The House of Memory (Pluto's Snitch Book 2) Read online

  “Father always says I’m the most stubborn woman he’s ever known,” Zelda said. “I think Camilla has topped me.” She swallowed. “I can’t go with you. I can’t. You can take the car.”

  I nodded my thanks. It wasn’t the scenario I’d hoped for, but we could drive Camilla and David back with us. “We should leave immediately.”

  “No time like right now.” Reginald took the key from the side table. “Stay out of Roswell House until we get back. We’ll return as soon as we can. Could you telegraph David and ask him to wait for us at the same hotel Raissa and I stayed in? I can find him there.”

  “I will.” Zelda’s voice was barely a whisper. “I’m sorry I’m not going. There’s something about that place that makes me think I’ll suffocate and die on the spot.”

  “I understand.” There was no point in heaping hot coals on the ashes of her fear. She was terrified. For whatever reason, she simply couldn’t confront those fears.

  “I’ll call Mr. Kuddle and tell him what Camilla said,” Zelda said. “If he has information that can prove that Joanne Pence is safe, I’ll send another telegram.”

  “That would be very helpful,” Reginald said. He, too, wanted to assuage her guilt at not going with us.

  “Don’t worry,” I told Zelda as I put a comforting hand on her shoulder. “We’ll bring her back.”

  I grabbed a change of clothes for Camilla and climbed into the front seat beside Reginald. He drove with confidence and care, and I relaxed into the seat and watched the scenery flash by. The storm that had threatened only an hour earlier had moved south and east, but the sun was still obscured by clouds, a blessing. We’d had no time to check road conditions, but the thoroughfare between the two cities was in constant use. Small towns, diners, and service stations had cropped up along the way. I realized that I’d never taken a car journey of this distance through such untamed land.

  The trees were a rolling rush of green, from the dark evergreen of the pines to the lighter coloring of the oaks and the brilliant yellow-green of new leaves sprouting in the summer heat. On the outskirts of Montgomery, we passed pastures with cattle, mules, and horses, and fields of the dark-green foliage of cotton.

  The road was paved in some of the larger towns, and we stopped for fuel and some sandwiches at a small place whose name escaped me. Then we were driving into the gloaming, intent on getting to Tuscaloosa and Bryce Hospital.

  Along the way, I told Reginald what I’d learned from Doddie McCann.

  He was thoughtful as we pressed on. “So Wick Roswell liked young women. Girls.”

  “Doddie said that Wick took what he wanted. And the curse that came down on the Roswell house involved only the females. All the males were spared.”

  “Don’t you find that strange?” Reginald asked. “If it was a curse, why curse the females when it was the Roswell men who were up to no good?”

  I saw his point clearly, but curses belonged to a voodoo culture I wasn’t certain I believed in. Reginald, though, had lived in the city that was home to Marie Laveau, the famous voodoo high priestess. Though she’d died nearly forty years earlier, her reign as the queen of dark magic and voodoo curses remained prominent in the Crescent City.

  “Curses don’t always work the way they’re intended.”

  “I see. But why would the Roswell curse apply to poor Camilla? She had nothing to do with the history of the property or the former owners.” I’d never discussed curses and spells with Madam, but I’d been raised in a home where a bargain with Satan had a price—a single soul. And the Roswell family had suffered tremendous tragedy.

  “I don’t know,” Reginald said. He slowed to take a sharp curve.

  Had someone hated Wick Roswell and his predecessors enough to trade his or her soul for revenge? “Maybe the things Doddie told me were accidents.”

  He looked away from the road long enough to stare at me. “I’d say a horse spooking to the point that it died of fright is a little more than an unfortunate accident.”

  I couldn’t explain that mystery, and I had another of my own. “Why would David Simpson buy a house with such a tragic past?” I asked. “Roswell House was beautiful, but any number of structures could have been renovated. Or a new home built.”

  “Maybe he didn’t know about the stories. Zelda didn’t. But that’s something you’d best ask David,” Reginald said. “And we can, as soon as we get to Tuscaloosa.”

  I nodded.

  “What if Camilla won’t come with us?” he asked.

  “Then we’ve wasted our time and Zelda’s money. If she won’t work with us . . .” I shrugged. We’d never promised Zelda we’d be able to accomplish anything. “It’s impossible to know what’s in the heart of another person. Maybe Camilla wants to punish herself for something, and that is more important than marrying or being happy.”

  “You believe she may have aborted a child, despite Zelda’s assurances she didn’t.”

  “Perhaps Zelda doesn’t know everything about Camilla that she thinks she does, or it’s possible Zelda would like to protect her young friend. Someone has to ask David, and it should be you. Man-to-man. He won’t take kindly to my asking that question.”

  “That’s a lot of wisdom for a young woman not yet thirty,” Reginald teased.

  “Madness in the heart. There’s no cure for it.” I leaned back in the car seat. The last light was leaving the sky, and Tuscaloosa was still a distance away. On either side of the car, the dense black of the woods drew close to the road. Beyond that was the paler black of the sky with the stars just winking to life.

  About fifty yards ahead, a young woman in a summer dress stepped out of the woods. She was barefoot, and her body had been lashed by branches and limbs where she’d run through the undergrowth. I sat forward and reached out a hand to force Reginald to stop the car, but I realized it was not a living girl, only the spirit of one departed.

  Her long hair was tangled with vines and brambles, and she stepped toward the road as if she was dazed. When we were close to her, she faced me. “Don’t leave me,” she said in that peculiar ghost voice that could travel across time and distance as clear as a bell. “I’ll be good. Don’t leave me here alone.”

  “Who are you?” I whispered.

  “What?” Reginald asked.

  I didn’t want to tell him about the spirit. Not now. He wanted so badly to see a ghost, and yet he couldn’t. I didn’t look back as we left the spirit behind. “Where are we?” I asked.

  “On the outskirts of Dooneyville.”

  Up ahead the lights of a gasoline station drew us as surely as a flame compelled a moth. “Let’s get some coffee,” I suggested. The night was still hot and close and suffocating, but the dead girl on the side of the road had given me a chill.

  “Sure thing. What did you see back there?” he asked, more observant than I credited him with being.

  “There was another dead girl in the woods. A pretty brunette. She asked me not to leave her.” I wasn’t afraid; I was sad. Bone sad. “She’s one of the lost girls.”

  “Maybe it’s a good thing I don’t see ghosts,” Reginald said. “What I do see now, though, is that you’re the connection, Raissa.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Of all the ghosts in Alabama, why are you seeing these poor girls? Something terrible is happening at the mental hospital. Somehow it’s connected to Camilla. Maybe it’s only that we’re to save her from danger, but I think it’s more. And you’re the means of figuring it all out.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  We pulled into Bryce Hospital driveway just at midnight. Our late hour told me David had long left the premises—Bryce frowned upon visitors on the grounds after hours. I’d hoped to arrive sooner, but road conditions had interfered. So, without David, we would attempt, once more, to convince Camilla to come with us voluntarily. Failing that, we’d be forced to strong-arm her into the car and drive away with her. If that happened, then Camilla could charge us with kidnapping, but we wer
e betting Zelda could convince her not to do that.

  The storm that had threatened us for the whole drive had amassed on the western horizon. Wicked lightning forked across the sky and charged the air. High above the treetops, a half-moon glowed dimly, peeking in and out of the clouds. “Annabel Lee,” Edgar Allan Poe’s masterpiece of death and longing, came to me. I spoke a stanza of the poem.

  “A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

  My beautiful Annabel Lee;

  So that her highborn kinsman came

  And bore her away from me,

  To shut her up in a sepulcher

  In this kingdom by the sea.”

  “That hospital does remind me of a tomb,” Reginald said, picking up instantly on my mood. “Some of the patients there will never leave. A lot of them, I fear. No one wants them.”

  “Some have no family, and some are too ill to be on their own.” I had to shake this malaise if I meant to do my job. “We can’t fix this for everyone. Let’s hope we can help Camilla.”

  “We’ll leave the car here for the time being,” Reginald said.

  We’d parked at the very end of the driveway on a dark street. The hospital grounds were extensive, and the state hadn’t maintained the road. There was no traffic, and the tree limbs drifting in the moonlight cast eerie shadows. He wiped a sheen of sweat from his forehead, and I knew the long-sleeve shirt, tie, and jacket were hot now that the car had ceased movement. My sleeveless dress was more comfortable, but still the night was extremely warm, and the impending storm was like a suffocating blanket thrown over the landscape.

  “Let’s do this.” We’d driven a long way in the dark just for this opportunity—so that I might talk with Camilla uninterrupted by the nurses or, worse yet, a doctor. “Boost me into a window.”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, there are bars on all the windows.” Reginald was the observant one in our detective agency.

  “Not on the front-office windows, only the patient rooms and dorms.” This time I’d paid attention, too, wondering if Camilla’s disappearing friends were slipping in and out without detection via windows. “David has the forged letter. He’ll meet us first thing in the morning, if we don’t pick him up at the hotel sooner. We’ll be long gone before the hospital is able to contact the Grangers and discover our letter is a forgery. But I need to get in there now. I need time to convince her.”

  “And what will I do?”

  “Find Joanne Pence. Camilla says she’s still on the grounds, and I think Kuddle took the hospital’s word that she was gone. He didn’t check. Now’s our best chance to search the outbuildings. There are barns and stables and chicken coops. Plenty of places for a clever girl to hide.”

  “I don’t like you going into Bryce by yourself.”

  “I’m not alone. There are thousands of patients there—and nurses, doctors . . . ghosts.” I gave him a smile that was more bravado than real. “They can’t do anything to me. Charge me with trespassing, maybe. That’s not so terrible. You know I’m in there. And you care. You’ll find me. It’s not like they can make me disappear.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure of that.” Reginald’s strained expression let me know he was truly worried that something would happen to me in the hospital.

  “I’ll signal from Camilla’s window. If I’m in any kind of danger, I’ll hang a scarf or pillowcase from the bars. Then you can call the police. You can say I’m being held prisoner or something to get them to take action. Call Judge Sayre. We do have a couple of big cards up our sleeve.”

  “I’m a gambling man, and this is too dangerous for my taste. What does that tell you?”

  “I understand, but I have to try.” I didn’t see any other course of action. “Either you can help me, or I’ll do it on my own.”

  “If anything happens to you, your uncle—”

  “Won’t blame you. He knows I’m an Airlie, just like him. Stubborn is bred in the bone.” I didn’t give him a chance to argue more. I ran down the long driveway, a shadow darting among the shifting patterns on the ground cast by the swaying tree limbs. Reginald followed close behind.

  Again Poe’s words seemed both to warn and hold me.

  For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams

  Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

  And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes

  Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

  And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

  Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,

  In her sepulcher there by the sea,

  In her tomb by the sounding sea.

  This hospital would not be Camilla’s tomb—not while I still breathed.

  I made for a ground-floor window of the reception office with Reginald at my side. None of the office windows were barred, and the young women working there had pushed this one open to let out some of the heat.

  With Reginald’s help, I managed to move the glass up enough for me to slide through. Reginald laced his fingers to make a stirrup and boosted me so I could slither over the edge. It wasn’t the most graceful entrance I’d ever made into a building, but I managed to get inside without injury. Loss of a little dignity wouldn’t kill me.

  “I’ll look around here for a bit. Please search for Joanne. If she’s here, we’ll take her with us, too.”

  It would be several hours before the day staff returned, and while I was in the business office, I decided to check on Joanne Pence’s records, as well as Connie Shelton’s. Connie’s body hadn’t been found, but I knew she was dead. Her spirit remained earthbound, free of her body. She was truly a ghost, and if I could help release her, I would. What I needed to find out was how the mental hospital was classifying the disappearance of the young women.

  I went to the office door and listened closely to be sure no one was near the business area. Nurses and orderlies remained in the wards and hallways all night and day, but I had to chance that the business offices weren’t watched or guarded. I snapped on a light, knowing Reginald would be cursing me to the high heavens for my recklessness. I needed illumination to read, and I needed to work fast.

  The patient files were listed alphabetically, and I checked Camilla’s first to see if there had been an official diagnosis. Some of the handwriting was hard to decipher, but the majority of notes had been made by Dr. Perkins and included his diagnosis of a form of schizophrenia. One of his notes made my pulse thunder.

  Dr. Perkins’s final conclusion was that Camilla’s brain was diseased and that rational thought and behavior would continue to decline—at an amazing pace, he had written—unless she received surgical intervention. He believed he could destroy the dying tissue and save a portion of her brain. In the margins to the right, he provided a thumbnail of the procedure he intended to use. Camilla’s face and skull would remain unscarred, but the technique was horrific. A slender spike would be driven through the corners of each eye and into her brain. The surgery, it was noted, was completely experimental and had been tried only in Europe.

  If I’d had any doubt about breaking into Bryce and removing Camilla, it vanished now. In the doctor’s hand was another notation mentioning Camilla’s pleasant and controlled behavior but also her fear of a violent outburst. He’d taken everything she’d said as supporting evidence of a diseased brain that could turn violent, a diagnosis I disavowed.

  I returned her file to the cabinet and found Joanne Pence’s. The patient was also seventeen and had been diagnosed as manic-depressive, with wild upswings of mania followed by plunging depression. Dr. Bentley had consulted on the case, and his handwriting was a vast improvement over Dr. Perkins’s.

  Joanne had been brought to the hospital as a ward of the state because of her behavior at Saint Margaret’s School for Girls, a place I vaguely knew about in Tuscaloosa. Runaways, orphans, and problem girls who defied parental authority were the inhabitants of the school, which trained the young women to be domestics, caregivers, and seamstresses.

 
; The report from the school noted that Joanne had slapped a nun while receiving corporal punishment. A thousand different scenarios could be read into that single sentence. She could have been a total hellion, or she could have been defending herself—or any combination of the two. Her tenure at Bryce was court ordered, and there was no mention that relatives had taken her away. In fact, just reading her file, one would think she was still a patient. She was listed, by Dr. French’s orders, for water therapy in the morning and exercise therapy in the afternoon. She’d received the same treatment yesterday, though Camilla said she was missing then. Another contradiction.

  It was possible Camilla could be mistaken, but I didn’t think so. Either Dr. French was unaware Joanne was gone, or he was deliberately covering it up, pretending that everything was normal. The hospital could be liable for losing a patient, I supposed. Maybe they were hoping they’d find her somewhere on the premises before her absence was documented. Or maybe there were other plans for her.

  Connie Shelton’s chart contained the same mania and depression diagnosis, mentioning pyromania and her “dangerous” symptoms. Surgery had been recommended and performed, with an optimistic charting of her improvement after the surgery. She’d been at Bryce for five months, an eternity if she’d been housed in one of the wards. A final notation showed she’d left Bryce with her uncle. But I knew that to be a falsehood—at least James Patrickson, the man listed as Connie’s uncle, didn’t know her and had never heard of her.

  I flipped through until I came to Cheryl Lawrence, the young woman who’d drowned only a couple of days before. It seemed as though a year had passed since I’d stood on the riverbank watching them drag her body from the water.

  Cheryl had come from the Lowndes County jail. She was a shoplifter and petty thief who’d attacked the jail warden and had been brutally beaten. She’d been diagnosed with brain trauma when she’d arrived at Bryce. They’d tried water treatment, solitary confinement, physical exertion. Nothing had helped control her rages.

  Dr. Bentley, consulting with Dr. Perkins, had deduced that when the jailer had beaten her into submission, her brain had swollen, causing permanent damage. They’d decided to perform the brain surgery in an attempt to restore her to docility so that she could live a “normal” life.