The Ladies of the Secret Circus by Constance Sayers (ebook reader with internet browser TXT) 📗

his pockets, Ben walked up the hill. He spotted the still-empty spot where her car had sat all night. It was leaking oil. It was one of those days that looked like a storm—a bad one, too—was about to break open. It had been unusually humid, and so Ben found himself wishing to hear a rumble overhead that might cool things down.

He hadn’t broken into a house in a long time, not since he was a kid, but he still knew how to spring a basement window free by jostling it. With a few strategic knocks, the window gave way easily, as always. Ben shimmied through the open window and landed on the dryer. He slid off the dryer and onto the basement floor.

It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He didn’t want to turn on the lights, so he wandered around until he reached the area he knew to be the stairs. Ben ascended slowly, step by step. He reached the top and held his breath when it occurred to him that she might have pulled the latch to the basement door, locking him downstairs. When he turned the knob, though, the door opened freely into the kitchen. When the light shone in, he noticed several large green-and-gray bags stacked nearly three feet high on the basement floor. He left the door open and walked back down the stairs to see an additional four commercial bags of lime sitting against the basement wall.

Lime.

He walked upstairs and headed toward the hall. The long hallway led to the foyer and the staircase. To his surprise, at the foot of the stairs were three suitcases, a matching black set stacked in order from largest to smallest, the canvas giving way like they were packed full. If he hadn’t been sure before, this incriminating detail was evidence enough of the fact that she was going to flee.

Yet he had to be sure. Walking back down the hall, he found the picture frame exactly where he recalled it had been. The subject was the Kerrigan River, at the bend near the old mill where it took its wildest turn, the grainy photo like a time capsule from the 1970s with its overexposed, undersaturated look. Pulling out the photo from Peter Beaumont’s police file, he held the two next to each other. The tree, the hue of the photo—they were a match. These had been snapped minutes apart.

He studied the rest—black-and-whites—all in matted frames. An old photo of a demolition derby stopped him dead in his tracks. Looking closely at the photo, he could see a car with the beginning of a number painted on its door. The car design dated it back to around 1943. Next to it, he held the newspaper file picture of Desmond Bennett’s car. The two scenes matched perfectly. Taken together, this arrangement was assembled like a trophy wall.

As he’d scrutinized the photos of Dez Bennett and Peter Beaumont, what had been similar had not been the men. It had been the photographer.

In 1938, Marla’s grandmother Victoria Chambers had lived in this house. It had not occurred to him until now that for all Marla’s love of history, he’d never once seen any pictures of her own family members. Most of the photos around the house were newer black-and-whites that Marla had taken herself, except for this cluster near the steps. But for someone who loved old photos—and someone who claimed to be so devoted to her family—there was not one single snapshot of anyone from Marla’s family. In fact, Marla’s mother had just died when he met her. Yet she didn’t have a single photo or album of her parents. He racked his brain recalling the odd ways that Marla avoided having pictures taken of herself through the years. Wedding photos? Nope. They’d eloped. He recalled once taking a Polaroid; she turned her head and it didn’t come out at all.

From Cecile Cabot’s diaries, he remembered that Cecile and Esmé could not be painted or photographed. The best way not to be the subject of a photo was to be the photographer. The other night at the gala—had Marla had her photo taken? No. At the last minute, she’d pulled him into the photo, replacing her.

Laughing to himself, he realized how brilliant it had been. She was always behind the camera, never in front of it. Now he felt downright stupid. He’d been so taken with her when he’d met her. She’d been sophisticated. He’d been so desperate to hang on to her. He had asked her about her mother once, and she’d become weepy, so he never pushed it. Why didn’t I push her? Because she was a damsel in distress.

An unfamiliar noise startled him, and his heart raced. He was about to sneak back down to the basement when he heard a latch open and then something drop. It took him a minute to realize it was the mailman. He peered out into the living room to see a neat stack of mail with a rubber band sitting on the floor in front of the door, just below the mail slot.

In the foyer, he padded past the mail pile and up the stairs. He was committed now. If Marla came home, he’d be trapped upstairs with no way out. He walked by the back bedroom—the spare where he had stayed at the end of their marriage. The room had undergone a transformation. It was as though she had erased every inch of the room that Ben had ever touched. Even the bed had been repainted white. The curtains were blue, the rug navy blue, and the room was now wallpapered in a floral pattern so busy that it would have caused him many sleepless nights.

“Jesus,” he muttered out loud.

He walked down the hall and into the master bedroom, not exactly sure what he was looking for. The bed was unruly and unmade, which was also highly unusual. He sat down on