a huge deal. And no one thought the kidnappers were coming back. They’d kind of taken everyone there was to take. So this school was supposed to be a beautiful thing for Alice to come back to. Albert Ellingham wanted the place to be lively. He was sort of . . . making sure there were people for Alice to play with.”
“That’s really grim,” Janelle said. “Sweet, but . . . grim.”
“So how many millions of people said they were Alice?” Nate said. “Before DNA testing, everybody must have claimed they were Alice.”
“That was a thing,” Stevie said, nodding. “But Ellingham had a plan. Alice’s nanny was devoted to her and the family. She refused to give up any details about Alice. Ellingham had a secret file made of information about Alice, so that if anyone came forward, they would be able to check.”
“What, like a birthmark or something?”
Stevie shrugged. “That’s the point. No one knows except the people in the trust, and they can’t inherit. The people who run the trust are Alice’s keepers. I mean, now they’d just use DNA, so the secret Alice file doesn’t really matter as much.”
“It’s good to know we’re going to the most morbid school in America,” Nate said. “Now let’s go. I’m hungry and I’m still pretty sure we weren’t supposed to come in here.”
“Again,” Vi said, “gate was open.”
“We probably should go,” Janelle said. “But this is amazing.”
And it was amazing. For so many reasons.
April 13, 1936, 8:00 p.m.
FLORA ROBINSON HAD A WELL-DEVELOPED SENSE OF IMPENDING trouble, a skill she had developed in her time working at a speakeasy. You had to be able to feel the ripple that went through the room when the police were approaching the door. You had to know a false alarm from the real thing. You had to develop the reflex to hit the alarm button at just the right moment—that button that tilted the shelves and opened the chute and sent hundreds, or sometimes thousands, of dollars’ worth of booze and glass down into a hidden disposal area. Do it right, and you saved the club from closure and all the patrons from arrest. Do it wrong, and you simply ruined everything.
Flora could taste fear and anticipation in the air tonight. She turned and looked at the little silver clock on the side table. Iris and Alice had been gone for a long time. She’d seen them off at noon. Usually, when Iris took her drives, she was back in an hour or two. She’d been gone eight. No one had called Flora for dinner.
This break in routine made Flora extremely uneasy. There was trouble around, somewhere in this quiet mansion tucked up in the mountains. She sat on her bed in her room, hugging her knees, listening and waiting. Her keenly tuned hearing and the acoustics of the house meant she heard the arrival at the front door. Iris was back. She slipped out of her bed at once and went to the edge of the balcony to see what had kept her friend.
Instead of Iris, the butler was ushering in a man. It was George Marsh, a close family friend and member of the intimate Ellingham circle.
Normally, George would have come in and made small talk with Montgomery as he handed over his hat and coat. Tonight, the hat and coat stayed on and the two of them walked briskly and silently toward Ellingham’s private office.
George was a former New York police detective. Several years before, he had saved Albert’s life when an anarchist placed a bomb in his car. Full of gratitude and impressed with his wits and courage, Albert called J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI, and recommended that George be taken on as an agent. George tended to be wherever Ellingham and his circle were—if they were in New York, he worked out of the office there. If they were in Vermont, George would be moved up to Burlington to work on smuggling cases coming down from Canada via Lake Champlain.
George Marsh was Albert’s de facto security man, and tonight, Flora could see he was here on business. Off duty, George was loose and gregarious. This was on-duty George, his step quick, his tone clipped. George and Montgomery were speaking in very low voices, but Flora could make out a few words.
“. . . thirty-five minutes,” George said. “Have you . . .”
“No, sir,” Montgomery replied. “No police . . .”
Within a few seconds, he was ensconced