“What tower?” Judy asked, growing more and more interested.
“It’s a circular tower built onto Sarah’s house. Joy’s room was on the third floor and there’s where her mother locked her up. She wanted Joy all to herself. That’s what I call mothering a girl to death. Though how Joy died is still something of a puzzle to me.”
“Why? What happened to her?”
Emily Grimshaw’s expression changed. The lines in her forehead deepened. “I told you she disappeared, vanished completely, just like you say this friend of yours vanished. Some folks think she jumped from a window. How ever it happened, Jasper Crosby identified a body in the morgue as hers. They had a funeral over it and buried it, but her mother declares to this day it wasn’t Joy. It didn’t look like her. That girl was too beautiful to die and Sarah thinks she floats around bodily, mind you. No doubt you gathered that much from reading the poetry.”
“Oh,” Judy exclaimed. “That....”
“Yes, that. But I doubt it.” She shook her head gravely and regarded Judy with a fixed stare. “Yes, I very much doubt it. Joy Holiday must be dead. Otherwise her spirit wouldn’t be coming back to haunt the earth. But what I’ve done that she should haunt me, the good Lord knows!”
“Published the poetry, perhaps,” Judy suggested wickedly. If Irene’s disappearance hadn’t been such a serious matter she would have laughed at the old lady’s superstitions.
On the way home Judy tried to figure out why Irene had failed to get in touch with her. That Blackberry had chewed up her note as well as the yellow flower petals seemed likely until she talked it over with Pauline.
“A cat chew up paper?” the other girl sniffed. “Why, Judy, only goats do that.”
“I know, but Blackberry is an unusual cat. I thought he might——”