Page 28 of The Only One Left

I slow my steps, moving on tiptoes. Even Jessie quiets down, walking with her arms outstretched to keep her bracelets from clattering. She stays that way until we reach the top of the Grand Stairs. I head down one side; Jessie uses the other.

“How do you like it here?” she says when we meet again on the landing.

“It’s a lot to take in.”

“Totally,” Jessie says. “But it’s not so bad. Have you met Carter yet?”

“Yeah. On my way in.”

“He’s, like, totally dreamy, right?”

“I guess,” I say, even though I’m in agreement there.

We stand in the shadow of the stained-glass window, its colors muted by the darkness outside. Directly beneath our feet, an unruly red splotch two shades darker than the surrounding carpet takes up most of the landing. Earlier today, I thought it was caused by light streaming through the stained glass. Standing on it now, though, I see it for what it is.

A bloodstain.

A big one.

I leap away from it, onto one of the lower steps, where I find another, smaller stain. And another on the step below that. Hopping to the foyer floor, I stare up at Jessie and say, “You could have warned me.”

“And miss that reaction? I don’t think so.”

She descends the rest of the stairs, stepping on several more bloodstains in the red carpet and making me notice a pattern to the splotches. It looks like someone bleeding profusely had tried coming up the Grand Stairs before being stopped at the landing.

“Evangeline Hope,” Jessie says, knowing exactly what I’m thinking. “It’s assumed she was stabbed in the foyer, tried to escape up the steps, and was stabbed again on the landing, where she bled out.”

I shudder and turn away, looking instead to the large front door leading to outside. “Why didn’t she try to leave?”

“No one knows,” Jessie says. “There’s a lot about that night that remains unknown.”

She starts moving down the hall on the right, the one that ends at the sunroom. We don’t make it that far. At the halfway point, just past Lenora’s portrait, Jessie stops at one of the hallway’s many closed doors. She pushes it open and flicks a switch just inside. Light floods the room, coming from both a green-glass fixture on the ceiling and matching sconces on the walls.

“The billiard room,” she announces with an enthusiasm usually reserved for tour guides who really, really love their job. “Where Winston Hope met his end.”

My first thought is that yes, this feels very much like a room where a man of Mr. Hope’s stature would die. The décor is brutish. Various antique firearms hang on the walls, along with the heads of animals that were probably killed by them. A lion. A bear. Several deer. A pair of matching leather armchairs sits atop a zebra pelt in front of a fireplace. On one wall is a rack of pool cues, although there’s no pool table to be seen. The only sign it was ever here is a rectangular path in themiddle of the room where the floor has been worn down by well-heeled soles.

“What happened to the pool table?”

“Winston Hope died slumped over it,” Jessie says. “Since his throat was slit, I guess it was too bloody to salvage.”

I turn her way, startled. “The rhyme says he was stabbed.”

“Oh, he was,” Jessie says. “Once in the side, before his throat was slit. I guess that was too complicated to make rhyme.”

“How do you know so much about all of this?”

“Mostly Mary,” Jessie says. “She knows a lot about what happened that night. She’s, like, totally obsessed with the murders. I think it’s why she took the job, you know?”

I don’t. Other than my father’s house, this is the last place I want to be.

“Why didyoutake a job here?” I say.

Jessie gives a jewelry-rattling shrug. “This place seemed as good as any. I needed to do something, right? Work is work and money is money.”

Now that’s a sentiment I can get behind. I never thought I’d be a caregiver, just like I’m sure Jessie never thought she’d be cleaning a murder mansion. But it’s better than nothing, which is what I had before today.

With nothing more to be explored in the billiard room, we leave. Jessie cuts the lights and closes the door before taking me to the one across the hall from it.

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