The Secret Staircase (A Wendover House Mystery Book 1)

by Jackson, Melanie

  Harris opened the Mickle’s Emporium door for me and I stepped inside the shadowy shop of old things and new things which looked old. The creaking floors were hand-pegged like they were in Wendover House, though these boards were far more battered and they had never enjoyed a coat of wax.

  Morris Mickle, the proprietor, was introduced and after a nod, Harris set about explaining what I wanted. Morris had a lovely soft voice but he used it very little. He gave the impression of being slightly moth-eaten, a taxidermy left forgotten on some shelf. I wondered if this was by design.

  After some searching in a shallow bin, he decided that he did not have a keyed lock for the basement door, but he had a heavy bolt that would work as well. He had also just gotten in a stock of crank lantern-flashlights and crank radios. Harris complimented him on his acumen and he looked pleased.

  I got one radio and three flashlights and an adapter for my cell phone charger. That seemed like overkill if I was leaving in a few days, but I had been thinking it over and decided that I wanted time to go through the attic and look for family photos and maybe a few keepsakes to bring home. There was no reason to get back to Minnesota right away, so why rush? And besides, there could be antique treasures in those trunks and crates.

  Morris reached under the counter and pulled out a green fishing float which he wrapped in newspaper and added to my bag.

  “A house warming gift to keep you safe—though of course you’ve no need of it,” he said with a shy smile and a guilty glance at Harris.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I will hang it over the basement door. I think I have boggles down there.”

  Morris blinked but didn’t say anything.

  I was prepared to pay with a credit card as my purchases were loaded into a mesh bag, but Harris told Morris to send the bill to his office and he’d see it was paid at the end of the month.

  “Everyone runs a tab. It’s just easier,” Harris explained as we left. “And the estate should pay for these expenses for now. Probate will take about two weeks more. Then the money will be yours free and clear, but for now, don’t take on the burden of debt.”

  “I’m impressed that it is only two weeks,” I said.

  “We are not a populated county. There aren’t that many people pressing claims ahead of you, and I started the ball rolling the moment I found you.”

  The next stop was the grocer. Morris Mickle’s parents owned it. They were introduced as Mr. and Mrs. Mickle. They were straight out of American Gothic, missing only the pitchfork, and this time I didn’t offer to shake hands or attempt any off-topic conversation. Frivolity would not be welcome by the dour pair.

  Harris did not protest my purchase of a large bag of cat kibble. He probably saw all of this shopping as a sign that I was thinking of staying permanently. I was about forty percent sure he was wrong, but there was no point in trying to deny that I was enjoying myself that morning and maybe the fantasy of living there—in the summer—crossed my mind a time or two.

  Again, Harris set me up with a tab and suggested that I might like to schedule regular deliveries of perishables and fuel by ferry on Fridays, including the large bag of kibble, unless I needed it immediately. Feeling slightly cornered, but also amused by his maneuvering, I agreed to have a pint of milk and a half dozen eggs delivered every Friday. Additional items for an order could be phoned in on Thursday, Mrs. Mickle explained, and they would be added to the grocery box. Accounts were settled at the end of the month, unless the last day happened to fall on a Sunday. Then Monday was fine.

  I also picked up some Gouda cheese, two postcards which I addressed to my coworkers and mailed immediately, and a Mrs. Crumpert’s blueberry pie.

  By then it was after noon and I was feeling peckish. It may have scandalized Mike, but I ordered a hamburger instead of clam chowder with a donut for dessert. More pea soup was waiting for me at dinner and I wanted some large animal protein.

  Harris and I chatted comfortably as we dined. I asked about Kelvin and he told me about some of my great-grandfather’s wilder inventions and ongoing feud with a local fisherman called Dandy Dawes who liked to set his bug pots (lobster traps) too close to the island. Kelvin considered everything within a hundred feet of shore to be his own private fishing ground and warned everyone else away. In the interest of peace, the Sands brothers had backed him up and Dawes was terrorizing lobsters elsewhere.

  Though Harris didn’t come out and say anything directly, I got the feeling that Kelvin had been a law unto himself, a bit tyrannical even, and I wondered how far his eccentricities had gone. There had to be some reason for my grandmother’s willful amnesia about her early life, and an even better reason than any I had heard for her to run away and stay away until she died. I thought this also explained where my grandmother’s towering stubbornness had come from.

  There was something else odd about the situation though. My great-grandfather had not been an idle man. He had invented a lot of things and tinkered with the house. But I got the impression that he had not exactly been a roll-up-the-sleeves and work from nine to five kind of man even in his youth. He wasn’t a fisherman or a lawyer or a carpenter. He hadn’t owned a store or painted houses.

  In fact it didn’t sound like anyone in the family—since the pirate—had toiled and survived by the sweat of their brow. What had they done with their time? Where had the family money come from? How had they survived?

  The contrast to my grandmother’s life—to my own life—couldn’t have been stronger.

  Chapter 6

  Harris insisted that I see the lighthouse, which was open to all visitors in spite of being overseen by the Canadian Coast Guard. It was very narrow and claustrophobic inside and I declined to go all the way to the top, knowing it would provoke my vertigo.

  The clouds were gathering as we headed back for Little Goose and we had to work our way through the returning fishing boats. Everyone stared and nodded at me and most waved at Harris, though no one shouted any kind of introduction or greeting. Maybe bellowing at ladies was considered bad form.

  The air as we neared Little Goose held the expectation of rain and I began looking east with regularity as the clouds thickened and roiled. Harris said this was normal weather for summer and that I would have to watch the sunset, which would be spectacular. I took comfort in his calm demeanor.

  At my request we circled the island before docking. The sun was in the wrong place to have a great view of the house, which was mostly just a silhouette, but I got to see more of the island itself. The cliff that fell away from my backyard was dark shale with pockets of soil which had probably washed down from the garden and gotten caught in the fractured stone. Small, scruffy plants were growing in the cracks and it seemed that seabirds were also nesting there.

  At one point I thought that I heard a booming echo that can mean a sea cave, but I couldn’t see anything in the growing shadows and Harris disclaimed any knowledge of Little Goose’s topography or geology, though he admitted that caves were common to the area.

  I might have asked Harris to get closer to where I heard the sound, but the wind had picked up and the water was choppy enough to make me uncomfortable with the large rocks peeking between the shadowy waves. I was used to boating on lakes, not in the sea which rises up and down with the tides. I’d never seen stones look so savage and the changing tide made the boat harder to control. Searching for caves was an activity for a calm morning when the sun would light the cliff face and surrounding sea.

  Though my day on Great Goose had been lovely, I admit that my nervousness returned as we approached the house, and I found myself asking Harris if he would like to stay to dinner when he finished installing the bolt on the basement door. He accepted and seemed to enjoy my variation of egg fried rice, but we had to eat quickly so he could beat the dark and the storm back to Great Goose.

  I felt almost sad waving Harris goodbye, though I wasted no time shutting out the dark and wind. Like the night before, I closed and locked the doors before retiring
upstairs. Deciding that I wanted just a bit more of Mrs. Crumpert’s utterly delicious pie, I helped myself to another slice and then put out kibble for Kelvin, who had appeared on the back porch the moment we had the house to ourselves. I let him in, accepting the scolding for having gone off and left him all day with nothing more than an enormous bowl of crunchies and water for company. There seemed no point in explaining that he could have come in while Harris was there. The cat just didn’t like my attorney.

  I had to clean out the fireplace before I could lay another fire. Something about the smell of the ash made me melancholy. Coal made sense on the island, but if I stayed, I would want to have wood brought in. Wood reminded me of bonfires and camping and happy wholesome things. Coal was industrial and lonely.

  * * *

  I woke when Kelvin jumped from the bed and landed on the naked floor. He went to the bedroom door and mewled softly, patting at the wood with an enormous paw.

  Feeling slightly more confident about getting up in the dark now that I had a lock on the basement door, I reached for my flashlight—all fully cranked and ready to brighten the night—and turned it on.

  Kelvin’s eyes glowed at me. He meowed demandingly.

  “I’ll get you a litter box tomorrow,” I told him. But that didn’t solve the problem of his wanting out right then.

  Kelvin meowed insistently and since I also needed the bathroom, I gave in. Sighing pointedly, I pulled on my robe, wishing I had something warmer to wear. The nights were chillier than I had expected.

  My door opened silently, though the house was far from quiet that night. There was wind in the eaves and rain hurled at the leaded windows. In the distance, the sea grumbled. Timbers creaked and groaned. But that was okay. These were outside noises and normal old house sounds.

  And there was a lock on the basement door. It would keep out anyone and anything. At least anything earthly in nature and that was all I was worried about. Because there were no ghosts.

  “Don’t go there,” I whispered. “Don’t even think about it.”

  Kelvin frisked down the stairs and disappeared into the dark. I did not frisk. I clung to the bannister and listened carefully as I descended. Animal eyes watched me—foxes and hounds, dead pheasants, one large black and white cow, an owl. And cats. Lots of cats that looked like Kelvin. I hadn’t noticed the paintings before. Perhaps in daylight one wasn’t aware of all the staring eyes. Or that none of the eyes on the wall were human.

  Nothing stirred, no sound and no movement, but I did feel the chill as it began to inch up my legs. Even in summer with much longer days in which to heat the house, nylon was not protection enough from the night air.

  Or fear.

  I turned my light on the front door. No cat. He wasn’t at the back door either. It did not surprise me to find Kelvin scratching at the basement door and meowing impatiently. I had no intention of opening it, even with my witch ball hanging overhead, but I went to the panels and laid an ear against them. I could hear nothing through the thick wood.

  Because there was nothing to hear.

  “Come on, Kelvin. We aren’t chasing mice in the middle of the night and if you have a box down there, well, it’s just too bad. If you need out, it will have to be the back door.”

  But Kelvin didn’t want the porch or the yard. He remained at the basement door, staring and sometimes scratching while I tried to coax him away with kissing noises and leg pats.

  “No way,” I said for a last time and turned back for the stairs. “I’m going back to bed. You can do what you want.”

  After a moment, a sulking Kelvin followed me to the stairs. He stalked ahead of me when we reached the bedroom and jumped onto the bed. He gave me a hard look and lay down. I had to move him from his chosen spot right in the center of the bed and this earned me a cold shoulder when I tried to pet him. I was sorry for it, but there was absolutely no way that I was opening the basement door at night.

  I fell asleep thinking that it was odd that there were so many pictures of animals in the house, but none of any people. Where were my ancestors? Had none of them had their portraits painted? If not, why not?

  Chapter 7

  I woke with the sun, having spent the rest of the night in troubling dreams about sinking ships and faceless smugglers hauling barrels of rum from ship to ship while storms raged. I had forgotten to draw my drapes and the bedroom was dazzling with morning light.

  Though feeling very purposeful and resolved on some research, or at the very least finding some photos or paintings of my mysterious ancestors, I made myself fix some eggs and sip some tinned orange juice for breakfast.

  A careful tour of the living areas discovered no portraits in any room. I hadn’t seen any in the basement either, so that left the attic as a possible repository of art.

  The air was stale at the top of the house and I stepped carefully so as to not stir up the dust on the attic floor as I went hunting for photographs or paintings of the family I had never known. Though Hollywood would have us believe that there are as many monsters in attics as in basements, I found the smell of dust to be much less upsetting than damp earth and felt not the slightest stirring of unease.

  My first family find was not a photo album, but rather a painting, a seascape which had been leaned against the wall just inside the door. It was realistic but rather dark, perhaps simply aged or maybe grimed with soot from hanging over a smoky fireplace. I could make out that I was looking at Little Goose, Great Goose, and Goose Haven, though there was no lighthouse and the only building was on Little Goose. There was also a ship sinking in the stormy sea, torn open on Goose Haven’s rocky shore. A lone figure was on the deck. Carrying the canvas close to the tiny window I could make out the ship’s name. It was the Terminer. Abercrombie’s ship.

  If anything should have given me the shivers it was that painting, but I felt not a tremor. Not happy subject matter, of course. I could understand why it had been relegated to the attic. Had Kelvin done it when he thought he was becoming a “Jonah”? It wasn’t pretty, but still, it was my first look at something and someone connected to me, however distantly, and I decided to bring it downstairs and hang it again. Later I would ask Harris about getting it cleaned.

  I turned next to the trunks and crates that lined the wall, making the room feel smaller than it should. The first chest opened with a blast of camphor. It held musty textile treasures, each wrapped in aging fabric. There was a fur caplet that must once have been white but was now very yellow and balding. I rather liked the black Astrakhan coat, but it was too large and a bit tatty for wearing in public. And anyway, it would be hard to wear it and not think of the newborn sheep that had died to make it.

  Though careful while unwrapping the yellowed muslin, there was still a bit of an explosion as I opened the last article in the trunk. Inside the old linen, there was a molting muff made of disintegrating bird feathers which started me sneezing but provided Kelvin with some entertainment as he chased the strays around the room. He was getting dusty, but I figured if there were any mice, Kelvin would keep them in hiding so I didn’t shut him out of the room while I worked.

  Someone had been busy. I found a box with hundreds of crocheted doilies done in all colors not found in the rainbow. Old as they were, the dyes remained garish. Too nice to throw away, but too ugly to use, they had been banished to the attic.

  Some of these things should be thrown away, but it didn’t seem my place to do it. Not yet anyway. The clothes weren’t harming anything; they could stay until either someone else took care of it, or I felt less presumptuous about attending to the task myself.

  There was a bride’s chest suffering from water damage that was filled with yellowed sheet music. A quick look showed me that it wasn’t for spinet but rather for harp. I had a quick glance around, but none of the shrouded shapes that lined the walls resembled a harp and I knew there was none downstairs. When had it gone from the house and who had been its owner? The era was about right for Great-grandpa Kelvin’
s wife, but might also have belonged to my grandma. Grandma Mac had never shown any musical inclination though, so I doubted it was hers.

  Curious now, I began pulling away tarps from the furniture along the wall. I found a cradle and some elaborately carved wooden chairs that needed refinishing. There were eleven of them, which seemed odd until I looked closer and saw that the varnish on the remaining chairs had been scorched and even blistered by heat. The twelfth chair must have burned beyond saving. I couldn’t repress a small shiver, thinking of Harris’s words about the fire that killed Abercrombie Wendover’s son. Not liking that I was feeling fey, I still backed off from the burned furniture and left the damaged chairs alone.

  There was a wardrobe too, a great blocky thing carved with wheat and fruit that was probably once attractive but one side of it also showed blistering of the varnish. The finish could be restored, which was why it was upstairs, I supposed, but I doubted that I would be the one to do it.

  It was placed inconveniently, right in the middle of the wall, as high as a door and deep enough I had to step around it as I dragged out the various boxes for examination. I thought about moving it aside, but it was filled with taxidermies, moth-eaten animal masks and mounted fish, and I was afraid it would be too heavy to move unless I emptied it first. Since I had no desire to touch the rotting things, I decided that the wardrobe would stay in place.

  The second crate opened reluctantly but was worth the effort. It was lined in cedar and filled with heavy damask that was embroidered over in silken thread. Each panel was made of pieced fabric, the cloth only being about two feet wide, though the seams were cleverly hidden. The workmanship was exquisite, the miniature flowers and birds so clear that I believed that I could pick them up. The style was a sort of tree of life, but along the bottom there were ocean waves filled with fish and boats.