The Haunting of Alcott Manor, page 26
part #1 of Alcott Manor Series
When they entered the kitchen, Henry dropped the crowd-pleasing pretense. “The President of the United States is in our home. As well as the governor and a room full of people who are important to my career, and therefore, our family. For once in your godforsaken life, why don’t you think of someone other than yourself?” His tone was sharp enough to cut a razor-thin slice of marble, and he jerked her arm twice for emphasis.
An older gentleman with wavy white hair burst into the kitchen and stormed toward Anna. “You’ve been drinking?” His accusation boomed to all edges of the vacuous kitchen, and yet, the kitchen staff ignored him. It appeared they had seen and heard Anna in trouble before.
She wriggled her arm away from Henry only to have her father grab her by the other arm. “This doesn’t concern you, Daddy.”
“The doctor warned you not to drink when you take the medication he gave you. Have you even been taking your pills?” Her father spoke to her as though he scolded an errant teenager.
Anna broke free from her father's grasp and stormed out the screen door that led to the rose garden. The door squeaked and closed with a slam.
“Having trouble, Senator Alcott?”
Both men turned around to find Sam Cardill standing in the doorway to the kitchen.
“Or shall I say Senators Alcott?”
“This doesn’t concern you, Sam. In fact, I don’t remember your name being on the invitation list. Why don’t you make it an early evening and head home?” Henry said.
The closer Henry moved to Sam’s face, the wider Sam’s smile spread. He took the cigar from his mouth and flicked the ashes on the kitchen floor.
“Anna invited me. She thought I might enjoy one of these political pep rallies. Can’t say I’m disappointed.” He propped the cigar in the corner of his mouth and searched the kitchen. “Didn’t I see Anna come this way? I thought I might have a word with her. That dress is magnificent.”
“Stay away from her, Sam. You’ve done enough damage.” Henry blocked Sam’s path with his body. “There won’t be another warning.”
Sam crossed his arms and puffed twice on the cigar. “Set Anna free, Benjamin, and your life will get a whole lot easier. You don’t want her, and I could make her happy. Plus, it doesn’t look like she’s made for political life.”
The kitchen staff cut glances at Sam when he said it.
“You mean you think my money could make you happy. Get out of my house, Sam. Come here again, and I’ll kill you.”
Sam pushed close to Henry. “I’d like to see you try.”
“Gentlemen. Tonight is not the night for this.” Anna’s father grabbed each man by a shoulder and tried to separate them but didn't manage to move them an inch.
Henry balled his hand into a fist. “Get out, Sam.”
Gemma fought the urge to grab Anna’s father by the arm and move him out of the way. Fists were about to fly. She pressed her hands against her chest, in part to keep herself from touching anything, but also because her heart thrummed against her chest like an endless roll of thunder.
Warm, salty air seeped in through the screen door. Anna was outside on her own.
Henry, go get Anna.
She wondered if she spoke loudly and directly enough to him if he would hear her. Or would that create a connection to the past, as well? She wondered if, for the first time in over a century, the past could play differently and set Henry on a different course. One where he didn't have to suffer alone for a hundred years.
But the needle of the past was in full play, running along the well-worn grooves of the only story it knew. She didn’t see a way to change what was. At least, not yet. She backed away from the men, who circled each other like wolves, and she bumped into a man in white kitchen garb.
She scuttled away quickly, scrambling to find a safe space not to interact, at least, not carelessly. He lifted a basket of potatoes onto the wooden table in the middle of the room. His white hat masked his hair, just as it had for the young teenager who had fallen into this world a year ago. But the shape of his face and something about his hands gave him away.
His hands.
She looked closely at them while he peeled the potatoes.
Swipe, swipe, swipe.
The metal peeler clinked in his hand and brown, flimsy potato peels flew onto the light wooden surface.
His hands. There was paint on his hands. Smudges of blue, purple, brown, and yellow. An artist’s hands. He was the artist her father had hired to restore the frescoes on the ceiling of the music room. He had been killed a year ago.
By Benjamin?
By something or someone, and he had been taken into the history of the manor.
Excitement rolled through her and she'd felt this kind before. Enticement. The fine brocade in the bodice of her dress sparkled and she felt the manor’s promise. She could be the lady of the house. A special honor. A cherished position.
The manor wanted her.
Just when she was about to give up her resistance, and only because she couldn't remember why she was resisting, the sound of footsteps bounding up the back stairway shook her into her original focus.
She stood in the kitchen with the uniformed staff, Sam Cardill, who pressed a white rag against his bloody mouth, and Anna’s father, who yelled at Sam.
“Stay out of her life! You don’t know what you're getting into here.”
Henry was gone.
She dashed up the back stairs and poked her head into open doors until she found him in Anna’s bedroom, retrieving a wrap from her closet. To cover the most revealing aspects of Anna’s dress, she suspected.
Two envelopes were laid out on her secretary desk. One addressed to Benjamin, the other addressed to Sam.
Henry growled and snatched the letters, quickly scanning through the one addressed to him. “No, no, no…damn it, Anna!” He dropped the letter on the secretary where he had found it and ran downstairs at top speed.
Anna’s father and Sam stood face-to-face in a heated conversation when Henry ran through the kitchen.
“Anna!” Henry yelled when he was outside. “Anna!”
By the light of the moon, Gemma saw Anna several feet from the sandy edge, right where Gemma had performed the healing ceremony. Anna held her purse in front and close to her chest.
The screen door slammed and Gemma turned to see Sam Cardill walking toward them. Hesitant. Curious.
“Anna, don’t do this.” Henry ran his hand over his face and sighed. “Come inside.”
“No, Henry. I’m not going inside.”
“I’ll take you up the servants’ stairs and you can spend the evening in your room. Would you like to paint? I’ll tell the president and the other guests that you aren't feeling well.” He was weary of her antics and was probably expecting her to take off running into the ocean.
“I won’t ever go inside that house again.” She stared at the house as Gemma often had. As though it had a spirit and an agenda of its own—one that didn't agree with hers.
Henry’s head tipped to the side in a what-is-she-going-to-do-now kind of way. “Then what will you do, Anna? Live on the beach? Go ahead then. Go to the beach. Wander through the night. See how well you do without my protection.”
He pressed his fingertip and thumb against his forehead, and it wasn't hard to see that he had lost his patience. Maybe some part of him even wished for Anna to wander off into the night and not return.
The affair, her mental illness, four children to care for. The world was watching. All of this poorly timed with a career dream coming true, and it was too much for any one person.
Now Gemma would see how Henry handled it.
Maybe he would walk away and she'd pull a trigger. Or maybe he would strangle her. Or maybe she would walk off into the night and someone else would finish the job.
With Henry trying to calm himself, his head lowered and his eyes closed, he didn’t see that Anna had opened her bag and removed a gun.
“Henry. Henry!” Gemma couldn't help herself. She yelled and shouted to get his attention. “Benjamin!”
Henry’s head lifted with a jerk. “Anna. What are you doing with that?
His hands were raised in front of him for protection. In surrender.
“It’s better this way.” Her voice was strangely calm. The tone was lower and more settled than Gemma had ever heard it.
“No, Anna. Stop. You have children, think of them.”
“I’m not a good mother.” She laughed a little as if Henry’s food for thought was absurd. “They’ll be better off with someone else. You’ll be better off, too, Benjamin.” She waved the gun, and his palms followed her aim in case he needed to stop a bullet.
Henry stepped forward. “Do you want a divorce? You can have it. If that's what you want.”
She stepped backward in counterpoint to Henry’s attempt to reach her. “It wouldn’t matter. I don’t need a divorce anymore.” She pointed the gun at the side of her head.
“Oh, God, Anna, Don’t. Please don't do this.”
“I’m tired, Benjamin. I’m sick and so tired of not being able to make anything work. I keep messing everything up.” Her hand shook.
“No, no, no!” Henry’s arms stretched toward his wife, his fingers splayed and rigid, his feet rooted where they stood. “What about Sam? Don't you want to be with him?”
“Sam doesn’t want to be with me.” Her head shook slowly and slightly from being drunk, making her appear as if she’d reverted to being a little girl. “You were right about him.”
“Then, whatever you want, sweetheart. You can have it. Just tell me what you want.”
“Anna?” Sam called. “Anna, what are you doing?”
Henry lunged toward her.
The sound of the gunshot blasted loud enough to rise above the noise of the chatter of the crowd and the music of the chamber orchestra. Two by two, guests poured onto the back lawn and found Benjamin Alcott standing over his dead wife’s body with a gun in his hands.
Sam Cardill stood a few feet away. “You killed her.”
Gemma stood by in horror, unable to move.
“You killed her!” Sam yelled. “You killed her, you son of a bitch!”
Henry rushed Anna's limp, bloodied body upstairs to the first room on the right and laid her on the bed. He knelt at her side and held her hand between his. “I’m sorry, Anna. I’m so sorry. I failed you.”
Several staff elbowed one another at Henry’s apology. “He’s confessing,” they whispered.
The overly warm room spun and events sped by in a blur. Gemma shook her head and held onto the wall. “No. No.” Dolls were lined along the shelves, blood spread along the mattress, and she held her stomach, tracing the raised, stiff brocade of the white dress Henry had given her.
She released the wall as if it were hot, as if it were poison, as if it stuck thorns into her flesh. “Leave me alone,” she scream-whispered. “I am trying to help you!”
She said it to the house and to whoever haunted it. It must have known she told the truth because it did leave her alone. The white dress Henry had given her melted away in favor of the black T-shirt and jacket she usually wore.
A young girl ran into the room and stopped short with a full-on scream when she saw her mother lying there. "Mama, you're bleeding!"
A moment later, the nanny rushed in and ushered her out of the room. The nanny stared at the scene before she left, her eyes stretched wide in horror.
Anna's father rushed in and cried over his daughter's body. “Oh, Anna!” he wailed.
Sam stopped at the doorway, and his eyes fell on Anna's lifeless body.
"You." Henry stepped toward Sam. "You did this.” His face, hands, and white shirt were smeared with Anna's blood.
Sam backed into the hallway and sweat glued thick strands of his dark hair to his forehead.
"You might as well have been the one to pull the trigger, you weak son of a bitch. Why couldn't you just leave her alone?” Henry said.
"She wasn't happy with you. She asked you for the divorce, but you wouldn't give it to her, you selfish ass. You killed her because you just couldn’t stand to see her happy.”
“When you knew you weren't going to get my money, you made other arrangements, didn't you? You’ve been working behind the scenes to find some other well-to-do lonely woman. Someone who would trade her bank account for some company." Henry slammed his fist on the side of Sam's jaw and a crack filled the air.
Sam fell to the ground and Henry shook his fist with a sense of satisfaction.
"Did you know she was sick, Sam? No? I guess she didn't tell you that, did she? And you were too self-obsessed to figure it out. She’s been seeing doctors since she was a teenager. Her own father put her in a sanitarium. That's why she wasn't happy. She had problems. I tried to help her.”
Sam crawled backward like a wounded crab until he ran into the wall. He scrambled upward and away from Henry, who stalked him like his next meal.
“The stable life I gave her helped her. But then you—" Henry laughed through a sneer and shook his head. “You set your hooks into her and ruined everything. By morning, the whole town is going to know exactly what kind of a deadweight you are. How you target women for their money because you can't keep your business afloat."
Sam threw a punch, but Benjamin blocked it and sank his fist into Sam’s stomach. "If I ever see you again, I'll kill you. Now get out of here!”
Henry returned to the little girl’s room and stared at Anna's lifeless body. Sam leaned against the wall, bent over, and staggered down the hallway until he paused at the open door to Anna's bedroom.
Gemma watched him carefully, shifting her glance between him and the doorway to the guest room. Sam didn't seem like a man willing to go down the way Henry threatened. He made his way to the edge of her bed and cried, only for a moment, as if he were trying the emotion on for size but didn't like it.
Gemma decided he cried more for himself out of panic than from grief.
He spotted Anna's painting on her headboard and sniffed and wiped his face. “You might change your mind, Senator, when you realize you have a secret of your own to keep quiet. Maybe tomorrow the papers will share a little something about Lizzie Mae that you didn’t know. I’m pretty sure they will call it motivation for murder.”
Sam glanced toward the secretary, where two pieces of paper were laid out in plain view. Gemma quickly followed. He picked up the letter addressed to him and read it, then read the letter that was addressed to Benjamin.
The suicide note.
It was real.
Henry had seen it.
Police sirens screamed into the night. Sam parted the curtain then looked around the room briefly, she assumed for someplace to hide the letters. He folded them and stuffed them into his jacket pocket and headed toward the door.
He was framing Henry.
"No!" Gemma fought the urge to tackle Sam and retrieve the letters.
Henry's warning came back to her: Don't touch anything.
She reached for an armless chair to throw in his path to stop him. She pulled her hands back at the last second. There had already had been several close encounters with the house tonight.
“Find him!" Benjamin yelled from down the hall.
Sam stopped short of the doorway.
Gemma released the breath she'd been holding.
His hand rested over the letters in his pocket. He dashed to the secretary and began opening drawers. A herd of footsteps sounded in the hallway.
Gemma kept an eye on Sam while she stepped to the doorway. Five or so policemen bounded up the stairs. Their rounded hats and single-breasted, gold-buttoned jackets reminded her of keystone cops. She hoped that wasn't the case, but given the known outcome, it had to have played a role. She doubted any of them had had to solve a murder before, and they probably didn't have a clue when it came to forensic practices.
She gasped when an unwelcome but familiar face followed close behind the police, an architectural drawing rolled and kept under his arm.
Asher.
She searched for a hiding place.
Sam brushed the wrinkles from his yellow suit, composed himself with a heavy exhale, and met the police in the hallway. "I saw the whole thing, officer. I can tell you what happened.”
One of the policemen listened intently as Sam recounted a creative interpretation of what had happened between Benjamin and Anna. "He told her he'd make it look like a suicide and that everyone would believe him. He said he'd be free of her at last and finally able to pursue his dream of being president. Then he aimed the gun at her head and shot her.”
Asher lurked along the side of the hallway with wide eyes and a half smile. "Sam Cardill. My God. He really was the hero in this story.”
Gemma tucked behind Anna's bed again. Arrogance was hereditary. She'd have to wait until Asher left the hallway before she could leave.
"I'll prove it to you," Henry growled from the hallway.
She leaned around the doorway and jumped back just in time to avoid Henry when he stormed into the room.
He moved things around on the secretary and searched the area under it. "The notes were here, I saw them."
Sam Cardill and the policeman stood at the doorway with arms crossed.
"You sure about that?" Sam pasted mock concern on his face.
"What did you do with them?" Benjamin’s eyes focused with fury. "Search him!”
"Senator—” the policeman began.
"Search him!" Henry pointed at Sam.
Asher appeared in the doorway and Gemma ducked behind the bed to avoid being seen.
The policeman opened his mouth to say something to Henry.
"It's okay, officer. I'm happy to comply." Sam raised his arms in mock surrender. He handed his jacket to the policeman who searched the pockets. When nothing turned up, he patted Sam down.
"There's nothing here, Senator."
"Make him take off his clothes. He probably shoved them into his pants."
The policeman turned to Sam, who was already unbuckling his belt. He stared at Henry with the same cockiness Gemma had seen on Asher's face in the courtroom. He finally stood in Anna's bedroom in boxers and socks only. Gemma thought it probably hadn't been the first time.
