The Vanishing Stair

by Maureen Johnson

  Fenton looked up from the pad.

  “There’s no mention of connecting a phone call at ten o’clock,” Fenton said. “So then I look again at what Margo Fields actually says. Prosecution: Coming in, going out, even between the buildings? And Margo Fields doesn’t say, yeah, that’s right. She says something totally different. She says, ‘Some days the Ellingham lines are very busy, but the evenings are generally quieter, and I think Mr. Ellingham was in town that day, so his phones were quieter. So it wasn’t that odd.’ Which is not actually an answer. So what do we have?”

  “A discrepancy,” Stevie said. “Gertie van Coevorden says that there was a call and the records say there wasn’t.”

  “And we have a telephone operator who is being evasive on the stand. She isn’t lying if she moves around the topic. So, which story is correct, do you think? Gertie van Coevorden with her phone call, or the evasive phone operator?”

  Stevie sat back and spun this around in her mind.

  “Why didn’t anyone notice what Gertie said about a phone call before?” she asked.

  Fenton smiled and tapped a finger alongside her nose.

  “Exactly the right question. Because no one ever asked her. They seem to have gone to great lengths not to ask anyone in Minerva House about phone calls. And Gertie van Coevorden did not strike me as being one of the nation’s great thinkers. I don’t think she noticed that the phone call was missing, from the accounts of things. But I did.”

  “So what does it mean? Someone called Minerva? That makes sense—they’d be looking for Dottie.”

  “Right again,” Fenton said. “So why does the record of this phone call not exist? The answer is in the building plan of Ellingham Academy.”

  She went to the wall of black-and-white photos of the house and grounds.

  “You know there are tunnels up there, right? You’ve been in the most famous one. But there are others. Many have been partially earthed in or sealed for safety—but the whole point of secret tunnels was that they were secret. Personal use. According to Gertie, there was a tunnel in Minerva.”

  “In Minerva?” Stevie said. “I live in Minerva.”

  “Any word of a tunnel there?”

  “Nothing that I’ve heard.”

  “Gertie was convinced of it. She said another student found it, that she had seen this student disappear and reappear.”

  “Where does it go?”

  “If my guess is right, it goes to somewhere on the other side of the campus, somewhere secluded, sort of over here.”

  She got up and pointed to the area down near the cafeteria and the gym.

  “So, if we find this tunnel,” Stevie said, “where does it get us?”

  “I have a little theory,” Fenton said. “If I can prove the tunnel exists, my theory is more likely.”

  “What’s the theory?” Stevie said.

  “For me to know. But if I’m right, and this book turns out the way I think it will, you’ll have been a part of it. There’s your assignment. See about that tunnel. Scout around.”

  Stevie decided not to mention that tunneling was kind of frowned upon. Best to leave that alone. She had just been given an official assignment.

  Hunter was sitting in the living room as they walked out, petting a big orange cat on his lap.

  “All done?” he said. “You need a ride, or . . .”

  “Leave her alone,” Fenton snapped. “They have a coach.”

  Fenton sneezed, then yanked a copy of her book off a pile of what looked like old copies.

  “Here,” she said. “For you.”

  Stevie had one already, and this one had yellowed edges, but she accepted it. Fenton went off to the kitchen, their exchange finished.

  “I just meant if you needed one,” Hunter said. “Sorry. She’s . . . abrupt.”

  “No, it’s fine,” Stevie said. “They don’t let people come up to campus, anyway.”

  “Oh, right.” His cheeks flushed a bit. “Yeah. Stupid. Sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” she said.

  “Look,” he said. “Is it weird if I give you my phone number? Just since you’re working with my aunt and . . .”

  He looked toward the kitchen, where Fenton was humming loudly.

  “. . . you may, you may want it. Or. You may not.”

  “Sure,” Stevie said, offering her phone.

  She wasn’t sure why he was giving her his number—whether it was the smile he had given her before, or the erratic nature of Fenton that suggested that something was not quite right with this whole arrangement. It was a phone number in any case, someone else to connect with.

  It wasn’t the worst feeling.

  13

  AT SIX THAT EVENING, AS THE DAY DREW TO A CLOSE AND THE SHADOWS fell over Ellingham, Stevie Bell stood in her room, tucking herself into the suit that still smelled strongly of mothballs and must from the costume attic. She stood before the mirror and did what the famously fastidious Belgian detective would do—she adjusted her mustache until it was perfect. She tucked a pillow into her front to fill out her belly a bit and take up some of the extra space in the baggy suit. She’d found a walking-stick prop and some white gloves, and the overall effect was pleasing.

  This tunnel stuff was stupid. If there was a tunnel under Minerva, someone would have found it by now. David. Ellie. Someone. It would have loomed large in the legend.

  Still, a passable effort would need to be made. Hercule would look.

  The source of the tunnel would have to be on the first floor. This meant the possible entry points were the kitchen, the common room, the hallway, either one of the two bathrooms, or any of the three bedrooms. She had already crawled all over Ellie’s floor. There was no evidence of a tunnel in there. Of course, entrances could be carefully hidden, but still. She got down and examined her floor, crawling, tapping, picking at the boards. Nothing.

  She could check Janelle’s room later. Janelle was deep into her Wonder Woman transformation and could not be disturbed. But it seemed unlikely that the bedrooms were the source. The entry would have to be through the floor.

  She went to the kitchen, poking into the back of the cabinets with her stick. It was possible the refrigerator or the stove or dishwasher could have been covering the opening, but then, surely these spots had been checked. You needed to hook these things up with water and gas. The refrigerator was heavy. A hollow spot under it would likely have been found.

  She walked around the common room, looking at the flagstone floor. This was a more promising area, as any one of these stones could be a hatch. But it certainly appeared that the seals were tight. Similarly, the bathrooms showed no sign of having a passage anywhere in the floor.

  It was a perfunctory check, and she would look more later, but it really seemed that Fenton had to be wrong. Maybe there was a tunnel somewhere on the campus that had not been found, but it probably wasn’t here.

  She was crawling down the hallway, examining the boards, when Nate came up behind her.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  Stevie stood up and adjusted her pillow stomach.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Thought I dropped something. Is that your costume?”

  Nate was wearing his normal clothes—his grayed-out cords and a loose T-shirt.

  “I don’t do costumes,” he said.

  Janelle’s door swung open, and Wonder Janelle stood in the doorway.

  “You think you’re getting away with that?” she said to Nate. “I guessed this was going to happen.”

  She reached behind her door and plucked out a long gray cloak made of some coarse material, a wizard hat of a similar color, and a gray beard. She extended the outfit in his direction.

  Nate stared and did not move.

  “You just . . . had that there?” he asked.

  “EBay,” she said. “And a little sewing. Take it.”

  Nate took the costume and put it over his arm.

  “And here.”

  She reached
back again and produced a tree branch that had been roughly fashioned into a staff.

  “How . . .” he said.

  “Listen to me,” Janelle said. “A lot of bad things have happened this year. It’s been scary and sad and horrible. But we’re here, and this is a holiday, which means we are going to celebrate because not everyone from this house can do that. So put on this wizard stuff, let me fix my tiara, and we go.”

  She shut her door.

  “She’s had this,” Nate said. “All along.”

  “She’s Janelle. She can see around corners. Are you going to wear it?”

  Nate felt the material between his fingers, then picked up the staff and examined it.

  “It’s a pretty good Gandalf outfit,” he said. “I guess she made this staff? Like she went out and found a branch?”

  “Because she’s Janelle,” Stevie said.

  They went to the common room and Nate started to slip into the robes. There was the creak of footsteps moving overhead. Janelle stepped out of her room, her tiara now perfectly in place, with a round shield on her back and a sword in her hand. She regarded Nate with a satisfied nod.

  “Good,” she said. “Team Minerva. Where’s David?”

  There was a patter of steps and the ungodly creak of the stairs, then, out of the dark of the hall, he emerged.

  “Oh,” Janelle said. “That’s . . .”

  “You did the . . .” The words were dying in Stevie’s mouth. “. . . Sherlock thing.”

  David had, in fact, done the Sherlock thing that Stevie had dismissed for herself, specifically, the BBC one. He was wearing a sharply cut blue dress shirt, slender, tailored pants, and a long gray-black coat with a red interior. He had teased out his hair a bit and made sure it curled. In many ways, it was a perfect costume while not being a costume at all. And it was obviously intentional, directed at her.

  Stevie’s legs decided to debone themselves and her body became a hormonal swamp. She clutched her pillow belly for emotional support.

  “What are you?” he said to Stevie. “A . . . chef?”

  “She’s Hercule Poirot,” Janelle said, as if it was obvious that the baggy suit and fake mustache also translated.

  “And Wonder Woman! And Gandalf! And Sherlock! All together! Just like nature intended. Should we go?”

  The four of them headed out into the night. They were met on the path by Vi, who was dressed as a perfect Steve Trevor.

  “So,” David said as the five of them passed under the dark trees to the Great House. “Is this weird?”

  “Which part?” Stevie said.

  “Is there fan-fic of this? You know, these two. What does that look like? What do we call it? Porlock? Sheriot?”

  Janelle and Vi were arm in arm, Wonder Woman and Steve. Nate was off by himself, his cape brushing the lawn.

  “Where did you get the coat?” Stevie said, trying to sound casual.

  “What, this old thing?” he said, extending his hands in the pockets and showing it off. “I just charged a two-thousand-dollar coat to my dad’s credit card.”

  “There are two-thousand-dollar coats?” Stevie replied.

  “He’d want me to have it. I can’t look shabby, can I? Not at the White House.”

  This was the first time David had ever said anything about his father’s ambitions, and Stevie glanced around nervously.

  “They didn’t hear,” he said. “And wouldn’t understand if they did.”

  They walked in silence for a moment. The world was spinning gently as she comprehended what was going on—he was doing the sexy dress for her. Not the other way around. He was trying so hard, reaching for her.

  “No chance you know about any tunnels under Minerva?” she asked, trying to regain some composure.

  “There are no tunnels under Minerva.”

  “Not according to Fenton.”

  “What is a Fenton?”

  “Fenton is the professor I work for in Burlington. The one writing a book about the case.”

  “There are no tunnels under Minerva,” he repeated. “You think I wouldn’t notice a tunnel under Minerva?”

  “Secret tunnel,” she said.

  “I repeat.”

  “She seems pretty sure.”

  “Well, I’m pretty sure too. You haven’t said if you like my coat.”

  “I like your coat.” She meant it to come out dry and unaffected, but instead her bastard throat betrayed her with a tiny croaking sound on the last syllable. The body was the enemy of the mind.

  Ellingham had gone all-out for the Halloween party. The Great House was made for occasions such as this, quite literally. All the overhead lights had been turned off and illumination came in the form of hundreds of tiny flickering electric candles. They were on every surface and lined the staircase. The diffused light winked off the crystal. A fire roared in the big fireplace, where a s’mores station had been set up, manned by Kaz, who was dressed as David Bowie, with a lightning bolt across his face. Call Me Charles approached dressed as Charlie Chaplin.

  “You guys ready for some fun?” he asked.

  “No,” David said.

  Charles let this slide and pointed toward the door of the ballroom with his costume cane.

  This was not a silent party tonight. The ballroom, with its mirrored walls and its carnival mask decorations, flickered with light and was rich with sound. There were orange and white fairy lights draped from the ceiling, and hundreds more tiny electric candles flicking along the walls and floor. A table was set up with drinks and snacks. A few regular suspects were in the middle of the floor, dancing away, including Maris, who was wearing a red flapper outfit, a choice that felt inevitable to Stevie. Dash was there as well, dressed as Han Solo. Vi extended a gallant hand to Janelle, who took it. Wonder Woman and Steve began to dance.

  “Hey.”

  Mudge was standing next to them, dressed as Mickey Mouse. A six-foot-five Mickey Mouse, with big ears coming off his jet-black hair.

  “Cool Gandalf,” he said to Nate. He looked a bit more confused by Stevie and David, but nodded politely.

  “I’m a watch ad,” David said. “She’s a hipster grandpa. Together, we solve crime.”

  Mudge cocked his head at this and decided his time might be better spent elsewhere. Nate also looked around the room from under the massive brim of his wizard hat and immediately decided that he was going to the s’mores station. Stevie and David were left standing on the side.

  “You want to dance, Grandpa?” he asked Stevie.

  “Her-cule.”

  “You want to dance, Hercule?”

  Hercule was feeling nervous. The fine cloth of David’s shirt was soft and fitting. She could sense what it would be like to put her hands against his chest, to work them around to his back, to press against his body.

  “Maybe a s’more,” she said.

  He gestured for her to lead the way.

  They stepped back into the main hall, where the less dance-inclined of the Ellingham student body were playing some games. There was another table of snacks out here, and David walked over to it and grabbed a few sticky balls of pretzel and marshmallow.

  “A tunnel,” he said, taking a bite. “I’d know.”

  This was safer, steadier ground.

  “You don’t know everything about the tunnels.”

  “I would know that if it was in the floor of the building I live in.”

  He sat down in a crepuscular spot under the shadow of the grand stairs. A person dressed as a skeleton bopped by.

  “If they wanted to have a real Halloween party, they’d let us into the basement,” she said. “It’s nuts down there. It’s like a maze.”

  “Now you interest me,” David said, straightening. “How does one get to this basement?”

  “No,” she said. “I promised Larry.”

  “A promise is only . . .”

  “I promised Larry,” she said, casting her eye in the direction of the doorway to the kitchen.

  “Well,
this is fun. Sitting on a bench.”

  “Then go dance or something,” Stevie said.

  “You don’t want to dance.”

  “You don’t need my permission,” she said.

  “But maybe I’d rather stay with you,” he said.

  David stretched out his legs a bit and tapped gently at the inside of her ankle with the toe of his shoe. He turned his eyes up to her. What was this? Flirting? Flirting was sending an unexpected text message. This was something else, something that made her feel like she did when Ellie gave her that warm champagne to drink on the first day—bubbles in the bloodstream, an air of unreality. No. This was more than that. This was like she’d gone through a stargate into the life of some parallel universe Stevie. She was used to feelings that butted up against each other, the way that anxiety brought bad excitement. She could handle that now because she knew that feeling. This was something like good nausea, which made no sense, and therefore she was back to anxiety and its bad excitement, except there was a new chemical level.

  And in this case, because everything stunk of Edward King, no good move to make. There were no answers here, except to avoid, avoid, avoid.

  She tried to look away from his tapping foot and concentrated on the stairs sweeping above them, and the door to the kitchen underneath. The door to the kitchen under the stairs. A lot happened under staircases in old houses. Under the stairs, that’s where the servants worked. Harry Potter lived under the stairs. Even Albert Ellingham had written about something being under the stairs. “Where do you look for someone who’s never really there? Always on a staircase . . .”

  “But never on a stair,” she said out loud.

  “Come again?”

  Stevie was already on her feet, and David followed. As they passed the door, Call Me Charlie Chaplin regarded them with confusion.

  “Going so soon?” he said.

  “I forgot something,” Stevie replied. “My . . . medication. Have to take it. Be right back.”

  Charlie Chaplin tipped his bowler hat. Stevie and David—or Hercule and Sherlock—walked double-time down the path and under the trees, quickly enough that Stevie worked up a cold sweat.

  “So what’s happening now?” he said.

  “Under the stairs,” she said. “Did you ever look under the stairs? In Minerva?”