The Thirteenth Tale

Margaret and her father run the bookshop, which rarely has any walk-in customers. Their real source of income is her father’s acquisition and selling of rare books to clients through international book fairs. From the time she was 11, Margaret has been working in the bookshop in some capacity and, over the years, has become an indispensable part of the bookshop’s operations. She is well-versed in the collections featured in the bookshop, but most particularly, her interest lies in 19th-century literature. Margaret has also written several short biographies, mostly for her own pleasure, though a number of them have been published and collected. She assumes that Vida has discovered her name through her published biographies, but Margaret sees herself as just an amateur and plans to write Vida and refuse her request.

Margaret’s mother has never liked the bookshop. Her mother has always had fragile health and sleeps in the spare bedroom, which none of them speak of. When Margaret was younger, she found a box of important papers under her mother’s bed. Among them, she found her own birth certificate and another, which was nearly identical except for the name. Margaret realizes that she had a twin; when she sees a death certificate, she realizes that her twin died the day they were born. She never told her parents about her discovery.

Margaret goes downstairs and takes the only copy of a Vida Winter book that they have from the cabinet where they keep the rarest, most expensive books. She takes it upstairs and reads it, and when she is done, it is daylight. She is confused because the book is called Thirteen Tales, and yet there are only 12 stories in the book. Margaret’s father is distraught about what he assumes is the theft of the book. Margaret tells him she borrowed it and read it the previous night. He explains the mystery of the title and tells her that the thirteenth tale has never been included in the book, and it is a longstanding literary mystery.

Margaret then tells him about the letter she received and that she has decided to meet Vida. Margaret takes several days off work to prepare for the meeting and reads several of Vida’s books, as well as interviews of her. As she tells her father later, she cannot find out anything about Vida’s personal life. Margaret spends the afternoon at her parents’ house, and she and her father talk more about Vida. Margaret looks at a wedding portrait of her parents, reflecting on how her birth and the death of her twin changed her mother from a vibrant woman to one who is afraid of life.

Margaret travels by train to visit Vida. Vida’s driver, Maurice, picks up Margaret at the train station in Yorkshire. They drive further and further into the country and out into the moors. By the time they arrive at Vida’s house, it is dark. Judith, the housekeeper, opens the door and shows Margaret to her suite of rooms in the house. She brings sandwiches for Margaret and asks her to meet Vida in the library of the house at eight o’clock in the evening.

Margaret arrives at the library 20 minutes early for her meeting with Vida. She becomes so engrossed in one of Vida’s novels while she waits that she doesn’t notice Vida has been in the room all along. Vida says she knows that Margaret plans to turn down her biography proposal because she fears Vida will not tell the truth. Margaret agrees to write the book if Vida tells her three true things that are verifiable by public record. She discovers that Vida’s name was originally Adeline March, and she was born at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London. Then Vida tells her that she lived at Angelfield, and there was a fire. She cries the name “Emmeline” and shows Margaret her hand, which is badly scarred from burns. Margaret realizes that Vida had a twin as well and decides she needs to stay and tell the story.

The next morning, Margaret meets Vida in the library so that they can begin. Vida starts the story, not with her own birth, but with the birth of a woman named Isabelle. Isabelle’s mother died in childbirth, and Isabelle’s father grieved alone in his library. He neglected his son, Charlie, who was nine, and baby Isabelle. Charlie terrorizes the household staff until almost all have left, leaving only the family, the housekeeper, the gardener, and the gamekeeper. Charlie tries to terrorize Isabelle, but she is smarter than him, and he becomes infatuated with her.

One day, Isabelle and Charlie are invited to a picnic. The local aristocracy are considering both of them as potential spouses for their children, as the Angelfields are very wealthy. Isabelle sets her sights on local neighbor boy, Roland March. She uses Charlie to distract Roland’s sister so that she can spend time with him. At the end of the summer, Isabelle tells her father that she is leaving Angelfield and disappears the same day. Isabelle’s father locks himself in his library and refuses to come out, dying several days later. Charlie is left alone in the house until one day in March, Isabelle returns. She brings with her twin baby girls, Emmeline and Adeline. She married Roland, but he died of pneumonia, and his family shuns Isabelle and their daughters. Isabelle settles back into her former life and leaves the care of the babies to the housekeeper, the Missus, and the gardener, John-the-dig. When Margaret goes back to her room that afternoon, she transcribes the story fully. She falls asleep thinking of all the questions she has, wondering if Vida is telling her the truth.

Margaret wakes up early the next morning and goes into the gardens. She realizes they are extensive and mazelike. She notices that Maurice the driver also does the gardening. She returns to the house and begins her next interview with Vida.

In Vida’s story, the housekeeper at Angelfield is named Mrs. Dunne but is known to all as the Missus. She has decided to try to raise Isabelle’s twin daughters as normally as possible, despite Isabelle and Charlie’s chaotic lifestyle. The twins resist, wrapped up in their own world, even speaking their own twin language. She notes that they seem not to understand that other people are feeling and thinking beings as they are. Because of this, they have no sense of propriety or boundaries, and they enter other people’s homes and partake of their property as they want. This causes much consternation in the village and nearby homes. One day, they destroy the topiary garden at Angelfield, the pride of John-the-dig and the result of the work of four generations of his family. They seem not to understand the impact of what they have done, but that night, Emmeline notices that the Missus and John-the-dig are sad. She does not feel guilty as a result but merely satisfied that she correctly identified their emotions. The Missus hopes, from witnessing this, that Emmeline will someday join the rest of the world.

That night, Margaret dreams that she meets her twin in the garden, but there is no recognition in the other woman’s eyes—they are blank.