Truly Devious recap

Stevie Bell, a sixteen-year-old obsessed with unsolved crime, wins a place at Ellingham Academy, a free Vermont school built by the tycoon Albert Ellingham, by proposing to solve the case that made it famous: the April 1936 kidnapping of Ellingham's wife Iris and their daughter Alice, and the killing of a student, Dottie Epstein, shortly after a taunting riddle signed "Truly, Devious" arrived. Alternating chapters follow 1936 as the crime unfolds. In the present, Stevie helps her housemate Hayes Major film an episode of his online zombie serial in the tunnel under the campus, and Hayes is found dead there, suffocated by carbon dioxide from the dry ice used for fog. Refusing to accept an accident, Stevie discovers that Hayes had not written the show he was famous for and pieces together that the dry ice was placed deliberately. She names her housemate Element "Ellie" Walker, who flees underground and vanishes. Stevie also learns that her friend David is the son of the senator her parents work for, and her parents pull her out of the school.

Stevie Bell, a sixteen-year-old from Pittsburgh preoccupied with true crime, arrives at Ellingham Academy, a tuition-free school for unusual students hidden in the mountains of Vermont. It was built in the 1930s by the tycoon Albert Ellingham, who filled the campus with riddles and games. In April 1936 his wife Iris and their small daughter Alice were kidnapped from the road below the school, a student named Dottie Epstein was killed, and a taunting riddle signed "Truly, Devious" had arrived shortly beforehand. Iris was found dead, Alice never was, and the case became one of the most famous in the country. Stevie won her place by proposing to solve it as her project. She moves into Minerva House alongside Janelle Franklin, an engineer building a competition machine; Nate Fisher, a teenage novelist stalled on his second book; Element "Ellie" Walker, an artist who keeps her own hours; and Hayes Major, the star of a popular online zombie serial. Their housemistress is Dr. Nell Pixwell, an archaeologist. Stevie also has a prickly first encounter with David Eastman, a student who seems to enjoy provoking her. Interleaved chapters follow the hours before the 1936 kidnapping, including Dottie slipping away to read alone in the tunnel beneath the grounds.

Stevie settles into Ellingham, where students pursue self-directed projects and the head of the school, who insists on being called Charles, encourages hers. She meets Larry, the head of campus security and a former detective, who is skeptical of amateur sleuthing but willing to talk with her about the old case, and she rebuilds her files on the 1936 crime in her room at Minerva House. Hayes Major asks for her help with his serial: he wants to shoot an episode in the tunnel that runs under the campus and needs someone to arrange access and props, including dry ice for fog. Stevie agrees, since it also gets her into a part of the estate tied to the old case. Germaine Batt records everything for her campus news feed, Maris Coombes joins Hayes's production, and David keeps needling Stevie while telling her nothing about himself. In the 1936 chapters, Dottie is alone underground where she should not be, and Iris and Alice fail to return from a drive; the household realizes they have been taken, and Albert Ellingham turns to his friend George Marsh while his secretary Robert Mackenzie and the painter Leonard Holmes Nair look on.

The shoot goes ahead in the tunnel under the campus, with several students taking part. Afterward Hayes Major is found dead there: carbon dioxide from the dry ice had settled in the enclosed space and displaced the breathable air. It is treated at first as a terrible accident, and Stevie is badly implicated, because she is the one who helped arrange the dry ice and the access. The school is thrown into crisis as police, Hayes's family and reporters arrive, and Charles has to decide whether Ellingham can carry on at all. Stevie's friends close ranks around her, and Larry's position becomes difficult. Unable to stop turning the facts over, Stevie fixes on the detail that does not fit an accident: how the dry ice came to be in the tunnel at all, and when. In the 1936 chapters, the ransom demand reaches Albert Ellingham and the search for Iris and Alice spreads across the mountain, while what happened to Dottie Epstein underground becomes clear.

Stevie sets the 1936 case aside and starts investigating Hayes's death. Pulling at his history, she finds that the serial he was famous for was not his own work: she traces a student from his previous school who says she wrote the earliest episodes and received nothing for them, and she recognizes a pattern of Hayes getting other people to produce his material on the promise of rewards that never arrived. She also learns that interest from a production company was in the air, which would have made the arrangement worth a great deal more. Meanwhile Ellingham is unravelling around her: students are being withdrawn, her own parents want her home, and her place at the school depends on the goodwill of an administration that would rather the whole thing went quiet. David alternates between helping her and getting in her way.

Stevie keeps working. She gets at records and footage from the day of the shoot and begins reconstructing who was where and when, using Germaine's obsessive filming and Maris's account of the production. Her antagonism with David turns into something more complicated and they kiss, which leaves her more confused about him than before. In the 1936 chapters, federal investigators press the household and get little; the search for Alice comes to nothing; and an anarchist named Anton Vorachek is arrested and charged with the crime, an outcome that satisfies the public and the press but never satisfies Albert Ellingham, who goes on searching for his daughter.

Stevie assembles the pieces. She establishes that the dry ice had been moved into the tunnel well before filming began, which means the air was already lethal before anyone arrived and the death was engineered rather than stumbled into. That narrows the question to who knew the tunnel, who could have got a heavy container down there unseen, and who stood to gain or lose by what Hayes had been concealing about his own work. The evidence about the serial's real authorship and the money attached to it points her toward an answer she does not want. Around her the school is shrinking, and she is running out of time before she is taken home.

Stevie learns who David really is: he is the son of Senator Edward King, the politician her parents work for and whose politics she detests, and he has been living at Ellingham under a different surname. The discovery destroys whatever was starting between them and reframes much of what he has said and done since she arrived. At the same time her parents, frightened by a death at the school and encouraged by their employer, decide to pull her out of Ellingham, giving her only days to finish what she has started.

Stevie proves that Hayes Major's death was not an accident: the dry ice was placed in the tunnel hours before the shoot, and the person who placed it was Element "Ellie" Walker, who had written the serial Hayes took credit for and had never been paid or acknowledged. Confronted in front of the house, Ellie runs, slips through a concealed opening into the passages beneath the campus, and disappears; the search does not find her. Stevie's parents then take her out of Ellingham and drive her home to Pittsburgh, with the 1936 case exactly where she found it and her friendship with David in ruins after the revelation about his father. The final historical chapters carry the past to its recorded end: Anton Vorachek is convicted and then shot dead on the courthouse steps, Alice is never recovered, and in October 1938 Albert Ellingham dies when his boat explodes on the lake below the school, leaving a riddle behind him and a fortune promised to whoever finds his daughter.

Stevie proves that Hayes Major's death was not an accident. The dry ice had been carried into the tunnel and left there long before the shoot, so the air was already unbreathable when he went in alone, and the person who put it there was Element "Ellie" Walker: she had written the online serial Hayes was famous for and had never been paid or credited for it. Confronted in front of the house, Ellie runs, gets through a concealed opening into the passages beneath the campus, and is not found. Stevie also learns that David Eastman is the son of Senator Edward King, the politician her own parents work for, which ends the fragile thing between them. Her parents then remove her from Ellingham and take her home to Pittsburgh with the historical case untouched. The 1936 chapters close the past as far as the record went: the anarchist Anton Vorachek is convicted of the crime and shot dead on the courthouse steps, Alice is never recovered, and in October 1938 Albert Ellingham is killed when his boat explodes on the lake below the school, leaving behind a riddle and a fortune promised to whoever finds his daughter.