I went back inside and told everyone how I’d found Elvis. “Dude, what were you thinking?” Avery said.
He almost seemed to shrug.
“There are some orders to be packed on the workbench,” I said to Avery, “and then could you do half a dozen more teacup planters, please?”
“Sure,” she said. “Want me to take the King of Rock and Roll and keep an eye on him?”
“Yes, please,” I said. I handed over Elvis, who seemed quite happy to go with Avery.
Once they were gone I told Mr. P. and Charlotte about my conversation with Emily.
Mr. P. took off his glasses and cleaned them with the little cloth he always carried in his pocket. “I know it seems somewhat unorthodox, but Elvis has never been wrong about this kind of thing.”
“Well, I’m happy,” Charlotte said. “I didn’t like the idea that Emily had killed Mr. Steele.”
“Neither did I,” I said.
“So we keep going,” Mr. P. said. He explained that he had copies of a bunch of the documents and photos that he believed Mark Steele had looked at while he was at the historical society. “I’m going to look through them to see if anything seems significant.”
I decided I’d spend some time working on my table. I went upstairs to change and grabbed a cup of coffee to take outside with me. It was dull and cool but there wasn’t any rain in the forecast. “Fire off a flare if you need me,” I told Charlotte.
I’d just gotten my tarp down when Mac pulled in. The table and chairs were in the back of his truck. There were four mint green chairs and a lighter green Formica table.
“Nice,” I said, walking around the bed of the truck so I could see the table from both sides.
“It’s sticky and dirty and ridiculously underpriced,” Mac said.
I turned to look at him. “I sense a story.”
He reached into the truck and took a large cardboard box off the front seat. “Not much of one. The guy who sold all of this to me was happy to get rid of what he called old-people furniture.”
I groaned. “I hate it when people don’t recognize quality.” I dropped the tailgate of the truck and climbed up into the back so I could look at the table and chairs up close. I checked the chairs from end to end and went all over the Formica table as well, even getting down on my knees to look at the underside.
“Well?” Mac said.
I backed out from under the table and sat back on my heels. “I’m pretty sure it’s 1950s vintage. I can’t get over what incredible shape it’s in after all these years. It doesn’t look like it’s been used in a long time.”
“I don’t think it has,” he said. “From what I saw it’s been sitting in this guy’s basement since it came from his grandmother’s house.”
I stood up, brushing some dried leaves from last fall off my jeans.
Mac handed me a piece of paper.
“What’s this?” I said.
He smiled. “I knew you’d want to see what else he has. We can go take a look Monday night. That’s his cell number and the address. His name is Jeremy.”
I jumped down from the back of the truck and flung my arms around him. “There will be a little something extra with your stipend this week,” I said, waggling my eyebrows at him.
As we unloaded the table and chairs I brought Mac up-to-date on the morning so far and Elvis’s adventures. “I’m with Alfred,” he said. “It’s not like you have any tangible evidence to link Emily to Mark Steele’s murder and Elvis has never steered you wrong before. I don’t know how he does it but he’s reading something in people. He’s a feline polygraph with a better reliability rate than a machine.”
I gestured at the box that Mac had taken out of the front seat of the truck. “What else did you buy?” I asked.
“A bunch of old LPs. I thought we could display the albums and the two remaining record players together and maybe they’d be more likely to sell.”
Once we had everything stashed in the workshop and covered with a tarp Mac went in to get coffee. “I’m going to grab Avery if that’s okay and make sure the albums are playable and that none of them are more valuable than I think.”
“Go ahead,” I said. “She was packing some parcels but she’s probably done by now.”
I had just finished the second coat of paint on the table when I saw Mr. P. coming across the parking lot. “Sarah, may I borrow your eyes for a minute?”
“Sure,” I said.
He was holding several sheets of paper. He set one down on top of a tea cart that I’d forgotten to ask Mac to take into the shop. “This is a very nice piece,” Mr. P. said.
“It’s walnut, for the most part,” I said. “I’m not sure how old it is but I’m confident it’s pre-1880 because of the square screws.” I smiled. “You have excellent taste, which I already knew because you chose Rose.”
He smiled back at me. “I think it was Rosie who chose me but I’ll take the compliment.” He tapped the paper he’d laid down. It was a copy of a photograph. His expression turned serious. “What do you see?” he said.
“That’s Annie and Emily.” The photo looked like it had been taken in the parlor at Gladstone House.
Mr. P. hiked his pants up a little. “They’re related.”
I nodded. “You know they are. They’re grandmother and granddaughter.”
It seemed to be what he’d wanted to hear me say. He smiled again. “How do you know?”
I had no idea what he was getting at. I rubbed a hand over the back of my neck. “I don’t know. They’re part of the same family. They have the same last name. They look alike.”
“So they have a biological connection?”
“Yes.” I didn’t know what he was getting at but we seemed to be taking the long way around the farm. I picked up the photocopy. “Look. Both Annie and Emily tip their heads to the left in the same way. They have the same jawline and the same nose.” I traced my finger down Annie’s nose and then Emily’s.
“It’s a Greek nose,” Mr. P. said. “Very straight and symmetrical. It’s only seen in a small amount of the population.”
He set down another copy of a photo. This one was of an older man. “Do you know who this is?”
The man looked to be in his late sixties. “No,” I said. “But he had to be related to Annie and Emily. He has the same jawline and the same nose. And look.” I tapped the image. “He’s even tilting his head a little to the left.”
“Very observant,” Mr. P. said.
I folded my arms across my chest and tried to guess the age of the picture. “Is that Annie’s father?”
He nodded. “Yes, it’s Jacob Gladstone.”
He handed me another picture. This was beginning to feel like the children’s memory game where you had to find the matching pairs.
This man looked very much like Jacob Gladstone. He appeared to be somewhere in his late seventies or early eighties. He had a full head of thick white hair and a serious expression on his face. A scar cut across his chin. Another ran from the outer edge of his left eyebrow down his cheek to the corner of his nose. He seemed to have the same traits that Jacob shared with Annie and Emily: the straight nose, the strong jaw. As well, the two men had the same straight, thick hair.
“That’s Jacob’s father, isn’t it?” I said.
“Yes,” Mr. P. said. “That is Henry Gladstone. You can’t tell from the photographs, because they’re black-and-white, but I found several references to both men having hazel eyes.”
“Annie has hazel eyes,” I said. “And Emily does, too.”
Mr. P. took off his glasses, rubbed the bridge of his nose and put them on again. “There are very few photos of Henry Gladstone as an adult, I’ve learned. It appears that he was averse to getting his photo taken.”
“You showed me a photo of Henry when he was a baby.”
He nodded and put yet another copy of a photograph on the tea cart. This one was a photo of a young man of about seventeen or so. “Mark Steele looked at this photo several times. Eli, the young man working at the archives, told me that Mr. Steele tried to take it over to the window to get a better look at it and he had to stop him. The next day Mr. Steele came back with a lighted magnifier.”
I looked at the picture again. “Do you have any idea why he was so interested in this particular photo?”
He nodded. “I think I do, but I want to see what you think without biasing you.”
I picked up the piece of paper. “Okay. I think this person could be related to the Phillips family.”
“Why do you say that?” Mr. P. said.
“You’ve shown me all these photos of the Gladstones.” I gestured at the table. “And this man doesn’t look like any of them. Look at his nose.” I pointed. “It’s completely different from what you called the Greek nose that all the Gladstones you showed me have. This man’s nose is larger and more prominent.”
He dipped his head. “You would be correct,” he said.
“This man’s jawline is thicker and he has a bit of wave to his hair. Even though it’s all slicked down I can see a bit of curl on one side. Since the Gladstones and the Phillipses are the two families tied up in all of this I think this man, whoever he is, is a member of the Phillips family.”
“This is Henry Gladstone at seventeen.”
I shook my head. “That’s not possible.” I picked up the two images of young Henry and old Henry and studied them side by side. After a moment I shook my head and held out the photograph of the younger man. “This one has been mislabeled or misidentified at the historical society. These are not photos of the same man. Their facial structure is too different.”
“I had the same thought,” Mr. P. said. “But the photo of the younger man is definitely Henry Gladstone. I found another photo of him. There’s no doubt. It’s Henry.”
I folded my arm up over the top of my head. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“It does if the older man isn’t Henry.”
If the older man isn’t Henry, he’d said.
I frowned. “So you think someone was masquerading as Henry Gladstone?”
Mr. P. nodded. “Essentially, yes.” He handed me the final piece of paper he was holding. It was a copy of a newspaper article about a train derailment. “Henry Gladstone was in school in Boston. He was called home when his father died. He hadn’t been back to North Harbor in years.”
“He was on that train.”
“Yes. You saw the scars on the older Henry’s face. They came from that accident. He spent ten days in hospital. At first he had some memory-loss issues and he walked with a limp for quite a while, but he was no longer the reckless young man he’d been. I think that’s because he literally was no longer that man.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “What happened?”
He smoothed one hand back over his head. “This is just speculation on my part,” he said. “But I believe I’m right. Another young man from Henry’s school was on that train—Peter Alexander. They were friends it seems. Peter died in the accident along with three other people. What I think really happened is that Peter, who was orphaned and only had a great uncle left as family, took on Henry’s life. Possibly he was even mistaken for Henry at first. No one had seen Henry Gladstone for years. He’d left a boy and come home a young man. And the accident was the perfect way to cover up all the things he didn’t know and the people he didn’t recognize.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “How would he have been able to pull that off?”
“It was a long time ago. Over a hundred years. No internet. No social media. Not even a lot of photographs being taken. People here were expecting to see Henry Gladstone and that’s what they saw. Everything else could be explained by the accident. And keep in mind, Henry and Peter Alexander knew each other so the latter likely knew at least a little about Henry’s life. I think Mr. Alexander saw an opportunity for a better life than what he was facing and he took it. He just slid seamlessly into Henry’s life.”
“Do you think Annie or Emily know?”
“I couldn’t even begin to guess,” he said.
“You think Mark Steele came to the same conclusion as you have, though.”
“I do. Revealing this subterfuge would be a way to have increased the viewership of his show in his mind.”
“So all of this was just about ratings.”
“Sadly, I think so. I think we need to talk to Annie.”
“Do you want to wait for Rose?” I asked.
He adjusted his glasses again. “Normally I would say yes, but Rosie will be tied up at the library until late this afternoon, and when I was talking to Eli at the historical society, he let it slip that Delia Watson has been in twice in the last couple of days.”
I blew out a breath. “You think she’s trying to learn what Mr. Steele was digging into.”
“I’m afraid so. And remember, they’re opening up Gladstone House to people who had tour tickets tomorrow. That includes Delia.”
“Give me fifteen minutes,” I said. “I just need to wash my brushes and change my clothes and we can go talk to Annie.”
“Thank you, my dear,” Mr. P. said. “I think this is a conversation better had in person than over the phone.”
I picked up the little bucket of water holding my brushes. This case had a lot more similarity to a maze than it did a puzzle, I realized. We were getting in deeper and deeper and there didn’t seem to be a clear way out.