“Not everybody wants to be peered at. Besides, Betty published a few stories and her one novel, but she was never what one would call a truly famous author. She made her living copyediting. Is a minor figure like that really interesting to you?”
“She’s not minor to me. And Beatrice might have published only one novel, but it gained something of a cult status and was reprinted twice. If you’re worried I won’t respect her legacy, I assure you I’m not going to do a hack job. Who was the girl who vanished? Please, Mrs. Yates, would you tell me about her?”
Carolyn dabbed a napkin against her lips. Once again, she seemed to carefully measure Minerva, as if trying to isolate a specific quality she possessed. Something must have convinced her, because she smiled.
“Virginia Somerset was wealthy and very different from Betty. That was her name, the girl who vanished. They were roommates.”
“Virginia Somerset,” Minerva said, repeating the name. It was almost like an invocation.
“Yes. But you won’t find her in any newspapers.” Carolyn tossed her napkin aside. “Her disappearance was not reported.”
“Why not?”
“There was a boy from Temperance Landing whom she might have been involved with. Her family believed she’d run off with him. Betty disagreed.”
“What did she think happened to Virginia?”
“Why don’t we go for a walk, Miss Contreras? Perhaps you won’t mind if I lean on you, I abhor the use of the cane, but I must admit I’m not my sprightly self anymore.”
Carolyn stood up and Minerva offered her an arm. They headed into a living room that had clearly last been redecorated during the Jazz Age; the floor was a black-and-white checkerboard and the walls were a mint green. A crystal chandelier and a large glass mirror, a floor lamp with an emerald-green fringed shade, a lacquered folding screen and the black sofas with rosewood arms edged in brass, they all evoked the glitz and glamour of decades past.
“Betty assumed Virginia had come to a bad end. I suppose she always did have an imagination, and I also suppose Virginia was acting strange in the weeks before she went missing. I was convinced she’d reappear one day, telling us how she’d gone away and traveled the world. I hoped that would be the case. But she never returned.”
“When did she disappear?”
“December of 1934.”
Carolyn opened a door and they walked into what seemed to be a combination of an office and a library, with rows of bookcases and a massive table in the middle of the room. Two banker’s reading lamps with their distinctive green shades were set atop the table and there were two chairs. A wall was decorated with paintings; most of them were large, portraits or floral compositions. Minerva stood in front of them, studying them with interest.
“These are very nice,” she said.
“You like them? Those are mine. I studied fine arts at Stoneridge. I had several exhibitions in my youth,” Carolyn said, an obvious note of pride in her voice.
Minerva’s gaze drifted to a small painting. It was unlike the others; it lacked an ornate gilded frame and the subject matter was utterly different. It was abstract. Yellow circles upon a blue surface, painted by a hand that seemed to have proceeded at a furious pace; there was something wild about the strokes of the brush compared to the careful, methodical approach of the other paintings. Triangles and lines suggested rays extending out from the circles, as though she were looking at half a dozen miniature suns.
“This one’s different. Were you experimenting with a new technique?”
Carolyn shook her head. “That is Virginia’s painting. One of her Spiritualist images. Edgar kept it.”
“Edgar?”
“My husband, Edgar Yates, was briefly engaged to Virginia. We all knew each other.”
What an odd thing, Minerva thought. But then again, they were all members of the same social circle, and in those days especially, she supposed they would have been required to join the same country club, attend the same parties and gatherings, and marry each other.
“Did you also know the man she supposedly ran away with?”
“Santiago. He was a Portuguese boy. We had our fair share of them from the days when there was a whaling industry in Massachusetts. Of course, that was one major reason why Virginia’s disappearance was not publicized. It would have been scandalous for people to learn that Virginia had rejected Edgar Yates and instead picked a handyman,” Carolyn said, leaning forward and running a finger along the frame of the small painting. A heavy emerald ring decorated one finger, a golden wedding band another. “He did some work around our dorm. That is how we knew him. We used to tease Virginia about him.”
“Why?”
“He stared at her. It was obvious he was infatuated with the girl. It all seemed rather innocent back then. Now, years later, who knows? Maybe Betty’s suspicions about Virginia’s disappearance were not unfounded. Maybe they eloped, then he hurt her.”
Carolyn lifted her hand and stepped back.
“You said it’s a Spiritualist painting? As in mediumship and ectoplasm?”
Carolyn nodded, the slightest bob of her head, pressing a hand against her chin. “It came back into vogue in the 1920s, after the Great War. People had lost loved ones and wished to contact them. Influenza had also killed many persons. Séances were popular, and there were numerous demonstrations of supposed mediums in action. Houdini debunked many of them. Then came the Great Depression and everyone had more pressing problems than ghosts.
