I looked up from the manuscript and shivered. “That was rather intense, wasn’t it?”
“It’s a perfect ghost story,” Matthew said. “But I think it also tells us something about what really went on that summer, don’t you?” He smiled a broad smile and gestured toward the walls.
“Exactly what I was thinking,” I said. “The passageways.”
“Without knowing about them, the story reads just a like an old-fashioned ghost tale,” he said. “But with what we know about the way this house is laid out …”
I nodded. “I’ll bet my father and his sister didn’t tell Coleville about the passageways. My brothers and I were always forbidden to talk about them with outsiders and I’m sure they were, too. I think it’s clear that Coleville sensed he was being watched that summer, even heard whomever it was shuffling around in the passageways. Add a writer’s imagination to that—”
“And you’ve got a ghost story!” Matthew finished my thought.
“I think we both know who was creeping around in those passageways scaring the life out of Coleville,” I said.
He leaned forward in his chair. “If Mercy had developed some sort of mental illness because of her ordeal in the crypt, maybe she was kept away from visitors. Her parents simply didn’t introduce her to Coleville. It’s a big enough house to have pulled that off.”
“It’s exactly the type of thing my family would do, keep a sick relative hidden away. Very Secret Garden.”
“And let’s say Mercy didn’t much like that, being away from all the fun,” Matthew went on. “What would she do?”
My eyes opened wide. “She’d do what my brothers and I would do when we didn’t want to stay in our rooms … but also didn’t want our parents to know we were watching them.”
We sat in silence for a moment. We might never know what really happened all those years ago, but this explanation was sounding more and more plausible to me. But then another thought floated through my mind.
“You know,” I began, “something else is bothering me. We suspected that my family was upset about what Coleville wrote and killed him because of it. But this isn’t some sort of exposé of my family’s dirty laundry. This is just an old-fashioned, gothic ghost story. Who would be upset enough about that to kill him because of it?”
Matthew leaned back and crossed his legs. “What if it wasn’t the manuscript that got Coleville killed?”
And there and then, the explanation for Coleville’s ill-timed death seemed to simply lay itself out before me. “In Coleville’s story, he found on his writing pad: ‘The girl in white loves you,’ ” I said. “What if that really happened? What if Mercy, creeping around in the passageways spying on him, really did fall in love with him?”
Matthew picked up my train of thought. “And what if she found out he was coming back the next summer to marry Lily—er, your mother?”
“People have killed for a lot less,” I said, the certainty of it wrapping itself around me. “If she killed Coleville, that would explain why my grandfather put her in Mercy House. Mystery solved! I’ll bet you anything that’s what happened.”
But Matthew began shaking his head. “Nope,” he said. “It still doesn’t explain what happened to Fate. I’m wondering—”
The crackling of the intercom interrupted his thought.
“Miss Grace, are you up there?” It was a man’s voice.
I crossed the room and pushed the button on the desk. “I’m here. Who’s this?”
“It’s Carter, miss,” he said, his voice harsh and full. “You need to get down here to the main floor immediately. I’ve rung the police and the ambulance, but—”
“Ambulance? Police?”
“It’s Jane, miss. She’s been hurt. We’re in the kitchen.”