“Here’s your tea, dear. Do have a seat,” Miss Lillian said.
Miss Lillian indicated a rocking chair beside an old pump organ.
“Thank you,” Evie said, already thinking up excuses for why she needed to leave: sick uncle, building on fire, a sudden case of gangrene.
“Addie and I have lived in the Bennington since nearly the beginning. We moved in in the spring of 1875. April.” She frowned. “Or perhaps May.”
“Spring of 1875,” Evie said, thinking. “Miss Lillian, do you remember a story about a man named John Hobbes who was hanged for murder in 1876?”
Miss Lillian pursed her lips, thinking. “I can’t say that I do.”
“He was accused of murdering a woman named Ida Knowles.”
“Oh, Ida Knowles! Yes, I remember that. Ran off with a fortune hunter, they said. And then… yes, yes, I remember now! That man—”
“John Hobbes.”
“He was tried for it. Oh, he seemed a bad sort. A grave robber, if I recall correctly. A charlatan.”
“Do you remember any details of the case, or anything about him? Anything at all?” Evie sipped her tea. It had an odd taste.
“No, I’m afraid not, dear. I’m an old woman. Ah, here’s our Addie now.”
Miss Adelaide carried the black cat with the yellow eyes and wore a dress that had probably seen its best days when Teddy Roosevelt was president. “I found Hawthorne trying to eat my begonias, the little devil,” she said, nuzzling the meowing cat.
“Miss O’Neill was just asking about the Ida Knowles case—you remember that, don’t you, dear?—and that terrible man who hung for it. But I couldn’t remember much, I’m afraid. Hawthorne, come here and have some kibble.” She put a bit of chicken salad on a plate at her feet and the cat leaped from Adelaide’s arms and ran for it.
“They hanged him the night of the comet,” Miss Addie said dreamily.
“Solomon’s Comet?” Evie asked carefully.
“Yes, that’s it. He told them to. It was his one request.”
“John Hobbes asked to be hanged the night of Solomon’s Comet?” Evie asked again. She wanted to be sure she had it right. It struck her as important, though she couldn’t say why. “Now why would he do that, I wonder?”
“Comets are powerful portents!” Miss Lillian clucked. “The ancients believed them to be times when the veil between this world and the next was thinnest.”
“I don’t understand.”
“If you wanted to open a door into the great spirit realm, to assure your return, what better time to plan your death?”
“But Miss Proctor, that’s quite impossible,” Evie said as gently as possible.
“It’s an impossible world,” Miss Lillian said, smiling. “Drink your tea, dear.”
Evie swallowed down the rest, spitting up small ends of leaves.
“That is a pretty talisman,” Miss Addie said, gazing at Evie’s pendant.
“Oh, it was a gift from my brother,” Evie replied. She didn’t elaborate further. If she told them James had been killed, they might cluck and sympathize, or else draw out the conversation talking about every relative who’d ever died, and she’d be there all day and night. She needed to make her getaway.
Miss Addie reached out a finger and slid it over the surface of the half-dollar, paling as she did. “Such a terrible choice to have to make.”
“What do you mean?” Evie asked.
“Addie sees into the eternal soul,” Miss Lillian said. “Addie, dear, you’ll let your tea go cold, and we’ve much to do still.” Miss Lillian stood rather hastily. “I’m afraid we must bid you good day, Miss O’Neill. Thank you for visiting.”
“A terrible choice,” Miss Addie said again, looking at Evie with such sympathy that Evie felt quite undone.
Out in the flickering light of the hall—why couldn’t they seem to fix the lamps in the old place?—Evie thought about John Hobbes’s odd last request. Had he thought he could come back after death? That was ridiculous, of course, the thought of an egotistical madman, which he seemed to be. In two weeks, that same comet would make its return to New York’s skies.
As she waited for the wheezing elevator, a shiver passed down her spine, though she couldn’t say why. She wished she could talk it over with Mabel, wished they could share a laugh about the Proctor sisters’ awful décor, but she and Mabel were still on the outs. They’d never gone this long without talking, and Evie wavered between being angry with Mabel and missing her terribly. When the elevator door opened, her finger hovered over the button for Mabel’s floor. At the last possible second, she pressed the button for the lobby instead.