The Castle on Deadman's Island (6 page)

Graham got to his feet groggily “I'm glad you woke me. I dreamt I met Frankenstein in the cellar and he was about to throttle me.”

They approached the back entrance to the castle cautiously. When they'd been in the kitchen earlier with Mrs. Ruff, Graham had taken note of the lock on the back door.
“A
cinch to jimmy,” Neil had said later, when Graham described it to him. “There's one of those on our back door at home. I can open it easy”

Neil got out his penknife. It was only a matter of a few minutes fiddling and they were in.

They stood in the middle of the empty kitchen and looked around. In the absolute silence that surrounded
them, Neil grew apprehensive. Was someone or something in the castle listening, waiting for them? He kept these thoughts to himself.

Graham proceeded to make himself at home, peering in the pantry and in the fridge. “I'm hungry,” he said. He came up with a canister labeled
OATMEAL COOKIES
from the pantry and a large slab of cheddar cheese from the fridge. “We won't take a lot,” he said. “Hopefully Mrs. R. won't notice.”

They munched on cookies and broke bits off the cheese slab before wrapping it carefully and putting it back. “Okay, where do we start?” Neil said, his mouth full.

“Let's find Aunt Etta's bedroom,” Graham said. “I saw a flashlight in the pantry; we'll need it soon.” Already the kitchen was growing dim, the brilliant sunlight now blocked by the tall pines as the sun sank in the west.

“I'm glad there's two of us,” Graham said, as they started along the hallway that Mrs. Ruff had led them down that morning. Neil felt the same. It was spooky enough when someone was with you.

Their voices echoed in the cavernous gloom – a rude violation of the castle's brooding silence.

At the grand staircase, they stood and gazed up at the landing, where the stairs curved seductively. “Shades of the Roaring Twenties,” Graham mused.
“Women in evening gowns and diamond tiaras, pausing there to look down at the men in white tie and tails, waiting for them below.”

“With the sound of the orchestra and the clink of champagne glasses in the background,” Neil added, having watched more than a few Hollywood movies. “I can see it now.” And, for a moment, he even thought he got a whiff of perfume, but the spell passed.

They took the stairs to the second floor and followed a wide carpeted corridor lined with paintings. “Aunt Etta would commandeer one of the better bedrooms, no doubt,” Graham said. “This one looks promising.”

He opened a double door, which turned out to be a vast walk-in linen closet, its shelves packed with sheets yellowing with age. “Oh, well, even Charlie Chan, ace detective, is sometimes wrong,” Graham said, and shut it again.

Farther along, however, they did find a number of large bedrooms – each with its own sitting room, dressing room, and bathroom. In one, Graham, peering in a closet, recognized his aunt's straw hat. “That's hers,” he said. “She wears it everywhere. Her favorite summer hat.” He looked fixedly at Neil. “Aunt Etta never goes anywhere without that hat.”

The closet also held a few dresses and skirts, and
there was a scattering of slips, blouses, and underclothes neatly folded in the drawers of an antique dresser. A few toiletries remained in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. There was no sign of a suitcase.

They sat on the four-poster bed and surveyed the room. “Not a lot of her clothes here,” Graham said. “So either she really did go away and take most of them with her, forgetting her favorite hat, or …”

“… Or someone else took them to make it look like she'd gone,” Neil finished.

“Precisely. In which case, where is she?” Graham said. “And what about her suitcase? All we have are questions.”

“There's still the rest of the castle to search,” Neil said encouragingly. “Maybe we'll find some answers yet.”

“I'm afraid to think about what we might find,” Graham said. He gazed up at his aunt's wide-brimmed straw hat, with its colorful silk band, sitting innocently on the top shelf of the closet.

“She never goes anywhere without that hat….”

Neil and Graham set out to search the remaining rooms. Eventually, Neil knew, they'd have to face the cellar.

There was nothing more of interest on the second floor, so they headed for the next floor up. Graham switched on the flashlight. He'd been saving the batteries, but now they needed it – the moon peeking in the windows was not enough. The castle had power and it was tempting to turn on some lights, but they couldn't risk attracting attention.

On the third floor, they found a number of smaller guest rooms, the furniture covered with sheets, like
the ghosts of the less important visitors who'd been relegated there. They went into every room, looking in cupboards and in shared bathrooms, but all they discovered were spiders in the bathtubs and droppings under the beds from the field mice who'd made cozy nests in the mattresses for the winter.

The main staircase ended at the third floor, but they found back stairs leading up to the fourth floor. “Stairs for the servants, I guess,” Neil said, as he followed Graham's circle of light up the steep narrow stairway.

The servants' quarters on the fourth floor were small poky rooms, each with one dormer window. The slanting ceilings forced Graham and Neil to crouch in places. Again, they searched every room. There was only a faded note in one dresser drawer, scribbled in pencil.
Colin, love,
it said.
Come tonight at one o'clock. I'll leave the door unlocked. Betsy.

“Uh-huh,
hanky-panky in the servants' quarters,” Graham said. “Not nearly as much as in the guests' quarters below, I'll bet.”

They finished searching the fourth-floor rooms. Apart from the cellar, the only place left was the attic. At the end of the hall, a rope dangled from the ceiling. Neil pulled on it and a hatch on hinges, with a folding ladder attached, swung down. They looked up apprehensively at the dark opening above.

Graham took a deep breath, climbed the ladder, and stuck his head in. “Hotter than all hell up here,” his muffled voice came back. “I can't see a thing. Hand me the flashlight.”

Neil passed it up and Graham switched it on. “Yikes!” he shouted, half-falling, half-sliding down the ladder. Something light and translucent drifted down with him.

Neil looked at the object on the floor. It was long and scaly and paper-thin. “Holy smokes! Is that what I think it is?”

Graham nodded. “A snake skin. Gave me quite a start. There's a whole pile of them up there.”

“How could snakes get way up there?” Neil wondered aloud.

“Snakes can climb,” Graham said. “They probably crawled up between the walls looking for warmth and hibernated there over the winter. Then they shed their skins in the spring and away they went.”

“Jeez, maybe there's live ones still up there.”

Graham started back up the ladder. “Not likely at this time of year.”

Neil followed him reluctantly. There was just room to stand. Cobwebs brushed their faces and dried snake skins crunched underfoot. Graham swung the light around the acres of attic. It picked out old steamer trunks with worn leather straps and boxes overflowing
with books. Then, in a far corner, something big and black. In the weak beam of light, it looked like a figure without a head.

They scrambled for the ladder.

Neil stopped abruptly. “Wait a minute,” he said, as recognition sunk in. “I know what that is. My mother has one in our attic. It's a dressmaker's dummy.”

Graham climbed back up the ladder. “Of course. Difficult to tell what it was in the dark….”

“Of course,” Neil said.

Roaming the attic, they came across a rocking horse, its mane and tail moth-eaten, and boxes of expensive-looking toys, barely used. Armies of colorful lead soldiers – British Grenadier Guards, with their tall fur hats, and mounted U.S. Cavalry – were carefully lined up in formation, facing German soldiers with their First World War spiked helmets. Except for the layer of dust on the soldiers' hats, someone could have just finished playing with them.

Neil remembered hearing the story of the young son of the second owner, who vanished mysteriously from the castle years ago. “I'll bet these belonged to the boy who disappeared,” he said. He could imagine the boy spending hours in the attic, refighting the Great War with his soldiers. They looked like they were patiently waiting for him to come back and give the order to attack.

In another corner, they found a small suitcase – a smart beige traveling case. Its shiny newness contrasted sharply with the other dusty things in the attic. Graham dropped to his knees and clicked open the latches. The suitcase was jammed with clothes – slips, blouses, skirts, stockings – that appeared to have been stuffed in haphazardly.

“Your aunt's?” Neil asked.

“I suspect so.” Graham stared at the case.

“What do you make of its being up here?”

“My guess is that someone hid it here because they wanted Mrs. Ruff to think she'd left on her trip.”

They were silent, thinking what this implied.

“Maybe she had two and didn't need this one,” Neil said, trying to offer a hopeful suggestion.

Graham gave him a withering look. “So she stuffed this one full of clothes and hid it in one of the farthest corners of the attic?” He stood up. “Well, there's only one more place left to search.”

“I know,” Neil said. “The cellar.” Probably a cold, clammy, creepy place, with dripping water, monster spiders, and scuttling centipedes. He wasn't looking forward to it.

Confident they would easily find the stairs leading down to the cellar, Neil and Graham scoured the ground floor, opening every door, peering into every alcove. “There's got to be cellar stairs somewhere,” Neil said, as he stood in the hall scratching his head. “Who ever heard of a castle without a cellar?”

Graham agreed.
“A
dark clammy spooky place usually, like in an Abbott and Costello movie. Maybe the entrance is outside.”

So they skirted the outside of the castle, shining the flashlight on the foundation all the way around, without finding any sign of an entranceway “Baffles
me,” Graham said. “I can't help feeling we're missing something….”

Back in the kitchen, he sighed. “We've done all we can for now. Might as well get some shut-eye before we have to beat it. I wonder what time Mrs. Ruff and the slave get here in the morning.”

Neil yawned. “Dunno, but I'm exhausted.”

They went back to the second floor. “Pick a bed room,” Graham said. “There are dozens to choose from. I'll take my aunt's room – maybe it'll give me inspiration while I sleep and I'll wake up with the answer.”

They separated, and Neil flopped on the bed in the room next to Graham. Despite his exhaustion, the rattling and grating noises of the old castle kept him awake. What was that creaking sound? Someone coming up the stairs? Were those footsteps outside his door? He had to keep reminding himself that Graham was in the next room, just a step away. Sleeping soundly, no doubt.

Neil didn't fall asleep until the sky began to lighten in the east. Then he slept so soundly that he didn't stir until he heard an abrasive voice calling loudly, “Leonard, where are you?” It was Mrs. Ruff.

Neil leaped out of bed.

A shaft of sunlight was streaming in the bedroom window.
What a time to sleep in!
He tiptoed into
Graham's room. His friend was spread-eagled on his aunt's bed, dead to the world. “Graham,” he whispered. “Wake up. They're here!”

Graham's eyes opened slowly.
“Huh?
Who?”

“Shh.
It's the Ruffs. Keep your voice down.”

Graham sat up. “Holy cow! It's morning already?”

“Yeah. We both slept in.”

They crept to the head of the main staircase and listened. From below a swishing sound drifted up, then Mrs. Ruff came into view, wielding a mop. She was pushing a bucket along with her foot as she moved down the hall. They ducked back out of sight. When a floorboard creaked under them, the swishing sound below paused momentarily, then resumed.

“The servants' stairs,” Graham mouthed, and Neil nodded. With Mrs. Ruff busy mopping the hall, the kitchen would be empty. They peered cautiously over the banister. She was now mopping the front hall, her back to them. They scooted past the top of the main staircase, where they were in full view from below, and sped along the hall to the back stairs.

At the bottom, Neil eased open the door to the kitchen.
Empty!
He nodded to Graham, and they made a quick dash across the kitchen and out the door. There was still Leonard to watch out for. But the steady
clip, clip
of hedge shears told them where he was. Under the cover of bushes, they got by him.

Once they reached the cove at the back of the island, where Crescent was to pick them up, they breathed easier. “Rather hard on the nerves, this detective business,” Graham said. “And we're still no further ahead.”

“But you did spot your aunt's favorite hat,” Neil reminded him,
“and
her suitcase.”

Graham stared out at the placid blue water of the cove, frowning. “Funny though, we never found the cellar. I keep thinking we've missed something.”

Neil shrugged. “I don't see how. Maybe there isn't a cellar. Maybe it was too rocky to put one in.” He eyed the sky. “The sun's getting up there. Must be ten or so. Where's Crescent, I wonder?”

“I hope she remembers to bring food,” Graham said. “I'm starved.”

There was nothing to do but wait, keeping an eye out for Leonard. Neil watched the point, around which Crescent would come, willing the bow of
Discovery
to appear. It seemed like hours went by. Finally a boat came around the point, but it wasn't Crescent's.