Grace Against the Clock (A Manor House Mystery)

by Julie Hyzy

  Flynn must have used up all his positive reinforcement for the day because he turned to Frances and snarled. “What are you here for? To take notes?”

  She’d dropped her glasses to her chest when Flynn had arrived. Now they swung side to side from their jeweled chain as she took two lumbering steps toward him. “Do you really want to get into a battle with me, young man?”

  Flynn’s face changed, yet again. As though calculating how much he could get away with. I wanted to remind him that she was a world-champion gossip, and if there was anything in his life that wasn’t perfectly squeaky-clean, she’d find it and use it to her advantage. He wasn’t afraid of her, but maybe he should be. Or maybe he was always squeaky-clean.

  Note to self: Ask Frances what she knows about him. Not that I’d ever use it, of course. Fingers crossed behind my back, I smiled.

  “What’s with you?” Flynn asked.

  “Ready to start searching is all,” I said, then added, “It’s funny, isn’t it? We stumbled upon a passage in my house that I never knew existed and here we’re looking for a specific one that we’re not sure was even ever installed.”

  “Hilarious,” Flynn said. Still holding on to the plans, he paced out a rectangle based on where it looked to be on the blueprints. He bounced his heel against the wood floor and grimaced at the solid sound. “That doesn’t tell us much.”

  “If there is a wood elevator in here,” Bennett said, “there would be a mechanism to activate it from within the room.” He glanced around. “Probably on one of the walls. In the other areas, our controls are at about this height.” He indicated a spot on the wall between his shoulder and elbow.

  This was the narrowest part of the large room, the section that had been screened by the temporary curtains and that had served as backstage. I thought, again, about how David Cherk had insisted on setting up the presentation area at this end. While it made sense aesthetically to do it that way, the fact that Dr. Keay had disappeared in this spot now added a potentially malicious intent behind the eccentric photographer’s choice.

  Bennett began searching the stage-right wall, Frances the one at stage left, and Flynn the one between. They were solid brick and, to my untrained eye, looked perfectly set. I couldn’t detect an aberration or misplaced block anywhere. I focused on the floor. We hadn’t discussed who would do what; we’d all simply started in.

  “Who puts a wooden floor in a basement?” Frances mumbled to herself.

  “Rich people,” Flynn replied without turning. “People who don’t have to worry about their basement flooding every time there’s a thunderstorm.” Still skimming his fingers along the wall, without looking at me, he added. “Nothing suspicious about that, of course.”

  Bennett made eye contact with me. “I’m relieved to hear you say so.”

  I remembered thinking about how the floor in this part of the basement reminded me of the top floors of an old-fashioned department store. Creaky and old, they were not so scarred as to make them unsightly. In fact, wear gave them character. I thought about the squeaks the floor made when stepped on in certain areas. Wouldn’t noise suggest an air pocket beneath? Wouldn’t a wooden floor installed on a solid foundation remain silent?

  I didn’t know. I wasn’t a builder and there was no one in the room with enough expertise to ask. Concentrating on where the top of the platform ought to be if the wood elevator had been installed according to the plans, I got down on my hands and knees to look closer.

  Tucking my skirt in behind me, I lowered my face sideways to the floor. I was hoping to spot a perfect rectangle of unevenness, sticking out like a car door that hadn’t closed all the way. No luck. The wooden slats of the floor weren’t precisely aligned, or even, but I couldn’t detect an out-of-place pattern. To me it looked like a well-worn floor, spied sideways.

  I scooched around to try from another angle. Still nothing.

  Bennett and Flynn were very quiet as they worked. Frances, however, let loose with regular, exasperated sighs. I ignored her.

  Maybe I was going about this the wrong way. I got to my knees and stared down. The oak boards that made up the floor were of varying lengths. They had beveled edges, and that made finding a pattern where boards might split among them all the more difficult.

  For some reason this wood elevator—if it existed—was different from the rest of those in Marshfield Manor. The rest of them blended into their floors, but were fairly easily spotted, even if you didn’t know what to look for. Why not this one? Was it because Bennett’s grandfather wanted it to be hard to find?

  Flynn interrupted my thoughts. “I’ve been over this wall twice and there’s nothing. This is a waste of time.”

  I opened my mouth to chastise him about giving up too easily, but Bennett spoke first. He walked over to the detective. “Tell you what, young man. My eyes are older. I may have missed something on my wall. Why don’t you go over it and double-check me?”

  Flynn didn’t argue. “Fine. You can check that other wall while I’m at it, but I’m telling you there’s nothing there.”

  “I believe you,” Bennett said. “Frances, how is it going over there?”

  She made a noise, but didn’t turn around. Bennett gave me a “What did I expect?” look and began scrutinizing the wall Flynn had just left.

  They went silent again as I returned to my ruminations. What if this elevator was not meant to be used for wood? What if it had been identified as such in the plans, but its purpose was something more guarded? That would help explain why it was proving difficult to find and why Bennett didn’t know about it.

  I got to my feet and slapped my hands together to clear off the dust.

  Flynn turned. “Giving up?”

  “No.”

  “Then what?”

  “Give me a minute,” I said. We’d left the plans on the floor nearby. I picked them up and paid closer attention to the distance between the wall and where this wood elevator was supposed to be. I might be a few feet off, I realized. I moved closer to the back wall and decided to try again.

  A thought occurred to me. What if the rectangular platform wasn’t a true rectangle? What if the designer and the crew who’d installed it had followed the shapes and edges of the wood slats that made up the floor in order to make it blend in better? If they’d done that, there would be virtually no way to detect it if you didn’t know where it was.

  I felt a rush of excitement. “Does anyone have anything solid, like a pen or a heavy keychain, with them?” I asked.

  Flynn turned, his face impassive. “What have you found?”

  “Nothing yet,” I said.

  Bennett pulled a Swiss Army knife from his pants pocket. “Will this help?” He handed it over.

  “I didn’t know you carried this,” I said.

  “Old habits die hard.”

  Flynn had stopped to watch. Keeping the knife closed, I resumed my spot on the floor and began tapping the edge of it against the boards.

  “Try this instead.” He pulled out a black, cylindrical piece of plastic, about eight inches long and an inch or so wide with several raised ridges. He brought it over to me.

  “What is it?”

  He yanked the tip, extending it. “You’ve never seen a police baton?”

  I took it from him. “It’s heavy.”

  “It’s supposed to be.”

  I returned the knife to Bennett and resumed my floor-tapping. I looked up to find the three of them watching me. “It’s an experiment,” I said. “You can keep working on the walls if you like; I want to try this for a while.”

  Using the blueprint as my guide, I returned to tapping the floor with the edge of the baton, slowly moving in a straight line perpendicular to the back wall, listening for changes in sound.

  “I thought you said you had no idea how a floor would sound if there was nothing under it,” Frances
said.

  I stopped long enough to send her a look of disdain. “I’ve never done anything like this before,” I said. “How do I know what I don’t know? Maybe I’ll figure it out. The only certainty is that I’ll never know if I don’t try.”

  She scowled.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  My mind floated with random thoughts. Flynn and Frances were such crankypants. Maybe that’s why they got under my skin so often. And then I thought about Adam. Quite the opposite personality.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  Allowing my mind to wander helped the tapping become background noise. Every tap sounded the same. Every single one.

  Tap, tap. Tup.

  Tup?

  “Did you hear that?” I asked.

  Silly question. They’d all heard it. “Do it again,” Bennett said.

  I tapped again, recreating the sound. “There it is.”

  Inching forward a bit I hit the baton against the floor. No hollow sound this time. “But look,” I pointed out when their expressions fell, “the board ended right there. Maybe if I try over here—”

  I smacked the end of the baton along the edge of the first board to the right. Solid, solid, hollow.

  Ecstatic, I said, “There’s a pattern!”

  “You call that a pattern?” Flynn’s tone was dismissive, but his eyes sparked with interest.

  I had an idea. “Frances, would you mind going upstairs and grabbing a roll of tape?”

  She made her way over. Now that things were getting interesting, she looked miffed to have to leave. “What for?”

  I shot her an impatient glare. “Just, please.”

  She held her pudgy hands high. “Fine. I’ll be right back.”

  While she was gone, I continued my search for the faint echo-y sounds as I painstakingly made my way, one board at a time, parallel to the back wall.

  “Help me remember which boards sounded different, okay?” I asked Bennett and Flynn. They got down on their knees next to me, placing their fingers along the crevices. Frances returned quickly.

  “They had this at the front desk,” she said, handing me a roll of duct tape. She must have read my expression because her tone became defensive. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “Nothing,” I said, embarrassed to have to explain. “I’m not a fan of duct tape, is all.” I thought about how many times my dad had used it to fix things—in the most unsightly way possible—when I was a kid. “I don’t like the way it looks.”

  “Oh, and appearances are so important right now?” She lifted her hands high. “A thousand apologies. I’ll go find prettier tape.”

  “That’s not what I meant. Forget I said anything. Thank you, Frances.”

  Taking it from her, I ripped off a six-inch piece and placed it along the edge where I’d first encountered a tup where I’d expected a tap. We continued marking the hollow lines with tape as I progressed. Now that I knew what I was looking for, we moved pretty quickly. In a little more than fifteen minutes, we had a rough—and ugly—outline of duct tape on the floor.

  The four of us stood to examine what we’d identified.

  “Looks like a homicide chalk drawing,” Flynn said. “For a giant murdered puzzle piece.”

  I laughed. “It does.”

  The puzzle piece, about three feet long and about four feet wide, was far smaller than I’d expected.

  Bennett strolled around the shape. “If this is a wood elevator, it’s not a very efficient one.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” I said. “Whoever designed this took pains to keep it hidden. Otherwise, why so much effort to have it blend in?”

  “We don’t know it’s an elevator,” Flynn reminded us. “We could have done all this for nothing.”

  Frances huffed. “Well, aren’t you the Negative Nellie.”

  This from Frances?

  “You know,” I said to reclaim their attention, “if this is supposed to be hidden, maybe the switch to operate it is hidden as well.” To Bennett, I said, “The activating mechanisms are set at a convenient height on the main level. What if we checked the walls again, this time looking for something located at an inconvenient height?”

  “Low or high?” Flynn asked.

  Bennett and I answered in unison, “Low.”

  Frances sniffed. “I would have said that, too.”

  We started in again, this time all four of us working the walls. I was about to join Frances on the stage-left wall, but she gave me a look that told me she resented the implication that she couldn’t find the thing on her own.

  “Mind if I join you here?” I asked Bennett.

  “You and your young eyes are most welcome, Gracie.”

  We all studied in silence for a few minutes until Frances gave a whoop. I was startled by the triumphant sound, especially coming from her.

  “I think this is it,” she said. “Look, look.”

  She fairly danced as we hurried over. Using a chubby finger to point at a spot about eighteen inches off the ground, she said, “It’s a fake brick. I could tell. It felt different, so I tried moving it and—See what I found!”

  The woman was as happy as I’d ever seen her. I got to my knees to view the fake brick at eye level. Flynn crouched next to me. Bennett stood behind.

  “Don’t crowd me out now. Not after I was the one who found it,” Frances said. On her knees, she muscled her way between me and Flynn.

  I ran my fingers along the outside of the fake brick. It jiggled.

  “What are you waiting for?” Flynn said. “Open it.”

  The fake brick was a small door with hinges along its upper edge. I lifted the door to find two round buttons—one black, one white, identical to the switches that controlled the wood elevators upstairs. The white one was depressed. The black one stuck out.

  “I’m going to press it,” I said.

  “Amazing,” Bennett said.

  Frances chimed in. “And I found it, remember.”

  I could feel the tingle of fear and excitement rushing up my back as I knelt there, finger poised. “Is everybody ready?”

  “For crying out loud, woman,” Flynn said. He jammed his thumb, hard, onto the black button.

  I’d expected a thunk, a whirr, the hum of a motor. Expectantly, we all turned around, disappointed by the utter quiet.

  Nothing.

  I started to say, “I was so sure.”

  But the floor shifted. Silently, it began to lower.

  Frances’s mouth hung open. I could hear her breathing. “Will you look at that,” she said.

  Flynn’s right hand went for his holster and he thrust an arm out to urge us all back. Only Bennett seemed unsurprised. “Well done, Grace.”

  “What do you mean?” Frances asked, having regained her composure. “I’m the one who found the fake brick.”

  “Yes, of course, Frances. We couldn’t have done it without you.”

  She gave a self-satisfied nod.

  The perimeter we’d drawn out with duct tape—the puzzle-piece shape in the floor—dropped out of sight faster than I would have expected. Much faster than the home’s other wood elevators.

  We disregarded Flynn’s orders to stay back and approached the edge of the opening as the platform slipped downward, then stopped.

  “Wow,” Frances said.

  Bennett nodded. “Indeed.”

  I flashed back to the moment immediately before I’d entered the secret passage in my basement. What was it with hidden tunnels lately?

  “I’m going in,” Flynn said. “You all stay here.”

  “I’m going with you,” I said.

  He glared at me. “We don’t know what we’ll find. You’d better not.”

  “I doubt the killer is hiding down there. It’s been almost a week.”

  Bennett cleared his throat.
“I would feel better if we waited for one of our security team to accompany the detective. Frances, please give them a call, would you?”

  “Frances, wait,” I said. I placed my hand on Bennett’s arm. “I’ll be fine, honest. I need to know where this goes. I need to be part of this.”

  “Gracie, you get too involved with these things. You put yourself in danger.”

  “But I’m not going alone this time. Detective Flynn is with me.” Bennett’s jaw was set, but I sensed he was about to relent. It wasn’t as though he could forbid me from going down there, of course, but I was always reluctant to risk angering him.

  Flynn had dropped into the abyss.

  “We’ll be right back,” I said, “I promise.”

  Bennett worked his jaw. “Don’t be long.”

  Frances made a clucking noise. “That girl never listens, does she?”

  Chapter 22

  The odd-shaped opening in the floor meant that there were only a couple of places wide enough for me to sit at the edge. Seeing as how I was in a skirt, I couldn’t simply jump in the way Flynn had. Not if I wanted to maintain my dignity. I found one decent-sized spot, sat, and tucked my skirt’s fabric around my legs as they dangled into the darkness. I thought again about the secret passage we’d discovered at my house, and how dark it had been inside.

  “We should get a flashlight,” I said.

  Flynn’s voice was a couple of feet away. “Have one. Come on.”

  There was enough ambient light from the auditorium to let me see down to the bottom. I eased myself forward and braced my hands on the side of the opening, elbows bent. “Here goes,” I said, and dropped in.

  I stumbled, but didn’t fall. Good thing I was wearing flats.

  The space was a little deeper than I’d imagined at first, about six feet down. When Flynn had gone in, he’d landed in a crouch and stayed that way before moving out of sight. I could see that there was a tunnel ahead of us, lit only by the skinny beam of Flynn’s flashlight.

  He turned around. “You okay?” he asked.