“What’s that you’re reading?” her mother said as she passed behind Stevie. She paused, leaning in to look, as Stevie knew she would. “Is that a dollhouse?”
“Sort of,” Stevie said, flipping the page.
Her mother made a noise that sounded like a hamster being gently but persistently pressed until flattened.
The scene depicted was a kitchen lovingly crafted in miniature. The walls were papered in a cheerful pattern of deer and flowers. There was ironing on the small board, a pot in the sink, two potatoes on the draining board, each no bigger than a child’s pinkie nail. From the curtains to the line outside the window pegged with bras and stockings to the pile of folded linens, everything about this scene was made
with care. This included the unmistakably dead figure on the floor by the oven, a doll-size ice tray under her hand.
“It’s called The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death,” Stevie said. “They’re dioramas made in the thirties and forties to teach investigators how to look at crime scenes. This one is called Kitchen. Look at the incredible level of detail. See these tiny cans on the shelves? Those labels are accurate reproductions. See the carefully printed tiny newspapers stuffed in the cracks of the doors? And all these doors have tiny, functioning keys. Everything in this scene has been made and put in here to be examined. It all means something. Did the woman stuff the paper in the door herself to gas herself? You can tell it’s gas for sure. The jets are open on the stove, and her skin has been painted so you can see the blush you get from carbon monoxide poisoning. But did she do it herself or did someone knock her out, then stuff the paper in the doors and leave her in there? See, she’s in the middle of taking things out of the oven. . . .”
Her mother stared at Stevie grimly.
“The woman who made these was named Frances Glessner Lee,” Stevie went on. “It used to be that when someone died, there was no set method for examining the body and the scene. All kinds of people would be sent who had no formal training, and they’d move things, or they’d guess at what happened, or they’d contaminate the scene. Sometimes people would be accused of murder when it was an accident and the other way around. So this woman . . .”
Stevie flipped to the photo of the grandmotherly woman
with the old-fashioned glasses and bun who was peering lovingly into a skull.
“。 . . was the heiress to a tractor fortune, and she was friends with the chief medical examiner in Boston. He told her about all the trouble he was having with how bodies and scenes were being treated, and all of the things you could learn about a death from the scene and the body. She basically established forensics in the United States. Then she made these miniatures, each depicting an unexplained death. Each one is a contained mystery. They still use them to train detectives.”
Her mother walked over to the counter, shaking her head. Stevie observed her surreptitiously.
“I wish you’d get another hobby, but . . .”
The sentence was left unfinished.
Stevie flipped back to the kitchen scene and let a few moments tick by while she waited for her mother to speak again.
“What are you up to this afternoon?”
“I was going to read,” Stevie said.
“It’s a gorgeous day. You could get some sun.”
Stevie hmmmmed and leaned in close to the picture of the death kitchen.
“I got a note,” she said casually, “from a guy who owns a summer camp. He read about me, what I did at Ellingham. He asked if I wanted a job working there as a counselor. I guess he thought I’d be an interesting addition, you know, something extra for campers.”
“A summer camp?” Stevie’s mom said. “You?”
“I know,” Stevie said. “Right?”