Winterhouse: Part Three

She went to the portrait gallery and studied the painting of Nestor Falls with the coded message—unbreakable, Elizabeth was beginning to feel certain, unless she kept A Guide for Children and it divulged the keyword—displayed on the book in his lap; and then she spent two hours working on the puzzle with Mr. Wellington and Mr. Rajput, found seven pieces that fit into the enormous blue sky, and even studied the antique box that had contained the puzzle pieces for so many years.

“I’ve often thought,” Mr. Rajput said, “how odd it is that this puzzle even exists. I mean, who would create such an enormous puzzle of such an obscure place, a place where Mr. Nestor Falls himself learned all of his magical hokum and nonsense—”

It wasn’t until dinnertime, with no sign of anything strange afoot and no evidence of anything amiss in the library—which had been closed all day for the holiday—that Elizabeth began to feel less anxious about what had happened the night before.

“It’s a disquieting fact about the Falls family that Gracella was always very...odd.”

We thought she was just a fairly regular if disagreeable young woman who became estranged from her family, but it seems her hatred for Winterhouse and Norbridge and all of the Falls family just sat inside her and grew.

“I should have told you about this book before. It’s a one-of-a-kind, personal account of Winterhouse written by one of Norbridge’s relatives, Marshall Falls. He was quite an eccentric, but, my, did he love to write!”

“I’m a very biased old librarian, I’ll confess,” Leona said. “But I believe Winterhouse is one of those places in this world that isn’t just to be enjoyed, but that actually increases the amount of goodness that exists.”

She widened her eyes as if to make light, just a tiny bit, of how momentous it all sounded—although her point had been absolutely sincere.

“But feel free to delve into that old book.”

A Personal History of the Winterhouse Hotel was written on the facing page in an ornate, meticulous style, and beneath it, “By Marshall Falls, Inhabitant.”

For millennia the windswept shores of Lake Luna sat bare and open to the vicissitudes of the indifferent natural forces of nature, unvisited by man or woman or child or anyone at all, awaiting the coming of that illustrious supernova of his generation and all others, my grand-uncle Nestor Falls.

For millennia the windswept shores of Lake Luna sat bare and open to the vicissitudes of the indifferent natural forces of nature, unvisited by man or woman or child or anyone at all, awaiting the coming of that illustrious supernova of his generation and all others, my grand-uncle Nestor Falls.

Two hundred pages in, she found a section about Gracella and learned she had been something of a recluse and a very unpleasant girl—apparently she’d run away once when she was thirteen, and then returned after several days with no explanation of where she’d been; and another time, three years later, she’d had an altercation with a hotel guest who accused her of stealing jewelry that, indeed, turned up in Gracella’s room but that she claimed to know nothing about.

Two hundred pages in, she found a section about Gracella and learned she had been something of a recluse and a very unpleasant girl—apparently she’d run away once when she was thirteen, and then returned after several days with no explanation of where she’d been; and another time, three years later, she’d had an altercation with a hotel guest who accused her of stealing jewelry that, indeed, turned up in Gracella’s room but that she claimed to know nothing about.

As often as I heard my relatives here at Winterhouse mention The Book, there were never any details forthcoming about the title, say, or the color or shape or size of The Book, about whether or not it was thin or thick or whether it was about animals or boats or anything. No one seemed to know!

It was all sort of a joke—a “lark,” you might say, something to do for fun and as a way to pass the time or have a laugh.

“Fascinating people in their own way. Each of them. Some kind, others not so kind. Some very helpful and thoughtful and dedicated, others maybe not so much. But that’s okay. I loved each for their uniqueness—their idiosyncrasies!”

Or my dear aunt Ravenna. Just the kindest woman you could ever hope to meet, and in her day renowned as one of the most beautiful women in the world

You know, one of the less happy things about the Falls family is that, as you can see, we just don’t have a lot of descendants. For one reason or another—untimely deaths, people who didn’t get married or didn’t have children, whatever the cause—the Falls family has all but disappeared.

“Almost all the women lived to exactly one hundred,” Elizabeth said.
“And we have no idea why! It seems that as long as they stay here at Winterhouse, they are guaranteed to hit the century mark. It’s unfathomable.”

She pictured the envelope Aunt Purdy and Uncle Burlap had taped to their door, the measly three dollars—the note they’d left her seemed to sum up everything about them she couldn’t stand.

She zoomed in closer with the telescope and saw Marcus Q. Hiems’s distinctive mustache on the taller of the two figures.

She wore her standard black clothing, the satiny dress and the vest with the strange symbols on it; her face was starkly white, as though she’d put on an extra layer of makeup.

Elizabeth felt more uncomfortable than she would have guessed, though as she was ushered in and given a seat on the plush sofa by the window and offered tea and cookies—with Marcus and Selena chattering pleasantly throughout, asking her about her vacation thus far at Winterhouse—she considered there was nothing on the surface that was unusual.

Their room was about as nondescript as could be; the Hiemses hadn’t altered the standard Winterhouse décor in any way, and none of their belongings were in evidence aside from a few books on the end tables.

“As I believe I alluded to in a previous conversation,” Marcus said, “there are, we feel certain, some stolen books in this library.”

“I don’t think Norbridge has stolen any books,” Elizabeth said.
“Not casting aspersions!”

I will leave the gentleman out of the equation and simply state that by some means and at the hands of someone here in this hotel, a collection of books from our family has ended up in the Winterhouse library. I need not explicitly lay blame on any particular individual, but the facts are the facts.

We think you might have a capacity for, shall we say, identifying at least one of the books that has been pilfered from us.

“What he’s asking, dear,” Selena said, “is if you might have picked up, say, a particularly compelling volume since you have been here. Simply put: Is there a special book that you have found in the library?”

She looked mildly angry, as though she was not going to be deterred from heading down the path she’d chosen.

“Lovely necklace, incidentally,” Selena said, ignoring her.

Even if he’d been reluctant to delve too deeply into all the mysterious things she’d discovered before, and even though he most likely would have found these recent developments alarming, at least he would listen to her—and he would probably help her think things through clearly now.

“You just kept talking about all the things you thought were going on here, even after Norbridge explained all of it. It really started to bug me.”
Elizabeth’s face flushed.

She was trying to remain calm, but inside she felt ecstatic: Freddy wanted to be friends again.

“A nur is like a knot in wood! And before you say anything else, ‘furl’ means to roll up!”

After about twenty minutes, the group of skiers had stretched out along the trail—the faster ones moving to the front, the slower ones dropping to the rear—and Elizabeth and Freddy found themselves drifting to the back of the group, occasionally out of sight of the other stragglers and alone on some short stretches of the trail as it twisted around the lake and wound through the trees.

There was something so alluring about the cabin as it stood alone in the silence, something so inviting, Elizabeth felt she had to take a look.

Its roof was laden with snow, but the path up to the doorway was cleared, as though someone had recently visited.

“I’m flabbergasted,” Norbridge said. “I’m dumbfounded. I’m thunderstruck. I don’t know what to say.”