A Fatal Appraisal (28 page)

Molly looked up at him with a mischievous glint to her gray
eyes. "I'm going to drop this off. And then you get me home, Matt
Harrison," she whispered huskily, brushing her lips against his cheek,
"and I'll show you that I've got a another side of me. One that’s not at
all angelic."

~~~~~~~~~~

The desk was put up for auction on a blustery March
afternoon. The auction was unusually well attended for a seized and unclaimed
property sale. The items ranged from an assortment of jewelry, used cars,
bicycles, electronics, and a scattering of small household items.

Unfortunately for Clara Appleby, a photograph of the desk
heal been included in the newspaper advertisement announcing the sale. Eager
buyers representing the Smithsonian, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, and both the Fredericksburg and Richmond Historical
Societies had already looked the desk over with black lights and magnifying
glasses weeks ago. Each society sought to purchase such an exquisite piece of
American furniture history.

Clara groaned as she took her seat, recognizing some of
the power buyers immediately. Five minutes later, she still sat in shock hands
quivering, her bidding card unused on her lap. The final bid came in at
$175,000 with all proceeds to benefit the Fallen Officers of Virginia Fund.
With one strike of the gavel, the benefit fund would now be able to send a
dozen young men and women to college and the high bidders from the Colonial
Williamsburg Foundation would add another piece to its already stellar
collection of federal furniture.

Propped up on a carpeted dais, the desk sat at a safe
distance from the public behind a crimson velvet rope. Thousands of visitors
walked through the museum that spring, each one pausing to glance at the
reproduction of the Declaration of Independence that rested on the desk's
writing surface. Little did they know that a real historical document lay
hidden scant inches beneath that reproduction. Undiscovered by a lifetime of
owners, appraisers, and finally, the team of Colonial Williamsburg furniture
experts, the desk held onto its greatest treasure. For inside a hollow within
its left slide support, a faded and yellowed paper was folded into a tiny
square. This letter read:

Radford, Virginia 1810

To Elspeth,

I know not where to find you, so I shall write this letter
and place it in the secret place in your father's desk, which belongs to me
now. I purchased it from your aunt when she came to occupy your family's house
after you and your father disappeared. Each time I look upon it I remember
standing in your house and boasting of my clever craftsmanship by showing you
the third secret compartment. What a young fool I was. How strong and beautiful
you were! As you can see, I have learned to write. My wife Mary, who has
departed this life for a better one in Heaven, was a schoolteacher. She taught
me my letters. It is a great joy to be able to read now that I am old and my
joints are too sore to allow me to craft furniture. I find much solace in the
words I once could not comprehend

I searched for you, Elspeth. I searched for years. You
haunted my thoughts like a ghost. I heard many rumors about where you had been
taken. Your father escaped arrest the night at the munitions factory. A
dockworker from Portsmouth claimed that by the light of the full moon, Captain
Tarling boarded one of his ships and returned to England. They say you were
carried aboard, bound and gagged, and forced to accompany him. A trader from
Norfolk told tale of that same ship veering south, where your father
established himself in the West Indies. This trader also claimed that your
father's fortune grew enormous through the slave trade and that you perished
from an illness within a fortnight of arriving there.

I could never confirm either story, as your father changed
his name several times. We captured every member of the Hazard Club that night,
Elspeth, except for your father. Believing that my failure to seize him has
cost you happiness or worse, your very life, has brought me much anguish. Not knowing
your fate has been the greatest regret of my lifetime. I swore to protect you
and I did not. But it is time to let the past lie now, so I place this letter
along with your token, where I shall not look upon it again.

My sight grows weak, Elspeth. The daylight is fading above
the great hills. When twilight comes I shall think of your blue eyes again, as
I do each night, and as I shall do every night until I see you once more in
Paradise. On that great day, I can finally ask for your forgiveness. Your Own,
Thomas

The fragile sheaf was carefully bound with an old silk
ribbon. The ribbon is now faded and tattered at the edges, but if it were ever
rescued from its dark nook and held beneath a gentle beam of sunlight, it would
reveal a soft and delicate shade of cornflower blue.

~~~~~~~~~~

People learn at an early age to squirrel their treasures
away in creative hiding places. Even young children follow a deep-seated
instinct to tuck their favorite belongings into a shoebox and hide it under the
bed or in the back of the closet. This urge to hide a sparkly hair bow or a
Matchbox car can carry over into adulthood. The existence of secret hiding
places comes as no surprise, as architects, furniture makers, and jewelers have
created secret niches within houses, furniture, and even the smallest pieces of
jewelry for centuries.

Medieval castles contained secret passageways meant for
escape, an old house can have secret doors, rooms, or panels meant for hiding
people or objects within, then why not construct a piece of furniture with a
secret compartment as well? The human race has always kept secrets; whether
political secrets of global significance or a clandestine token, such as a love
poem from an unacceptable suitor, there is no shortage of things that need to
be hidden.

The most common pieces of antique furniture in which to
search for hidden compartments would include a variety of desks, chests of
drawers, blanket or storage chests, and portable boxes. Occasionally, you might
run across a wardrobe with a secret drawer across the bottom, a sideboard with
a secret panel hidden beneath a piece of carving, or even an eighteenth-century
headboard containing a hollow area in which the master of the house could
conceal a weapon—many pieces have the potential for secret hiding places, but
the trick is to discover them!

An antique desk created with the purpose of storing
documents is a hopeful place to begin. In fact, a desk containing pigeonholes,
such as fall or slant-front desks, secretaries, kneehole desks, plantation
desks, and ladies writing desks, might have been built with at least one hidden
compartment. If your antique desk has a central cupboard in the pigeonhole
area, check the panels of wood called pilasters flanking the cupboard. As in
A
Fatal Appraisal
, one or both of these pieces might slide out to reveal a
vertical hiding spot. Put your fingers inside the cupboard and search for a
button or a pin. Either press the button or pull the pin to release these
"document drawers."

Sometimes the secret space is located behind the cupboard.
Again, see if your forefinger can discover a depression in which some kind of
release latch is built. Press with one hand and pull out the entire center
section with the other. If your desk has no cupboard or central section, check
any horizontal facing panels near the pigeonholes for a false drawer. Sometimes
the hidden area is actually located beneath the writing surface. This area
might resemble a small, shallow well in which documents can be tucked away.

In the case of a chest of drawers, sometimes one of the
strips of wood separating the drawers is actually a secret drawer itself.
Created without pulls or handles, this hidden drawer is meant to fool anyone
but the knowledgeable owner as to its existence. Sometimes the skirt of a chest
of drawers is a false drawer and can be pulled out by grabbing it underneath
and pulling forward. This is called a "slipper drawer." Always check
for a release mechanism before pulling out the false drawer.

My mother owns a case piece with an unusual secret space; it
is a North Carolina tall chest or a "High Daddy" as it is called
locally, dating to circa 1800. When my mother was examining the piece, she
noticed the top back board was attached with screws made much later than 1800,
yet the other horizontal back boards were attached to the case with old cut
nails. She then carefully removed the board with the "newer" screws
to discover two small drawers tucked into the open cavity behind the crown
molding. In one of the drawers was a yellowed piece of paper dated 1911
detailing the family history of the High Daddy. What a find! My mother
speculates that the drawers were added at the time of the Civil War in order to
keep valuables safe from marauding soldiers.

Boxes of all shapes and sizes are a great place to look for
secret hiding places. The best way to check a box for a secret compartment is
to look at its overall shape. Now open the lid and see if the compartment
inside looks as deep as the overall height of the box. If not, you might find
that the box has a false bottom. That false bottom can be pried upwards using a
thin blade or even a long fingernail to reveal a space below. Sometimes the
hidden space is actually in the lid and is covered by a thin piece of wood or a
fabric lining.

Pressing a button or moving a lever can reveal some hidden
places in boxes. For example, my father owns a mahogany box in which a tiny
button is cleverly placed near one of the hinges on the back. You can only see
this button if the box is open. Once the button is pressed, a thin, secret
drawer pops out on the front of the box, towards the bottom. I won't mention
how my father learned to regret his decision of proudly showing his three
children where he hid the "emergency money." He found himself short a
twenty or two more than once afterward.

A good rule of thumb when seeking out hidden panels is not
to force anything. If glue cracks or wood starts groaning as you are prying at
what you hope to be a secret panel in your grandmother's eighteenth-century
secretary, you might be completely ruining the value of your antique by tearing
it apart. Slashing the silk lining of your two-hundred-year-old document box in
the hopes of discovering gold coins or letters written by Benjamin Franklin
might only result in a damaged box with an empty secret compartment.

Keep in mind that like a child's treasured purple crayon or
hoard of stale Halloween candy, some of the valuables placed in a secret hiding
place may not be valuable to you at all. We'd all like to pull out a false
drawer only to discover the signature of the piece's maker (along with the date
of course), or a jeweled ring used to poison a villainous character ages past
(ideally with a cyanide tablet still intact). These instances are unlikely,
however.

So as you examine the hollow legs of your antique dining
room table with a flashlight or insist upon watching over the upholsterer's
shoulder as he replaces the fabric on your federal side chairs, I hope that
your antique does yield an undiscovered, untouched secret compartment. If it
does, I also hope that you find something that sparks your imagination—a baby's
bootie, a simple bracelet engraved with two sets of initials, a wrinkled
photograph of a beautiful and haunting young face. Whatever you find, I hope
your discovery brings a bit of excitement and mystery into your life. After
all, isn’t that what a good secret is all about?

~~~~~~~~~~

J.B. Stanley taught sixth grade language arts in Cary, North
Carolina for the majority of her eight-year teaching career. Raised an
antique-lover by her grandparents and parents, Stanley also worked part-time in
an auction gallery. An eBay junkie and food-lover, Stanley now lives in
Richmond, Virginia with her husband, two children, and four cats. For more info
please visit
www.jbstanley.com
.