Truly Devious (Truly Devious #1) - Maureen Johnson Page 0,86

the letters AIE were also painted in gold. There was a stack of books near the china.

She returned to the first row he had taken her to and looked at the long green ledgers. Some contained orders of groceries and household supplies. These people went through a lot of food on the weekends—endless lemons and oranges and eggs and mint for drinks. Massive orders of cigarettes to be put in cigarette dispensers. Notes of dozens of smashed champagne glasses and orders of fresh ones. Floor wax for the scuffs in the ballroom.

One book just contained household menus. Stevie paged through until she found April 13, 1936. It was written in a neat, precise hand:

MAIN TABLE:

Crème de céleri soup

Filet of sole with sauce amandine

Roast lamb

Minted peas

Asparagus hollandaise

Potatoes lyonnaise

Cold lemon soufflé

April 14 was not as elaborate:

No main table service. Tray taken to office.

Sandwiches of cold chicken and ham salad

Sliced celery and stuffed olives

Lemon cake

Coffee

Guest, Miss Flora Robinson, tray service: clear soup, tea with milk, tomato juice, sandwiches of cold chicken salad, sliced celery, junket

Guest, Mr. Leonard Nair, tray service: scrambled eggs, coffee

Insignificant though this may have seemed, it gave a sense of the day and the change in the household. Everything had been going along as normal on the thirteenth. On the fourteenth, it was a different place. The tray of cold sandwiches, thrown together because they had to eat to keep going. The weird addition of just some sliced celery that had probably been around from the day before and some olives (eat anything, anything, whatever is there), some cake that was probably already made. The coffee to keep them going.

Flora Robinson and Leo Holmes Nair seemed to have eaten in their rooms, simple foods, foods you ate when you were sick or hungover. Scrambled eggs. Broth. And more coffee and tea. Just stay awake. The whole house, crackling with nervous energy, waiting for the phone to ring. And still, the butler recorded it, this desperate meal, because that was how things were done. The kitchen staff had probably been questioned as well, so they didn’t have as much time to prepare food.

She worked her way along the row, pulling out boxes of old office supplies—three telephones, rolled maps, wax tubes, telephone directories. One large, velvet-lined box held a number of items that seemed unique—a crystal ink pot, a fine pen, pushpins, paper clips, a stack of business cards, an invitation to a dinner party on October 31, 1938.

That was a meaningful date. These were the things that must have been on his desk when he died. She shuffled through them, the notepad with some circles and numbers drawn on it, with drips of ink on the page. A bit of ripped newspaper with information about the stock exchange. A Western Union telegraph slip with the words:

10/30/38

Where do you look for someone who’s never really there?

Always on a staircase but never on a stair

His last riddle, with no solution given. On the thirtieth of October, 1938, Albert Ellingham told his secretary that he was going for a sail. He seemed strangely bright that day. He took George Marsh, his loyal friend, with him. They sailed out of Burlington Yacht Club. Later that evening, residents of South Hero heard a boom and saw a flash on the water. Ellingham’s boat had exploded. The wreckage revealed a bomb had been placed on board. The anarchists who had long dogged him, who had been blamed for the murder of his wife and the disappearance of his child, seemed to have gotten him in the end.

Last things were so strange. Most people had no control over or concept of what their last acts would be. She wondered for a moment if Hayes had realized what was happening to him, that he was going to die while filming a video at school.

For a moment, she remembered the letter on the wall, her vision. It had seemed so real, but there was no way it could be. It made no sense. It had simply been a vivid dream caused by a racing mind. Stevie did not believe in psychics, in precognition. She didn’t think she had seen Hayes’s death coming. The word murder had appeared in her dream, but that was because murders happened here. There was nothing spooky about it. She dreamed of a murder, there was a murder. Albert Ellingham wrote a riddle, as he did many times, and then he died.

She stared at the little telegram slip for a long time, examining the words,