The Secret Staircase (A Wendover House Mystery Book 1) (5 page)

I noticed the smell of ozone and wondered if we would have lightning. Other than worrying about the roof leaking, I had no real concerns about a storm. No one was predicting a hurricane and I’d experienced heavy rain before.

Leaving the pot to tend to the peas itself, I took my lamp upstairs and chose a room to sleep in. The beds were all made up and they were each rather handsome, but I liked the one at the front of the house with the maroon and gold striped walls best and set about making a fire in the tiny grate. For a while it seemed that the coal would defeat me, but eventually I got it lit and by then enough time had passed that I was able to eat.

It would have been ridiculous to set up the dining room for a lonesome bowl of soup, though I was tempted because the pretty but mismatched hutches that lined one wall had all kinds of china and silver in them. But I chose the modest breakfast room where I lit a second lamp and placed it in the center of the small maple table. I could see well enough with just the one kitchen light, but the gloom was beginning to bother me. I realized that at some point there was a turning of mood from cheerful bemusement at cooking my dinner on an antique stove to a slight nervousness at being alone in a strange place with the night closing in. It took me a while to recognize this feeling because usually I am not nervous about anything except paying the bills.

Partly the oppression was the intense dark pressing on the windows. Though I live in a small town, we have streetlights so the dark is never complete. There were no other lights that I could see beyond one in an upstairs room of May House.

It was full dark by the time I set the table and quite late for my dinner, so I ate without shillyshallying and washed up the dishes. Though tired and lulled by the rain that had begun to fall, I decided that sleep would not come quite yet and so stopped in the library to select some reading material. The room, which had seemed very friendly in the daylight, now felt mysterious and perhaps even a little forbidding. It was also difficult to read titles by lamplight, so I gathered a few books at random to bring upstairs.

On the way through the parlor, I passed the spinet. I play piano and was looking forward to trying this older instrument, but not that night. It seemed wrong to make any noise once dark had fallen. I was too busy listening to strange sounds.

Not being as trusting as Harris, I locked the doors before I retired. It didn’t strike me at the time that this was a sign of anxiety. It was simply habit.

The bedroom smelled faintly of coal, but this was not a bad thing. I settled my lamp on a table and got ready for bed. I thought about the bathtub and its strange water heater and decided that I would save that treat for morning.

I checked the sheets for spiders and silverfish, but everything was very clean and smelled faintly of lavender. I snuggled into the blankets after pummeling the old pillows into a bolster and then opened a book. The bed curtains I ignored since they might well be dusty and it was not that cold or drafty.

The first book I opened was a history of Maine, not my usual bedtime reading but I was interested enough to pursue it. The thought occurred that if I lived there I would probably do this every night. I might, in time, actually get bored with this routine. Though I tried to imagine that retiring with the sun and reading into the night would get tedious, I couldn’t actually believe it. Most nights I worked late and worried. This was heaven.

*
 
*
 
*

My eyes opened, looking for danger before my conscious mind knew I was alarmed. There was a moment of disorientation before I realized that I was in my great-grandfather’s colonial bed with only the light from my watch and the wind for company.

The fire I had lit before bed had burned down, leaving only the faint smell of soot. The moon was near full, but still obscured by clouds so there was no more than a faint glow to show me where the windows were.

I listened. I looked at the shades of black. Nothing was there.
Nothing at all.
Whatever I had thought I heard or
felt, it wasn’t real
. My emotional alarm was probably just an aftereffect of long travel, a strange environment, and the suggestion from Harris Ladd that there was some kind of curse on the island.
And maybe a ghost or two.
Harris hadn’t said anything about ghosts but silences also have emotional overtones and his had been fraught. I would bet anything that there were ghost stories about Wendover House. Didn’t every old home have them?

These thoughts were all very rational and meant to be calming, but they didn’t slow my thudding heart. Reason would not fix this problem.

A flash at the corner of my eye.
I rolled my head.
Light on the window—
strobing
, distant.
The lighthouse of Goose Haven, I realized. Could that be what had awakened me?

Calm.
I needed to be calm. I had a cell phone. I had a signal. I wasn’t sure who to call in an emergency, but surely 9-1-1 would get me something. And there was Harris Ladd.
But only if I was desperate.
For some reason I did not want to appear ridiculous to him. Maybe because he already seemed inclined to treat me like I was slightly feebleminded. It was okay to respond to actual external stimuli but not imagination.

Enough.
I would not spend the rest of the night cowering in bed, listening for clanking chains and werewolf howls. I would get up and assure myself that nothing was wrong and then go back to sleep. It took an act of will but I got out of the sheets. The phone gave me enough light to find the matches and light the lamp. I was careful with the glass shade but it still made what seemed to be a great deal of noise as I lifted it on and off. Why the hell weren’t there flashlights on the end tables? Oil lamps were dangerous.

I didn’t tiptoe but I walked softly. My socks were still on and they helped muffle my steps when I left the rug beside the bed. Down the stairs I
went,
cell phone in one hand and lamp in the other. I walked to one side of the steps, hoping it would minimize creaking. No one was there, of course. But still I wanted to be silent.

Step.
Listen.
Step.
Listen. I stopped on the landing and held my breath. But there wasn’t the smallest sound beyond the wind
razoring
through the garden and the last violent spatters of rain at the
uncurtained
window and the thudding of my heart. The house and I held our breaths and shuddered at the brief assault, but nothing else happened.

Ghosts, I thought again, but banished the word immediately. I was ashamed it even crossed my mind and the violence with which I rejected the possibility showed me how frightened I really was.

Down the steps I went on tiptoe until I reached the bottom. Then I smelled it. Felt it. Saw it in the lamp’s brief wavering light.
Fresh air, a small drought creeping over the floor and then up my body as it encountered the obstacle of my legs and decided to explore my trembling body.

It was coming from the kitchen.

It was harder to make the legs move after that, but move they did until I reached the doorway. Breath held, I lifted the lamp high and peered into the gloom. Nothing stirred inside the circle of light. I could hear the generator out on the porch laboring to keep my eggs cool. The smell of pea soup lingered in the air, first stronger then softer as it rotated through the room on the current that shouldn’t be there. I advanced a single step so that I was completely inside the kitchen and began to turn slowly, lamp held high—stove, sink, work table, blackened chimney oven. Open basement door. I could see the edge of it beyond the fireplace chimney.

I almost screamed.
Would have if terror hadn’t frozen my breath.
Fortunately, while in the thrall of terror, my intruder stepped into the pool of shivering light and I identified him.

His green eyes were wide and held fear equal to my own.

The cat.
Kelvin.
Somehow the cat had gotten into the basement and had come upstairs. The door had probably not been properly latched and being a large cat, he managed to get the heavy boards to open. That’s probably what I had heard, the door banging against the chimney.

It was a cat. Not a ghost—a cat.

Finally I remembered that I needed to breathe.

“Here kitty.
Here Kelvin.”
My voice was husky with residual fear. Setting the lamp and my phone on the table, I knelt down into the current of fresh air and put out a hand. “Good kitty. It’s okay.”

After a moment the cat came forward and rubbed his head briefly against my fingers. Then, his fear forgotten, he sauntered for the pantry. Exhaling softly, I followed. There was already a dish for
crunchies
out on the porch, but it was cold and wet and dark out there, and nothing would make me unlock the nice, thick door that was holding back the windy night. Instead I got out a new dish for kibble and a second one for water. They were
Haviland
china. I hoped my ancestors didn’t start rolling in their graves at their debased use, but they were mine now, and perhaps the cat had more claim to them than anyone else did.

Kelvin gulped his food and I wondered how long he had gone without eating. I left him to his meal and, taking the lamp, went back to the basement door. The cold I felt from the dark mouth was not supernatural in origin. It was just a damp basement, but I closed the door firmly, making sure it latched. I looked for a lock but could find none.

Of course there wasn’t one, I lectured myself. This was the only entrance and exit to a subterranean room that had no outside access. Locking it would be silly and even dangerous. There wasn’t a lock on the kitchen or dining room door either and for the same reason.

Except the basement was creepy and should be locked. And how did I know there was no outside access? The cat had gotten in there somehow.

Okay. Reason it through. There wasn’t any outside access—a human could use—because if there had been, the previous owners would have put a lock on the door. There was a lock on the front door and a lock on the back. Ergo there would be a lock here if there was some way into the house.

Still, I wasn’t entirely comforted by this logic and there was absolutely no way that I was going down to the basement to search for a door while it was dark, so I went to the dining room and dragged out a heavy wooden chair. It wedged nicely under the latch.

This task complete, my adrenaline ebbed away. All at once exhausted, I turned back to the pantry to see if I could lure the cat up to the bedroom with me. This was a night for company.

Damn, I thought, retrieving the lamp. I had a cat. I’d meant to bring home some souvenirs of my trip—maybe a t-shirt or some postcards—but not an animal.

Should I bring him home? Could I bring him home? It was all feeling very complicated.

I was up with the sun, never having really fallen asleep again, in spite of Kelvin snoring on the blankets beside me.

Unable to lay there any longer, I watched the sun fight free of the water and the few remaining clouds. My first and foremost desire was for a hot bath, so I sat down with the detailed written instructions left in the tub and figured out how to use the strange water heater. It seemed to work like a giant electric tea kettle. Like a tea kettle, I submerged no part of my body in the water while it was heating.

My bath wasn’t deep, but it was warm enough and I felt more able to face life once I had washed away the last traces of the night’s fear sweat.

The face that looked back at me from the mirror though was not one I had seen before. Of course it was my face, but it seemed to have grown thinner, paler just overnight, and I had hollows under my eyes. I told myself it was just a lack of sleep and that old mirrors were sometimes imperfect, distorting.

Though I was still feeling very
henhearted
, I went downstairs, started some oatmeal and dried apples, and then went to look at the basement. If the cat could get in then other animals could too. I didn’t know what lived on the island besides birds, but I was pretty sure I didn’t want the local animal kingdom’s representatives living in the basement.

Kelvin followed me to the kitchen but was happy to stay in the pantry and eat his breakfast so I was on my own for exploring.

I stood by the chimney listening and thought I heard a sly scratching. Kelvin appeared immediately and stared fixedly, gaze aimed upward into the flu.

Birds, I thought, with a welcome blast of common sense. Someone had built a nest in the chimney. It would need to be cleaned before winter.

The basement waited while I dithered. It still seemed sinister to me, but what was sleep deprivation and what was valid judgment I couldn’t really say. Some people are procrastinators, but I’m not. Especially if there is something unpleasant that needs doing. Unable to delay any longer, I went to the door and listened. Dragging the chair aside, I opened the door and peered down the stairs that disappeared in the smelly gloom. Even with the morning sun filling up the room, I was going to need a light to see anything downstairs. There had to be something better than the oil lamps and I looked around hopefully.