Mara Louis; Girl of Mystery

by Timothy Paterson

destination, and checked into a bed & breakfast inn that Mr. Anderson had reserved for them. All of their expenses were paid by the Museum/historical society.

  After a traditional Virginia style dinner of baked ham and all of the fixings, Mara and her parents retired to their bedrooms for the rest of the evening.

  On Saturday morning, Mara was up before the sun had risen. She could not sleep for another minute. She was just too excited. She waited until 6:30 am before she dared to wake her parents.

  After a quick breakfast, they drove over to the Marshall Mansion Museum. When they arrived, they met Mr. Anderson, the curator of the museum, along with six other members of the historical society and a few of the museum staff.

  After introductions, Mara and her parents were taken on a tour of the mansion and the property. At the end of the tour, they were taken to the curator’s office, where Mara found the items that she had requested.

  On a desk were the original blueprints of the mansion, several books about the Marshall family and some old photos which showed the inside and outside of the mansion, taken over the last one hundred years or so. After Mara sifted though the items, she asked the curator for some privacy while she did her investigation.

  The first thing Mara did was to walk slowly around the property. She looked for anything that might seem out of place. Next, she carefully examined the outside walls of the mansion, which were made out of brick and stone.

  When Mara had finished with her outside investigation, she proceeded inside the mansion to continue her search.

  She started in the attic, looking for hidden doors, or loose boards. She found nothing.

  She then went from room to room, from the second floor to the first floor, and then into the small wine cellar under the kitchen, thoroughly looking for anything out of the ordinary. Mara came up empty handed.

  All of the rooms had polished hard wood floors, except for a large room on the first floor. It was in the center of the house and was used as a ballroom in the mansion’s earlier days. The room was covered with a very large Persian rug, which had seen better days.

  According to the original blueprints, the room was twenty-five feet by thirty feet and had a ten-foot ceiling.

  The room had no windows and had two doors leading into it.

  The room was completely bare, as the museum staff had not yet furnished it.

  Mara asked her father to help her measure the size of all the rooms. Mara wrote down all of the measurements in her notebook.

  There was something odd about the room, but Mara could not put her finger on what it was. As she slowly scanned the room, Mara saw something out of the corner of her eye. In one end of the room, she saw the faint outline of a six by six foot square impression in the Persian rug. She took off her shoes and slowly walked over to the corner of the room. With her bare feet, she detected a slight rise in the corner of the floor, where she had seen the square outline.

  Mara asked her father if he would please go find the curator, as well as the rest of the staff of the museum. When everyone was assembled, Mara asked Mr. Anderson if she could pull back a corner of the rug.

  After she got permission, Mara slowly pulled back the rug where the floor seemed to be a little higher than the rest of the room. Mara noticed that a ten-inch section of the rug was folded under, and was taped underneath the rug on all sides of the room.

  After Mara had rolled the carpet back six feet or so, she found what she was looking for. There was a separate section of flooring about six feet by six feet square.

  From her backpack, Mara took out a screwdriver and carefully pried up one corner of the piece of flooring.

  When she had lifted it up about four inches, a few members of the staff lifted the piece of wood off the floor, revealing a dark room beneath.

  Mara took out her flashlight and shined it down into the room. What she saw surprised herself, as well as everyone else in the room.

  There, in front of them, they saw a set of stairs leading down into a secret basement. Mara tested the stairs and since they seemed solid, she started down the steps, followed by her parents and the staff of the museum. One staff member brought down two battery-operated lanterns, which lit up the entire underground room. The room was three times the size of the ballroom above it, as it was as big as the entire first floor.

  The room was filled with antique furniture from different eras, dating back to the mid 1600’s, as well as several old trunks. Inside the trunks were items from the 1600’s, 1700’s and 1800’s and even a few things from the early 1900’s.

  There were sets of china and porcelain dishes, silver serving sets, crystal, and lots of well-preserved clothing spanning three centuries.

  There were trunks filled with old books, family bibles, old magazines and newspapers. One large trunk was filled with old historical photos of the state of Virginia, Charles City, and the Marshall family dating back to the 1860’s. There were several old clocks, watches and assorted timepieces dating back to the late 1600’s.

  All of the antique furniture was in excellent condition and dated from the 1600’s through the early 1900’s. In one corner of the room, Mara found a strongbox filled with silver and gold coins.

  One of the museum staff gave Mara a big hug and thanked her for finding the secret room. “We can use this furniture to furnish this house as it may have looked over the past three hundred years. This discovery is absolutely priceless.”

  Mara noticed that Mr. Anderson, the curator seemed to be searching for something specific. She asked him what he was looking for. He told Mara that he was looking for paintings. “The Marshall family supposedly had invested a lot of money in artwork over the past few hundred years, but no one recalls the family ever selling the collection. I thought that the paintings would be in this room, but I don’t see any.”

  Mara started thinking and after a few minutes, she told the curator that she had to check something, and then she would get back to him.

  Mara went back up the stairs to the ballroom and started going through her notebook and all of the notes that she had jotted down. She then looked at the original blueprints and suddenly, an idea came to her.

  Mara started going through the old photos of the house. When she got to a few photos of the ballroom, she took out her magnifying glass and looked closely at the photos. Then, she looked at the bottom of the rug, where part of the rug had been taped under.

  Mara stood up and started tapping the walls. From the sound she heard, Mara knew that she had solved the mystery of the lost paintings.

  She started yelling for Mr. Anderson to come back up the stairs to the ballroom. Everybody climbed the stairs back into the ballroom, to see what the excitement was all about.

  Mara was standing there with a big grin on her face. She could barely talk. “Mr. Anderson” she said, “I believe that I know where the missing paintings are.”

  When everybody quieted down, Mara carefully began explaining her theory. “When I pulled the Persian rug back, to reveal the hidden room, I noticed that a ten inch strip of the rug had been taped back around all sides. At first, I thought that when the rug was originally purchased, they found that it was too large, and rather than cut it down to fit the room, they decided to fold the edges underneath, so that the rug would fit the room. However, when I looked closely at the old photos of the ballroom, I noticed that this was the same rug in the photos, but in the old photos, I could see the border of the rug.’

  “My father and I measured all of the rooms in the house, because I was looking for a secret room on one of the main floors. When I compared the measurements that we took of this room, with the original blueprints, I found that this room had shrunk twenty inches in width and 20 inches in length, which explains why the edges of the rug were folded underneath.”

  “Now, since rooms can’t shrink, at least not that much
. Somebody would have had to make the room smaller on purpose. If you look closely at the paneling on these walls, you will see tiny screws holding the paneling on to the walls.”

  Mara was getting very excited and had to stop for a moment, to catch her breath, before continuing. “I believe that the last occupant of this house, the last surviving member of the Marshall family, John Marshall, became paranoid, and was fearful that he would be robbed.”

  “I also believe that he put up false walls to cover up the original walls where the paintings are still hanging. If I may have some tools, I’d like to prove my theory.”

  Mr. Anderson had a staff member bring a power driven screwdriver, and handed it to Mara.

  After Mara had taken out all of the screws she could reach, Mr. Anderson got on a ladder and removed the remaining screws. Other members of the staff held the sheet of paneling in place.

  When the last screw was removed, Mara and Mr. Anderson removed the sheet of paneling to reveal a two by four-frame wall sitting several inches in front of the true wall.

  There, hanging on the true wall, from ceiling to floor, and wall to wall were several paintings, just as Mara had predicted. The false wall framing was screwed into the floor and to the ceiling.

  Mr. Anderson looked like he was going to faint. Mara quickly got a chair for him to sit in, while someone got him a glass of water.