On the Street Where you Live by Mary Higgins Clark Page A

published in 1938. The author, Phyllis Gates, hadsummered in Spring Lake in the late 1880s and early 1890s.
    The book was well written and gave a vivid picture of the social life of those days. Picnics and cotillions, splendid events at the Monmouth Hotel, bathing in the ocean, horseback riding and bicycling were described. What intrigued Emily most were the copious excerpts from a diary Phyllis Gates had kept during those years.
    Emily had finished dinner. Her eyes were burning with fatigue, and she was about to close the book for the night when she turned the page and saw Madeline Shapley’s name in a diary excerpt.
    June 18, 1891. This afternoon we attended a festive luncheon at the Shapley home. It was to celebrate Madeline’s nineteenth birthday. Twelve tables beautifully decorated with flowers from the garden had been placed on the porch. I sat at Madeline’s table as did Douglas Carter, who is so very much in love with her. We tease her about him.
    In an 1891 excerpt, the author wrote:
    We had just closed our cottage and returned to Philadelphia when we learned of Madeline’s disappearance. It was a great grief to all of us. Mother hurried back to Spring Lake to express her condolences and found the family to be in a state of profound grief. Madeline’s father confided that for the sake of his wife’s health he will remove the family from the area.
    About to close the book, Emily skimmed through the pages. An October 1893 entry caught her eye.
    Douglas Carter committed suicide. He had missed the early train from New York on that tragic day and was forced to wait for a later one. He became obsessed with the idea that had he been there earlier he might have saved her.
    My mother felt that it had been a grave mistake for Douglas’s parents not to move from their home, directly across the street from the Shapleys. She felt that the melancholy that overcame Douglas might have been avoided, had he not sat hour after hour staring at the porch of the Shapley home.
    Emily set down the book. I knew Douglas Carter had committed suicide, she thought. I didn’t know he lived directly across the street.
    I’d like to find out a lot more about him, she thought. I wonder how sure they were that he did in fact miss the train?

Friday, March 23

twenty-one ________________
    T HE RUMOR HAD BEGUN with the question of The National Daily reporter to the prosecutor: “Do you think Martha’s killer is a reincarnation?”
    Dr. Lillian Madden’s phone started to ring without stopping on Thursday afternoon. On Friday morning Joan Hodges, her secretary, had a stock answer, which she delivered crisply over and over again: “Dr. Madden has deemed it inappropriate to discuss the subject of reincarnation in regard to the Spring Lake murder case.”
    At lunchtime on Friday, Joan Hodges had no problem discussing the matter with her boss. “Dr. Madden, look at what the newspapers are saying, and they’re right. It was no coincidence that Martha Lawrence and Madeline Shapley both disappeared on September 7th. And you want to know the latest?”
    Pause now for dramatic effect, Lillian Madden thought wryly.
    â€œOn August 5, 1893, Letitia Gregg—listen to me, Doctor—‘failed to return home.’” Joan’s eyes widened. “Doctor, there was a girl, Carla Harper, who spent theweekend at the Warren Hotel two years ago, then just vanished into thin air. I remember reading about it. She checked out of the Warren and got in her car. Some woman swears she saw her near Philadelphia. That’s where she was going. She lived in Rosemont, on the Main Line. But now according to the New York Post, that eyewitness starts to sound like looney-tunes.”
    Then Joan’s eyes, wide open and demanding, bored into Dr. Lillian Madden’s face. “Doctor, I don’t think Carla Harper ever left Spring Lake. I think—and apparently lots of people think—that