Chapter 23

I used to think it only happened in movies, the classic black-and-white kind that Gran and I used to watch together on Movie Nights in our apartment, snuggled side by side on our threadbare sofa. But now I know it can happen in reality, too—that a segment of your past can play out like a movie montage, that life can flash before your very eyes, reminding you of everything you’ve lived through that has brought you to the present moment, that has made you who you are.

That’s what I’ve been experiencing as I reveal the truth to Detective Stark about that fateful couple of weeks I spent working alongside Gran in the Grimthorpe mansion, polishing silver, reading in the library, and befriending a troubled man, an author to whom I fed ideas I had no clue would lead him to write an international blockbuster. I have relived all of this in Technicolor. I have seen it again through fresh eyes.

Mr. Snow suggested that Detective Stark and I retire to his office to speak privately, and for the last hour, that’s where we’ve been. I’m sitting in a chair across from an imposing detective who has always intimidated me. And I’m telling her my life story.

I’ll grant her this: for the first time ever, Stark is listening intently, patiently. For once, she realizes I’m ahead of her, that I know things she doesn’t. I can see her struggling to piece things together, to connect the past with what has happened recently—the unsolved mystery of a poisoned author in the Regency Grand Hotel.

Gran used to say, Stories are a way to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.

She was right. Every fairy tale teaches a lesson.

The monster is always real, just not the way you thought.

No secret stays buried forever.

The maid shalt be redeemed in the end.

“Rat-a-tat-tat-tat,” I say to Detective Stark. “That sound was always in the background, the sound of his personal secretary typing. Mr. Grimthorpe wrote longhand, yet never once did I see him doing anything but doodling in those monogrammed black Moleskines. As a child, I was told his personal secretary typed up what he wrote, and I believed it. But now, I don’t think that was true.”

“You said just now that you gave him the idea for the end of his most popular novel,” Detective Stark says. “The lye solution.”

“Yes. That was my idea, but what if someone else gave him the rest of the story, the rest of all his stories? Maybe that secretary was more than a typist. Maybe she was…”

“A ghostwriter?” Stark offers.

“Yes,” I reply.

“A ghostwriter working in secrecy while the fraudulent front man took all the credit and fame,” Stark says.

“And reaped the staggering monetary rewards,” I add. “Would that not breed discontent? Would that not be a motive for revenge?”

Detective Stark stands suddenly. She paces the perimeter of the room. The reverberation of her footsteps travels right up my spine.

“I’ve met some writers in my time,” she says. “The ones who write police procedurals sometimes consult with me. They want to know if they got their details right. Let’s just say, those writers know a hell of a lot about how to murder someone without leaving a trace. The question is: Could a writer—or a ghostwriter—apply their knowledge to a real murder? And if so, could they get away with it?” The detective pauses in her tracks. “Molly,” she says. “I think I’ve underestimated you.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“I don’t always know what you’re going on about. But you just put together a whole series of clues I didn’t even realize were clues. I need your help.”

“My help?” I say. “With what?”

“We’re going on a road trip.”

The thought of going anywhere with Detective Stark is the most terrifying thing I can imagine right about now. “Where are we going?” I ask.

“To the Grimthorpe mansion, of course.”

---

—Now, I find myself on the outskirts of the city in a police cruiser chauffeured by Detective Stark. It gives me only an iota of solace that I’m seated in the passenger seat rather than beyond the bulletproof barrier in the back. I’m feeling very much like a little girl as I head to a place I never thought I’d see again, this time not with my beloved gran but with the imposing detective at the wheel beside me. My hands tremble. I grip the door handle just as I did all those years ago in a taxi on my very first visit to the mansion.

Before embarking on this trip, Stark made a call and spoke to a judge. She explained everything and argued for a search warrant, the corner of which is sticking out from the hidden interior pocket of her black coat.

“Is it far from here?” Stark asks as she surveys the road ahead.

“No,” I reply. “Just five minutes away.”

Stark nods, then surveys the various grand mansions punctuating the dense, forested suburb. “Bloody posh neck of the woods,” she says.

“Beyond my wildest dreams,” I say.

We round the last bend in the road, and the Grimthorpe mansion comes into view. “That’s the one. Up there.”

The monolithic, three-story mansion is just as imposing as it was when I was a child, with black-framed windows set in three rows—the terrifying face of an eight-eyed spider.

The detective drives right up to the wrought-iron gate. The black paint is peeling, rust setting in. The watchtower is a stone’s throw away, its tinted windows obscuring whoever is inside.

Detective Stark stops the car. We both get out and approach the gate.

The buttons of the hidden intercom are faded and cracked with age. “You have to buzz the gatekeeper,” I say. “He’s in that watchtower.”

Stark puts a hand on the gate and pushes it. It creaks open with ease.

“Oh,” I say. “Things have changed.”

I pass through the gate, following the detective.

We walk down the familiar path of blood-red roses flanking the driveway. The buds are beginning to open. They emit an ambrosial fragrance, hypnotic and treacly sweet.

“This place has seen better days,” Stark says. “Looks like Fawlty Towers.”

The mansion is in a state of disrepair—the façade faded and cracked. The roses are the only things that look tended at all.

We arrive at the imposing front door with the lion knocker, the brass blackened and weathered. The last time I was here, my tiny hand was tucked into Gran’s as we made our way to this landing. The memory hits my heart with a wallop.

“You knock, I’ll do the talking,” Detective Stark says.

I grab the mandible and pound three times.

Clomping footsteps, some shuffling, then the turn of the knob as the enormous door swings open. Standing in the threshold is a gray-haired man with protruding eyes and a leather tool belt around his waist containing an array of trowels, secateurs, scissors, and clippers. He is rounded with age, his body no longer an exclamation point but shaped more like a question mark. Regardless, when I look into those eyes, I recognize the man who stands before me.

“Jenkins? Is it you?”

“Molly? Molly Gray?”

“You remember me.”

“Of course I do,” he replies. “My Little Mite. The silver girl, polishing everything to perfection. Oh, that was such a long time ago. It was a dark place in those days. But you made everything shine.”

“You were kind to me,” I say, “though I was a bit afraid of you. I was too young to tell the good eggs from the bad.”

“You were a lovely little thing, filled with youthful energy. I used to listen in on the fanciful stories you told. Hard worker, too. Your grandmother was so proud of you. How’s she doing? Flora?”

“She died,” I report matter-of-factly.

“Oh, I’m so sorry. She was a good woman.”

“The very best,” I say.

“So much for me doing the talking,” Detective Stark says with a sigh.

Jenkins turns his attention to the imposing figure on the landing. “And you are?”

“Detective Stark,” she replies. “I’m in charge of investigating the death of the owner of this estate. I was wondering who was in the mansion these days. Thought I’d pay a visit.”

“I’m afraid there’s no one else here but me at the moment,” Jenkins replies. “We’re waiting for the will to be read. I figure the property will go up for sale sometime soon. I’m sure Mrs. Grimthorpe is rolling over in her grave.”

“Jenkins, may I ask how she died?” I say.

“A stroke, five years ago,” Jenkins replies, “right after plucking a rose from her very own garden. As you know, Molly, Mr. Grimthorpe was always strange, but he got even stranger after that. More paranoid. Said without his wife his secrets would never be safe. He never did go back to the bottle, though. He made a promise to Mrs. Grimthorpe, and he kept it. I suspect that’s the only way he was ever loyal to her.” Jenkins pauses and looks down at a box by his feet. It’s filled to the brim with tarnished silver, trinkets, and paintings. “I’m clearing house,” he says. “I’ve received orders.”

He eyes Stark from head to toe. “So…do you have a search warrant?” he asks.

“Yeah,” says Stark. “I do.” She produces it from her coat, and Jenkins eyes it for a moment before giving it back to her.

“Jenkins, would you mind terribly if I had a look around, too?” I ask. “It would mean so much to me. I have such fond memories of this place.”

“You might be the only person who does,” he says. Turning to Stark, he asks, “Have you figured it out yet—who poisoned Mr. Grimthorpe?”

“No,” Stark replies. “But we will. It’s only a matter of time.”

Jenkins nods, the deep lines in his visage a map of untold secrets. “You can come in,” he says. “I’ll be in the parlor, cleaning it out. No love for old things nowadays. Change is nigh.”

“Thank you, Jenkins,” I say as he moves the box of discarded objects, allowing us to pass. Overhead the shards of the modernist chandelier are so covered in cobwebs the entire fixture looks more like driftwood than glass.

“This way,” I say to Detective Stark, as I lead her up the main staircase. The steps are even creakier than they used to be, groaning and heaving under every footfall.

We reach the top of the stairs. “Follow me,” I say as we walk down the hall, the lights turning on automatically—at least the ones with working bulbs. The damask wallpaper in the corridor is faded and dull. I once saw eyes in its pattern, but I can’t see them anymore. Were they ever really there, or did they exist only in my imagination?

We pass bedroom after bedroom, the doors all open but the curtains drawn in every single one.

“It’s filthy,” Detective Stark says.

Every nook and cranny, every wall sconce is coated in a thick layer of grime and dust. “There has not been a maid in this mansion for a very long time,” I say. I wonder to myself if Gran was the last. Maybe Mrs. Grimthorpe trusted no one after firing her.

We make it to the room at the very end of the hall. I walk over to the window, pull back the curtains, and let the light stream in from the floor-to-ceiling window.

This room is not what it used to be. The books are neglected, a layer of dust coating every leather-bound spine. Detective Stark takes it all in—the ladder on wheels, the dust-covered nymph holding up a grubby lampshade, the bookshelves lining all four walls. She spots the anomaly quickly, the one book that juts out awkwardly and that isn’t covered in dust—the shiny Oxford dictionary on the fourth wall.

“This it?” she asks, pointing to it.

“Yes,” I say. “The secret doorway, a portal to another dimension.” I step forward and push it. The fourth wall springs open to reveal Mr. Grimthorpe’s study.

“Get a load of that,” Stark says, her face wide with surprise.

His desk is in the same spot it always was. On it are teetering stacks of black monogrammed Moleskines. They’ve multiplied considerably since the last time I was here. There are stacks on the desk like before, but now there are more on the floor, some of them piled waist high. The room is so filled with Moleskines that the only empty space is a narrow pathway to Mr. Grimthorpe’s desk and another leading to his bookcase on the far wall.

“Whoa,” says Stark. “This is bonkers. Was Grimthorpe a hoarder?”

“In a way,” I say. “The lord of everything. And of nothing.”

She picks up a Moleskine, opens it gingerly to a random page filled with scribbles and doodles and unintelligible scrawl. “Indecipherable. Just like the one Cheryl sold,” she says.

Stark checks a few other Moleskines, and I do the same, though I’m loath to besmirch my hands with grime. The contents are exactly as I remember—scrawls and scratches, not handwriting or even code, and certainly not any novel written in long-form.

“There’s nothing in here that anyone could have typed up,” Stark says.

“Exactly,” I reply. “And Mr. Grimthorpe never typed. It was always his secretary typing away, unseen, while these notebooks multiplied, untouched.”

The detective spots something on Mr. Grimthorpe’s bookcase on the far wall, another book that stands out, the only one on the shelf that is clean—a second Oxford dictionary. She walks over and presses on it. A wall springs open.

“What?” I exclaim. “I never even noticed that was there!”

“Glad I’m good for something,” Stark replies. She walks through the narrow doorway into a modern office, spotlessly clean and gleaming white, the contrast extreme. I follow behind her. There’s a spiral staircase in the corner that leads down to the mansion’s side door. Modular Ikea shelves line one wall, and in each cubby are stacks of printed manuscripts, perfectly organized and bound with elastic bands. There’s a cubby for each of Mr. Grimthorpe’s past books, the titles printed neatly above each stack, all of them ordered by year of publication, from the most recent on crisp, white paper to his biggest bestseller, The Maid in the Mansion, the paper yellowed with age.

“Looks like his novels in manuscript form,” Stark says as she crouches for a closer look.

She stands and walks over to a simple desk at one side of the room. There’s a rose-gold Mac laptop on it, closed, and a printer to one side, nothing else.

Then I see it. In an arched niche behind the desk sits an old typewriter. On the wall above it is a single photo in a simple gilded frame. I approach for a closer look.

What I see is an utter surprise, but in some ways it all makes sense. There she is, the woman in the blue kerchief and gloves, standing with her arm around a young girl who looks her spitting image. “That’s her,” I say. “The lady in blue, his previous personal secretary. When I was a child, she came here every day through the side entrance. I could never figure out where her office was, but I heard her typing away.”

Stark approaches and leans into the photo. “But who’s that child beside her?” she asks.

Yet again, I know something before Detective Stark does. I put two and two together and come up with a sum that is more than I thought it could ever be. “You don’t recognize her? Look closely.”

Stark squints. “Jesus,” she says. “Is that her?”

“Yes,” I reply. “The resemblance is uncanny, isn’t it? That little girl,” I say, “is Ms. Serena Sharpe.”