The story was getting more and more interesting, in Veronica’s opinion. “Is a saint?” she repeated. “Miss Winnie is alive?”
“She is. I visit her every couple of weeks. They take good care of her there, although I still have to remind the staff to look at her while they’re speaking.”
“I don’t think so,” Lillian countered.
“What do you mean?”
“That’s what I was trying to tell you when I wrote the letter. That Miss Winnie can hear better than she lets on. At least she could back then. She wasn’t partially deaf at all.”
“Of course she was. Why would you say such a thing?”
Lillian took one more look at her husband, who nodded. Whatever she was about to divulge had already been discussed at length between them. “One day, near the end, when things were in an uproar, Miss Winnie came to me with reassurance that all would be all right. She said that the accusations were baseless, and that I wasn’t a scoundrel, no matter what Mr. Childs said. I appreciated her thoughtfulness, of course, but only later I realized she was repeating what had been discussed in the library in front of the private detective, with the doors closed. A room where she wasn’t present.”
“What if someone had mentioned to her what was said?”
“I wondered about that as well. So I did a test. I growled.”
“You did what?”
“When your mother and Miss Winnie weren’t looking at me. I made a strange noise.”
“And I’m sure they thought you insane.”
“They both turned around.”
Miss Helen touched her own throat with a trembling hand. “Both?”
“Both.”
She looked down at the cameo, as if seeing it for the first time. “Well then. Off we go.”
“Where to, Miss Helen?” asked Joshua.
“To speak with Miss Winnie. To find out the truth, for once and for all.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Lillian had always wondered what had become of her former employer. Sometimes there were small items in the newspapers about Helen Frick’s art reference library or the Collection in general, but little else. Her own frenzied three months in the Frick mansion were like a fever dream, hazy and remote. But one summer she and Archer had splurged on a trip to Paris, and the walls of the Louvre had brought back a vivid recollection of painters and paintings. The bucolic serenity of a Constable, the cottony softness of a Fragonard—to think at one time she’d lived among them, passed by them several times a day.
Helen hadn’t lost any of her imperiousness, even after almost five decades. She blasted classical music on the radio during the forty-five-minute drive to the nursing home, making any chitchat among Lillian, Veronica, and Joshua impossible, a fact that Lillian relished as the Lincoln charged down the highway, sliding from lane to lane. Once they’d arrived at the nursing home—a beautifully landscaped Victorian mansion—Miss Helen strode up to the reception desk, banging her flat palm on the counter to call for attention. Some things never changed. But then again, she’d been protected from most perils of life by her piles of money, by her library, by creating a domain where she could rule with little pushback.
Lillian, on the other hand, had experienced the normal trials and tribulations. Her life with Archer hadn’t been easy, but they’d laughed their way through most of it. A surprise, really, considering how little she’d known him before her escape. Not long after her frightening leap from Mr. Frick’s sitting room to the roof of the loggia, Archer’s voice had risen up from the street below. With the help of some crates precariously stacked on top of each other, he’d guided her down to the safety of the sidewalk, and been by her side ever since. First in an uptown hotel, where he’d slept on the floor, then here in Pine Knolls, where he had a cousin who let them find their bearings. During that time, she’d fallen in love with Archer and been able to forge a new life for herself, far away from the Fricks’ calamitous influence. He’d seen her as a whole person, and hadn’t judged her by her past, nor been offended by it.
They’d scraped by with the money he brought in from playing at services and weddings at the local church, the organ a rangy, difficult beast compared to the Fricks’ thoroughbred of an instrument. But he’d never complained, not when he returned from teaching private lessons to children who had little talent or inclination, or directing the church’s shrill choir, top-heavy with sopranos. They’d made a tranquil life together, growing vegetables and fixing up the house, taking long walks in forests that used to be farmland, following obsolete rock walls that no longer fenced in livestock or delineated crops but had survived centuries.