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this new family in the Stewart house.”
    “It’s the Chenoweth house now,” Alma said with authority.
    “Is it, indeed, then? So what about the occupants of the Chenoweth house?”
    Her mother loved gossip. Whatever she picked up from Alma would be passed on over drinks and dinner orders and tubs of dirty dishes in the kitchen of the Liffey Pub. Dutifully, Alma told all she knew.
    “So you didn’t see the old one today? The Miss Havisham woman?”
    “Miss Lily. No. And Olivia Chenoweth smells. And she has a space between her two front teeth.”
    “So you’ve said. And what about these letters?”
    Alma sat up straight in her chair. “Mom, I had to swear not to talk about them. They’re private. Miss Olivia said I should think ofmyself as a pen that writes them but doesn’t understand. Or something like that.”
    Clara stirred her cold tea. “I guess you’re right. You wouldn’t be much of a secretary if you blabbed, would you? Well, let’s get dressed and get some work done.”
    “I am dressed,” Alma said.
    “So you are. Then while I don my finest apparel, you can do up the dishes.”

CHAPTER
Seven
    O ne Monday after school Alma headed for the library, carrying her school bag. The trees around the square had turned blazing red and orange, and a chilly rain pattered on the broad leaves, knocking some of them to the soggy grass.
    To Alma, the large double door of panelled oak, shiny with varnish, adorned with long tubular brass handles darkened by many hands, was like the portal to a castle. She stepped inside and shook the rain from her coat before hanging it alongside six or seven others on the rack by the door, eyes averted from the stairs to the darkened basement, where, according to Robbie Thornton, the ghost of a dead janitor lurked.
    “Of course he’s dead,” Alma had sneered when Robbie told her the story of how the janitor had hanged himself from the steam pipe. “He couldn’t be a ghost otherwise, could he?”
    Robbie seemed to think every building in Charlotte’s Bight harboured a haunt somewhere in its dark corners. Alma was certain—almost—that he had made up the tale about the janitor. He told the stories just to get attention, she thought. Still, she kept her eyes fixed ahead as she mounted the three steps to the reading room and circulation desk.
    There were a few people in the reading room, standing among the stacks or perusing newspapers at one of the broad tables in the centre. Alma caught sight of Louise Arsenault in the fiction section, with Polly Switzer and Samantha Keith, two of her most loyal followers. Alma pointedly ignored them and listened to the quiet, punctuated by the
click, click
of the old clock, with its hexagonal face and Gothic numerals, on the wall above the circulation desk. At the far end of the room, she saw her mother pushing a book cart among the stacks, pausing to replace a book, then moving on. When Clara looked up, Alma waved.
    Alma’s first stop was the card catalogue. Miss McAllister had given the class an arts assignment that morning. The students were to choose an author and write a one-page biography by Friday.
    She opened the R–S drawer of the author file and quickly found the card for Hawkins, RR. The seven books Alma was familiar with were listed, the trilogy and the series of four, but no others. It seemed that the owner of the Turnaround had been right, Alma thought with disappointment, for she had continued to nourish the hope that she would find other books by her favourite author. The card catalogue’s “Subject” section listed no biography of RR Hawkins.
    Miss McGregor, the head librarian, wasn’t present that day. Alma liked her because she knew everything and was very eager to share her knowledge, sometimes too anxious. Alma went to the reference section, which was the kingdom of Mr. Winters, a skinny young man with dark, oily hair combed straight back. He always wore a white shirt and tie and his leather shoes squeaked. He