A Door That Was Never Empty
Chapter 02 - A Door That Was Never Empty
The first thing Rosa did was ask if Sophia could have some supper. It was such an ordinary request that Dante had to look at her twice.
"She's had nothing since lunch," Rosa said. "And when she gets frightened, she says she's not hungry, even when she is."
Dante sent Mrs. Pell, the cook, for bread, cheese, and sliced pears. He ordered one of his men to remain by the east entrance, then took Rosa and Sophia into the small breakfast room, where the afternoon sun had turned the curtains yellow. He did not summon the police. Not yet. That decision would trouble him later.
Sophia ate three slices of pear. Dante placed the button on the table between them. It was not quite white, he saw now. Years of handling had given it a faint brown shadow, just as he remembered.
"Tell me how you met the lady," he said.
Sophia swung her shoes beneath the chair. "I lost Rabbit." Rabbit was a faded stuffed toy with one ear shorter than the other. "He rolled where the painting is. I went after him."
"What painting?"
"The lady with the oranges."
There was a portrait of a dark-haired woman holding a bowl of fruit outside Elena's room. It had hung there for decades. "Then what?"
"Somebody said, 'Don't be afraid, honey.' She sounded like Mommy when I have a bad dream." Sophia licked juice from her thumb. "I couldn't see her very much. There was a little opening. She gave me the button and told me to give it to the lonely man."
Rosa put down her cup. "She didn't tell me that part."
"I told you there was a lady. You said it was the wind."
"I thought you were playing."
"Grown-ups always think that." Sophia returned to her pear, the matter settled as far as she was concerned.
Dante left them with Mrs. Pell and went to the east wing. His head of security, Nick Sorrento, caught up with him before he reached the portrait. Nick had been beside Dante since they were twenty-one, when loyalty was a matter of surviving long enough to pay the rent.
"The camera outside this wing has been down for twelve days," Nick said.
"Why wasn't I told?"
"Maintenance said it was waiting on a component. I signed the report."
Dante stopped. "Who requested the repair?"
Nick didn't answer immediately. "Your aunt."
Dante's aunt Beatrice had overseen the household since his father died. She was an intelligent woman who treated love as a management problem and disappointment as evidence of poor planning. She had called Elena unsuitable from the day they met. But she had stayed beside Dante after the accident when everybody else seemed to want him to get well on a schedule.
"Find the technician," Dante said.
He moved the painting. Its lower corner came away from the wall easily, revealing a narrow panel no bigger than a paperback book. Behind it was an old service speaking tube, the kind servants once used before telephones reached every room. Someone had removed the mouthpiece and replaced it with a wooden sliding shutter.
He touched the shutter. On the other side came a faint sound, almost a cough. A woman's cough.
"Elena?"
There was a soft shuffle and then silence.
"Elena, if you're there, tell me."
A low voice replied, "Don't use the key."
He closed his eyes. It was a woman's voice, thin with exhaustion. He could not have said whether it belonged to his wife. Grief had taught him to hear Elena in recordings of strangers and in the laugh of a woman across a restaurant.
"Who are you?"
"Not with him standing there."
Dante looked toward Nick. His old friend was staring at the wall with a blankness that suddenly seemed arranged. "Go to the gate," Dante told him. "See that nobody comes in."
Nick hesitated. "Dante—"
"Now."
When his footsteps had faded, the voice returned. "Find the letter inside the clock. She thought you'd never open it."
"What clock?"
A small click answered him. The shutter slid closed from the other side.
In the sitting room Elena had kept an eighteenth-century carriage clock on the mantel. It had stopped at 2:17 on the night she vanished. Dante remembered because he had refused to let anyone repair it. It was a foolish superstition for a man who considered himself practical, but he had once watched her wind it every Sunday.
He tried the old brass key. It turned halfway, then caught. He remembered the warning and pulled his hand away.
On the far side of the corridor, Beatrice appeared in a dove-gray suit. She seemed unsurprised to find him there.
"I heard you've been questioning the help," she said. "A child says she saw a ghost and suddenly you lock down the house?"
"There's someone inside Elena's room."
"Of course there is." She smoothed one sleeve. "You put her in there yourself, Dante. Every day for eighteen months."
It was exactly the sort of thing his aunt would say, sensible and cruel in equal measure. But her hands were shaking, and she had tucked one inside her jacket to hide it.
"When was the camera disconnected?" Dante asked.
Beatrice stared at him. "Ask Nicholas."
"I did."
At the end of the hall, a door opened. Mrs. Pell appeared carrying a silver tray, an untouched bowl of soup, and a bottle of medication whose label had been carefully peeled away.
"I told you to take the back passage," Beatrice said to her.
Dante looked at the tray. "Who is the soup for?"
May you like
Mrs. Pell said nothing. Behind the locked door, a woman knocked three times, paused, and knocked twice more.
It was Elena's old signal for him to come home.
