Chapter 22
TWENTY-TWO
The road toward the Museum of Rhinebeck History twisted through the countryside, passing farmlands, then stately houses, then more fields.
Marlowe had to stop at frequent four-way intersections, all of them named after old local families.
Herman Corners. Jackson Corners. She took the curving road slowly as she headed west, gripping the steering wheel tighter.
Every thought and every memory that popped into her head was now askew and grainy, as if someone had tiptoed through her mind and scratched at her old files with a knife, slicing off details, blurring the dates, knocking conversations off-kilter.
The night before, after trying and failing to sleep, she continued a fevered search on the Internet for information about Pete and Harmon Gallagher.
She couldn’t find anything beyond a bare-bones obituary for Pete, and that was no longer enough.
Marlowe started searching for local museums and libraries, anywhere that might have records.
Buried underneath results advertising Washington Irving’s home and the historic Victorian mansions that lined the Hudson, she found the website for a local farm museum that housed photos and records for historic Hudson Valley families.
The museum was tucked away in an old building on a side street, behind a bookshop and across from a clothing store, its windows dressed with wicker furniture and soft cashmere sweaters.
Marlowe was the only visitor. She meandered through the main room, trying to put on a show of examining the antique plow in its glass case and the photos of old farmsteads.
After only fifteen minutes, she approached the woman at the desk who had sold her the entry ticket.
“I just moved to the area,” Marlowe said. “I’m so curious about the local farmers—I was wondering if you had any old archives.”
“Yes, we do.” The older woman nodded. “Jeanine can show you—let me get her from the office.”
Jeanine was a gray-haired woman in a heavy-gauge cardigan who peered out at Marlowe from behind her glasses with renewed purpose when Marlowe expressed interest in the museum’s records.
She led Marlowe to the archive room. It was narrow and dusty, with tall shelves and a pristine long wooden table that had a set of white microfiber gloves on top.
Jeanine spread out a map of the county, labeled with old names and spidery ancient property lines.
Marlowe found Bean River Road and tapped a spot on the map.
“That’s near the Pulvers,” Jeanine said. “They had one of the biggest operations.”
The name was familiar. Marlowe had driven by their massive barns, up on top of the mountain behind the Gray House.
“How long were they in the area?” Marlowe asked. “I’m curious about all the farmhouses built in the late nineteenth century.”
“Well, a lot of those houses are gone or renovated beyond recognition,” Jeanine said. “But so many do remain, and most have a striking history, which is what I just love about this area. Some of these farming families go back to the 1700s, back when apple orchards were one of the main industries.”
Marlowe thought of the orchard behind the Gray House.
The biggest tree had a thick trunk, stout enough to fit several grown men.
Its branches bent low to the ground, like a matron with thick hooped skirts.
One of the trees had been struck by lightning a few winters ago and had to be taken down.
Another one had withered and died. One of them was so old and gnarled and bent that Marlowe thought of it as the grandfather of the orchard.
“I didn’t know that,” Marlowe said, hoping to sell her ignorance. “When did dairy farming start?”
“Nineteenth century,” Jeanine said. “The wet, swampy marshes create ideal grazing pastures. Obviously not in the swamps, but the water travels overground and underground; that’s what makes it so green up here.”
Marlowe nodded and looked back to the map. She got the feeling Jeanine was passionate enough to go on an environmental history tangent if Marlowe didn’t redirect.
“I’d love to see some family trees,” Marlowe said. “Do you have records for all the properties around here? I live closer to town, but I’m interested in the history of the older homes in the area.”
“I have them organized by geography.” Jeanine squinted at the map, mumbled a coordinate, and then turned to the shelves, pulling out a hardcover book.
“Here.” Jeanine opened the book. “The Pulvers.”
Jeanine flipped through the pages, reading names aloud. The third one was “Gallagher.”
“I’ve heard that name,” Marlowe said.
“Yes,” Jeanine said and sighed. “It was in the local news recently. Someone from the family was killed. That type of thing never happens up here. People leave the city to get away from all that—that’s why my husband and I moved up here.”
Jeanine shook her head as she examined the list of births and deaths.
“Old family,” she said. “They were around awhile, but the farm went down with most of the others in the eighties.”
It had been a slow death, Marlowe thought to herself. Jeanine wouldn’t have known all the details of how those three old brothers held on a few years longer.
“Oh, Victoria Gallagher.” Jeanine smiled as she tapped on the name. The note accompanying it was brief: Born 1875, married William Pulver 1896, died 1898.
“Victoria was interesting, and a bit of a local legend,” she said.
“Nothing as big as the Headless Horseman or Captain Kidd, but rumors said she went a little mad as a teenager. That’s what they always said back then about odd girls.
She might have been put on trial as a witch a few centuries earlier. ”
The Gallagher daughter. The one who sat up in the hedgerow until she saw demons and was locked away. Marlowe didn’t know she was married, let alone to a neighbor.
“What happened to her?” Marlowe asked. “She died so young.”
“Likely childbirth,” Jeanine said, turning the page. “If you run into any Pulvers, you can ask if she’s haunting them. Most of the old houses come with a ghost story or two.”
Marlowe tried to conceal a chuckle at the dark irony of Jeanine’s comment, and she forced herself to remain impassive when she saw the square, faded ink on the next page: Tom Gallagher b. 1935. Leroy Gallagher b. 1938. Dave Gallagher b. 1945.
Notices of their deaths were not included.
The records likely hadn’t been updated in decades.
Jeanine flipped another page, revealing a small pencil sketch that made Marlowe’s heart drop.
It was the Gray House, as it had once been, long before Marlowe was born: smaller, and without a front porch, but it was unmistakable, like seeing a photo of her dad in high school—thick, dark hair, his youthful smile wide and carefree.
The antique front door, two windows on either side.
The stone chimney. Where the thin birch trees now stood there was an old oak tree that must have died and been harvested for firewood.
The clapboard of the house was etched with a light hand.
The artist wasn’t particularly skilled, and the sketch was far from refined, but it was a true rendering.
“I just love the architecture of the farmhouses.” Jeanine brushed her wrinkled hand over the sketch, and Marlowe nearly swatted it away. “When weekenders buy them and turn them too boxy and smooth and modern or, worse, build new, it’s just a travesty.”
“There’s construction near me, and the neighbors are upset. It’s on a hill, and they’ve cut down a bunch of trees.” The false story fell easily from her mouth. “When you have a great view, you’re ruining someone else’s.”
“Exactly.” Jeanine glanced up. “I have a whole book of photos and sketches of barns.”
Jeanine was off, moving from shelf to shelf. Marlowe sank into the chair at the table.
“Do you mind if I just flip through these for a bit?” Marlowe asked.
“Oh, of course.” Jeanine smiled. “I just get lost in these old records sometimes.”
Jeanine pulled down a few more books and then, at last, left Marlowe alone.
Marlowe flipped back to the Gallagher records and quickly took pictures of every page.
There was an old map as well, and some black-and-white aerial shots.
It was all muddled, and she had no sense of the landscape from a bird’s-eye view, but she could study it and perhaps find a familiar road.
She made a show of flipping through the old barn pictures and then returned to the sketch of the Gray House.
There were a few scribbled lines in the corner: The Gallagher Place, July 1934.
The drawing was unsigned but dedicated to a Robert Gallagher.
She turned back to the page of the Gallagher extended family and rifled through her purse for a notebook and pen.
After snapping a picture of the page, she jotted down the names in a slapdash family tree.
She wanted it on paper so she could distinguish the repeated names and see the generations lined up.
The records went back to 1851, starting with Victoria’s parents, and then tracked through the generations.
It appeared that Robert was one of Victoria’s nephews, born in 1905.
If he had been in possession of the sketch, Marlowe reasoned that he must have been the one who lived in the Gray House at the time.
He had a son named Harry and a daughter named Caroline.
Caroline Rodine, née Gallagher. Marlowe shuddered.
This was who had sold Frank Fisher the property after Dave had died.
Continuing on the opposite page was a lineage of Robert’s older brother, Thomas. He had a wife, Abigail, and three sons, Tom Jr., Leroy, and Dave.
There it was: Robert Gallagher with his children on one side of the street, Thomas and Abigail and their sons on the other.
A farm split between two brothers. Cousins growing up together.
Caroline didn’t sell off an inheritance from a distant relative.
She sold what was left of her childhood home, long after she had left it.
The final entry was for Harry’s only child, Peter Gallagher, born in 1962.
Marlowe lifted her fingers, counting out the years she had been too hesitant to calculate before. If Peter was born in 1962, he would have been in his mid-twenties when Frank Fisher purchased the Gray House.
Marlowe slipped out of the archival room, avoiding any notice from Jeanine, and walked outside to her car.
She turned on the ignition and cracked a window, taking in the cold air, and then went back to her phone to search for another obituary.
Harry Gallagher had died in 2001, at fifty-nine, of an unspecified illness.
He had watched, from wherever he ended up after the sale of his land, as all his cousins died.
He had seen his sister sell the last of the property to Frank Fisher.
Had Harry found Dave’s journal, or was his son, Pete, the only one who had helped clear out the house?
Marlowe closed her eyes, trying to picture Pete as a boy.
His bachelor cousins would have taught him to stack hay and sharpen blades on the stone wheel.
A lump rose in her throat. Pete wasn’t a weekend visitor.
He had, in fact, woken up in the Gray House every morning of his childhood.
He had known every winding path through the woods, climbed every apple tree.
He must have loved it, maybe even more than she did.
And maybe he had assumed he would inherit it.
Instead, he watched as the debts piled up and the farm slipped away.
That was the difference between the Fishers and the Gallaghers.
The Fishers didn’t depend on the land; the farmers did.
They were at the mercy of the land and its many betrayals.
There was never a perfect season. Rain ruined the hay.
Cows got sick. Foxes ate the chickens. Maybe Harry Gallagher had suffered a few difficult years.
Or maybe he just didn’t want to struggle anymore.
In any case, his loss was his son, Pete’s, loss too.
Had Pete come back after his side of the family lost the land? Wandered old woods, mooned about in the fields. Marlowe knew she would have. If the Gray House were taken from her, she wouldn’t be able to stay away.
One last time, Marlowe counted out the years.
In 1998, the night Nora disappeared, Pete Gallagher would have been thirty-six years old.
Marlowe’s age now. He would have had a toddler, Harmon, but no farm.
Her father had mentioned that Caroline had been willing to sell despite family pressure to hold on.
She imagined that Pete had been among those dissenting voices.
He would have been old enough to be angry about how things had panned out. Young enough to do something about it.
And if he had the journal—if he had pieced it together—he might have known.
He might have known the Fisher children had blood on their hands, and might have seen an opportunity for revenge.
No one wanted to live where a tragedy occurred.
And if the Fishers looked guilty, all the better.
The more Marlowe thought about it, the more she saw the logic.
The roads spreading out from the Gray House formed a web tattooed in her brain.
Where had Pete been all those years? She thought of the abandoned car she’d found with her brothers.
A figure watching from the tree line, keeping an eye on the Gallagher Place.
Marlowe shoved the piece of paper back into her purse and hurled it to the passenger seat. There wasn’t time to wait for the detectives to come to her. She pulled out of the parking spot and headed for Route 9, south toward Poughkeepsie.