by Laura Childs
“Try and figure out if there’s a hidden entrance,” Drayton said.
“More like an exit, an escape door.”
Drayton pulled his copy of the floor plan out of his jacket pocket and unfolded it. “Here, shine your light on what we surmise is the basement plan.”
Theodosia complied.
“So if this is the bottom of the staircase, then what we’re looking for should be on the opposite wall,” Drayton said.
“Works for me.”
But nothing ever comes easy. The floor was packed earth, and the ceiling was low and confining. Cobwebs swept their heads. And when they took a few tentative steps, they were confronted by piles of junk.
“What is all this stuff?” Drayton wondered. “And are there more lights?”
“The answer to both questions is I don’t know,” Theodosia said.
“Shine your light over to where we think that wall is,” Drayton said, gesturing nervously.
Theodosia’s flashlight barely pierced the basement’s darkness, but what it did reveal were several old wooden trunks, an antique birdcage, some stone statuary that might have come from a garden, and a rack of clothing that had to be many decades old.
Drayton put a hand out, brushed against a piece of clothing, and immediately sneezed.
“Dusty down here,” he said.
“It’s awful.”
Slowly, a step at a time, they eased their way through the maze of boxes and cartons that were stacked head high and greatly impeded their movement. Picking a path forward was slow going.
“Shine your light over this way, will you?” Drayton asked. “I think I see something.”
Theodosia flicked her small beam of light to the right to suddenly reveal a set of eyes peering at them out of the darkness.
“Dear Lord!” Drayton cried. “Is that a child sitting down here in the dark?” He sounded like he was ready to jump out of his socks.
“Take it easy, Drayton, it’s just a doll.” Theodosia studied it carefully. “And by the look of its clothing and porcelain face, an antique doll at that.”
Drayton shuddered. “Ugh, its face is cracked, and it’s got weird eyes. Frightening eyes. They follow me when I move.”
“Then don’t look at it and don’t talk yourself into a state of blind panic,” Theodosia cautioned. She wasn’t having a jolly time down here, either. The basement was dark and scary, with a terrible musty odor.
They kept moving forward, bumping into things, then cautiously easing their way around them.
“We should be getting close to that far wall,” Theodosia said, even though she felt as if she was whistling in the dark. Hoping they were almost there.
A loud CLANK rang out followed by a scuffling sound. Scurrying rats? No, it was Drayton.
“Ouch! What did I just run into? What on earth is this old metal table?” Drayton asked, obviously perturbed. “Or perhaps it’s not a table at all but some other strange apparatus.”
“Let me see.”
Drayton was flailing around with his hands. “It’s got holes in it.”
As Theodosia flashed her light toward him, her throat went dry as the Gobi Desert. “Drayton, it’s an old-fashioned embalming table!”
Drayton jumped back as if it were writhing with poisonous snakes.
“Sweet Fanny Adams, this really was a funeral parlor!” Drayton turned toward Theodosia, and his shoulders jerked convulsively, as if he were about to make a run for it. “That’s the last straw. We’re out of here. I don’t like this snooping business one bit.”
“But we’re making progress, don’t you see?”
“By poking around in a place that used to be a mortuary? No, I don’t see any sense in it at all.”
“Wait a minute. Here, give me the floor plan and you take the flashlight. Hold it steady now,” Theodosia said. “I want to check . . .”
“What?” Drayton asked. He was both frightened and impatient.
Theodosia bent over the plan, studying it. “This notation here, Drayton. Do you know what porte du cercueil means?”
“No, and at this point I don’t think I want to know.”
“It could be something important.”
Theodosia pulled out her iPhone, hoping it would work down here—it did—and hastily typed in porte du cercueil.
“Drayton!” Theodosia was almost incredulous. Though it wasn’t easy to read the screen in the dim light, she could read it well enough. “It means casket door!”
Drayton’s face was a pale oval in the glow of the flashlight. “Seriously?” His voice trembled. “Where is it?” He was nervous but also a tiny bit curious.
“It has to be . . .” Theodosia moved forward cautiously. “Over this way.” As she reached out, her fingertips brushed against a damp stone wall. She recoiled immediately. “Ugh. I think I found something.”
“Found what?”
Now her fingers tentatively touched the wall again, then moved along the cool, bumpy stones until she felt a large piece of metal set flush against the wall. “I think I found the casket door.”
Feeling bolder now, Theodosia continued to explore.
“And I think there might be a latch.” Her fingers moved expectantly across the metal. “Holy Christmas, Drayton, there is a secret exit. Like, right here!”
“Does it open?”
“Aim the light over.”
Drayton pointed the light, revealing a rusted hunk of metal that was hinged at the bottom and had a strange-looking latch at the top.
“We’ve got to try and see if it opens,” Theodosia said.
She jerked and fiddled with the latch, but it seemed to be stuck tight.
“Here, let me try,” Drayton said.
But after a few minutes of fussing and jiggling, they still weren’t making any headway.
Theodosia wasn’t to be deterred. “Maybe if we . . .” She balled up her fist and gave the hunk of metal a hard smack.
There was a sudden loud CREAK, like rusted hinges that hadn’t been oiled in decades. Then . . .
“Watch out!” Theodosia cried as they both jumped back.
A loud, ominous CLANK rang out as a large metal flap dropped open. It was like a giant mailbox opening in the side of the wall.
They both stared into the dark, gaping hole. It was a perfect rectangle, about five feet wide and four feet high.
“Look at that! The opening is just wide enough and high enough to slide a casket in and out,” Theodosia cried. She was breathless with excitement.
Drayton peered into the dark hole. “It’s like gazing into the pit of hell.”
They both let that remark percolate in their brains for a moment. Then Theodosia said, “No, Drayton, I think this is how our killer escaped!”
19
Back upstairs, the place was totally deserted. The guests had left, so had all the fortune-tellers, literary characters, and Heritage Society folks who’d been minding the store.
Good, Theodosia thought as they quickly flipped off all the lights. After a quick check and a callout of “Anybody here?” they stepped outside and locked the front door behind them.
Then it was a mad scramble around to the back of the old mansion to locate the outside exit for that coffin door.
Of course nothing ever comes easy.
“It’s a mess back here. Overgrown shrubbery, brambles, and some kind of thorn bush,” Drayton complained. “And the fact that it’s dark as a coal mine makes our task even more difficult. I can’t imagine where that coffin door is.”
“We have to try,” Theodosia said. “Here, you hold the Maglite, and I’ll scrunch in between these bushes.”
“Easier said than done,” Drayton declared as he watched Theodosia wedge herself into the shrubbery and try her darndest to get closer to the foundation.
“I thin
k I’m . . . No, maybe I need a push,” Theodosia said. She was huffing and puffing now, caught tight in what was a giant, gnarly hedge. “I’ve got to . . .”
SNAP. POP.
“. . . break some of these branches. Then I think I can squeeze through.”
“Better you than me,” Drayton mumbled.
“I’m almost in,” Theodosia said. “I just need to . . .” She inhaled sharply, bulldozing forward with all her might, and finally popped on through. “Okay, I’m in.”
“What do you see?”
“Nothing. It’s like being lost in an English maze back here. Pass the flashlight over, will you?”
“Here you go,” Drayton said as he stuck his arm through the brambles and passed her the light. “Ouch.”
“You okay?”
“Only that I was practically punctured by a bramble,” he said. “Now do you see anything?”
“Hang on a minute. Okay, yes. It’s muddy back here, and the ground is all churned up. Like someone was back here recently.”
“Maybe Sunday night? While everyone was staring at the ghastly figure of poor Willow, the perpetrator was getting away?” Drayton said.
“That’s exactly what I’m thinking,” Theodosia said.
“But do you see where the casket door opens out?” Drayton asked.
Theodosia crouched down and ran the light up and down the side of the house. “I don’t see anything yet.”
“Keep trying.”
“I will, but I’ve got all of eight inches to maneuver in back here. Maybe if I . . .”
The rest of her words were lost to Drayton.
“Theo?” Drayton said. “Are you still there? Are you all right?”
When Theodosia spoke next, her voice came from ten feet away from where she’d been standing.
“It’s here Drayton,” she said excitedly. “I found it. The casket door. It’s concealed extremely well. There’s a kind of crumbly plaster caked all over the outside of it, so it looks as if it’s part of the foundation. Probably done after it ceased to be used.”
“But it’s the door?”
“Has to be because it’s pretty much the same proportions as the door in the basement.”
“Very clever,” Drayton said.
“Okay, I’m coming out.” And then, “This is big. We have to tell Timothy.”
* * *
* * *
Timothy Neville lived in baronial splendor in an Italianate mansion on Archdale Street some three blocks from the Bouchard Mansion. Theodosia and Drayton wasted no time in rushing to his house, which wasn’t really a house at all, but a three-and-a-half-story riot of cupolas, dormers, balconies, eaves, tall narrow windows, and double doors. A veritable wedding cake of a house.
“Do you think Timothy is still awake?” Theodosia asked.
Drayton lifted the brass boar’s head knocker to the right of the front door and let it drop against the metal plate. A booming echo sounded deep within Timothy’s home.
“We’ll soon find out,” he said.
A minute later, Timothy Neville opened his front door. He was wearing—and this was God’s honest truth—a maroon smoking jacket with his family crest embroidered on the breast pocket, and gray wool trousers.
Drayton, who favored conservative tweedy garb, wasn’t the least bit fazed by this. Theodosia, on the other hand, could barely contain the urge to ask Timothy if he’d had a recent invitation to pose for the British version of GQ.
No. There’s no joking around tonight. I’ve got to stick to the business at hand.
“We have news,” Drayton said.
“Then you’d better come in,” Timothy said.
He led them through a large entryway where a Greek statue of some minor deity held sway, and into a side parlor. There, enormous mirrors with gilded frames, antique lamps, a crystal chandelier, pale-green silk wallpaper, and fine furniture greeted them. A fire blazed in the fireplace. Over the mantel was an oil portrait of Timothy’s grandmother that had been done by George Whiting Flagg, the renowned portrait artist. The atmosphere in the room was elegant and luxurious.
When Timothy was seated in a tufted blue silk armchair and Theodosia and Drayton sat opposite him on a matching sofa, Timothy said, “Now what’s your news? Or, more likely, our newest problem?”
“We just discovered that the Bouchard Mansion was once used as a funeral home,” Theodosia said.
“Truly?” Timothy frowned. “I’ve never heard that before.”
“What’s even more disconcerting is the fact that we discovered a kind of exit door in the basement,” Drayton said.
“The exit door Drayton is referring to is technically known as a casket door,” Theodosia said. “It’s noted as such on the old architectural plans.”
Timothy stared at her, looking more than a little confused.
“A casket door is an opening that allowed caskets to be slid in and out,” Theodosia explained. “The bodies were embalmed in the basement, then put into caskets and slid out the casket door to, um, probably the hearse. Or taken to whatever room in the old house served as a funeral parlor.”
“Think of it like a coal chute,” Drayton said. “Only for bodies.”
Timothy’s face slowly crumpled into a look of angst. “If there’s a hidden door then it must have served as an escape route for Willow’s killer.”
“That’s our theory, yes,” Theodosia said, hating that their discovery was causing Timothy so much additional pain. “We think that’s exactly why Willow’s killer got away undetected.”
“I’d no idea such a door existed. Then again, I don’t think anyone was aware the old place had been used as a funeral home,” Timothy said in a hoarse voice.
“Ellis Bouchard knew,” Theodosia said. “He’s the one who told me about it.”
“Did he now?” Timothy said.
They sat for a few moments lost in thought, listening to the pop and crackle of the fireplace.
Finally, Drayton spoke. “Well, someone besides Bouchard could have figured the casket door out as well. I hate to bring this up, but it’s possible the killer is someone who works at the Heritage Society. I mean, they’re the folks who readied the old mansion, so they were undoubtedly in and out at all hours of the day and night.”
“Someone could have stumbled upon it,” Theodosia said. “That is a distinct possibility.”
“You think someone from the Heritage Society could have . . . ?” Timothy touched a hand to the side of his face. “Dear Lord, no. It’s . . . too horrible to even contemplate.”
“Did Willow spend a lot of time at the Heritage Society?” Theodosia asked.
“Recently, she did. Almost every day. Using our reference library as she worked on her books,” Timothy said.
“So everyone knew who she was,” Theodosia said. “And maybe . . .” She stopped short of what she was about to say.
“And maybe what?” Timothy asked. “Maybe someone noticed her diamond earrings?”
“Could have happened that way,” Theodosia said. “Did she wear the diamonds often?”
“Often enough,” Timothy said.
“Of course there are any number of outsiders who also knew Willow,” Drayton said. “Who also knew about the diamonds.”
“It’s also possible it was someone extremely close to Willow,” Theodosia said.
“Don’t,” Drayton said to her sharply.
“I think I pretty much have to,” Theodosia replied.
“What are you two dithering about?” Timothy asked.
“I hate to bring this up, but there’s an outside chance that Robert Vardell might be involved,” Theodosia said.
Timothy looked suddenly defiant. “No, he can’t be. Please don’t even plant that seed of doubt in anyone’s mind.”
“We have to look at the facts,” Theodosia
said. “Vardell was familiar with Willow’s suite of diamonds. And now the diamonds are gone, and he’s inherited a very expensive home.”
“But they were in love!” was Timothy’s vehement response.
“Then why wasn’t Willow wearing her engagement ring at the book signing Sunday night?” Theodosia asked.
Timothy was caught without an answer. “I . . . I don’t know. She loved that ring. It was usually on her finger.”
“And where’s the ring now?” Theodosia asked. “We checked Willow’s apartment fairly carefully Monday night. If we didn’t find the ring then, it probably wasn’t there.”
“I don’t know,” Timothy said. He seemed to grow more and more flustered as the conversation went on.
Drayton noticed Timothy’s unease and decided to step in.
“What about Henry Curtis?” Drayton asked. “He sent Willow a kind of love note. He was notably absent from tonight’s visitation, and he failed to show up for work at the haunted house.”
“That could all be damning evidence,” Timothy said.
Theodosia leaned forward. “It could be. But here’s the tricky thing. We have a number of possible suspects.”
Timothy gave a slow nod as he gazed at her. “Yes?”
“We know that Ellis Bouchard is in dire financial trouble,” Theodosia said. “So who knows what he’s capable of doing? Allan Barnaby knew nothing about the novel Willow had written, so that’s highly suspicious right there. It’s even indicative of a huge crack in their relationship. Henry Curtis, one of your interns, wrote Willow a love note, but now he’s—I don’t know—disappeared, skipped town, hiding out somewhere? And, yes, we have to throw Robert Vardell’s name into the mix as well. Whenever a woman is murdered, it’s generally the boyfriend or husband who comes under suspicion and, I might add, is the person the police most fixate on. And then, I hate to keep harping on this, but there’s an entire cast of characters at the Heritage Society. Any one of whom could hold an angry grudge against you, be in deep financial trouble, or have coveted Willow’s diamonds in the worst way possible.”
