The Secret Staircase (A Wendover House Mystery Book 1)

by Jackson, Melanie

  “The first house was partially burned during a bad lightning storm. It was when Abercrombie’s son died.”

  “The one who stayed on the island?”

  “Yes. A terrible tragedy. Only the daughter, who was away at the time, survived the fire. The name Wendover would have gone extinct but she was finally persuaded to return and her husband agreed to take the family name. It was said that he was….” Mr. Ladd frowned.

  “Yes?”

  “A smuggler and pirate and wanted by the law in New Hampshire. Of course, there’s always been some smuggling hereabouts. Liquor mostly since it was outlawed for more than a century and certain men will always want what they shouldn’t have.” He sounded a bit prissy and I began to relax.

  I couldn’t help but notice the parallel with my grandmother’s life. Maybe Wendover women made a habit of marrying disreputable men.

  “That’s colorful. How did they meet—the daughter and the pirate?”

  “No one knows.” The words were growing more repressive and I was betting the stories of that romance were pretty racy. I would have to look them up. Surely someone had written an account of this affair. It was too wonderful to ignore.

  “Taking his wife’s name was unusual though, wasn’t it?”

  “Very, but convenient when he was a wanted man. And perhaps he thought the Wendover name would protect him if he stayed on the island.”

  “Protect him from what?” I asked and was immediately sorry.

  “From arrest and prosecution, of course.” I didn’t ask for clarification.

  Mr. Ladd opened the door with a strange ceremonious air and then handed me the old-fashioned iron key that weighed about as much as a boat anchor. I would not be adding it to my key ring. We paused before entering, both of us waiting for some invitation I guess. Technically, I was the owner, so though it felt very odd I gestured the attorney inside.

  I lost interest in the smuggler as soon as I stepped inside. It was a relief that the furnishings were not nautical. There were nine rooms in the main house, spacious, nicely appointed with antiques, or reproductions that looked so authentic I couldn’t tell the difference. The place seemed a little overburdened with clocks, which would be noisy if they were all wound and ticking away at the same time, but that was the only off-note in an otherwise charming house. There were no obvious signs of damage to the walls or ceiling and no broken windows. The floors were level and the walls seemed square, suggesting the foundation was sound, so I hoped any repairs would be minor.

  Every room had a fireplace. The openings were small and the fireboxes shallow. They had either a central tablet in the frieze with flanking columns or ornamental pilasters, or else lovely painted tiles with either nature scenes or indigenous animals on them. The hearths were clean but clearly the fireplaces were used and often. There were only oil lamps and candles on the various tables. It soon became apparent that the twenty-first century did not matter, or even exist, in Wendover House.

  I was also struck by how tidy everything was. It would have been natural for some dust to have collected since my great-grandfather’s death, but the house might have been cleaned the day before.

  Of course, maybe it was cleaned the day before. If so, it was a thoughtful gesture from my great-grandfather’s attorney.

  “Plenty of coal and kindling wood,” Mr. Ladd murmured as I peered into what really was a coal scuttle in what would probably be called the front parlor. I murmured something that sounded like agreement but was really closer to you’ve got to be kidding.

  “Kitchen’s this way. It is a little old fashioned but terribly charming.” I thought the understatement was a sign of trepidation. I don’t know many women who prefer charming to practical when it comes to kitchens.

  A quick glance showed me that the original kitchen had been larger, but at some point the pantry had been installed along with windows, probably to provide ventilation. The few appliances were also new, replacing the old oven which had been built into the fireplace. It was also doubtful that the oak settle was original either, since this was probably the domain of servants and resting on the job would not have been encouraged.

  Mr. Ladd probably expected me to be dismayed at the antique Magic Chef gas stove, but Grandma’s first home—in Minnesota—had had a similar model and she had taught me to cook on it. On Sundays I would stand on a chair beside her and help make flapjacks. I was charmed. Which I told him while I looked in the bins and found flour, brown rice, and dried peas. Sugar was in a canister marked SUGAR on a battered work table made of what looked like pine. There was a copper kettle beside the stove, but everything else was tucked away into cupboards in labeled crocks. One said dried apples. I didn’t look then, but checked later and it did indeed contained withered apples. There was a lovely crystal decanter in there too. A quick whiff was enough to identify the contents as whisky rather than sherry or brandy.

  There was also a sack of dry cat food. I made a note to hunt for a bowl so I would know where to feed the cat. Experience with neighbors’ pets had taught me that they were creatures of habit and apt to take exception to having their plans changed.

  Appliances were limited, but there was an Edison Electric top monitor. It was an all steel refrigerator—again not unknown to me though an antique. Even with the radiator coil on top—which rather looked like a cookie jar—it was still shorter than I am. It was small but adequate for one or two people. It was just as well not to have anything larger because it ran off a generator, which was kept outside on the screened-in porch. The generator was not an antique and made very little noise when Mr. Ladd started it up. I suppressed a sigh. I should have guessed that there was no electricity on the island.

  And no phone. But that was less annoying because I had a cell phone. No way to charge it, but I would be fine for the night.

  “There are adapters that will work with the generator,” Mr. Ladd said when he saw me checking for a signal. “Your great-grandfather had one but I don’t know where it is. We’ll get one for you. If you stay,” he added when I looked at him with raised brows.

  “Water?”

  “From a well.” He tucked my eggs and soda pop into the refrigerator. The bread he put into an old bread box. He seemed at ease in the kitchen, treating the room with familiarity.

  “Hand pumped?” I asked, by then expecting the worst, though there was a sink and what I assumed was a faucet. It was copper and looked more like the swing arm from a standing lamp. In fact, it looked exactly like an inverted swing arm from a standing lamp, minus the light bulb.

  “No. And there is a kind of water heater in the bathroom where there is a nice big tub—one of the old claw-foot kind. You just need to turn it on before you bathe if it’s after dark. It is only a little noisy.”

  An old-fashioned tub—that meant cast iron which would suck the heat out of the bath water almost instantly. I was glad it was summer. Bathing in winter could be a penance.

  “No shower?”

  “No.”

  “Flushing toilets?”

  “Of course!” He sounded offended. “There’s a shared leach field used by all three houses.”

  “Where does that door lead?” It wasn’t the pantry. I’d already seen it. It was the only door he hadn’t opened and it was heavy and wrapped with large iron hinges.

  “The basement. It’s where the coal is stored, but I assure you that there is no need to go down there as the scuttles are filled. It is really more of a coal and root cellar and empty now.”

  “Don’t worry. Basements hold few charms for me,” I assured him, eyeing the attractive oaken settle on the opposite wall and wishing that I could sit down and have a cup of tea.

  “There is something out back I want you to see.” Mr. Ladd was beginning to smile and the easing of worry from his face made him look a lot more attractive.

  We stepped out through a screened porch with a door that stuck and a workbench cluttered with gardening tools. We advanced about fifteen feet out into what had on
ce been an herb and vegetable garden and he turned and looked up at the roof.

  “Mind the plants. They’re mostly slime now.”

  “What are those … not solar panels?”

  “Yes. But not for electricity. It heats water.”

  “Oh.” I felt myself beginning to smile too as I looked at the zigzags of garden hose twisty-tied into wood frames. All at once I found that maybe I did want to know something about my great-grandpa.

  “It’s all chewing gum and bailing wire,” Mr. Ladd warned. “Your great-grandfather was a bit of mad m—scientist. The gaumy thing works fine as long as it doesn’t get too hot. If it gets too warm a valve sticks. It’s there on the right where the ladder is.” I looked through the rungs of a very old wooden ladder and there was some kind of box that had smudgy fingerprints all around it. “It’s easy to pull out, but for heavensakes don’t go up there while it’s spraying water. Wait until dark or do it the next morning.”

  “Does it happen a lot?”

  “Ayuh. It’s what killed his garden. I came the day after he died and the scrid was stuck in. Boiling water was everywhere. Smelled like the worst vegetable soup ever made.”

  I had an urge to laugh and decided to go ahead and giggle.

  “I guess it runs in the family. Grandma was always doing home repairs on her dentures and her typewriter, and my dad—” I stopped, remembering that it had been a home-design fuel injector that killed both him and my mom. “Well, I’ll have to hope the day stays cool. I don’t really want a baptism by boiling water.”

  “You’ll be fine today. The heat has passed and it will be cooling off soon. You have a knack for coal fires if it turns cold enough? Mind it needs to be pretty darn cold or the chimney won’t draw.”

  “Yes, I remember.” I actually hadn’t seen a coal fire since I was about eight, but there didn’t seem to be much to it beyond feeding it coal as needed. It started the same as a wood fire with paper and kindling, though hardwood worked better because it burned hotter. Pinecones were excellent fire starters, but they put pitch up the chimney and made it more dangerous to use, so we had them only rarely.

  Mr. Ladd—Harris—beamed happily. I had passed some kind of test.

  “Most outlanders don’t understand about these kinds of things. They don’t appreciate that the islands are old, and the families too. Of course we get some from away every now and again but mostly we keep on with our own ways of thinking and doing and believing. But you’ll do nicely here, I can tell.”

  “My grandmother was old fashioned,” I said and let it go. No need to mention that she had used old appliances and had coal fires because she was poor for most of her adult life. Because she preferred to run away from home and marry a con man rather than speak to her family again. I changed the subject. “It’s a shame about the garden. It looks like there used to be tomatoes. And that’s basil. It would have made a nice salad.”

  “I suppose it’s too late in the season to replant,” Harris said regretfully. “But there is always next year.”

  I nodded but didn’t comment. He had it fixed in his head that I was staying. I was only about ten percent persuaded. Of course, that was ten percent more than I had been when I got off the boat at Great Goose that morning.

  “Mind that line of shrubs there,” Harris instructed. “That is the end of the yard. There is a stack-stone wall beyond that is mostly sound, so there is no way to accidently fall unless you crawl out too far on the ledge. But go carefully anyway. Once in a while a bit of the cliff gives way after a storm.”

  “Don’t worry. I have a touch of vertigo. I won’t be crawling anywhere that’s up in the air.”

  Feeling observed I looked over my shoulder and found myself the subject of a green-eyed stare. We had been followed. The gray cat with a crucifix of black fur on his chest and arms was sitting tall on what looked like the base for a statue.

  “What did you say the cat’s name was?” I asked.

  Mr. Ladd hesitated.

  “I believe he’s called Kelvin.”

  “My great-grandfather named the cat after himself?”

  “No. After his father. All the men in your family, since Abercrombie, have been called Kelvin. A fortune-teller told Abercrombie that the name would bring good fortune. Your great-grandfather was the ninth of that name.”

  There was no reason that this eccentricity should bother me, but it did. My family sounded extremely superstitious and even irrational.

  “Here kitty-kitty. Here, Kelvin,” I tried, kneeling down, but the cat shifted its gaze to Harris and laid back its ears. He came no closer.

  Harris didn’t try to cajole the cat. The antipathy was apparently mutual. Maybe he was a dog person.

  “Well, if you are set, I should be going. You have my number if you need anything and I’ll be back in the morning, say around nine?”

  Again with the assuming. I hadn’t agreed to stay the night, though I knew that I was going to do it. After all, I should spend one night in the old family home before I sold it. And I would sell it if a buyer could be found. I was seventy-five percent sure.

  Chapter 3

  I couldn’t find the cat’s bowl so set out a new one full of crunchies and one of water on the back porch. If the cat was hungry enough, he’d come and eat even in the wrong place.

  On my own, I explored the house at leisure. It was excitingly old. I had never been in anything half so ancient. A place where so many people had died should have been filled with a heavy atmosphere, but it wasn’t. Maybe because it had a cat and that made it feel still lived in.

  In addition to the front parlor and kitchen on the ground floor, there was a dining room with a table that seated twelve, a library haunted by the smells of tobacco and leather and with a desk so massive it could withstand a hurricane, and a breakfast room that had probably once been a back parlor. Upstairs were four large bedrooms and two closer to closet size that had probably housed servants.

  There was also a very narrow, very dark stair leading to an attic, but like the basement, I found this held little charm, especially when the sun began to set and the orange light picked out the dust and cobwebs. Though the pleasant odor of lumber lingered in the air, no cleaning had been done up there, not for a long while since there were no footprints in the thin layer of dust. So I closed the narrow door on the trunks and boxes, saving it for the morning. Or never.

  There were oil lamps all through the house so I lit one from the parlor and carried it into the kitchen. Food choices were limited and I paused unhappily while I debated the merits of a can of stew or chicken noodle soup. Then I noticed another bin that proved to hold sprouting onions. There was dried basil and thyme and some barley, and lots and lots of dried split peas and several glass jars of pickled shallots and onion marmalade. I decided to make soup—without pickled shallots. There were no carrots or celery, but I found a can of new potatoes so I diced them up and threw them into the pot too. The soup was aromatic and made the house feel more inhabited and less like something on a historic tour. The can I rinsed and set aside; I would have to ask Harris how trash was handled. It probably went out on the ferry.

  Around me, the house grew dark but also noisier as it settled in the cooling air which moved rowdily through the screened porch and shook the window frames when it found them. The door from the porch to the garden could be latched open, which I did, hoping the cat would shelter inside if it rained. A look at the near-empty bowls near an old Adirondack chair told me he had stopped by for a snack, so I hoped for the best.

  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 abou
t 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.