by Donna McLean
Addie gulped.
“Why couldn’t it be a scream?” she asked hopefully.
Tilda and Mrs. Motley ran into the hall. “My husband!” Maybellanne said, panicked. “That sounds exactly like my husband!”
Another scream, this one ending in sobs.
“Yes, that’s definitely him,” Mrs. Motley stated.
Tilda put an arm around her shoulder. “Now, now, we’ll find him, dear, don’t you worry about that.”
Four jittery people exchanged glances. They listened for a moment and then stepped inside a tiny room that appeared to have been abandoned before it was completed. A few pieces of mismatched furniture, a couple of crooked paintings bordered by rotting curtains and a half empty bookshelf were all that the room contained.
Addie said, “Sounds like it’s coming from behind that wall over there. But I don’t see a door or a window or anything.”
Pearce Allen stepped into the hall, vanished for a few minutes and returned. “There’s no door or any kind of an entrance out there, either. But the sobs, er, sounds are definitely coming from behind that wall—”
“So there must be an entrance,” Addie finished.
“They always said old man MacGuffin built all kinds of tricks into this house! There must be a hidden door or a spring that opens a wall or some kind of something like that!” Tilda’s hazel green eyes brightened. “Y’all spread out and start looking around for anything that looks out of place. Some kind of switch or a knob or a button!”
Pearce Allen tapped on the wall from which the sound seemed to be emanating. A terrified yowl followed.
“It’s me, Mayor! Pearce Allen! We’re trying to reach you!”
The sobs subsided to sniffles and a long pause. The mayor’s voice, trying to recover its usual commanding tone, called out. “Continue, my good man, continue. I’ll wait here.”
“Can’t very well leave,” Addie whispered to Pearce Allen.
The three women and the young man worked in sections, each person running hands over the walls, peering behind paintings, looking behind curtains, moving the few pieces of furniture aside. After what seemed a very long time, Tilda called out in excitement.
“Look here! It’s a tiny little wooden knob sticking out of this side of the bookcase. See, right there behind that book. Now what would a knob be doing in an odd, out of the way place like that?”
“Try pulling it or twisting it, Tilda,” Addie urged.
They all gathered behind the spry lady, craning to see the little knob.
“It won’t move at all,” Tilda complained. “Can’t pull it back or push it forward. Let me try pressing it like a button.”
Unexpectedly, the whole wall seemed to shudder. The paintings and curtains hanging upon it began to move. A thin shaft of light seemed to sear one side of the wall in a straight line from top to bottom, the wall slid back, and suddenly the mayor was standing right in front of their very eyes!
Mayor Motley fell upon his wife and clasped her in his arms. “There, there,” she murmured, hugging him close.
“What happened?” Addie asked. Everyone gathered near.
The relieved man told them how he had entered the room through a doorway, gone straight to the desk, and turned around to find nothing but a wall of shelves and books.
“That must be the old sliding bookcase I’ve always heard about!” Tilda was thrilled. “That old man MacGuffin really did build a secret doorway through a hidden bookcase!”
“Awesome!” Pearce Allen couldn’t hide his admiration. He pushed the button again and asked, “Is anything happening?”
Addie answered, “No, but wait!” She ran into the mysterious room and stood in front of the desk, just where the mayor had been. Her cleverness was rewarded when the mysterious wall slid silently into place.
“There must be a spring on the floor or something. It probably triggers the sliding bookcase when someone stands on just the right spot,” she yelled. A long pause and then, “Okay, Pearce Allen, you can let me out now.”
He grinned mischievously. “I don’t know about that. Maybe we should take a vote.”
Tilda waved her hand and laughed. “Oh Pearce Allen, you are a mess!” She pushed the button and the panel slid open, revealing an impatient redhead with hands on her hips and fire in her eyes.
Mayor Motley shuddered. “Oh dear, I simply must go, right this very minute! What an awful place!”
His wife murmured soothing words to him and Tilda trotted along behind the couple as the explorers found their way back to the hall. The Motleys and Ms. MacArdan left the house through the front door.
Addie started to follow but Pearce Allen grabbed her arm. “Wait! Don’t you want to see what else this old manse has to offer?”
She looked around at the Victorian clutter, the trickles of sunlight and the murky shadows that crept along the floor even in the midday heat. “Well, I am curious,” she said hesitantly. “I guess if we’re very careful and don’t wander too far into the place. I mean, we don’t want to get trapped like the Mayor!”
“I’ll make a deal with you. We’ll stay on the first floor, stay together, and stay within earshot. How’s that?”
“Deal,” Addie stated. “Now, I wonder what is behind this door, if it is a door?” She twisted the cold brass knob left, then right, but the door wouldn’t open. Pearce Allen reached past her, pulled and then pushed the door, but it still wouldn’t budge.
He sighed in disappointment. “Okay, we don’t have much time, so let’s go down the hall and check out a few more rooms.” They started off together but Addie soon lapsed behind the lanky young man. She paused at every painting and portrait or stopped next to every little table, while Peace Allen preferred to move quickly down the hallway and take a brief glance into each room. There seemed to stretch in front of them at least a dozen doorways, and the oddest thing was that no matter how far they had come, it seemed that more doorways were before them.
Addie stood gazing silently at a beautifully painted portrait of a young woman that hung midway down the hall. The lady was blonde with pale blue eyes that connected to the observer, and she smiled as though she held a pleasant secret. Her cornflower blue dress was tightly corseted to her tiny waist, and the sleeves were long and draped elegantly across the full, sweeping skirt.
The young lady appeared to hold something within her dainty hands. Addie leaned forward and peered closely, trying to see between the folded fingers. It looked as though something gleamed there, gleamed with a light that could not have come from within the dim old mansion.
“Addie, are you still behind me?” Pearce Allen called. He seemed to call from a long way off.
“I’m out here in the hall,” she answered to her right, in the direction Pearce Allen had walked.
“I’m in a sort of sitting room, I guess.” This time the voice seemed to echo. “I must have walked thirty or forty feet before getting here. You stay where you are and I’ll find my way back—”
“Ouch!” Addie turned just in time to bump into Pearce Allen, who was standing right behind her.
They stared at each other, baffled.
“Where did you come from?” the young man asked.
Addie crossed her arms. “I’ve been right here all the time. Where did you come from? Were you just standing in a corner watching me all this time?” she asked in an accusing tone.
“No, I really did walk a long way! I’m sure I did!” Pearce Allen grasped her hand and started off down the hallway again. “You’re coming with me. Something is really funny here.”
“Let’s count the doors out loud,” Addie suggested, and she took the odd numbers while Pearce Allen called out the even. “Eight,” he announced, stopping next to the room he had previously entered.
They turned around and looked behind them.
“I only see two,” Addie said.
“But it feels like we walked a long way,” Pearce Allen argued.
“There’s the portrait where I was stand
ing,” she pointed out, “and there are only two doors on that side of the hall, between us and the pretty lady in the portrait.”
They looked back and forth in the dim light. Pearce Allen observed, “Looking from this direction, it seems that there are a whole lot of doors and a very long hall in front of us. But looking back, from where we came, it seems a short distance.”
“Smoke and mirrors?” Addie suggested.
He shrugged. “Maybe just mirrors. We’ll have to investigate again when the light is brighter. Anyway, this is the room. Let’s see where it takes me this time.”
The young couple entered the room side by side, shoulders touching. Addie swung his hand affectionately while they strolled across the plush Victorian rug.
“Seems like a normal sort of a room to me,” the young woman said.
“That’s what I thought too,” the young man agreed. “Now let’s exit by a different door, shall we? And we should be miles and miles away from—”
They stepped into the hall and found themselves face to face with the young lady in the portrait. She smiled at them secretively, as though she knew the mystery of the hallway but would never, ever tell.
The couple stared back at her, then at each other, baffled. Pearce Allen looked down the hall and Addie looked back at the door they had exited. Nothing seemed to add up to the distance they thought they had covered.
“This place is beginning to give me the creeps,” Addie muttered.
“But it is kind of cool,” Pearce Allen said. “Alfred MacGuffin must have been a genius to design and build all this!”
Addie squeezed his fingers. “Let’s go. We can come back some other time.”
The couple strolled toward the front door, examining the old place with curious eyes. They paused before a painting of a plump, middle-aged man.
“Must be a MacGuffin,” Addie mused.
“Looks like a MacGuffin to me,” Pearce Allen agreed.
The man in the portrait stared back at them. His beady brown eyes peered through folds of skin that matched the wrinkled pink top of his bald pate. Tufts of short white hair started behind his ears and circled the back of his head. His jowls hung down to a level close to his double chins. Not an attractive man, rather plain and ordinary looking, but the shrewd eyes and the slight smirk of his thin lips undeniably held a touch of dark amusement.
Addie let go of Pearce Allen’s hand. She took a couple of steps backward to get a different view of the portrait and backed right into a little table. This caused the china bric-a-brac on top to wobble, and to Addie’s dismay, one of the little objects fell to the floor. She stooped to pick it up, examining it carefully in the dim light, and was relieved to find no cracks or chips. Addie started to replace it and then paused, turning it over in her hand. “This is a curious fellow,” she murmured. “Like one of those old fashioned clowns in a bright costume and dark mask. I forget what they were called.”
Pearce Allen glanced at it and said, “They were from medieval times, I think. Impish creatures that caused all kinds of trouble. I’ll have to brush up on my literary history and get back with you on that.” He walked a few steps down the hall, toward the open front door, and paused to study a crest carved into the high back of an oak chair.
Addie studied the figurine’s smirking face for a moment longer before placing him carefully back in the same spot he had been standing for countless years, made obvious by the round spot free of dust that corresponded to the china base of the little statue, on the hall table beneath the elegant golden frame of a large mirror.
Addie started to stand up and then cried out in shock. Her face, reflected in the mirror before her, was white with fear. The reflection next to hers clearly showed a man’s body slumped over a desk!
She turned around slowly. Now she faced a narrow pane of glass on either side of a vast wooden door, and through this glass Addie could see that the huddled form was real, and not a trick of light and mirrors. “Pearce Allen! Look!” One trembling finger pointed toward the ghastly sight.
“What now?” he joked, but the jest on his lips faded away when he saw her expression of terror. Pearce Allen crossed the hall in a hurry and peered into the room through the narrow glass. “That looks real. Very real.”
“But maybe it’s not. This is a crazy house! Could it be another trompe l’oeil painting like the one Tilda found? Another one of MacGuffin’s sick jokes?”
Pearce Allen cupped his hands around his eyes, pressed his face close to the glass and tried to see through the murky light. He drew back and grimly shook his head. His tone was serious. “I don’t think so, Addie. That’s a dead body. And look at the way he’s dressed. He hasn’t been there since 1871. That’s someone from the twenty-first century!”
Addie gripped the brass doorknob and twisted it forward and back. The door didn’t budge.
“Maybe he isn’t dead. Maybe he got locked in, like the mayor, and maybe he needs help!” There was panic brimming in her voice. She twisted and shoved, but the door refused to open.
Pearce Allen put one shoulder to the door and pushed. Nothing moved. “Hey!” he yelled. “Hey!” His fist banged against the stubborn wood.
Addie looked through the window and pulled back sharply, shaking her head. “No response.”
They stared at each other.
“I think we should go outside,” Addie said.
“And I’ll call the police,” Pearce Allen stated.
“We should wait until they arrive.”
“We’ll stay on the porch. Make sure nobody goes in the house—”
“—or out,” Addie finished.
She couldn’t stop herself from casting a nervous glance over her shoulder as they hurried to the front door.
It seemed to her that the little china clown smirked at them from the shadows.
FOUR
Officer Douglas Winton Campbell studied the two faces before him with obvious skepticism.
“You say there’s a dead body in there?” He indicated the room by jerking his capped head in the general direction.
Pearce Allen and Addie nodded in unison.
“And you say the door won’t open?”
“No, sir.”
The officer grunted. He looked through the glass windowpane and muttered, “Well I’ll be dogged.” Then he tried the door knob, pushed against the door with his shoulder, and bent to look more closely at the knob while the young couple watched nervously and the medical examiner waited with curiosity. Campbell cupped both hands around his eyes and peered into the room through the glass, straining to see the doorknob on the inner side.
“Definitely somebody in there. Definitely have to get inside,” he announced, straightening up. “There’s a key in the lock. It’s an odd lock. The brass panel on the front of the door is completely smooth, no keyhole. But one of those old fashioned wrought iron keys is pushed into the door from the inside of the room. So the fellow must have locked himself in before he did it. If he did it. If it’s real.” He cast a critical glance at Pearce Allen and Addie, who squirmed under the glare.
“Do you know who it is, officer?” Addie asked.
“Not from out here I don’t.” The policeman was curt. “Somebody must have wandered in here with the rest of you and gone in there and done himself in. Why?” He shrugged. “Who knows why people do this kind of crazy thing.”
He studied each of them in turn before saying, “Now tell me again. You two, and the mayor, and his wife, and who else, decided to come traipsing into this old abandoned house and get into who knows what?”
They hung their heads at his scolding tone.
“Ms. Tilda,” Addie mumbled.
Officer Campbell’s eyes widened. He removed his cap, wiped the sweat off his brow, and replaced the cap. Then he repeated, “Ms. Tilda. That’s just fine and dandy. So you, Pearce Allen, the editor of the local newspaper. And you, Ms. Addie, a freelance writer who’s always stirring things up asking questions. And Mayor Motley and his wife, who ar
e trying to attract tourists to the area. And, of all people, Ms. Tilda, who seems to know everything there is to know about everybody, sometimes before it gets around to the police department! You all got together and decided to go on a tour of the mysterious mansion, and you find a dead body. Sounds very newsworthy to me. Sounds kind of suspicious, too.”
Addie’s green eyes flashed. “Don’t you believe us?”
“I’m just saying it’s all very strange. Very convenient. That’s all I’m saying. But right now me and my coroner have got to get in there and take care of a corpse. So you two had better stay put. Don’t go in the room and don’t leave the premises, either. Joe, you stay with these two. Don’t let them out of your sight.”
Joe Smyth, the medical examiner, nodded.
Officer Campbell entered the rooms on either side of the locked room and exited quickly, determining that there were no connecting doors. He walked out the front door of the mansion. They could hear his heavy footsteps crossing the porch and going down the steps.
The policeman came back into the old mansion with a frown on his rugged face. “No other way into the room and those old windows won’t open. They’re locked from the inside too. Whoever’s in there sure didn’t want to be disturbed, I can tell you that much.” He rapped the knuckles of one hand against the heavy glass next to the door. “We’ll have to use a glasscutter and open it up enough to reach in and turn the key from the inside.”
“Probably gonna smell,” Joe drawled matter-of-factly. “Room must be sealed up pretty good if the whole house don’t stink in this heat.”
Addie muffled a groan. Pearce Allen’s face grew pale under his tan.
Douglas Campbell glanced at the young lady and his rough demeanor softened, but only slightly. “Guess you and Pearce Allen can wait out on the porch,” he muttered, his voice gruff.
They scrambled to get outdoors in a hurry. Addie sat on the steps and Pearce Allen leaned against the banister, waiting.
They watched the little town square buzzing with activity even in the afternoon heat. The young woman glanced at her cell phone to check the time. “Two-thirty,” she announced to the young man, who nodded in silent acknowledgement.