The Secret Staircase (A Wendover House Mystery Book 1)

by Jackson, Melanie

  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.

  Chapter 4

  I was up with the sun, never having really fallen asleep a
gain, 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.

  My eyes were delayed a moment at the porch’s screen door, which I could see through the window. It had remained open during the night so that the cat would have shelter. Unfortunately, the more energetic gusts of wind had brought rain inside to swell and stain the plank floor. That wasn’t good. The boards would need to be sealed before winter because even storm windows wouldn’t keep all the weather out. I made a note to mention this to Harris.

  I went back to the kitchen and began opening drawers under the work table, all the while keeping half an eye and both my ears fixed on the dark opening to the basement. Finally I found a flashlight. The casing was cracked and the beam was weak but it was better than the oil lamp, so I made do.

  Damp earth, dust, the nascent smell of decay. I hate that basement scent. The cat’s tracks were on the stairs, but so were others. Probably my great-grandfather’s, I realized, and shivered. The mud had dried so there was no knowing when they had been left—possibly a long time ago, I told myself, but….

  My parents were not imaginative people and if Grandma Mac was, I never saw any evidence of it, so I had not been raised to fear the dark or the things that might inhabit it. But I disliked this particular darkness and could all too easily imagine things lurking in it—ghosts and skeletons and ferocious rats.

  Still, it seemed better to go down the stairs in daylight and find out what was there than to wait for it to creep up some night and surprise me in bed.

  Wondering if I was being as stupid as all the women in the monster movies who go down to the basement when they know they shouldn’t, I pressed on until I was on the last stair and then stopped. I played the light around the room, examining it before I stepped onto the floor.

  The room was empty, just as Harris had said, not one skeleton or rat in sight. The floor was dirt and stone, the yard-sized sheets of paving rocks laid in a circular pattern that I felt I should recognize but couldn’t place. All I could think of was Greece and Crete and stories of labyrinths, though I didn’t think the pattern was quite right for that.

  Three walls were covered in shelves and a plywood bin was heaped with coal. The fourth wall had cupboard doors made of some kind of heavy wood. One at a time I pulled them open, revealing old crockery, antique tools like a carpet beater, a damaged storm shutter, some ancient canned goods so old that their contents were no longer identifiable, and one locked door that wouldn’t budge no matter how hard I pulled on the handle.

  By then more piqued then terrified, I went back upstairs and started searching the kitchen for a key. Eventually I found one, but either it was the wrong one or the doors were jammed, perhaps the wood warped by the damp, because I couldn’t get the last set of doors open.

  Defeated, I stepped back to regroup.

  In any event, the cat hadn’t come in that way, so the contents of an old cupboard didn’t really matter. It was just curiosity that drove me to want the door open—just to be sure about the lack of rats and bones. But that wouldn’t be happening right away so I needed to be patient and not pick up the rusty old ax and beat the door into kindling.

  “Okay, so what now?” I asked myself aloud. “How did the cat get in?”

  I didn’t feel any air currents around me to suggest a likely opening hidden in one of the other walls, but the storm had passed so perhaps that lack of air current was natural. Short of removing every cobwebbed item from every shelf and looking for a cat-sized opening in the walls behind the clutter, I wasn’t going to find where Kelvin had gained access. Was it really worth the effort?

  Before I could decide how ambitious I was feeling, there came a pounding at the front door. It was faint but persistent. I glanced at my watch and realized that it was probably Harris and that I was dusty and that my oatmeal might very well be cold.

  “Good morning,” I said, opening the door and then blinking at the stranger on the doorstep.

  He was a tall man, middle aged, pale, rectangular of face, and at the moment unsmiling. I recognized him from his author photos and felt a small flutter in my stomach.

  “Good morning,” he said politely but with less enthusiasm than I had shown. “I saw a light moving around last night and thought perhaps I should come by to see who was in the house.”

  “Tess MacKay,” I said, smiling and offering my hand. “I’ve inherited the house from my great-grandfather.”

  The sandy brows flew up but he took my hand and shook it once. I hoped he wouldn’t notice that it was still a little smudgy.

  “So Ladd finally found someone. That will upset some people on Goose Haven, though the fishermen will be happy enough. The betting pool at the chowder house is running heavily in favor of no heir ever being found.”

  “And you are Benjamin Livingston of Greyhome, the writer from away.”

  The face relaxed just a trifle and I was pleased. Everyone here seemed so serious. I thought my sense of humor had atrophied in the last few years, but these guys made me look like a jokester.

  “Away being Philadelphia.”

  “I’m from really away. I live in Minnesota.”

  “But you are a Wendover—that makes you a local. You even look like a Wendover. It’s rather uncanny.” This was news to me. I was tall and dark haired like my grandmother, but I wasn’t aware that this was a family “look.” “Has Ladd explained about how this is a wonderful place to live and that you must take up residency at once?”

  “Yes. I just fear that maybe our definitions of wonderful may vary slightly.”

  “Good luck convincing him of that. He very badly wants a Wendover in this house. A lot of the locals are very superstitious, you know. They think of Wendovers as being weather charms. Silly, of course, but with most of them I doubt you could knock that notion loose with a ballpeen hammer.”

  “Hm. Which one is the ballpe
en? I can never remember and I want to be sure I have the right one on hand.”

  A twinkle, a definite twinkle. I decided that I liked him. Why hadn’t he and my great-grandfather gotten along?

  “Would you care to come in for some breakfast? I have just made some oatmeal. It has cinnamon and apples so it should be edible.”

  I am not sure if my offer would have been accepted, but at that moment Harris Ladd crested the hill. My stare alerted my guest to the visitor and after glancing over his shoulder, he declined politely.

  “Morning, Ladd,” Benjamin said, now barely amiable but making it obvious that the cold shoulder was for Harris and not me. I got a friendlier nod though no smile, and then he was gone down the same path without another word.

  “Good morning, Tess. You passed a pleasant night?” Harris was dressed casually in chinos and windbreaker but somehow still managed to convey an old-fashioned formality.

  “Not entirely.”

  He began to frown.

  “The storm worried you?”

  “No. The cat decided to let himself into the basement and then into the house around two this morning.”

  “The cat was in the basement?” Now he was frowning in earnest. “But how can this be?”

  “I guess there is a cat door somewhere. I couldn’t find it though. It may take some hunting. The shelves down there are packed with junk.” My oatmeal was probably glue but I was still hungry so again made my offer of breakfast. “I’ve made some apple oatmeal, would you care to join me?”

  Harris hesitated but his jowls quivered in a telling manner, so I pressed him.

  “Is not the laborer worthy of his hire?” I asked, and earned an actual smile. Men were unbending right and left, before you knew it they would be breaking out in fits of jocularity and smiling hard enough to show some teeth. “And if it tastes ghastly you don’t have to eat it.”

  “I should be glad to join you.” He stepped inside. “Will I be laboring today? Have you decided to remain a while longer, or is my job to take you to the ferry?”