“Let’s go copy these pages, then send them to my mother. She’ll charm her way into their houses.”
19
Jace and Nigh spent the day trying to pretend they weren’t nervous. They played Scrabble—Nigh won—and they wandered about the garden, with Nigh giving opinions about what she’d do to the garden if the house were hers.
“You like this house, don’t you? If you had a choice, you’d live here, wouldn’t you?”
“No,” she said honestly. “The house is cold, drafty, and it’s full of ghosts. And I’m not talking about just Ann Stuart. I think my mother’s spirit is here and maybe my father’s. Or maybe it’s just me and my memories that are here.” She shivered. “No, I wouldn’t like to live in this house. There’s something else in it too, but I don’t know what it is.”
“I think it’s the ghost of that damned lady highwayman. I think she did live here and I think her presence is here.”
“Maybe you’re right. Shall we check the machines again?”
All day long they’d checked the fax machine, the answering machine, and Jace’s e-mail. His mother kept them posted every step of the way, of who she’d called and what she’d found out. So far, there had been nothing about who Stacy met outside the school.
They had found out that Stacy had been a very, very unhappy student and mostly kept to herself.
“I guess that’s why she never told me that she’d spent most of a year in a boarding school,” Jace said. He was doing his best to understand why Stacy had kept such a big secret from him.
Mrs. Montgomery had called Jace three hours ago and told what she’d found out from the woman who had been the headmistress of the school when Stacy was there. When Stacy entered the school, she had been a newly traumatized person. Her mother had died just months before the term started and she had been sent to live with her father, a man she’d rarely seen in her life. He had just remarried. The man didn’t have time to take care of his expanding business and two needy females. His new wife won out, and Stacy was sent to school in another country.
“One of the girls I talked to,” Mrs. Montgomery said, “told me that no one knew much about Stacy. She spent the few months she was there in her room.”
“But there was a man—” Jace began.
“I’m getting to that, dear,” she said, “but you must be patient. But first of all, I want to know who is there with you. I can hear her breathing on the phone.”
Nigh jumped away from the telephone as though she’d been burned.
“It’s the gardener’s boy, Mick,” Jace said.
“You never could lie well. Who is it?”
“Got a pen?”
“Of course.”
“Look up N. A. Smythe on the ’Net. Spelled S-M-Y-T-H-E. You’ll see all about her. She lives here in Margate, when she isn’t globetrotting, that is, and she’s been helping me with…well, with whatever I need help with.”
“You sound much better than you did when you left, so tell her thank you from me.”
“I will,” Jace said, smiling at Nigh. “So now tell me what else you found out.”
“About three months after she arrived, one of the girls I talked to said that Stacy had changed. She was as secretive and as separate from the rest of the girls as ever, but they saw her smiling now and then. One of the girls said she thought that sometimes Stacy wasn’t in her room all night.”
Jace raised his eyebrows at Nigh, as he knew she could hear.
Nigh nodded, yes, this was possible back in ’94.
“Was she sneaking out to see someone?” Jace asked his mother.
“They thought so. I think the security of the school was rather lax at that time, which is why the headmistress was dismissed the next year and the current one hired. Is she lax?”
“Airport security could learn from her,” Jace said. “Can you keep calling and find out what you can? I need the name of the man she was seeing.”
“Jace, honey, I’ll ask you again: Are you sure you want to find out all this information? You might find out some things about Stacy that you won’t like.”
“I’m sure. In fact, the more I find out, the better I feel.”
“I’m not sure I agree with that. Oh! My goodness! I just pulled up your N. A. Smythe. She’s beautiful! And she looks to be intelligent. Well done!”
“Mom,” Jace said, laughing and embarrassed at the same time.
“What does the ‘N. A.’ stand for?”
“Nightingale Augusta.”
“She should fit right in with our family. Okay, I have to go. I’ll call you when I know more. Or I may send a fax with a name. I love you.”
“Me too, Mom,” Jace said softly, then hung up.
The phone didn’t ring again until 1:30, just after lunch. It was his mother and she was yawning. She’d been on the phone and fax and Internet all night, compensating for the time difference in England.
“I have a name and an address,” his mother said without preamble, “and you’re to go to her house to have tea at four. Her name is Carol Heatherington, and she was Stacy’s roommate.”
“Her roommate!” Jace said, looking at Nigh in triumph. “Did she give you a name?”
“No. Carol wants to talk to you personally because she feels very bad about Stacy. She was out of the country when Stacy died or she would have come forward.”
“She knows that Stacy didn’t kill herself.”
“No, quite the contrary. Carol thinks that Stacy did kill herself and she thinks she knows why.”
“That’s what she said?”
“Yes. Jace, darling, I did warn you that you might find out things you didn’t want to know. You should leave now. I told Carol that you’d be bringing a friend with you. Jace?”
“Yes,” he said, still reeling from being told that someone who knew Stacy believed that she’d killed herself.
“I know you have your own mind, but I suggest that you listen to what this young woman has to say. Really listen.”
“Yeah, okay, sure, Mom,” Jace said listlessly. “I better go. I’ll call you when I get back.”
“Make it twelve hours from now. I need some sleep.”
“Thanks for this, Mom. Love you.”
Mrs. Montgomery gave a jaw-cracking yawn. “Me too. Give my best to Nightingale.”
“Nigh,” he said. “We shorten it to Nigh.”
“I look forward to meeting her.” She hung up.
Nigh looked at Jace. She’d heard enough of the conversation to know what it was about. “I think we should put on our best clothes and go to tea,” she said. She looked at the address Jace had written down. “It will take us a couple hours to get there.”
Silently, Jace nodded, then went upstairs to change. He didn’t want to give himself time to think about what he was finding out. The reality that Stacy’d had a life that he knew nothing about was at last coming through to him. He knew that from now on, what he found out was going to be difficult for him to hear. Part of him wanted to stop where he was, but the bigger part knew he had to go on.
“I asked you here today mainly to assuage my own guilt,” Carol Heatherington said. She was young, not very pretty, but she had that English skin that was flawless and she had a presence that only money and breeding could give a person. She had a pretty house set near a river, surrounded by thirty acres of land. Her husband commuted every day to London, leaving her with her horses and dogs and a young child. She seemed utterly content with her life.
Carol poured the tea into Herend cups. “I’m afraid I wasn’t very kind to Stacy when we were at school. You see, I had requested that I be put in a room with my best friend, but instead I was put in with this angry, sullen American girl. I’m afraid I took out my disappointment on her.”
Jace grimaced and had to clamp his mouth shut to keep from telling her what he thought of someone who would be unkind to a girl who’d just lost her mother.
Nigh took the cup of tea. “We’re all bitches at that age,” she
said calmly.
“The irony is that years later I found out that my so-called best friend had asked her grandfather to call the head of the board of the school and ask that they not give me as her roommate. I took my anger out on Stacy when I should have been angry at my sister-in-law.”
“Your sister-in-law?”
Carol smiled. “I married her brother, which is just what she didn’t want me to do.”
“Did Stacy meet anyone that year? Probably a man?” Jace asked.
“Yes,” Carol said. “Back then—it does seem long ago, doesn’t it?—we were still allowed to go into Margate on the weekends. All of us girls stayed together. I’m afraid we were frightful snobs. We traveled in little packs, each of us belonging to one pack or the other.”
“But Stacy wasn’t part of the group,” Jace said.
“No. She was American and…I’m not defending my actions, but truthfully, Stacy never made an effort to be a part of us. Sometimes we asked her to go with us, but she always refused. It didn’t help that she said she hated England and that her father was going to send for her any day. We all thought boarding school was perfectly normal, but I think Stacy looked on it as a punishment. I think she thought it was a jail and that it was her duty to try to escape.”
“With someone?” Nigh asked.
“Yes. At least I think so. Stacy was a very secretive person. You could talk to her but she told you only what she wanted you to know. She never really revealed any confidences. Did you find this to be true?” she asked Jace.
“I wouldn’t have said so, but I found out that that was true. Even though we were engaged to be married, I didn’t know that she’d spent a year in an English boarding school.”
“I think Stacy looked on it as most people would think of having served a term in prison. She was probably too embarrassed to speak of it. I could see that she’d keep it a secret. I’m curious as to what happened with her father and his young wife.”
“Stacy told you about them?” Jace asked.
“Only in the most sarcastic manner. She used to make us laugh with her black humor. One time a little girl, about twelve, came into the dining room, and we all wondered who she was. Stacy said, ‘She’s my father’s new wife.’”
“That sounds like her,” Jace said, looking away for a moment. “You said that you think Stacy did commit suicide and it was your fault.”
“I’ve been haunted by Stacy since I heard of her death. I wish I’d been kinder to her, made more of an effort to include her in our gatherings.”
“Why would you think she committed suicide?” Nigh asked, trying to steer the woman onto the path of what they needed to know.
“For Tony, of course.”
“Tony?” Nigh asked.
“Tony Vine. He was the man she was in love with. At least I think she was in love with him.”
Nigh and Jace looked at each other. “Could you tell us all that you know about Mr. Vine?”
Carol took a sip of her tea. “The first time I saw him, I was in Margate with half a dozen other girls. It was a Saturday afternoon and I thought Stacy had stayed back at the school. I asked her if she wanted to join us, but she said she had to study for a chemistry exam. Hours later, I was with the girls and there was a street market that day. I was looking at the things in the stalls when I looked up and all my friends were gone. I didn’t see them anywhere, and I’m afraid I panicked. I started running back toward the school, but as I passed a side street I saw a flash of bright red. I stopped where I was. Curiosity overran my fear of being without my herd of girlfriends.”
“Was it Stacy?” Nigh asked.
“I thought so. She had a beautiful red silk scarf—we all envied Stacy’s American clothes—and I thought I saw that scarf going around a corner. I looked to see if anyone could see me, then I went down the little road toward where I’d seen the scarf.
“When I got to what looked like a garage, I saw the scarf again and turned the corner. There was Stacy wrapped about a young man. Oh, excuse me,” she said to Jace.
“No, that’s all right. I’d like to hear everything.”
Carol put down her cup of tea. “You have to understand that almost all of us girls were virgins. We talked about sex all the time and we all made out as though we had the sexual experience of a woman of the streets, but actually we knew nothing. But there was Stacy, the quiet American who kept to herself, entangled with a man in a way that most of us girls had never even imagined. She had one leg up about his waist and—”
She broke off after a look at Jace’s face.
“You saw them in Margate,” Nigh said. “Do you know where else they met? And how did you find out who he was?”
“I was afraid they’d see me, so I left, but I went back to the market. My curiosity was stronger than anything else, so I wanted to see if I could find out more about this man Stacy was with.”
“Man?” Nigh asked. “Not a boy?”
“Oh, no! He was thirty if he was a day, and we were only sixteen then. I think Stacy was seventeen.”
“A thirty-year-old man,” Jace said softly.
“Did you see them again?” Nigh asked.
“Not that day. I went back to the school and there was Stacy, curled up on her bed with her chemistry book. You would never have guessed that she’d been out of the school, certainly not that she’d been twined about a man nearly twice her age.”
Carol took a bite of a cucumber sandwich. “After that, I can tell you that I began to watch Stacy. I never let her know and I never even hinted at what I saw, but I watched her.”
“And what did you see?” Jace asked.
“Secrets and lies,” Carol said. “She was a great liar. Sorry again. I mean no disrespect to Stacy’s memory, but I saw her lie directly to Matron and never so much as blink an eye.”
“What did she lie about?”
“Where she’d been and what she’d done. Stacy used to sneak out of our room at night. I’ve always been a sound sleeper, so it was hard for me to stay awake to watch what she was up to, but I managed it on three nights. She’d listen for me to go to sleep, then she’d tiptoe out of the room. Twice I looked out the window and saw her running across the green. She stayed away from the outdoor lights, but I could see her.”
“Do you know where she went?”
“Toward the back, to the hill. One day I climbed the hill and there’s a dirt road up there. I saw candy bar wrappers and some soda cans, rubbish along the edge of the woods.”
“Very non-U,” Nigh said.
Carol smiled. “I haven’t heard that term in ages. Yes, it was very non-U, and I felt sure that Stacy’s boyfriend had left them there.” She looked at Jace. “Sorry for the snobbery. Non-U means ‘not upper class.’”
Jace didn’t tell her that the term was used in the States, too. “You think Stacy met the man at the top of the hill?” Jace asked.
“I’m sure of it. It was a steep climb, but it could be done. I did it. The second night that I was able to stay awake to see what Stacy was doing, I thought I heard the sound of a motorcycle. I think he was waiting for her up there on his motorcycle and they rode away together.”
“When did she get back?” Nigh asked.
“She was always there when I awoke in the morning. Stacy never seemed to need much sleep,” she said, looking at Jace for verification.
“No, she didn’t. Insomnia was a problem for her,” he said. “It’s why she always had prescription sleeping pills with her.”
“I never saw her yawn,” Carol said. “I never saw her look sleepy in class. If I don’t get a full eight hours, nine if I can, I’m incoherent during the day. But not Stacy.”
“So why do you think Stacy’s death was suicide?” Jace asked.
Carol looked at Jace. “I must apologize for that statement. I said it before I knew all the facts. I knew nothing about you or that Stacy had been engaged to someone other than Tony Vine. All I knew was what I’d seen in the papers, and I didn’t see them until
months later. I thought Stacy had returned to Margate to get back with Tony. After all these years she was going to at last be with him, but maybe he turned her down. Stacy was always an intense person and I could imagine that once she loved someone, she’d love them forever. I could see that if she went back to him and found he was maybe married to someone else, she’d be extremely unhappy about that.”
“Who is Tony Vine?” Nigh asked. “Or did you not find out who he was?”
“About a month after I saw him and Stacy together, I saw him walking down the street in Margate. He was a very handsome man, but he wasn’t my type.”
“What do you mean?” Nigh asked.
Carol shrugged. “Everything about him was too…shiny. My father hates new clothes. If he puts on something new, he’ll spend the day riding and doing his best to break the clothes in. That’s what I was used to, so Tony was a shock to me. There was something about him that…please don’t think I’m being melodramatic, but it was dangerous. He seemed like a dangerous man.”
“A thirty-year-old with a seventeen-year-old girl?” Jace said. “He should have been locked up.”
“Anyway,” Carol said, “I asked someone who he was. I think it was a woman in a tea shop. She said, ‘That’s Tony Vine,’ and the way she said it made me think that everyone in town knew him.”
“Do you know where he is now or what happened to him?” Nigh asked.
Carol got up and went to an antique cabinet behind the sofa and took a piece of paper out of a drawer. “About a year ago I was in London and I saw a man on the street. I knew I knew him but I couldn’t remember where I’d seen him. That night I remembered that he was the man Stacy used to sneak out to meet. Tony Vine. It hadn’t been too long since I’d heard of her death in Margate so I wrote down the name of the building that I’d seen Tony come out of.” She handed the paper to Jace, who looked at it, then passed it to Nigh.
“I was very sorry to hear about Stacy,” Carol said to Jace. “When I heard, I thought, She killed herself over that awful Tony Vine. There was a point when we were at school that I thought about going to the headmistress and telling about Stacy. I was afraid for her, and worried about her, but then, her father came to school and got her and took her back to California and I never heard from her again. Until I was told of her tragic death.”