Crowned and Moldering (22 page)

There was only one way to find out. I would have to track him down and have a conversation
with him. For now, though, I was here and ready to work off some of these worries
with good, hard labor. I glanced at Carla, who still looked anxious. “Don’t worry,”
I said. “I’ll talk to Aldous.”

“Okay, good. Thanks, Shannon.”

“For now, let’s go over the stuff you guys have been doing all week.”

“Sounds like a plan. Let’s start out here.” We circled the front porch, and she pointed
out the items on my list they’d taken care of. “We’ve taken down all the shutters.
I’m storing them up on the porch because it keeps threatening to rain.”

“Good thinking.” Two dozen pairs of shutters were neatly piled under the front window.
Also, a number of wooden planks were chalked to indicate that they needed to be replaced.

“This header will have to come down, by the way,” she said, reaching up to slap the
head beam that ran between the two main posts that stood on either side of the front
steps. “Water damage.”

“Yeah, I had that on my list. The roof over the porch is warped, so I know water’s
been leaking into those beams for years now.”

“That’s the downside of having a two-hundred-year-old house next to the ocean,” she
said, shaking her head.

“Sad but true.” I pulled out my tablet and consulted my handy list of projects. “Did
you get started on the kitchen yet?”

“Sure have,” she said. “Let’s go inside.”

We walked through the foyer into the dining room and pushed open the kitchen door.
The sink and the entire counter and the cabinets above and below it were gone. “I
had the guys put the old cabinets in the garage for safekeeping until you’re ready
to do something with them.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’d like to salvage them somehow. Maybe Mac has some ideas of ways
to use them. The wood is so beautiful.”

Carla gestured toward the tools leaning against the wall where the sink used to be.
“I’ve got a sledgehammer and a pickax sitting here, just in case you feel like attacking
something.”

I laughed. “How did you know?” I crossed the room and lifted the ax. “Tell me what
to work on next.”

She pointed to the other side of the room. “That pantry closet needs to come down.
It’s all yours. Billy and I can start tearing apart the mudroom.”

“Sounds like a plan.” I stared at the south end of the kitchen, where a floor-to-ceiling
pantry had been built out from the wall, taking up half the space on that side of
the room. On the wall next to the cabinet was nothing but a faded, boxy outline, indicating
that an old refrigerator had once stood there.

The wood cabinet was old and had been picked apart from the inside by termites, so
I had no intention of salvaging any of it, except to use as kindling.

I slipped on my safety goggles and did a few practice swings before I slammed the
ax into the side of the pantry. Splinters and chunks of wood went flying. I continued
swinging until the doors and sides of the pantry were scattered in pieces across the
floor.

I could feel my muscles thrumming, and I don’t know why the thought came to me, but
I remembered that Denise Jones had strong arms, too. Swinging an ax or a sledgehammer—or
a shovel—every day could do that for you.

The entire pantry had been attached to the wall by one-by-two-inch wood slats. I used
a regular hammer to claw off the slats, and part of the wall came off with them. I
wasn’t concerned, because we would have to take the entire room down to the studs,
anyway.

But instead of the usual layer of lath beneath the surface plaster, there was a sheet
of old drywall. I knew drywall had been around for almost a hundred years; that wasn’t
the problem. It just didn’t match the rest of the walls of the house, which had been
constructed using the traditional lath and plaster. Had this wall been built later?

Since we’d be rebuilding it anyway, I used the pickax to dig through the drywall and
break it up. But instead of finding two-by-four studs beyond the drywall, there was
only empty space.

“What in the world?” It was too dark to see anything, so I tore down more of the drywall
and then grabbed the big flashlight from my tool chest.

“How’s it going?” Carla asked, strolling over to my side of the room.

“We’ve got a little mystery in here,” I muttered, shining the light through the hole
I’d opened in the drywall. I really hoped I wouldn’t find another body. Or rats.
Please not rats.
I stepped back to give Carla room to look. “Can you see anything?”

“What’s back there?” She peered into the space for a long moment. “Huh. Looks like
a staircase.”

“Oh, my God.” A tingle of excitement mixed with fear shot across my shoulders and
down my arms. “It
is
a staircase.”

I grabbed the sledgehammer and slashed away at the rest of the wall. Carla used her
gloved hands to tear off a few chunks and toss them on the floor.

Within minutes, we were able to step through the wall and get a closer look at the
impossibly narrow, rickety set of stairs that led up to a second-floor landing and
then continued up to the third floor. I could see from where I stood that the landing
came to an abrupt end at a blank wall. There was no doorway. The entire staircase
had been completely blocked off and enclosed by walls.

“This must’ve been the servants’ stairs,” Carla marveled. “I don’t understand why
they would cover them up.”

“I don’t, either,” I said, gazing at the dark wooden bannister that wobbled when I
touched it. “But I owe Aldous Murch an apology.”

*   *   *

The guys and Carla were happy to clean up the remains of the demolished pantry while
I drove back to town to track down Aldous and tell him what we’d found.

I stopped at the Planning Commission offices first, but he wasn’t there. One of the
secretaries came over to the counter and said, “You’ll probably find him strolling
somewhere between here and the Historical Society office down on the square.”

I decided to walk the same route and finally caught up with him. He was seated on
a park bench in the tree-lined grassy center of the town square. His head was bowed
and I wondered if he was dozing.

“Hello, Mr. Murch,” I said.

He blinked and sat up straighter. “Well, hello, there. I haven’t seen you in a while,
young lady.” He coughed to clear his throat.

“I’ve been pretty busy. But I heard you were out at the mansion, and I was wondering
if you needed any help looking for something.”

“I didn’t . . . I wasn’t. . . .” His lips curled down in a frown. “I forget what I
was looking for.”

I sat down next to him on the bench. “Maybe this will help you remember.” I held out
my tablet so he could see the photograph I’d taken.

He stared at it for over a minute and finally looked up at me. I was shocked to see
tears blurring his eyes. “I told you,” he whispered.

“You did.” I felt terrible that I hadn’t taken his word about the staircase. Especially
when it seemed to mean so much to him. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. You were right.
We found this staircase behind the kitchen wall.” I slid my finger across the screen
and showed him the next photo. “Beyond the stairs we found a little room with this
small fireplace. But this whole area was completely closed off on all three floors.
And you can’t see this chimney from the outside of the house, so they must’ve taken
it down, brick by brick.”

“It was the servants’ parlor,” he murmured, and curled arthritic fingers around the
edges of the tablet.

“But why did they close it off? They even went to the trouble of changing the blueprints
so nobody knew it was there.”

He pressed one hand against the bench seat and seemed to brace himself before speaking.
“A young girl was attacked on those back stairs.” He took another breath and kept
talking. It was painful to listen to him struggle for words. “She was a sweet girl,
and pretty. Betsy was her name. They hurt her, you see. Badly. She wasn’t the same
after that.”

“Did they punish the person who hurt her?”

“No,” he uttered in disgust. “She would never say who did it, but we knew. We knew.”

“You couldn’t do anything about it?”

“Not without her testimony. Frankly, even if she’d testified, they never would’ve
prosecuted the evil man who did it. The navy decided to close off that dangerous passageway
rather than discipline the man who did those horrible things.”

I patted his arm. “I’m so sorry.”

Aldous shot me a sideways glance. “The man was untouchable back then. He was a high-ranking
officer. The one who did all that bad stuff. You understand.”

“I’m afraid so.” The navy wouldn’t want to risk receiving negative PR over one insignificant
housemaid.

“I’d like to say times have changed,” he said, “but they haven’t, have they?”

“Some things are changing,” I said lamely, unable to think of anything that would
make him feel better.

He reached over and I felt again the crepe-paper-thin skin of his hand as he patted
mine in sympathy. “Perhaps you’re right, dear. Things do seem to be changing. Altogether
too fast sometimes, if you ask me.” He pursed his lips tightly, and then slowly he
seemed to make a conscious effort to smile. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find
out it was the first time he’d done so in months.

“It’s good you uncovered those stairs,” he said. “Betsy deserves to be remembered,
not shut away behind walls and deaf ears.”

I got a chill, but he was right. Finding the stairs would allow us to shine a light
on the past.

“My offer to show you around the mansion still stands,” I said. “Whenever you’d like
me to drive you out there.”

“I appreciate that. And thank you for showing me the pictures, Shannon, dear. I’ve
got to admit, I thought I might be going a little senile for a while there.”

“Not you, Mr. Murch,” I said, chuckling. “Not you.”

*   *   *

On my way home, I stopped to visit Lizzie at Paper Moon on the square. “Any word on
Cliff?”

“Let’s go get a latte,” she whispered. We both waved to Hal, who smiled and shooed
us off. “I can take fifteen minutes.”

We didn’t speak as we walked three doors down from her shop to the coffeehouse, where
I bought two lattes. We found a quiet corner and sat to talk. Lizzie took a sip first
and then said, “Cliff is still in intensive care but not quite as critical as earlier.”

“Have you heard if they arrested Denise or not?”

“I haven’t heard, which is sad, because why have a stupid police scanner if you can’t
get the latest updates?”

“Why, indeed?”

I filled her in on everything Mac had told me about Denise bashing Cliff with the
shovel and the interesting detail of him trying to blackmail her.

“Blackmail?” Lizzie repeated. “What could she have possibly done that would cause
someone to blackmail her?”

“I can’t figure it out. Is it something that happened back in high school or is it
more recent?”

“I wonder if it has something to do with Lily.”

“That was my first guess.”

“I’ll talk to Hal. He might know something.”

“Okay, and if you see anyone else who might have a clue, ask them. I want to know
what the heck Cliff was thinking.”

“And we don’t know if Denise has been arrested,” she said. “I hope they let her go.”

“Me, too,” I whispered. “It sounds like Cliff would’ve killed her if he’d had the
chance.”

I walked Lizzie back to the store and drove toward home. We had both promised to call
each other first thing if we heard anything. Because that’s how our small-town world
operated.

It bothered me that Cliff had told Denise something so outrageous that she’d taken
a lethal swing at him. I supposed the story would leak out eventually, so I would
just have to wait. Patience, sadly, was not my greatest virtue.

*   *   *

When I got home, I dashed up the stairs that led to the apartment over the garage
to look for Mac. After a few seconds of my pounding on the door, he answered, looking
as though he hadn’t slept all night. He wore a ratty old T-shirt with holes, an ancient
pair of cargo shorts, and flip-flops. Despite all that, he looked ridiculously sexy.

“Are you working?” I asked, recognizing his usual writing attire.

“No, because someone was hammering on my door so loudly I couldn’t concentrate.” He
said it with a gleam in his eye, so I didn’t feel too awful for interrupting.

“Sorry, but I have to talk to you.”

He swung the door open. “Come in. Talk to me.”

The large studio apartment was neater than I’d thought it would be, given that Mac
was in writing mode. Yes, his desk was a mess, but that was to be expected. The king-sized
bed was made, though, with all the pillows stacked in an orderly fashion. The small
dining table in front of the bay window held only a thin vase with a sprig of flowers
from my garden.

“What’s up?” he said.

“There’s a secret room behind the kitchen wall with a fireplace and a staircase going
to the second and third floors,” I told him.

He pulled out one of the chairs next to the table. “Sit. Breathe.”

I plopped down, realizing for the first time how fast my heart was beating. It was
no wonder. I had discovered a secret room!

Mac pulled out the other chair and joined me at the table. “So, Aldous had the right
of it after all.”

“Yes, and I felt so bad. I tracked him down a while ago to show him pictures and tell
him about it. He had tears in his eyes, and it almost broke my heart.”

“Can I see the pictures?”

“Oh yeah.” I pulled my tablet out of my bag and handed it to him.

As he gazed at the photographs, I related the entire story to Mac, of poor Betsy’s
attack on the back stairs and the cover-up that followed. When I was done, Mac took
my hand and we sat in silence for several long minutes.

“I admit I’m fascinated by the hidden staircase,” Mac said. “But its history is so
dark, I wonder if the whole thing should be walled up again.”