Return to Wyldcliffe Heights: A Novel

by Carol Goodman

Genres: Domestic Thrillers; Psychological Thrillers; Gothic; Horror

Synopsis

Jane Eyre meets The Thirteenth Tale in this new modern gothic mystery from two-time Mary Higgins Clark Award–winner Carol Goodman, about a reclusive writer who is desperate to rewrite the past.

Losing yourself inside of a book can be dangerous. Not everyone finds their way out.

Agnes Corey, a junior editor at a small independent publisher, has been hired by enigmatic author Veronica St. Clair to transcribe the sequel to her 1993 hit phenomenon, The Secret of Wyldcliffe Heights. St. Clair has been a recluse since the publication of the Jane Eyre-esque book, which coincided with a terrible fire that blinded and scarred her. Arriving in the Hudson Valley at St. Clair’s crumbling estate, which was once a psychiatric hospital for “wayward women,” Agnes is eager to ensure St. Clair’s devoted fans will get the sequel they’ve been anticipating for the past thirty years.

As St. Clair dictates, Agnes realizes there are clues in the story that reveal the true—and terrifying—events three decades ago that inspired the original novel. The line between fact and fiction becomes increasingly blurred, and Agnes discovers terrible secrets about an unresolved murder from long ago, which have startling connections to her own life. As St. Clair’s twisting tale infiltrates Agnes’s psyche, Agnes begins to question her own sanity—and safety. In order to save herself, Agnes must uncover what really happened to St. Clair, and in doing so, set free the stories of all the women victimized by Wyldcliffe Heights. 

 

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Release date: July 30, 2024

Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks

Print pages: 336

Sample

Chapter One

Like many of the letters that came for Veronica St. Clair, this envelope contained dried pressed violets. Over the last three months I’d been opening them, my desk had become purple with dried violet dust and my hands always smelled like an old lady’s closet.

Dear Ms. St. Clair, this one read,

I just wanted to tell you how much The Secret of Wyldcliffe Heights means to me. I read it for the first time when I was fourteen and it saved my life. I’d never felt like someone really saw me until then, and since, I’ve reread it a dozen times. Sometimes I feel like Jayne exploring the winding hallways and secret passageways of Wyldcliffe Heights, sometimes I feel like Violet waiting to be released from her tower, and sometimes I feel like Wyldcliffe Heights itself, a big heap of secrets and lies teetering on the brink of the abyss. It’s the book that made me into a reader. My only complaint is that there isn’t more! I still think about Jayne and Violet and wonder what happened to them after the fire. Have you considered writing a sequel? I would be the first on line to buy it. And maybe then you could finally reveal the secret of Wyldcliffe Heights—ha ha! ☺

Yours truly,

A Curious Fan

I put the letter down. When I started my job at Gatehouse Books as an editorial assistant three months ago, the office manager, Gloria, had explained that I would be reading Veronica St. Clair’s fan mail and forwarding all “favorable” letters to her home in the country. You are never to respond to any of the fans or to send any unfavorable mail to Miss St. Clair, she told me.

I thought it was a little funny. Why would I write back to a fan? And what “unfavorable” mail? Didn’t everyone love Veronica St. Clair as much as I did? When I asked Gloria she’d blinked at me, her eyes owlish behind her black-framed glasses. Sometimes they love her so much they think they own a piece of her. Miss St. Clair’s fans can be a bit . . . possessive. Especially when it comes to the subject of a sequel.

I read the letter again. It was handwritten on lavender stationery with a border of violets in purple ink. I reread the last lines.

Have you considered writing a sequel?

That certainly sounded innocent enough. Lots of her fans wanted a sequel. There were only so many times you could reread a book trying to recapture the excitement of that first read. But what about that last line? And maybe then you could finally reveal the Secret of Wyldcliffe Heights—ha ha! ☺ Was Curious Fan suggesting that the book was lacking a satisfying ending? Would Ms. St. Clair take offense at that? And that smiley face—there was something a little snarky about it. Something almost . . . threatening.

Or maybe I’d just spent too much time parsing fan letters and inhaling violet dust.

I gather up this week’s letters—twelve besides the one from Curious Fan, all of them gushing love letters to their favorite author and innocent of subtext—stuff them into a large brown mailing envelope, weigh it on our old-fashioned postal scale, and print out the correct postage—a routine that makes me feel like I’ve gone back to the nineteenth century. Then I write the address on the front even though we have printed mailing labels because it feels like writing to my favorite fictional place—Jane Eyre’s Thornfield or the Castle of Otranto.

Veronica St. Clair

Wyldcliffe Heights

Wyldcliffe-on-Hudson, NY 12571

There is one other letter but I don’t include it, because it isn’t favorable at all. In fact, it sounds rather threatening.

Dear Miss Clare, it began, the misspelling itself a challenge.

I don’t know how you can sleep at night knowing all the lives you have ruined. My sister was one of your so-called fans. She defiled her body with those violet tattoos and went looking for that trashy life your book made her want. She was last seen on the streets of New York City peddling her body for drug money. I wish you and your book had burnt up in that fire.

It isn’t signed and there’s no return address. In fact, it doesn’t have a postmark. Someone must have slid it through the mail slot in the door. It wasn’t that hard to google Gatehouse Books’ address online. Gloria had told me early on to “keep an eye out” when I was entering and leaving the building for any rabid fans or disgruntled writers waiting to pigeonhole an employee about why they hadn’t gotten a response about their manuscript yet. That had been unsettling enough, but she hadn’t said anything about vengeful family members of St. Clair’s readers. And yet, it wasn’t the first letter I’ve read complaining about the effect the book had had on a sister, daughter, wife, or mother. Your book is inspiring, a girl who had borrowed the book from her older sister had written, but sometimes I think it inspires unrealistic fantasies. A mother had written to say she’d demanded the town library remove it from their shelves because it was unhealthy and morbid. A psychiatrist wrote to say it encouraged suicidal ideation.

The letters had made me angry at first—how narrow-minded!—and then they had made me uneasy. Maybe they knew something about the book I didn’t. This letter, though, makes me a little scared. I lay it on top of the larger envelope to show to Gloria, then I look at the time and see it’s ten minutes after five. Gloria takes the mail to the post office on Hudson Street promptly at 5:15 each evening. I had just enough time to walk down three flights of stairs to deliver it to her.

As I stuff my things in my tote bag, I am distracted by something Hadley Fisher, the marketing assistant, is saying.

“He called me in to show him how to set up his Instagram account,” she says, rolling her eyes. Hadley, the most tech savvy in the office, has barely disguised disdain for our Luddite publisher. “And he was standing at the window when I came in, staring out at the river. He looked like he was thinking about jumping.”

“It’s not high enough,” Kayla, the publicity assistant, replies. “He’d only a break a leg and the media attention would kill the potential

sale.”

They’re talking about Kurtis Chadwick, our publisher. Four days ago, he’d had a meeting with our accounting firm. I’d brought in the coffee and heard the words “bankruptcy,” “merger,” and “buyout” as I was shutting the door. Twice since then I’ve come into his office to find him standing at the window looking out at the river. Each time I’d had the same thought as Hadley.

“Do you think there will be a buyout?” Kayla asks.

“I don’t know,” Hadley replies, chewing the stem of her horn-rimmed glasses, which I have begun to suspect aren’t even prescription but merely accessories to the wool cardigans, plaid skirts, and chunky loafers she wears even in the summer, a nerdy librarian style I’ve been trying to emulate since I started here. Somehow my old school uniform skirt paired with cheap tops and sweaters from H&M never look quite the same. “He told me there was ‘uncertainty on the horizon’ and I should consider all my options.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” Kayla says. “My friend at Hachette says there are rumors that they’re acquiring us.”

“At least that might save the company,” Hadley says.

“Yeah, but would the new publisher keep us on?” Kayla asks.

“Not if they saw you gossiping instead of working.”

They swerve their heads toward the stairs where Gloria stands glaring through oversized, black-framed glasses. Kayla and Hadley swivel back toward their respective desks instantly, their chair springs squeaking like frightened mice.

“Remember we still have books to edit and promote. Whether the house is bought by a larger publisher or not, we have a responsibility to our authors.”

From my vantage point I can see Kayla smirking. Our fall catalog of books is not exactly celebration worthy. It consists of the twelfth installment of a mystery series featuring a clairvoyant tea shop owner and her psychic cats, a history of whaling in the nineteenth century, a memoir of the granddaughter of some World War II general, and a cookbook. A cookbook! I’d heard Kayla darkly mutter. Who buys cookbooks anymore?

“Kayla, have you notified all the aquariums about the whaling book?”

“Um . . . the aquariums might actually take objection to the whaling book?” Kayla says, but already Gloria’s keen predator eyes have turned toward me.

“And you—” She stares at me as if she’s forgotten my name even though she writes out my paycheck every week. I know there’s nothing wrong with Gloria’s memory, though. She does the Times crossword puzzle every day in ink and can recite by heart the sales figures of every book ever published by Gatehouse during our weekly staff meetings. I’ve begun to suspect that there is something about my name—or about me—she finds objectionable. “Agnes Corey,” she

says now, injecting a tone of disapproval into the four syllables. “Mr. Chadwick wants to see you in his office. Now.”

I rise from my desk, upsetting a stack of slush pile manuscripts, and see Kayla and Hadley exchange a knowing look. As the last person hired, and still in my probationary period, I would no doubt be the first fired.

I follow Gloria down the steep attic stairs to the third floor. Gatehouse Books occupies all four floors of a townhouse in the West Village. The first floor is lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves of all the books published by the company in its one-hundred-year history. Prospective authors and agents and booksellers are given tea in china cups in the second-floor boardroom. The walls of the third floor, which houses the offices of the publisher, editor in chief, and copyeditor, are papered in a William Morris print and covered with photographs of famous authors. Descending from the attic, where the assistants toil, the smell of mold dissipates into the maple-syrupy smell of old paper and salt from the river—

Which means Mr. Chadwick has his window open.

Gloria must smell it, too, because she pauses on the landing and sniffs, reaching up the sleeve of her cardigan to pull out a tissue to dab her nose. “That damp,” she croaks, “from that damn river. It’ll be the death of me yet. You go on—” She shoos me toward Mr. Chadwick’s office, retreating down the stairs to the hermetic confines of her ground-floor office lined in corkboards and spreadsheets and lit by the green glow of an ancient Hewlett-Packard.

Maybe she just doesn’t want to overhear me being fired, I think, heading down the narrow hall filled with framed photographs of authors. Cyril Chadwick, the father of our current publisher, is featured next to one literary luminary after another—John Cheever, John Updike, John Irving—the Hall of Johns, I’ve heard Atticus, the copyeditor, call the passage even though it also includes Arthur Miller, Saul Bellow, Gore Vidal, and even a very old blurry shot of a young Cyril Chadwick with a white-bearded and very drunk Ernest Hemingway at the White Horse Tavern.

At the end of this long hall of men is one woman. It is not, though, an author photo; it’s a book cover in the style of an old-fashioned gothic romance—a woman in a flimsy white dress runs from a turreted mansion behind her, one light shining from the tower window like a baleful eye. The woman, her long black hair swirling in the wind, looks over her shoulder as if she hears the hoofbeats and baying hounds of her pursuers. Her profile, partly obscured by her wild hair, is hauntingly beautiful.

“You always stop at that one.”

The voice comes from an open door behind me where our copyeditor toils.

“I know it’s not supposed to be the author on the cover, but she always makes me think of Veronica St. Clair and what happened to her.”

“Actually, you’re not entirely wrong.” I hear the creak of a floorboard behind me and see him reflected in the picture glass, leaning against the doorway to his office, hands in trouser pockets, shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, a blue pencil stuck behind his ear and a smudge of ink on his cheek as if he’s been writing with a fountain pen instead of a Mac. Atticus Zimmerman is one of those old-school hipsters who fetishize the trappings of an analog era even as they swipe right on Tinder and catalog the films they watch on Letterboxd.

Thinks he’s hot shit, Kayla said once when we all went out for drinks at the White Horse Tavern and he declined because he had a manuscript to copyedit. Went to Princeton and thinks he’s F. Scott Fitzgerald.

She’s just mad because they went out on one date and he never asked her again, Hadley told me when Kayla went to the toilet. I told her she was lucky; he’s a bit of a heartbreaker, our Atticus. He goes through assistants like Kleenex, so watch yourself.

“Not entirely wrong?” I echo, thinking it’s the closest Atticus has gotten to saying I was right about something since I started here. Maybe it’s being a copyeditor, who’s in charge of correcting mistakes; he can’t seem to stop correcting people in person.

“There’s a story about the cover. When Kurtis Chadwick discovered Veronica St. Clair he went up to her house on the Hudson and stayed there until she finished the manuscript. Then he commissioned a local artist to paint the cover using her house and basing the girl on the cover on her—” He leans over my shoulder to peer more closely at the framed cover. I can smell the old-fashioned bay rum aftershave he uses, and pencil shavings. “You see the way she’s turning away? That’s to hide the scars from the fire. It was a bold choice to go with a retro gothic look. Who knew a tawdry gothic romance could still be a bestseller in the nineties—or are you one of those girls who thought it was a great masterpiece?”

“I don’t know if it’s a masterpiece,” I say carefully, “but the fans love it and . . .” I try to think of something to say that will sound smart. “All those teens who’d grown up reading Flowers in the Attic ate it up and people started comparing it to Jane Eyre and Rebecca. It introduced a whole generation of girls to the gothic.”

“Ha!” he barks his deconstructed version of a laugh. “I remember those girls from high school. They called themselves Wyld girls and tattooed themselves with violets.”

“You make it sound like a cult,” I say. “Those girls grew up and gave it to their daughters.”

I’m regretting admitting to reading the book at all, but then he says, “I stole my sister’s copy and read it in one night in eighth grade. I thought that it would be sexier—”

He ducks his head, his hair falling over his forehead, and laughs. As I turn, I see

he’s blushing. The hallway suddenly feels very narrow and warm. I look toward the closed door at the end.

“I’d better go in there,” I say. “He asked to see me. I think I’m about to get fired.”

He cringes. “Ouch.” He looks genuinely sorry for me but he doesn’t try to convince me otherwise. “I’m probably next. If we’re acquired the new company will use freelance copyeditors.” I see, then, that beneath his hipster pose he’s worried—scared even. What will happen to Atticus Zimmerman if Gatehouse Books is bought out? I can’t imagine him working in a big corporate office. Where, for that matter, will Gloria go? She must be pushing sixty. As I turn to go, I feel the weight of the house—the literal brick-and-mortar building as well as the figurative publishing house—pressing down on my shoulders like . . . how had Curious Fan put it? A big heap of secrets and lies teetering on the brink of the abyss.

 

My knock is met with a brisk “Come!” that sounds like what a captain would say on a ship. And indeed, Kurtis Chadwick is standing at the large porthole-shaped window, legs braced as if against a swelling sea, surveying the Hudson River like a sea captain. Or like a man thinking about throwing himself overboard. When I’ve stood silently for a minute he turns around and startles, as if surprised to see me even though he presumably asked for me.

“Oh, I thought you were Gloria . . . but . . . good . . . I wanted to talk to you . . .” He gestures to the chair in front of his desk while sitting down at his own, plusher one behind it. He leans back, crossing his long legs and steepling his fingers, resuming the confident ease of a man at the helm of a ship, not one about to jump overboard. I sit up straight. “It’s Agnes, yes? Agnes Corey?” He’s staring at an open folder on his desk, his head bent so I can make out a few strands of gray in the black. “And you’ve been with us almost three months now?”

“It will be three months at the end of next week,” I say, remembering that’s how long my probationary period is supposed to last.

“How have you found us here at Gatehouse?” he asks with a disarming smile. As if he really wants my opinion.

“It’s been great!” I enthuse. “Everybody’s been . . .” Before I can say “great” again, I manage to avoid the repetition (a mantra of our editor in chief). “So helpful! I’m learning so much from Ms. Chastain.”

“Diane’s a talented editor,” he says. “Is that what you want to do?”

“Yes,” I say, hoping that doesn’t sound too presumptuous. “I mean, I know I have

a long way to go and I have a lot to learn—”

“Why?” he asks, looking at me directly.

“Why?” I repeat, confused.

“Why do you want to be an editor?” he asks patiently. “The pay’s low, the industry’s in chaos, writers are difficult to work with—unless what you really want is to be a writer—”

“No,” I say, truthfully. It had only taken a handful of interviews to realize that publishing professionals were wary of hiring assistants who wanted to be writers. Luckily, I didn’t. “My mother was a writer and I saw how hard a life it was. I want to . . .” I pause and look out the window. A mist rising from the river softens the edges of the West Side Highway and the piers. We could really be on a ship sailing up the Hudson. Maybe that’s why Kurtis Chadwick spends so much time standing at the window; he’s wishing he could sail up the river to Wyldcliffe-on-Hudson and relive his first editorial victory when he discovered Veronica St. Clair. “I want to help writers,” I say, looking back toward him and finding his gaze firmly locked on me. “Like you do. Everyone says it was your editing that made The Secret of Wyldcliffe Heights the masterpiece it is.”

His lips twitch, half smile, half grimace. “You think it’s a masterpiece?”

“It changed my life.” I say, twisting my hands together. They brush against the envelope in my lap and I remember the letters inside. “As it did for so many readers,” I add. “We get fan letters every week asking for a sequel—”

He laughs, but it’s a mirthless sound. “Ah, that siren song. A sequel! Yes, if Veronica would only write a sequel all our problems would be solved. Personally, I’ve never understood why they all want one so much—”

“It’s the way the book ends,” I say impetuously. As long as I keep talking he can’t fire me. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, the book has a satisfying ending but you’ve come to love Violet and Jayne so much you want to know what happens to them next. Where do they go after the fire? Does the ghost of Red Bess still haunt them? I mean, we don’t even know what the secret of Wyldcliffe Heights is!”

His eyebrows shoot up and he laughs, a short bark that startles me and then relieves me. At least I’ve distracted him from his worries. “I said the same thing to Veronica,” he admits with a confidential smile. “And begged her for an epilogue, but she refused. She said she hated epilogues because they tied things up too neatly. Her readers”—he’s assumed an elevated diction that’s supposed, I imagine, to replicate the author’s voice—“would appreciate a bit left to their imagination.”

“Her readers,” I say, holding up the mailing envelope, “would like a sequel.”

That confidential smile falters and I see I’ve lost him. “Unfortunately, it’s quite impossible. As you may have heard, Veronica St. Clair is blind.”

“She was blinded in the fire, right?” I say, glad I can show off this bit of knowledge. “But why should that stop her from writing

a sequel? She could dictate to someone, like Henry James and Milton did. Or she could use voice-recognition software—”

Kurtis Chadwick chuckles. “I can’t see Veronica speaking into a machine, and I’m afraid she’s much too private a person to endure the intrusion of an amanuensis.” He sighs and looks at me sadly. “There will be no sequel to The Secret of Wyldcliffe Heights, and without it, I fear, no more Gatehouse Books. Which brings me to the reason I wanted to speak with you. Gloria tells me you’ve done an excellent job, and Diane needs an editorial assistant. But alas, in the present circumstances—”

He spreads his hands open. “Well, you’ve probably heard the rumors. We are embarking on a new phase and I’ve been told that we must trim our sails and lighten our load for the journey. Of course, I’ll write you an excellent recommendation. We can continue paying you through next week . . . unless you have other opportunities.”

“No,” I say, getting to my feet shakily, as if we are really on a ship at sea. “No other opportunities. I have a manuscript from the slush pile I’m reading and Ms. Chastain asked me to write a reader’s report for the newest in the psychic cat series. I’d like to finish those if I may.”

“Oh yes, those cats,” he says with a shudder. “By all means, see what you can do. Maybe the series will get a boost and save the day.”

“Maybe,” I say doubtfully. I’ve heard Kayla and Hadley discussing the dismal sales of the psychic cat tea shop mysteries.

He gets up and holds his hand out to me. It’s warm and steady, his grip firm, but when I meet his gaze, he’s the one who looks as if he’s drowning.

Chapter Two

When I come out of Kurtis Chadwick’s office, I catch the scent of Chanel Number 5 and hear laughter down the hall. As I walk toward it, I make out the throaty purr of Diane Chastain, editor in chief. It’s rare for her to be in this late on a Friday, and I wonder if her presence has something to do with the impending acquisition. When I reach her open door, I see her leaning back in her ergonomic desk chair, long denim-clad legs stretched out in front of her, somehow both elegant and casual in a silky white button-down and burgundy sweater tossed over her shoulders. Her dark silver-streaked hair floats like a cloud over her sharp widow’s peak and high cheekbones. A canvas tote bag filled with manuscripts rests on the floor. Embroidered where a monogram usually would be are the words Book Slut.

“Hey, kid,” she says when she sees me hovering in the hallway. “I heard you were called into the lion’s den. How’d it go?”

Atticus, who’s sitting on the edge of her desk, half turns to give me an apologetic smile. I blush, realizing they’ve been talking about me.

“Okay, I guess. I have one more week and Mr. Chadwick says he’ll give me a good reference.”

“Tough break,” Diane says, wincing and taking a long swig of some amber liquid in a rocks glass. “We may all be looking for work soon. I hear they’re hiring down at the White Horse. I bartended there in the eighties. Made more in tips in one night than I did in a week as an editorial assistant.”

“Speaking of the White Horse,” Atticus says, “a few of us are going after work. You should come, Agnes.”

“Yeah, thanks, maybe . . .” I can feel a pressure mounting behind my eyes. “I just have to finish that manuscript.” As I bolt up the stairs I hear that rich throaty laugh again, echoed by Atticus’s drier, deconstructed version. I pass Kayla and Hadley on their way down, Hadley’s English schoolboy satchel slung across her chest, Kayla clutching her phone.

“How’d it go?” Hadley asks. “Are you—”

“Still here for a week,” I say brightly, squeezing past them. Pressing myself against the wall I feel like my chest is going to explode.

Kayla’s eyes slide sideways toward Hadley as if to say, See, I told you she was being let go, but Hadley at least has the good grace to look sorry. “That’s rough,” she says. “Look, we’re going to the White Horse. You should come.”

“Yeah, Atticus told me, maybe I’ll see you there later.”

As soon as they are past me, I sprint up the rest of the stairs and then slip behind the stacks of manuscripts on my desk, grateful Gatehouse is so old-school that they still print out manuscripts instead of having us read them on screen. They form an effective blockade against any prying eyes as the tears begin to fall. ...