Serafina and the Twisted Staff (The Serafina Series) (26 page)

‘A dead cat?’ Serafina asked in alarm.

‘It’s just an expression,’ Essie said.

‘Do you have a master key or anything like that?’

‘Oh, no, miss. I ain’t got permission for that. Most guests don’t lock their doors. No reason to. But Mrs King says if a guest wants privacy then we should give it to
them.’

Serafina shook her head in frustration. This seemed like another dead end.

‘So what’s the big interest in Detective Grathan?’ Essie asked.

‘I think he’s up to no good, and I want to catch him at it,’ Serafina said, which was the God’s honest truth.

‘Well, you be careful,’ Essie warned gravely. ‘He strikes me as a bad awful man.’

Serafina nodded. Remembering the rats the night before, she said, ‘I’ll do my best.’ Then one more thought came into her mind.

‘Which room is Detective Grathan in?’ she asked Essie. She thought it would be good to double-check what she’d learned from Rowena.

‘Well, when he first arrived, Mrs Vanderbilt told us to put him in the Sheraton Room, which is a very nice room, but Detective Grathan had some sort of problem with it.’

‘What did he say?’

‘No one could understand what he was yammerin’ on about, but he complained high and low about it so much that they finally just give in and put him where he wanted to be. I mean, how
rude, to be a guest in someone’s house and then to demand a particular room!’

‘What room did he demand?’ she asked.

‘The Van Dyck Room at the top of the stairs on the third floor.’

This was the same room that Lady Rowena had named, so this wasn’t new information in itself, but when Serafina heard Essie say these words her heart began to thump.
The room at the top
of the stairs on the third floor
. That was right where she and Braeden had encountered the rats, and right where Gidean had attacked her, and before that where the chimney swifts had chased
her. Then she remembered that the black-cloaked Mr Thorne had used the same room.

‘On my way back from the water closet this mornin’,’ Essie continued, ‘I heard the other girls talkin’ about Detective Grathan.’

‘What did they say?’

‘Well, you know he missed dinner last night, which was extremely rude to Mr and Mrs Vanderbilt. He came in late, went straight up to his room, trackin’ mud all the way, which poor
Betsy had to clean up before Mrs King saw it in the mornin’, and then he rang his bell. He had the gall to demand his dinner be brought up to him in his room. The chef had to get hisself out
of bed, reopen the kitchen, warm up a plate for him and send a footman all the way up there. That would have been no problem at all if he’d showed a speck of gratitude, but he wouldn’t
even let the footman in his room. He shouted at him to set the tray on the floor outside the door and go away.’

Serafina listened with fascination. ‘So Detective Grathan is back in the house . . .’

‘Oh, yes, he’s back, but I wouldn’t cry none if Mr Vanderbilt kicked him right on out again. All the other guests are so friendly and appreciative, especially ’round the
holidays, but he’s just a very rude and demanding man.’

‘Thank you for all the information, Essie,’ Serafina said, clutching her arm. ‘You’ve been a good friend to me. I’ll pay you back for your dress as soon as I
can.’

‘I know you will, miss,’ Essie said. ‘I’ve got a few minutes before I have to go. Do you want me to do your hair? It looks like you’ve been through a right lot of
trouble.’

Serafina smiled and nodded appreciatively. ‘That would be nice.’

‘How would you like me to do it?’ Essie said, standing behind Serafina and gathering her hair up into her hands.

‘Have you seen Consuelo Vanderbilt, the Duchess of Marlborough?’ Serafina asked with a twinkle in her eye.

‘Oh, miss, that would take an hour!’ Essie said. ‘I’m a-fixin’ to get to work!’

‘All right, a roll and a twist it is,’ Serafina said, laughing.

After talking with Essie, Serafina ventured down to the lower floors. Moving from one hiding spot to another, she watched the comings and goings of the bustling house for the rest of the
morning, but she didn’t see anything suspicious or out of the ordinary. There was no sign of Detective Grathan. The rat seemed to have gone to ground. She wondered if her two allies had
spotted anything. Somehow, they had to come up with a plan to defeat Grathan once and for all. They couldn’t keep dodging him. But so far they hadn’t even been able to get into his
room. She felt like she needed some sort of trap.

That afternoon, she went outside to patrol the perimeter of the grounds. She wondered if there was a point at which the old man of the forest would attack head-on. From what direction and in
what form would he come? Or would the attack come from Grathan himself, within the house?

She spotted Mr Vanderbilt and Mr Olmsted walking down a path together in the gardens and hurried to listen in on their conversation.

‘Have you checked in on the planting crews working down along the river?’ Mr Vanderbilt asked Mr Olmsted.

‘They’re making good progress,’ Mr Olmsted said. ‘Mr Schenck has a good eye for the land.’ Serafina recognised the name of the chief forester they had hired to
manage Biltmore’s woodlands. ‘All we need now are a few more decades, and we’ll have a lovely forest again,’ Mr Olmsted added.

The two men laughed a little, but Serafina could see a seriousness in Mr Olmsted’s expression, in the wrinkles around his eyes. The old man was hiding something from Mr Vanderbilt, just as
Lady Rowena had said.

‘I just want to keep making progress,’ Mr Vanderbilt said to Mr Olmsted as the two friends walked together.

‘Don’t worry, George. We’ll keep at it,’ Mr Olmsted assured him. ‘We’re going to make it so beautiful at Biltmore that no one will ever know what it was like
before. You and your family and your guests will be able to enjoy the bounty of nature for years to come.’

‘I appreciate that, Frederick,’ Mr Vanderbilt said.

‘I learned long ago,’ Mr Olmsted continued, ‘that whether it’s a delicate tea rose or a three-foot oak, planting and growing requires an immeasurable amount of
patience.’

‘I don’t always have it,’ Mr Vanderbilt said.

‘Neither do I,’ Mr Olmsted admitted.

Serafina thought that Mr Olmsted should have chuckled or smiled when he said that, but he didn’t. There was a darkness in him that she did not understand. There were thoughts on his mind
that he was not sharing with Mr Vanderbilt. She wondered again why he’d come back to Biltmore now, at this particular time.

As she watched and listened to these two men, she thought about her own life. Years ago, she had often seen these two friends together, walking and planting, talking about what species of trees
would grow in each area, how they could bring in more water here or protect an area from the wind there, like shepherds of the forest. She had never thought about it before, but lately she had
started to realise that all the comforts, buildings and machines around her were once nothing more than someone’s dream. In the not-too-distant past, these things had just been an idea in
someone’s head. When Mr Vanderbilt’s grandfather grew up, people had to walk or ride horses to travel great distances, but he’d imagined trains crisscrossing America. It was only
by those trains that his grandson was able to venture from New York to the wilds of western North Carolina. And then his grandson had dreams of his own and built a great house in the mountains. Mr
Edison had imagined a lightbulb that would bring light to the darkest nights. Other people had imagined the elevator, and the dynamo, and all the other inventions her pa worked on every day. But,
unlike the men of iron, Mr Olmsted had dreamed of vast gardens and endless forests. Those were the things he’d brought into the world. Thinking back in time, she wondered if the mountains,
and the rivers, and the clouds, and even human beings, had been
God’s
dream a million years before.

As she thought about all this, she couldn’t help but wonder about herself.
Envision what you want to be, then you’ ll find a way to get there
, Waysa had told her in the cave
behind the waterfall. She knew she wasn’t going to invent a machine or build a great building, but she had to figure out who and what she wanted to be. She had to envision her future, and
then she had to get there.

When she snuck back into the house that evening, she hunkered down in the second-floor airshaft and tried to think about what she could do. What trick could she use to trap Grathan? She had
tried to get into his room and failed. She could barely keep track of where he was. But he had to have some kind of weakness.

Restless for any sort of plan, she crawled through the shaft and checked Braeden’s room, which was empty. So she made her way down to the library. As usual, she entered through the vent
near the ceiling. Just as she began climbing down the bookshelves to the library’s second-floor walkway, Serafina heard footsteps approaching. She scurried into a hiding spot, crouched down
and waited for someone to enter the room.

But no one did.

She kept waiting, curious. She was sure she had heard something. It was like the person had paused just outside the door and wasn’t coming in. The longer it went on, the more curious she
became. Was she mistaken?

Suddenly, a figure appeared in the room, but not through the main door as she’d expected. Someone stepped out from behind the upper portion of the room’s massive fireplace mantel. It
was Lady Rowena! Serafina realised she must have used the hidden passageway that led from the house’s second floor directly into the top level of the library.

Serafina thought she should reveal herself to Rowena, but there was something furtive about the girl’s movements, so she crouched down and watched her.

Rowena quickly ran down the finely wrought spiral staircase to the library’s main floor, her lavish, dusky-rose dress billowing behind her. She looked around as if to make sure no one else
was in the room, then darted over to the walnut wall panels just to the left of the fireplace.

Serafina crept along the railing, but before she could get to a better vantage point she heard a faint metallic ratcheting, a turning sound and then a distinct
click
. This was followed by
the squeak of what sounded like a hinge. Rowena must have found some sort of small hidden compartment in the wall. There was a rustling of paper and then a long sliding sound.

Rowena came back into view with a bundle of rolled documents in her hands. She took them over to one of the tables and opened them up. It was hard to tell from a distance what the rolls
contained, but they seemed to be architectural drawings of some kind.

What was Rowena looking for? Was she studying a diagram of the house so that she would know it as well as Serafina and Braeden did? Or maybe she’d found the list of guests and was now
matching them to the various rooms of the house like Serafina had told her to. It seemed wrong for Rowena to be snooping around in the library when no one else was there, but then Serafina realised
that she herself was doing the exact same thing. Maybe Rowena had some theory she was pursuing about Detective Grathan. When Serafina had asked Rowena to join her and Braeden, she’d had no
idea the girl would be so committed. She seemed to truly enjoy playing spy. Serafina was eager to hear what she had learned.

Just as she thought about revealing herself to Rowena, Serafina heard the sound of footsteps walking down the Tapestry Gallery towards the main door of the library. Lady Rowena quickly stuffed
the drawings back into the hidden compartment in the wall, sat down on the sofa in front of the fire and pretended to read a book.

This girl is good
, Serafina thought as she watched with a smile. That was a trick she’d never thought of before. The old act-like-everything-is-fine-here trick.

A footman came into the room. ‘I beg your pardon, my lady,’ the footman said, bowing slightly. ‘Dinner will be served at the normal hour of eight o’clock this evening,
but please be advised that most of the clocks in the house have stopped, so we are letting our guests know that it’s currently seven o’clock and they may wish to start getting dressed
for dinner at this time. Thank you.’

Serafina’s body jolted when she heard the footman’s words. The clocks had stopped! Lady Rowena was here in the library, so that meant Braeden had sounded the alarm! He was in
trouble!

Rowena seemed to understand this as well, for she immediately brushed past the footman and hurried out of the room.

Serafina darted from her hiding spot and ran for the rooftop.

S
erafina climbed through the fourth-floor window onto the roof of Biltmore House and hurried along the top side of the Grand Staircase’s
copper dome. She made her way between the slanting slate roofs, rising chimneys, pointed towers and sculpted stone gargoyles of Biltmore’s rooftop realm. The ridges of the roof were capped
with ornate copper trim embossed with patterns of oak leaves, acorns and George Vanderbilt’s gold-gilded initials burning bright in the moonlit night.

As she came to the edge of the roof, she had a nighthawk’s view of the Winter Garden’s glass rooftop and the estate’s many courtyards and gardens far below her. With the
glistening stars above and the forested mountains rolling into the distance, the roof provided her a breathtaking view of her world.