CHAPTER 18 The Bellkeeper
Adrian reached the door first.
He pulled it open.
Lena stood in the hallway holding a stack of legal files.
Her face changed when she saw us.
“What happened?”
No one answered immediately.
She looked from Adrian to Alvarez, then to the cassette recorder on the desk.
“You think I was listening.”
“Were you?” Adrian asked.
“No.”
Alvarez took the files from her hands.
They contained victim assistance applications from the Samuel Mercer Center. Nothing appeared suspicious.
But the message had not said the Bellkeeper worked at the center.
It said the Bellkeeper was inside Mercer House.
That could mean anyone.
Natalie.
Lena.
A member of the staff.
Even Lily.
I hated that the thought entered my mind.
Alvarez ordered a full security review.
Every employee was questioned. Every room was searched. All electronic access records were copied.
The house had twenty-three active staff members.
Three had worked for Samuel.
One was an elderly groundskeeper named Walter Finch.
He had been employed by the Mercer family for forty-one years.
Walter rarely entered the main house. He lived in a small cottage beyond the gardens and spent most of his time caring for the trees.
When agents approached his cottage, they found the door open.
The fireplace was still warm.
A teacup sat on the table.
Walter was gone.
Inside a drawer, Alvarez discovered nine small brass bells.
Each bell carried an engraved number.
One through eight were present.
The ninth was missing.
Adrian examined an old photograph hanging beside the fireplace. It showed Samuel, Thomas Mercer, and a much younger Walter standing beside a freight locomotive.
Walter had been part of the rescue network.
“He is the Bellkeeper,” Adrian said.
“Or someone wants us to believe he is,” Lena replied.
Alvarez found a hidden compartment beneath Walter’s bed.
It contained passports under different names, medical documents, and letters written by displaced families.
The most recent letter was dated only four months earlier.
Dear Bellkeeper,
Catherine is getting weaker. She refuses to leave until Madeline knows the truth about Elizabeth.
I read the sentence twice.
Elizabeth was my mother’s name.
She had died when I was sixteen.
At least that was what I had always believed.
The letter did not explain what Catherine knew about her.
Another page had been removed.
The envelope contained a return address in Vermont, but when investigators searched the property records, they found only an abandoned church.
Lily stood behind me, reading over my shoulder.
“Why would Great-Aunt Catherine know something about Grandma Elizabeth?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was Grandma part of the ship?”
The question landed harder than I expected.
My mother had rarely spoken about Samuel’s business. She had avoided the harbor. She had also warned me never to trust Robert.
Until that moment, I had believed it was ordinary family distrust.
Now I remembered something else.
Two weeks before she died, my mother had given me a necklace.
A simple silver chain with a hollow pendant.
I had not worn it in years.
I went to my bedroom and found it in the bottom drawer of an old jewelry case.
The pendant did not open.
But along the edge, nearly invisible, was an engraving.
A small bell.
Number nine.
I brought it downstairs.
Alvarez examined it beneath a lamp.
“There is something inside.”
He used a precision tool to release the clasp.
A tightly rolled strip of paper fell onto the desk.
It contained four words written in my mother’s handwriting.
ROBERT KILLED THE WRONG WOMAN.
Adrian stared at the message.
“Who was he trying to kill?”
Before I could answer, the house alarms began sounding.
A guard rushed into the office.
“Mrs. Mercer, Lily is missing.”
My hand went cold.
“She was here.”
“She left the room six minutes ago.”
We searched the house.
Her violin was gone.
So was the ninth brass bell from my mother’s pendant.
Security footage showed Lily walking through the back garden alone.
Then stopping beneath the old cedar tree.
A woman stepped out from behind the branches.
Her face was hidden by a red scarf.
Lily did not run.
May you like
She handed the woman the bell.
Then she followed her into the woods.
