The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red (27 page)

It has come to my attention that persons unknown (namely, the

police, or persons masquerading as the same) are torturing and

mistreating my dear friend and African handmaid in their pursuit of

the truth as concerns our dear departed daughter. I am quite aware

that you continue to attribute the random spirits of this house to

Sukeena, and to place her in the blame for events here. This, despite

my many objections to such an attitude. You now apparently harbor

suspicions that include the disappearance of our dear April. I beg you

to review the events as they stand.

What I hope to remind you of is that Mr. Corbin’s actions

predated my even meeting Sukeena by over a year. Furthermore,

during the séance with Madame Stravinski, it was Sukeena, and only

Sukeena who attempted to stop the events of that evening—to

disconnect us all from Rose Red, not to encourage us to listen. On the

night of April’s disappearance, only Sukeena heard this wretched

house scream.

Your suspicions are incorrect and ill founded, and I beseech you

to use whatever relationships with which you are bestowed to return

home at once my most senior staff member, be they, these

relationships, with the police, the politicians, or with her abductors

themselves. If any more harm, any lasting harm, comes to Sukeena,

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I shall hold you personally responsible, John. Any resulting

investigation will, by necessity, include you and your role in her

initial removal from this household.

Your wife,

I signed it “Ellen Rimbauer,” as I have found deliberate use of my

formal name to be suggestive of a strong attitude on my part and

quite a successful technique where negotiations with John are

concerned. I licked the envelope, sealed it and wrote his name on

the front: Mr. John Rimbauer, all informality gone.

Since that time I have turned to your pages as a means of escape,

for I cannot bear the thought of my dear Sukeena in the condition

in which she presently ?nds herself. About the only good any

of this has done is to distract me from a mother’s sorrow, however

brie?y. Sitting here just now, I have heard John’s motorcar

depart the property. My heart swells with hope that Sukeena is to

be returned! But there is a second sound as well, which I shall

now investigate. It comes from inside the walls, and sounds ever

so much like the sawing of wood. Perhaps not inside the walls,

exactly, but overhead instead. Guest chambers occupy the space

directly above my own rooms, and above these, the attic. I shall

return to your pages, but ?rst I must ?nd the source of these

peculiar sounds, if for no other reason than to put my mind at

rest that little April isn’t still to be found here, having been mistakenly

overlooked while having gotten herself injured. Hope

clings to every branch. I quiver in the wind. I shall dress in pants

and a sweater, and I shall explore Rose Red like never before.

Damn them all!

4 A.M.

I have always taken your pages in con?dence, but never so much

as now, as the darkness of this place makes itself so plainly evi-

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dent. My curiosity drove me to the ?oor above my own West Wing

chambers in search of the mechanical noises that sounded to me

like wood being sawed. To no great surprise, I found the chambers

above my own unoccupied. However, in a keen search of the

hallway there, I found a panel that when pressed upon with both

hands sprang open far enough to admit a person. I slipped

inside, studied the panel to make sure I knew I could reopen it,

and deciding I could, pulled it shut. I entered a dark, narrow

passage, no wider than my slim frame, and moved around a corner

to where I found myself standing at a cloudy window—yes, a

piece of glass, large and substantial—that looked in on the principal

dressing room off the guest quarters’ master bedroom. Only

then did I realize this piece of glass was the dressing room’s mirror,

and that I was on the other side of it. I continued on down

the narrow corridor past the next turn, ?nding a panel that

moved out of the way. Climbing up a step clearly intended for

same, it allowed me to insert my head into a wooden box and to

?nd my eyes looking out the mouth of one of John’s African

game trophies—right at the guest bed itself! Farther down the

corridor, another back side of a mirror, this time inappropriately

looking in on the sink, toilet and bath. My husband’s fantasies

might very well include watching women dress and undress, might

include watching the couples invited to stay the night as they are

engaged in the most intimate courting rituals. But the idea of my

husband, or any man, leering at a woman in the privacy of her

toilet made me sick to my stomach. I had heard of such observation

stations built into the staff quarters. Having never found

one, I had not protested. But locating such a nefarious viewing

platform as the mouth of a dead beast, and another allowing study

of a woman’s toilet habits—and both directed at our dear guests—

?lled me with anger.

Worse, this hall of delight did not stop there. I followed it

more deeply into Rose’s walls, turning left twice, a fraction of

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light seeping in through holes I gather were drilled for this purpose.

A right-hand turn and then, at my feet, a perfect square of

white lines. Light. I knelt, tried to move the square panel there in

the ?oor, and ?nally made it slide open exactly an inch. I put my

head to it, lying on the ?oor as I imagined was intended.

I was looking down onto my own bed, the electric lamp by my

pillow strong enough to turn the sheer suspended over my fourposter

into a transparency. I could see clearly enough to read the

Holy Bible in gold on the nightstand. I panicked as only a guilty

person can. First in anger, then in guilt. Not everything in that

bed had been innocent. Not every moment of tender loving in

that bed had included my husband. Now I thought I understood

his jealousy and anger toward Sukeena. Now I knew, his fantasies

aside, he had witnessed me—us—there, and that no matter how it

may have excited him, it had repulsed him as well, and he had

taken action. For the faintest moment I even allowed myself to

believe my husband had done something to little April, or (and

I’d thought this earlier) had hired one of the staff to take her away

brie?y to allow suspicion to fall upon my maid, to satisfy the convenience

of the police being in attendance. Perhaps more than

one of the staff, perhaps his loyal core of servants—the children’s

young governesses had been acting strangely of late. Conspiracy

worked hard to replace my own sense of debauchery and unfaithfulness,

and I managed to turn my own misgiving into a strong

resentment of my husband in no time.

I continued on. Shortly thereafter, the corridor did rise and

climb via a set of steep stairs to a padded trapdoor that led directly

into the attic. Here were kept many of the dozens and dozens of

items collected while on our honeymoon and still not put to good

use. Here were sewing stands, pottery and a second set of stairs

that, when descended, led directly into the back of the lesser closets

in my husband’s primary changing room. This second set of

stairs afforded him escape to his rooms if overheard or pursued,

or a way to reach from his rooms into the attic, back down to the

guest quarters and out into the hallway. I was guessing already that

I had missed a secret door leading right into the guest bedroom—

a way for John to enjoy the pleasures of our single women guests

while escaping attention. A certain opera star came to mind. For

a while, a year or so ago, she had lived with us while performing

downtown. I sensed she had been performing in my house as

well. (When I look at it this way, there is much for Rose Red to be

angry about, Dear Diary—we have abused her repeatedly.)

I did not return immediately, for what took my breath away,

what startled me to the point of swooning and nearly fainting,

had nothing whatsoever to do with John’s philandering, or even

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his secret passages. I’d come to grips with my husband’s perverted

shortcomings years ago. No, Dear Diary, not my husband! It was

the fresh board, the steel carpenter’s saw, the horses and the fresh

pile of sawdust that caught my eye. A door that I did not remember.

I inspected this work. The saw’s blade felt warm to the touch!

The sawdust smelled of fresh cedar. There, a framed door stood

in the middle of the attic. Alone, and all by itself. A door to

nowhere. Connected both top and bottom. For unexplainable

reasons, I picked up the saw, inserted its warm teeth into the

sawed slot, and put my hand to it. A moment later, the end piece

of wood broke free and fell with a clatter, for I had neglected to

hold it, or to catch it.

Someone had been up here working while I lay in my bed trying

to pray for Sukeena’s release to freedom. Someone had been

building Rose Red. But who, Dear Diary? Who on our staff works

this time of night? What carpenter saws in the dark?

And why did I see that board and that handsaw much more as

an invitation? Far less mystery than mastery. I am to help build

this house—the tower where my captured daughter is said to live

and from where she will seek her freedom. A tower that has yet to

be built.

I am to help build it. I know this with absolute certainty. To

build it in secrecy. Perhaps Adam will help when he’s home from

school. He, too, will want to reach April as soon as possible.

Am I losing my mind? As quickly as I’m losing those I love?

I must schedule my day to make room for this endeavor. I

must prepare to wear blisters on my hands—to smuggle lumber

stolen from our other construction and into the attic late at night

when no one else suspects. April, I fear, lives on the other side of

that unbuilt door. April awaits her mother.

John has just now returned from his journey into town, and I

could wait no longer. I ran—yes, ran!—down the Grand Stair to

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that very same spot where he had shoved me days earlier, and I

pleaded with him for some news of my friend.

“Your friend?” he asked.

“Yes, John. She is my friend.” I practically dragged him into

the Parlor, the suit of armor our only eavesdropper. I secured the

doors shut and beseeched him, “Dear husband, I beg you for

news of my friend.”

“You call me husband and yet do not allow me into your

chambers, woman. What kind of husband is that?”

It had never crossed my mind that the man wanted into my

chambers. Our child was missing—how could any other words

escape his mouth? All these months of not so much as a kiss

between us, I had assumed his transgressions with the women of

the night had satis?ed whatever urges a man like John Rimbauer

has—substantial urges indeed. But now I saw before me another

man altogether, pitiful, and I wondered (a deeper, darker

thought) if some curse had not befallen my husband, some curse

that is said to af?ict some men, and that if, in his twisted, selfcentered

way, he had attributed that curse to Sukeena, and that

this explained her abduction by the police and therefore, quite

possibly, my missing daughter. Had John not dared to harm

Sukeena himself, because of her substantial powers? Had he concocted

the disappearance of our daughter as a means to rid himself

of my maid with the help of the police? Or had he spent time

in secret observation of my bedroom and the acts that have taken

place there between me and my friend? Was jealousy his master

now? Had I somehow risen to a level of power over him that to

this moment I had been unaware of?

“I was unaware you had interest in my bedroom, John. I have

not heard your knock upon my door for many months.”

Or (I was thinking) had the act of man with woman become

meaningless without the sense of love? Had the only curse upon

my husband been a curse he had brought upon himself? Perhaps

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he was now incapable of the other kind of love and in need of the

love he and I had once shared, however brie?y. Perhaps April’s

disappearance had something to do with this—making John aware

of external powers that he could not, in fact, control; powers he

associated with Sukeena, and hence his lashing out at her.

Perhaps this man was boy again, and in me sought a mother to

whom he could turn.

It was everything I could do, Dear Diary, to remain composed

under the weight of Sukeena’s prolonged absence and the disappearance

of my lovely daughter. For these were the only two subjects

of my inquiry, and I found John’s diversions annoying and

entirely self-centered, which should not have surprised me one bit.

“I believe you’ve had other interests,” he said. “You’ve been

preoccupied with April and Sukeena.”

And they were both gone. This fact did not escape me. I

shuddered, head to toe. Had my husband conceived of this