought I heard someone laughing and a snowball hit my ear.”

“I did
not
throw a snowball at you,” Nat says, “and I wasn’t laughing. I was half frozen because when I saw you from my window heading into the garden without a coat, I ran down to follow you without
my
coat.”

“I’m just telling you what I thought was happening,” Bethesda says. “I had this feeling . . . I know it was stupid . . . but I had this feeling it was the
snow
doing it.”

“So David and Ellis were led up to the attic by a trail of stones, and Nat and Bethesda were led into the garden by a trail of ice,” Zalman, who’s sitting on the couch with his injured leg stretched out, says.

“What next?” David asks, looking down at the group. “Bread crumbs?”

“I heard wings today,” I say. “And then . . .” I look up at David and blush.

“Uh . . . something happened in my room,” he says. “The carved eagle on my bed split in two.”

Nat looks at David and then at me, and then he leans forward and, before she can stop him, takes Bethesda’s glass from her and swallows the last of her scotch.

“So we’ve got rocks, ice, and wings,” Zalman says, ticking off each item on his fingers as if collecting supplies for a picnic.

“No,” I say. “Stone, water, and wood.” As I say the words, a log shifts in the fireplace and a spark jumps out onto the carpet, which David promptly grounds out under his boot. “I was writing the scene of the second séance today,” I explain, “and what I wrote . . . I imagined what Corinth Blackwell might have done if she didn’t really want to conjure the spirits of the Latham children.”

“But why wouldn’t she want to conjure the children?” Bethesda asks.

“Think of all those children in the cemetery,” I say, “some who lived only a few hours. Would you want to come face-to-face with those?”

When no one answers, I go on. “So, what I had her do is think of something else while she said the children’s names, and I picked inanimate things that seemed to have no personality.”

“Stone, water, wood,” Zalman says.

“Yes, that’s what she said . . . or I mean, that’s what I had her say. Only it doesn’t work. The children come anyway, but they come . . .” I stop, too horrified to finish what I’d been about to say.

“They come,” Zalman says, finishing for me, “as stone, water, and wood.”

Chapter Twenty

Corinth knows as she walks through the garden on the way back to the house that something is wrong. At first it’s just a sense that everything’s more alive. The polished ilex leaves quiver in the moonlight like phosphorescence in a Mediterranean sea. The hedges rustle as she walks by, pulsing in and out with each step she takes. The statues, soaked in moonlight, are draped with leaf shadows that rise and fall across their breasts like patterned gauze stirred by their breath. It reminds Corinth of walking through the woods with her mother, how every plant and animal and stone and even the wind that stirred the leaves had a name. Only the spirits animating this garden do not seem benign to her. When she reaches the top terrace and turns to look back, she sees that the water in the fountain allée, whose murmur has accompanied her from the grotto, is flowing uphill.

She turns toward the house and crosses the terrace as quickly as she can, pushed by a wind that tugs at her skirts. The French doors to the library open easily, but she has to struggle against the wind to close them, the glass rattling in the wooden frames so hard that she thinks they will break. When she finally gets them closed she sees, on the glass pane below the knob, the imprint of a small hand. She turns away, relieved to see a fire in the fireplace and the calm solidity of the Morris chairs on the hearth, relieved to be inside and alone—but then she hears a rustle in the alcove and catches a scent that brings to mind the bog behind the cabin on the Sacandaga.
No,
Corinth thinks, closing her eyes, not
that,
but when she opens her eyes, she sees Mrs. Ramsdale step out of the shadows, a small sherry glass in one hand and a crystal decanter in the other. Mrs. Ramsdale pours a thimbleful of the amber-colored liquor and drinks it all down.

“Care for a drink?” she asks, pouring herself another one. “I couldn’t find any sherry, but I don’t think Milo would mind me drinking from his private stock of scotch. It’s a little bitter at first, but you get used to the taste.”

“Where have they taken his body?” Corinth asks.

“To the parlor, where he can keep Mr. Campbell company. Dr. Murdoch might have saved himself a visit. At least this time he won’t have to lie on the death certificate. I believe this really was a heart attack. You knew, of course, that Milo had a weak heart?”

“No,” Corinth says, crossing the room toward the door to the hallway, “I didn’t know that.” Mrs. Ramsdale steps in front of her, blocking her way out. Corinth can smell, beneath the bitter reek of the scotch, the sweeter smell of laudanum.

“Yes, we frequented many of the same spas and took the same water-cures, although my malady resides a bit lower in the body than his.” She lays her hand over her stomach, pressing the cloth flat so that Corinth can see the swelling there. “I thought there was another tumor growing, but Dr. Murdoch examined me this morning and . . . well, I’m afraid my condition is a bit more
delicate
than that.” She pauses, waiting for Corinth to absorb the import of her news. “Of course, I’m surprised. I’d thought I was too old and that the last surgery had removed any chance . . . but, as they say, life will find a way. Of course it will have to be a hurried wedding and some people will talk, but what does that matter? We’ll go to Europe. I have a house in the south of France; I have enough money for the three of us . . .”

“I hope you’ll be very happy,” Corinth says, pushing past Mrs. Ramsdale.
A baby?
Could a baby really be born of that corruption? But as she presses by Mrs. Ramsdale, grazing the woman’s shoulder with her own, she can feel the presence of the child and knows it is Tom’s. It occurs to her, as she flees up the stairs to her room, that it might be the only life to break free of this sepulcher.

When she gets to her room, she finds a sheet of paper lying flat on the floor, just over the threshold. Picking it up, she sees that it’s a theatrical poster, an old one from the Lyceum Theater in Gloversville on the night she and Tom both appeared. She turns it over and sees on the back a handwritten message:
Cory, I’m leaving Bosco tonight. If you want to go with me, meet me in the Rose Garden at midnight.—Q
And beneath that:
We’ll follow the rivers north.

Mrs. Ramsdale probably hasn’t had a chance to tell him her news. When she does . . . well, it doesn’t matter. He’s no doubt arranged for a carriage to take them away. If he’s not there, then she’ll take it herself. She packs her trunk, but then realizes that she can’t carry it herself down to the rose garden. And she’s certainly not going to leave a forwarding address for Aurora Latham to send it on. She takes out her plainest dress and only what will fit in her small carpetbag, consigning the rest of her dresses, her toiletry case, and the unmatched glove to the trunk. She pauses over the case that contains her wires and picks, but then decides to leave it in the trunk—let whoever finds it unmask her as a fraud. What does it matter? She won’t be performing any more séances after tonight.

Before she closes her trunk, though, she checks the toiletry case and finds the hellebore root that she put back earlier, relieved to see that it’s still there.
A weak heart,
Mrs. Ramsdale had said. No, she’d never known that Milo had
any
weakness. When they met at the spas in Europe, he always said that they were taking the waters because of Aurora’s neurasthenia, but now that she thinks of it, she remembers that he spent his days taking various water-cures and drinking from the springs. If he had a weak heart, it wouldn’t have taken much of the hellebore root to kill him. But who would know that?

If her trunk is searched and the root found in it, she might be blamed for Milo’s death. Or if she’s stopped and it’s found on her person . . . She looks around the room for a place to hide it, but decides she can’t take the chance of it being found in her room, either. She has to hide it somewhere in the house. Opening her door and listening for voices, she hears Aurora’s keening cry coming from the downstairs parlor. Now she really is Egeria mourning for her lost husband. It’s almost as if she purchased the statue first and then rearranged her life to fit it.

At the back stairs she also hears voices—Mrs. Norris and one of the maids—coming from below, so she takes the stairs up to the third floor and then to the attic.

The long room is dark except for the light from the newly risen moon that cuts a swath from the window to the storage room on the west side of the attic, catching the glass eyes of the dolls and the rocking horse but leaving the beds along the north wall in shadow. She can’t tell which bed Alice is in as she crosses to the storage room. She tries the door and finds that it’s locked with a heavy iron padlock. She slips a wire out of her sleeve and within a minute she’s picked the lock. As soon as she slides the padlock off the bolt, the door swings in and moonlight pours into the bare room. Corinth had expected a jumble of trunks and old furniture. Instead the only object in the room is a single straight-backed chair upon which sits a little girl in a white nightgown who stares up at Corinth with bottomless black eyes.

After he and Lantini have carried Milo’s body into the parlor, Tom tries to get away so that he can find Corinth, but Aurora Latham pauses in her weeping long enough to ask him to go into town to summon Dr. Murdoch back to the house. Why the doctor is needed so urgently—or why he should be needed to accompany the driver into Saratoga—is beyond Tom’s reasoning, but he can see that there’s no point arguing with the grieving widow. Besides, he might need the driver’s cooperation later and it won’t hurt to scout out a likely hotel in Saratoga while he’s fetching Dr. Murdoch.

He rides in on the box beside Latham’s coachman, a taciturn young man in his midthirties with lank black hair and pitted skin, which he hides with a hat turned low over his forehead. Tom asks him if he’d be available later to drive him back into town, but he doesn’t answer. Tom wonders if the man is deaf and dumb, but then he realizes that he’s waiting to be offered money. He takes out a few bills and holds them out so that the driver can see them.

“Twice this if you wait for me at the bottom of the garden and don’t tell anyone where you take us.”

The driver takes the bills and stuffs them into his pocket, grunting assent.

Maybe the man is dumb, if not deaf, Tom concludes, which suits him just fine. Less chance he’ll give them away. Maybe he could have gotten away with giving him less—as it is he’ll barely have enough to pay for the hotel. He spends the rest of the drive into Saratoga calculating what he has left from the last time Violet paid him and how much he’s likely to get by pawning the pocket watch and other trinkets she’s given him over the years. By the time he’s walking up the path to Dr. Murdoch’s spacious Greek Revival mansion on North Broadway, he’s come to the conclusion that he sorely needs more money if he expects to get any farther than Saratoga with Corinth.

The housekeeper tells Tom to wait in the library while she goes to wake the doctor. “He was up delivering a baby in Ballston Spa last night and turned in early tonight,” she explains when Tom expresses surprise that the doctor is already asleep. “And this man’s already dead, you say? Well, if it were anyone else but Milo Latham, I’d tell you to come back in the morning, but he and the doctor were good friends. He’ll want to know.”

It’s hard to imagine anyone being good friends with Milo Latham, but when Tom enters the library he guesses that what the housekeeper means is that the doctor and Latham were good hunting buddies. The room is filled with trophies of the hunt: deer and moose heads mounted on the walls, bear rugs on the floor, and a stuffed loon hovering above the mantelpiece as if it were about to take flight. Below the loon Tom notices a photo—in a frame made of silver and carved antler—of Dr. Murdoch and Milo Latham standing in front of a cabin, rifles resting in the crooks of their arms and a pile of dead beaver lying at their feet.

“Best damn hunting in the Adirondacks over by Latham’s cabin on the Vly,” Tom hears the doctor say from behind him. “I’ll sure miss it.”

Tom turns, feeling in his pocket for the letter of sale Latham gave him earlier this evening. “You may not have to, Dr. Murdoch,” he says.

“Have you come to let me out?” the girl asks.

Corinth puts her hand to her chest and wills her heart to stop pounding. It’s only Alice Latham sitting in the chair, not her ghostly sister, but still, with her pale skin and black eyes glowing in the moonlight, she’s a startling sight.

“What are you doing in here?” Corinth asks, thinking for a moment that the girl might be playing a game of hide-and-seek until she remembers that the door was locked from the outside.

“I’m being punished,” Alice says, attempting a nonchalant shrug. The motion is awkward, though, because she keeps her hands behind her back. Corinth steps into the closet and, looking over the girl’s shoulders, sees that her hands are tied behind her back.

“Who did this?” Corinth asks, her voice coming out as a hoarse croak that she’s sure must frighten the child. It certainly frightens her.