The old man made a sound of horror and began hacking violently.

Kip switched off the recorder.

“It took him a while to compose himself and be able to speak again,” Kip told them, “so I’ll just paraphrase the rest of what he told me. The household came running, Mr. Young and all the Young sons, including our current Mr. Young, Howard. Harry Noons told them what he’d seen, and they immediately dispersed across the estate looking for Clem. They searched for hours, but couldn’t find him.”

“Did they ever find him?” Douglas asked.

Kip shook his head. “Apparently not. He never resurfaced, as far as Harry Noons ever knew.”

“But the sheriff must have led a manhunt to find him,” Douglas said.

“No.” Kip sighed. “For the simple reason that your great-great-grandfather never made any accusation against him.” Kip sat back down, shaking his head. “The family was terrified of scandal. They only reported that Beatrice had died of an accident. They never let anyone into the house. They never told the sheriff the nature of Beatrice’s accident, and reported simply that she’d been buried in the family cemetery nearby.”

“And such has always been the power of my family that what they decree is accepted by the authorities.” Douglas sighed. “Money has its privileges.”

“But the newspaper reports make no mention that she had a baby,” Carolyn observed.

“No,” Kip said. “That much isn’t all that surprising. Back in the day, a bastard child was an unmentionable in the press.”

“So what happened to the baby?” Carolyn asked.

“Harry Noons was told that Mr. Young had found a home for the baby.”

Douglas seemed aghast. “And the sheriff didn’t even inquire further?”

Kip shook his head. “Mr. Young was apparently simply taken at his word. Of course, this was in the days before aggressive child welfare services and things like that.”

Douglas stood, unnerved and agitated by all that he heard about his family. “And so when the high and mighty Desmond Young issued a pronouncement, the local authorities just shook their heads and said, ‘Yes, sir.’” He snorted. “I know how it works. And it’s not right.”

“So there was never any investigation into Beatrice’s death,” Carolyn said.

“None,” Kip said.

“And no inquiry into what happened to her baby.”

“None.”

Carolyn was adding it all up in her mind. “And Clem disappeared, never to be heard from again.”

“Except to haunt members of the family,” Douglas said. “Okay. So this tells us some of the history. How did the lottery start? What connection does it have?”

“I’m afraid that I can’t tell you precisely,” Kip said. “Yet again, Mr. Young was stingy with some details. All he would say is that without the lottery, without the sacrifice of one member of the family every ten years, the entire clan would perish. This is what was told to his father, Desmond Young, who inaugurated the first lottery a week after Beatrice’s death.”

“Who told him?” Douglas wanted to know. “Who told Desmond Young that they had to send someone into that room? The ghost of Beatrice?”

Kip could only shrug.

“It would appear again,” Carolyn said, “that certain details are being withheld from us, whether through choice or force.”

“Okay,” Douglas said, trying to find some iota of logic in all of this madness, “let’s suppose it was Beatrice who started the curse, or whatever you want to call it. It would seem that it would have to be her, right? Because as far as we know, Clem didn’t die that day. He escaped. So if it was Beatrice, why would she want to hurt a family who had been so good to her? Who hadn’t cast her out when she got pregnant? For a family that feared scandal, that was pretty nice of them. So why would she want to hurt them?”

“Again,” Kip said, “your guess will be as good as mine on that.”

“Perhaps Beatrice is the force in that room,” Carolyn observed, “but perhaps she isn’t the originator of the curse. Perhaps it was someone else-someone we have no idea about as yet.” She stood, wrapping her arms around herself, still struggling to get warm. “As an investigator, I can only go with the facts as we know them. I cannot add two and two to get four, because there may be another variable to consider in the equation. Maybe it’s two plus two plus two again-and we get six.” She smiled. “It’s not enough for me to say that Clem just disappeared. What happened to him? And for that matter, how do we know Harry Noons is a reliable witness? Why did he wait seventy years to tell his story?”

Kip smiled. “Oh, I’m sorry; I left out a rather salient point.” His eyes moved over to Douglas. “Your great-great-grandfather paid him a considerable amount of money to keep quiet. In the midst of the Depression, with five younger siblings in his struggling family, Harry couldn’t refuse. Only all those years later, when I found him, did his conscience compel him to tell the real story.”

Douglas groaned, putting his hands in his hair and turning to look out over the marsh.

“And you found Noons to be trustworthy?” Carolyn asked.

“I did. As did Georgeanne.”

“I held his hand,” she said. “He was speaking the truth.”

Kip chuckled. “She’s rather like a human lie detector. I can’t get away with anything with her.”

Carolyn managed a small smile. “So we still don’t know how the lottery began and what power keeps it in force-or what does the killing in that room.”

“If I were still working on this case,” Kip said, “I would try to reach the spirit of Clem. Find out what happened. Where did he go? And why did he kill Beatrice?”

“We don’t know he killed Beatrice,” Carolyn said.

“He was the only one with a motive,” Kip said. “Noons said he saw Beatrice turning him down, taunting him.”

“But he didn’t see him kill her. He left the basement. And when he went down there again, Clem was nowhere to be found.”

Kip made a face. “He saw Clem there moments before the screaming began.”

“And he rushed down there immediately and found only Beatrice. No Clem.”

“He could have been hiding in the basement somewhere.”

“Possibly.”

Kip looked extremely sad. “I wanted so much to help the family. I wanted so much to end those terrible deaths that they face every decade. I volunteered to continue my research after it was clear that I had failed. I wanted to keep going, to try to find the cause and the solution so that next time…but Mr. Young said I was done.”

Douglas turned his head at that. “Why wouldn’t my uncle want you to continue? After you had already discovered so much?”

“He is a very stubborn man,” Kip said simply.

“Did he blame you for not ending the curse?” Carolyn asked.

“Let’s just say he wasn’t very happy with me.” Kip sighed. “I refused to accept any payment from him. But I did promise him that I would speak of it to no one, unless he sent other researchers to me. I heard nothing until I got your call, Carolyn.”

“That’s why you never wrote a concluding report,” Carolyn said. “Howard Young was done with you.”

Kip nodded sadly. “I suppose I can understand his distress. I had failed. Another family member of his was dead. The curse went on.”

There was nothing much more to say. Carolyn and Kip exchanged a few words as they looked over each others’ notes while Georgeanne refilled everyone’s coffee cups. Douglas remained where he was, standing looking out over the marsh. The ducks had all taken flight, nearly in unison, and flew in formation over the coastline. The sun was dropping lower in the sky, emerging from the gray clouds to stain the marsh pink.

He didn’t like what he’d learned about his family. The secrets were horrible enough. But the way they’d withheld information from the police, picking and choosing details, was reprehensible. That woman’s killer was never brought to justice. No wonder she and her baby haunted the family. And the parceling of information that was done eighty years ago was not so different from the way Uncle Howie shared certain details with some people and not with others. What was going on?