The Secret of Bourke's Mansion

by Carolyn (Moyer) Swayze

  “Oh, but it’s dark,” she protested weakly. “You can’t go scouting around the island in the dark.”

  “Yes, dear, it is dark, but I’ll take a flashlight and be perfectly fine. I’ll probably be quite a while, especially if I have to go up to the Indian settlement; I think I can find it. I’m wondering about you though, if you’ll be all right here alone.”

  “Of course I will,” she said with more assurance than she felt. “I fully expect that some word will come to the house, so it’s important that there’s someone here. Do you really think there’s any point in your going at night, though? Wouldn’t it be wiser to wait until daylight?”

  “Do you think we’d be able to sleep, not knowing?”

  “Of course not. You’re right. Away you go before I get cold feet and change my mind.”

  “Good-bye, my lovely,” he said as he gently kissed her cheek. “Take care and don’t open the door to anyone except Percy. Anyone else, you can talk to with the door closed.”

  “Bye. Be very careful, please.” She clung to him for one brief moment.

  And then he was gone. She sighed heavily, appalled at how empty and abandoned she felt. She hoped he got back before it started to rain. She wedged chairs under the knobs of the kitchen and basement doors and then took a blanket and settled herself comfortably on the sofa, hoping to rest. Her mind whirled in a quandary, flitting on Casey, Grev, Lynn, Allan, and the island residents but most often coming to rest on the portly little figure of Mr. Peters, bound and gagged in various locations. Most often she saw him tied up under a tree, which was alarming considering the weather, heavy with damp fog. She fervently hoped that he wasn’t outside, exposed to the elements, as he had only been wearing a lightweight, houndstooth sports jacket. He must be at least sixty-five, she worried.

  Would Grev try to phone again, she wondered? She should have mentioned that to him. Lynn would probably be home and could confirm the story about the suitcase. And he should phone the police, she realized. After all, Mr. Peters was definitely missing and as Grev had said, he was a wealthy man. Perhaps having the police come to the island would bring a lot of other answers to light. She dwelt on the possibilities for a moment before chuckling at the absurdity of saying to an officer, “Please tell me why the islanders won’t be nice to me.” No. Except for a dead cat, now buried, there wasn’t much tangible evidence. But they would certainly be interested in the missing Mr. Peters. So would his secretary. Kate could just imagine her reaction when she learned that her revered boss had not after all met his appointment. An earth-shaking event to be sure!

  There it was again. A slow, careful sound of movement from the attic. Squirrels don’t move slowly and carefully. Besides, she wondered, were they nocturnal animals? She didn’t think so. Bats were, but they weren’t likely to make that type of sound. It stopped again. She was intensely alert, her senses keened to their highest, but she was not afraid. There was some measure of comfort in believing Grev correct in saying there was no attic access. When she stopped to think about it, she realized that was idiotic reasoning. Whatever was up there had to gain access somehow. Her mind went over the exterior of the house, searching for a well-situated tree. She drew a blank.

  “Mr. Peters,” she called tentatively toward the ceiling, “Mr. Peters, is that you up there? Bang on the floor if it is.”

  Feeling slightly foolish, she waited to listen before calling again and again. At length, wearily defeated, she drifted off into a restless sleep. Outside, the gray clouds became more heavy and moisture-laden while an insistent wind swept in from the ocean. It was a sleep of sad, heavy dreams. Visions of Casey the cat persisted until suddenly an unfamiliar sound penetrated her consciousness. Struggling to wakefulness, she listened, trying to think what it was she had heard. It must have been Grev at the door. Head reeling, she staggered to the kitchen, mindlessly removed the chair, and flung the door open. A blast of cold air startled her into full awareness. There was no one there. You idiot, she chided herself as she closed it and went back to her snug blanket. I must have been dreaming, she mused, until she was unnerved by a thud coming from above.

  “Mr. Peters,” she called tremulously, “is that you? Please answer.”

  “Help, let me down,” came the muffled reply.

  Kate was on her feet. “Where are you?” she cried. “How can I find you?”

  A strange laugh and then the words: “Attic wheel.”

  Tiny hairs lifted at the nape of her neck. It wasn’t Mr. Peters’s voice at all. “Lynn,” she called, “Lynn, is that you?”

  No answer but that heavy flopping thud again. “What’s happening?” Kate screamed. “I’m com­ing, just tell me how to get there.” She waited expectantly, prepared to launch into action. No answer.

  “Lynn!” she implored desperately. “Tell me how to get there. I’ll help you.” She waited while a deathly silence descended over the house. “No, answer me, answer me. Tell me how to find you.”

  In a frenzy, she dashed through the house, pounding walls, pulling at paneling. “There has to be a way.” She sobbed. “There simply has to be.”

  She ran back to where she had heard the sounds. “Lynn, bang on the floor if you can’t talk.” Silence. “I’m going to the basement to look for the stairs,” she called. “Don’t give up.”

  “Where is the other lamp?” she fumed as she tore through the house. The bedroom, yes, there it was. She dashed down the basement stairs, the lamplight describing wild arcs as she tried to look everywhere at once. Sheet metal, heating pipes, plywood, boxes, a jumble of things impeded her way. It had to be here. It was the only logical place. Probably concealed, she reasoned as she yanked things away from the walls, her hands groping for crevices, openings, handles, anything! Smooth stone walls, relentlessly firm, yielded no secrets. She beamed her light to the wall at the far end, then dashed over triumphantly.

  A mildewed mattress was propped at a crazy angle. Feverishly, she pulled it aside. Yes, there was the door! It squealed reluctantly as she pulled with all of her strength. At last it gave way, and she sobbed in disappointment as a gust of fresh salty air swept in. The doorway led outside. It was concealed from view by shrubs but not far from the path she and Lynn had taken to the shore. She banged the door shut in frustration, mindful of the time wasted. After a quick glance behind the furnace, she ran up the stairs to again call hopefully at the ceiling. “I can’t find the stairs. How can I get there? What does ‘attic wheel’ mean?” She waited in vain for an answer.

  At last she ran to the wood closet. Wheel, wheel, what kind of wheel would she be looking for? She hurriedly tossed the firewood out onto the kitchen floor. The closet was infuriatingly empty. Maybe the bedrooms. She ripped through racks of clothing, feeling for a wheel, any kind of a wheel. How could a wheel get her to the attic? she wondered, trying to. control a mounting hysteria. She ran back to the living room and called out, “How can a wheel get me to the attic? What do you mean?” Still no answer.

  “Calm down,” she told herself, pressing her palms to her flushed cheeks. “Attic wheel, wheel attic. It doesn’t make any sense. Lynn must be delirious. Oh, no! Could she have taken any of those pills? Lynn! Answer me!”

  Try to think. She tried to reconstruct Casey’s guided tour of the house. Had he mentioned an attic then or a wheel? She retraced her steps, pulled furniture from the walls, called out. No discover­ies. No answers. There was no place left to look. She sat and waited. How much time had she wasted now? Down to the basement again, out the basement door, circling the house with the lamp, peering at the walls. Nothing, nothing.

  How long had it been since Lynn had called? One hour, two hours? The fires were dead and cold. She must have been searching for a long time. Searching and getting nowhere. “Oh, you fool!” she exclaimed. “The Indian room.” The room neither Casey nor Grev had mentioned. The night Lynn was there, when she had heard people and sounds seemingly coming from above, she had been struck by the permeating scent of mothballs. Mothballs em
anating from the closet passageway leading to the Indian room. She pushed her way through, flung things aside, scanned the room. Nothing had changed. The room yielded no new secrets.

  “Lynn,” she called before backing into the closet. She ran her hands behind the coats on one side and then the other. At last, she felt a thrill of success as she touched a large metal wheel.

  It was sturdy, almost like a ship’s helm, with thick iron spokes bisecting it. Kate threw the coats out of the way and set the lamp on the floor so that it beamed onto the wheel. She gave it an experimental push, then a pull, before it began to turn slowly to the left. It turned easily and soundlessly, and Kate kept glancing above to the closet ceiling, expecting something to happen. Suddenly, there was a quiet thump from the room behind her. She gasped in wonder as she turned to see a full flight of stairs in the middle of the living room. Looking up, she saw that they led through a newly exposed opening in the paneled ceiling. Grabbing the lamp, she stumbled up the stairs.

  “Lynn, I’ve found it. I’m coming!”

  The attic was dimly illuminated by her lamp as she emerged at last to the top level of the house. Not far ahead, she saw a dark shape stretched out on the floor.

  “Lynn, is that you?” she whispered before shining the light in her friend’s face. “Lynn, wake up!” she pleaded. “Wake up,” she repeated as she

  felt in vain for a pulse beat. “Wake up!” She gently raised an eyelid and looked for some glimmer of life.

  Unable to think, unable to react, she stared without comprehension at the body of her friend. “No, no,” she whispered again and again. At last her eyes rested on Lynn’s overturned purse and the contents strewn over the floor. Angrily she grabbed the pill bottles. They were empty—every one.

  “Grev!” she screamed irrationally, over and over. “Grev!” At last came the answering call.

  “Kate, I’m coming. Where are you?”

  The sound of his voice replaced her hysteria with tears.

  “I’m upstairs, but I think it’s too late.” She sobbed. “Oh, why does it have to be too late?” She collapsed in a desolate heap beside Lynn, pouring out her grief for the loss of a friend she had never really known, never understood.

  Grev was gently easing her onto the cot. She watched numbly as he crouched by Lynn for a few moments. “Yes, Katie, it’s too late.” He firmly guided her down the stairs and, blinded by tears, she obeyed mindlessly.

  “Easy, now,” he said as he urged her to lie down on the sofa. “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry. So very sorry,” he kept repeating as he held her close.

  Chapter 16

  Later, as she huddled on the sofa, weak with grief, she said hollowly to Grev, “I would have helped her if I’d only known.”

  “I know you would. Take it easy. I expect that you did help her more than you knew, and it was the possible change in your way of life that frightened her. If there’s any blame to attach to anyone, it’s on me. If I had persevered in searching for the attic, it wouldn’t have been too late.”

  “Please, Grev, don’t ever blame yourself. I doubt that anyone would have found the stairs without guidance, and she didn’t ask for help until it was too late.”

  His gratitude was evident. “Tell me how you managed to produce that staircase.”

  She showed him the wheel. “I don’t understand the principle of the thing but after I’d cranked it, there was the staircase.”

  “Of course. I should have remembered that old attic stairs were often trapdoor types that you pulled down. This is just a more sophisticated version. With the strips of paneling on the ceiling, we completely overlooked it. The principle is simply a heavy weight-and-pulley system. I expect there’s another wheel upstairs or she could never have closed it. I’ll check it out.”

  In a few moments he was back. “Sure, an identical wheel is up there. Ingeniously simple, really. There’s more furniture and cartons stored up there. I wouldn’t be surprised if they belonged to Mrs. Bourke’s father.”

  “Oh, I nearly forgot about our Mr. Peters,” she said. “What did you discover on your trip?”

  “Nothing but static from every resident I talked to,” he replied disgustedly. “You’re right, it is a conspiracy. No one had heard of or seen Percy and according to them, the telephones are out of order because of the storm. I think they just didn’t want me to make any calls.”

  “Oh, but we have to use a phone! To call the police about Mr. Peters and about Lynn. We can’t just leave her up there,” she protested as the tears started to come again.

  “Now, you know there’s no reason at all why she shouldn’t be left there for now. It’s clean and dry, we’re here and you know yourself that in Ireland and in other countries the body is left in the home for quite some time. In the morning, we’ll both go down and if we can’t phone, we’ll simply take the ferry back and go to the authorities.”

  She nodded tiredly. “You’re right. It must be almost morning now. I suppose we should try to rest a bit while we can.”

  “I was just about to suggest that myself. You go ahead. I’m going to kindle up the fires first. It’s a wild, cold night.” As he spoke they heard the heavy rumble of thunder.

  Kate lay in bed looking out at a gray and dismal dawn. Sheets of rain slicked the window. She

  found it interesting that she had slept, if only for a few hours. It seemed disloyal to Lynn. She slowly and rationally thought over all that she could remember of her friend. The inconsistencies that she had tolerantly dismissed as small idiosyncra- cies loomed large now as tangible evidence that Lynn’s life was more complicated than Kate had ever imagined. The alienation from family and friends—from any personal history at all—now made sense. The steady succession of medically oriented jobs was additional verification of her story. Kate sensed that their relationship had been Lynn’s life-line to normalcy, and that her relationship with Grev was threatening to cut it. That would be the reason for the antagonism, she thought with a sad sigh. Poor Lynn had never been able to substantiate why she had disputed Grev’s motives.

  Grev was moving about in the kitchen. Grev. A kind, intelligent man. It seemed incredible that she could have doubted his integrity and rectitude. Why, their whole relationship—business as well as personal—had been built on the basis of her respect and fondness for those very characteristics.

  Into her room wafted the scent of burning toast. She closed her eyes and visualized him in the many circumstances of the past year. His intent way of listening to the needs of each client, sincerely sympathetic. His adamant refusal to propose any transaction that was not in the best interest of all concerned. She smiled as she recalled his honest frustration as he tried to dissuade a young couple from purchasing a property that was beyond their means. Allan had berated him for that, saying commission was commission, after all. His insistence that Kate always be given credit where credit was due.

  With a happy wave of wonder, she realized that because of Grev and for Grev, she had bloomed into a confident, competent individual during the past year. They did bring out the best in one another. Throwing her dressing gown over her shoulders, hair touseled and cheeks creased with sleep, she ran to the kitchen.

  “Guess what?” she said solemnly.

  “Good morning, my lovely. What?”

  “I love you.” She laughed happily as she flung her arms around his neck.

  He carefully placed his mug of coffee on the table and lifted her face in his hands. “Are you awake?” he asked incredulously. “Do you mean it?”

  “I am. I do. I guess I have for a long time,” she whispered before he kissed her.

  Her heart pounding shamelessly, she scurried to get dressed. What a gloriously beautiful, rainy day!

  When she returned to the kitchen for breakfast, Grev was curiously grim. “You needn’t have hurried,” he said. “We’ll not be going anywhere.”

  “But we have to go,” she protested. “I won’t mind the rain a bit.”

  “Katie, it’s not the r
ain. It seems after the islanders tried to get rid of us for so long, they’ve

  now decided to keep us here. As a matter of fact, we can’t leave the house. When I went to get wood, there was your friend, Samuel Moonsong, leaning against the doorjamb and carrying a rifle.”

  “That’s ridiculous. We have to find Percy and besides, it’s against the law to detain anyone against his will.”

  “Well, my girl, I’m afraid that we’re out of the reach of the law at the moment. Moonsong said the residents are going to have a meeting to decide what should be done. In the interim, it’s his job to keep us here. He’s most apologetic and explained that if we had only left and accepted their request to obtain the property, we wouldn’t be in this predicament. As a matter of fact, he was so sorry that he even brought a supply of firewood to the door. That doesn’t do Percy much good though, does it?” he concluded worriedly.

  “They can’t keep us here forever,” she insisted. “Anyway, it’s raining. He won’t stand around in the rain for long.”

  “I think he will and for the most part, he’s taking shelter in the woodshed. That traitor, Luke Morgan, is apparently guarding the rest of the house. I’ve seen him go past periodically.”

  “But we’ll miss the ferry if we don’t get away soon. Did you tell him we’d be willing to leave on it?”

  “Certainly, but now it seems they don’t feel it would be wise to let us go, perhaps because of Percy. At any rate, Samuel says that it’s unlikely that a ferry will be sailing in this weather. The strait is totally socked in with fog.”

  “Did you ask him about Percy?”

  “Yes. He didn’t seem to know what I was talking about. Here, I’ve made you a nice breakfast, so you might just as well enjoy it.”

  Kate strode to the door and flung it open. Sure enough, there was Samuel sitting on a stump, rifle ready.