Truly Devious (Truly Devious #1) - Maureen Johnson Page 0,41

they got to the top, everything opened up into a massive space that covered the footprint of the entire house. It was very dark; the windows were covered in light-blocking shades and curtains.

“Obviously,” he said, tapping the digital buttons on a panel of lights, “the Ellinghams had a lot of stuff. The papers went to Yale, some to the Library of Congress. The really valuable things went to the Smithsonian or the Met or the Louvre or various art museums around the world. What we have here are the remnants of their lives. The furnishings. The dishes. The clothes. The household items.”

Flick, flick, flick. The space came to light.

Everything was nooks and corners, every direction just racks of metal shelving that went from floor to ceiling. Archive boxes and books in one direction. Trunks in another. Lamps, vases, extra pieces of furniture—bedsteads stacked by a window, chairs clustered together in a tight communion, ottomans, dressers pushed back to back. There were rolls of old wallpaper, globes, boxes of crystal doorknobs.

Stevie felt like her brain had been replaced by a few dozen bees, bumping and swirling in her skull.

“This way,” he said.

She followed without a word. Charles led her to the far wall, to a large lump, about four feet high and six feet wide, covered in a silver satin bedspread. He lifted the sheet carefully. It was the Great House in miniature. A perfect replica, in dollhouse form, right down to the flower boxes in the front, which were full of tiny flowers.

“Albert Ellingham had this made for Alice months after she disappeared,” he said.

He reached over on the side and clicked a hidden button, then swung the dollhouse open on a hinge, like a giant book. There was the atrium, the giant staircase. Everything was perfect—the lamps and the tiny crystal doorknobs and the fireplaces. Even better, everything was arranged as it had been then.

“I read about this dollhouse,” Stevie said. “I didn’t know it was still here.”

“You can go into the other rooms by opening the back and the side,” Charles said. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

Stevie moved closer and bent down to examine the little rooms. There was Alice’s room, complete with teddy bears on the bed. Iris’s dressing room had little silver hairbrushes and impossibly small cosmetics. The kitchen was full of china dishes the size of fingernails. And there was Albert Ellingham’s office, with two desks, tiny telephones, pictures on the wall . . . a replica of the past.

“It’s a masterpiece,” Charles said. “It cost ten thousand dollars in 1936 money. We would have sent it to a museum, but all of Alice’s things have to remain in the house, as part of the estate. Everything that’s Alice’s stays here.”

Stevie helped him close the dollhouse, and the sheet was replaced.

“So,” he said, “why do you think I showed you this?”

“Because it’s awesome?” Stevie said.

“It is. But that’s not why.”

A dollhouse. The house in miniature. The world made small.

“It’s simple,” Charles said, cutting right to the answer. “A grieving man made a perfect toy for his daughter that she would never see. This is about real people, not figures from fiction. I know this crime is popular—that crime itself is popular. But crime has a human face. If you’re going to study crime, you have to remember the people involved.”

Stevie couldn’t tell if this was a rebuke of some kind or just one of those one-to-grow-on lessons, but it was fair enough. At least he was taking her seriously.

“To that end,” he said, “before you get caught up in trying to break the case open, I want you to get involved in a smaller project, something that restores a human face to this tragedy.”

“What project?” Stevie asked.

“Oh, I don’t do that. You do that. You come up with something.”

“But is this a paper, or . . .”

Charles shook his head. “The rest is up to you. I’ve got to get to my next appointment. I’m excited to see what you’re going to come up with.”

As Stevie walked back downstairs, her head spun with all she had just seen. Germaine Batt came out of Dr. Quinn’s door and hurried down the stairs, moving past Stevie. Her expression suggested someone who had just seen a document detailing how they died.

Nate was waiting below. He watched Germaine go, and then turned around to Stevie.

“Well?” he said.

“It was good,” Stevie said. “He showed me the attic and some stuff the family owned.”

Nate nodded and folded his arms over his chest,