“That was cultlike,” Nate said as they walked back to the green, where a picnic was being set up. “Why did we just thank a dead child?”

“It’s all in the rules,” Stevie said. “The school belongs to Alice Ellingham, if she ever turns up. We’re all technically here on her dime, so we have to thank her. She’s supporting us.”

“But she’s dead,” Nate said.

“Almost definitely,” Stevie replied. “She was kidnapped in 1936. But this place is hers . . . if she is alive and if she appears. She’d be old, but she could be alive, technically.”

“That really is a thing?” Janelle said. “I thought that was a myth?”

“Really a thing,” Stevie said.

“You said you know a lot about it?” Vi said. Vi had drifted out with them.

“Oh, Stevie knows it all,” Janelle said. “Go on. Tell us.”

Stevie had the strange feeling that she was being called on to perform, like a dog that knew how to use an iPad. At the same time, she now had an audience of people who wanted her to talk about the thing she loved, and that was a foreign and delightful feeling. The sun was warm and the grass was springy and all around her was the scene of murder.

They were heading toward the green, but the walled garden was just there, behind them. Stevie turned to have a look. The garden door was still open just a bit and there was no one around.

“Come on,” she said. “I’ll show you.”

“Are we supposed to go in there?” Nate asked.

“It’s open!” Vi said, stepping ahead.

The garden door was heavy and black, and passing through it had the quality of a dream. They stepped into a massive, lush garden surrounded by a high, perfectly spaced ring of trees. The grass was a brilliant, saturated green. The Great House stood at one end, with the low stone patio leading down to the lawn. There were small fountains and elaborate benches and planters. It was a regal garden, designed by people who took cues from the royal gardens of England and France. But there was one major thing that really stood out.

Most of it was a giant hole, covered in lush grass.

“What the hell?” Nate said.

“That,” Stevie said, “was a lake. Iris Ellingham was a champion swimmer. This was her pool. Albert Ellingham rerouted a stream to fill it, and there used to be rowboats to go out to that.”

She pointed to a knoll in the middle, where there was a round structure with a domed glass roof.

“That’s the place the kidnappers had him go to drop off the money,” she said. “After Iris and Alice were kidnapped, people used to contact Albert Ellingham with all kinds of theories. I think a psychic told him that Alice was in the lake, so he drained it. She wasn’t there. But he never refilled it. It probably reminded him too much of what happened. He left it just like this.”

“They call it the sunken garden on the map,” Vi said. “I see why.”

“Explain the dead child thing,” Nate said.

“The deal is this,” Stevie said. “The school and all the Ellingham fortune belong to Alice, but Ellingham kind of knew she was dead, even if he couldn’t admit it to himself. When two years had passed, he reopened the school.”

“And people came?” Vi said. “After the murders?”

“It was a one-off,” Stevie replied. “And it was still the Depression. And this was one of the most famous places in America. Free school from one of the richest men in the country . . . that was 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.