“Please tell Mr. Ellingham that he has to go to Philadelphia,” Robert said, passing over his hat.

“Mr. Mackenzie wishes me to inform you—”

“I’m starving, Montgomery,” Ellingham said. “What’s on for tonight?”

“Crème de céleri soup and filet of sole with a sauce amandine to start, sir, followed by roast lamb, minted peas, asparagus hollandaise, and potatoes lyonnaise, with a cold lemon soufflé to finish.”

“That’ll do. As soon as we can. I’ve worked up an appetite. How many hangers-on do we still have?”

“Miss Robinson and Mr. Nair are still with us, though they have been indisposed most of the day, so I believe it will just be Mrs. Ellingham, Mr. Mackenzie, and yourself, sir.”

“Good. Get them. Let’s eat.”

“Mrs. Ellingham has not yet returned, sir. She and Miss Alice went out for a drive this afternoon.”

“And they’re not back yet?”

“I imagine the fog must have slowed her, sir.”

“Have some men with lights wait at the end of the drive to help her on the path back. Tell her as soon as she gets back it’s time to eat. Don’t even let her take her coat off. March her right to the table.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Come along, Robert,” Ellingham said, heading off. “We’ll go to my office and have a game of Rook. And don’t try to argue with me. There is nothing so serious as a game.”

The secretary was professionally silent in response. Playing games with his employer was a nonnegotiable part of his job, and “there is nothing so serious as a game” was one of Ellingham’s many mottoes. That was why the students always had access to games, and the new Monopoly game was mandatory for students, residents of the household, and staff. Everyone had to play at least once a week, and there were now monthly tournaments. This was life in the world of Albert Ellingham.

Robert picked the day’s mail out of the tray and sifted through it with a practiced eye, tossing some letters immediately back in the tray and tucking others under his arm.

“Philadelphia,” he said again. It was his job to make sure the great Albert Ellingham stayed on course. Robert was good at this.

“Fine, fine. Schedule it. Ah . . .” Ellingham plucked a Western Union slip from his desk. These tiny slips of paper were his favorite medium for writing short notes. “I started a new riddle this morning. Tell me what you think of it.”

“Is the answer Philadelphia?”

“Robert,” Ellingham said sternly. “My riddle. This is a good one, I think. Now listen. What serves on either side, and if you wish to hide, may protect you from your foe, or show him where to go? Well? What do you think?”

Robert sighed and paused his mail sorting to think.

“Serves on either side,” he said. “Like a spy. A traitor. A duplicitous person.”

Ellingham smiled and gestured that his secretary should keep thinking.

“But,” Robert said, “it’s not a who. It’s a what. So it’s an object that works from two directions . . .”

There was a knock at the door, and Ellingham hurried over himself to answer it.

“It’s a door!” he said, throwing it open and revealing his ashen-faced butler. “A door!”

“Sir . . . ,” Montgomery said.

“One moment. You see, Robert, the door can be used from either side . . .”

“And you can hide behind it, or it might show where you’ve gone,” Robert said. “I see. Yes . . .”

“Sir!” Montgomery said. His urgent tone was entirely unfamiliar to the two men, and they looked at him in confusion.

“What is it, Montgomery?” Ellingham said.

“There is a telephone call, sir,” Montgomery replied. “You must come at once, sir. On the household line. In the pantry. Please, sir, hurry.”

This was so out of character for Montgomery that Ellingham complied without another word. He followed to the butler’s pantry and took the phone that was held out for him.

“I have your wife and daughter,” a voice said.

3

STEVIE BELL HAD A SIMPLE DESIRE: SHE WANTED TO BE STANDING OVER a dead body.

She didn’t want to kill people—far from it. She wanted to be the person who found out why the body was dead, that’s all. She wanted bags marked EVIDENCE and a paper boiler suit like forensics wore. She wanted to be in the interrogation room. She wanted to get to the bottom of the case.

Which was all well and good and probably what a lot of people wanted, if only people would be more honest. But her old high school was not the kind of place where she felt like she could fully express this desire. Her old high school was a fine high school, if you liked high school. It wasn’t bad or evil. It was just like it was supposed to be—miles of linoleum and humming lights, the warm funk of cafeteria stink too early in the morning, the flashes of inspiration that were quickly quashed by long stretches of tedium, and the perpetual desire to be somewhere else. And while Stevie had friends there, there was no one who fully understood her love of crime. So she had written a passionate essay, poured it all onto the screen, and sent it away almost as a joke. Ellingham would never take her.

Ellingham liked what they saw. They had given her this room.

The furniture was wooden and surprisingly big. There was a big dresser that wobbled when Stevie touched it; the polish couldn’t cover the many nicks on its surface. Some were just scratches from use, but a few were clear words and initials. Stevie opened the drawers and found, to her surprise, that there were already some things in there: a plaid flannel blanket, a heavy purple fleece with the Ellingham Academy crest on the breast, some kind of military-grade flashlight with a new pack of batteries, a blue flannel robe, and some rackets with clamps on them. These Stevie had to remove and examine for a while before she determined that these must be the snowshoes, and the pegs she’d seen by the door were likely places to hang them.

Stevie had known that she was going to Vermont, and she knew Vermont could get cold, but these items suggested survivalism.

She started opening up her boxes and bags. She pulled out her old gray sheets, the striped comforter that she’d had since she was ten, two of the less-yellowed pillows from the closet. As she looked at these objects in the clear Vermont sunlight, they all seemed a bit—drab. She had a few new items, like the requisite bath caddy and flip-flops for trips to the bathroom, but these things didn’t exactly liven up the room.

But it was fine. In her imagination, her dorm room was going to look like Sherlock Holmes’s residence on Baker Street—shabby, but genteel.

She put in her earbuds to finally continue listening to her podcast. This one was about H. H. Holmes, the Chicago serial killer: “. . . they would discover the many rooms of Holmes’s murder castle: the rooms fitted with gas lines, the hanging chamber, the soundproof vault . . .”

She’d marked one of her boxes with stars, and she opened this one now. This box contained the bare necessities of her life: her mystery novels. (At least, a carefully curated selection of a few dozen essentials.) These were lovingly arranged on the bookshelf in the order in which she needed to see them.