I resolved to make some phone calls while I waited for Carroll to appear. I walked to the far end of the dining room, skimming my finger through a fine layer of dust on the deep mantelpiece, over which an enormous mirror rose, gilded around its perimeter and reflecting darkly the other side of the room. Several stuffed velvet chairs sat by the windows, but I walked around them to stand just behind the curtains, pulling one aside to see the afternoon sun baking the grass outside. I dialed Ryan’s number. I wanted to talk particulars with him: who would have keys to this place, who could write checks, the status of our nonprofit application—all the details swirling in my mind, just behind the day’s larger drama. And I should probably tell him about that too. I wondered if a special board meeting was necessary.
He didn’t pick up. Maybe he was in a meeting, or maybe he psychically sensed my administrative questions coming his way, and ducked. I left him a message, quickly saying I wanted to talk when he had a chance. He had asked me about dinner this week, after all.
Next I called the number for the local paper, hoping to confer with Frances. A male voice answered, sounding very young and not terribly chipper.
“Hi, uh, Asheboro Gazette.”
“Hello, this is Kate Hamilton. I’m trying to reach Frances.” A long pause ensued. “Is she in?” I heard a whirr in the background, suggesting a scanner or an industrial copy machine.
“Frances…? Oh, you mean Mrs. Carter? Yeah, just a sec.” He put the receiver down with a clunk, and I could half hear a conversation across the room. I looked out at the grass on the lawn, crisping in the sun. Should I hire a groundskeeper? Frances picked up.
“Kate! Oh, I’m so pleased to hear from you. That was Troy, one of my interns—isn’t he charming?” I sensed a tinge of sarcasm.
“Hello, Frances. Charming? I guess you could call it that.”
“Well, he and his young cohort keep me from having to learn graphic design software, and he’s marginally housetrained, so I’m happy to have him around. Plus, they’re digitizing the paper’s archives, so everything will be available online and searchable. One of these kids is even talking about getting into metadata—isn’t it thrilling? I can’t say I know what that is, but thrilling nonetheless. Now, how are things going over there at the estate?”
“Well, things are a little odd, to be honest. I’ll tell you about that later. But I found a contractor, so that’s something. Morgan Wheeler—he’s here now actually, taking some measurements.”
“Morgan … did you say Wheeler? He’s leading the charge? I think I know him—or his family.”
“You do? Wow, small world.”
“You might think so, dear. But keep in mind, young people of your generation and a bit older have been moving away from this area in droves, finding work elsewhere, never coming back. But before that? Folks stayed put. This town used to have a lot more to recommend it. The Barton factory provided jobs for a lot of able-bodied men in town, and the stores on Main Street used to be something. Essentials, but also gifts, tailored clothing, handcrafts. My mother was one of a small collective of women who operated a sewing and quilting supply shop not far from the Gazette’s offices. They passed on the skills of many generations to young women growing up in Asheboro.”
“But not anymore. That’s sad. What does that have to do with Morgan?”
“I can’t say I know the man personally. But his family’s been in the area quite a long time. You hear names go past enough, they start to seem familiar. Memories are long in quiet places—old loves, old feuds, they tend to get handed down through generations.” She trailed off. This sounded a bit ominous to me, and I wasn’t sure what to make of it. After a few seconds, I spoke.
“Right. Anyway, I was hoping we could get together and look through some old copies of the Gazette to see if there’s more about Henry Barton—or Mary. We’ve got a bit of a lead, but if there’s more, I want to see it.”
“What are you hoping to learn?”
“Well, we now know Mary was from Asheboro and grew up in the farmhouse that Henry remodeled into what is now the mansion. Apparently, she stayed there with her mother after her dad went into an asylum, and the two of them tended to wounded soldiers at the end of the war. But I’ve never seen an obituary for her, or anything personal. What was she like? Is there something like a social register? Mentions of the couple in the gossip pages?”
“Dear, have you been to Asheboro? We don’t have gossip pages.”
“Ha, right—but what about in Victorian times? Do you think Henry and Mary ever made appearances? Or hosted events?” I was grasping at straws, but hopefully.
“We can always look. I’ll have Troy pull from the archives. When are you thinking—1880s?”
“We think Mary died in the early 1880s, so maybe more like the early 1870s?”
“I’ll have him pull what we have. Is there anything else, dear?”
“No. Thanks, Frances—I’ll try to stop in tomorrow to look at those.”
“I’ll see you then, Kate.”
I hung up and walked back to the kitchen. Morgan had produced a large sheet of drafting paper from somewhere and was sketching out a scale model of the room, with copious notes around the margins. He looked up and smiled.
“Kate, you’re back. Any news?”
I filled him in on the new details about Mary, and the approximate plan for lunch. He was glad to hear of the imminent arrival of food, but otherwise sounded energetic, glad to be in the thick of the kind of work he clearly loved. It occurred to me that I didn’t know what the process would look like moving forward.
“Morgan, now that you’re on board to work on this house, I realize you’ll need some help. Do you have a crew you usually work with, people who know different trades?”
“I don’t, not exactly. But I have a handful of contacts. I’ll make some calls today, see who’s available for the next few months.”
“That would be great. I’d like it if we had some consistency—keep the number of new people tromping through here to a minimum, before it becomes a public place.”
“I hear what you are saying. And it’s best for the quality of work to have the same few hands on deck throughout. It’s not everybody who wants to work on old houses, much less knows how to, but I’ll see who I can get.”
“Thanks, Morgan.” I meant it. It was a real comfort to have found someone else who liked this place and cared about its details the way I did. I strolled over to the hole in the wall, a new ominous presence in the room, even without the century-old dead body in it. “Did they find anything else of interest in here? Besides … that guy?”
“Nope. I guess whoever left him there didn’t feel like leaving a cedar trunk filled with winter clothes in the under-stairs storage. They’d just have to come back for it later, eh?”
“That’s true.” I gazed into the dark space in the wall. It didn’t look like much: a set of rustic wooden steps, bowing slightly in the center, with no railing. How long were they in use, before this grand house grew up around them? Centuries? The floor below them was made of long wood planks, a bit dusty, with—white pebbles in one corner? I stepped closer.
“What’s this? These … stones?” Morgan looked up from his work and came over, crouching down next to me. We both squinted into the hole in the wall. A few small, white … things rested on the floor beneath the stairs. Morgan withdrew a pocket flashlight from the bib of his overalls and pointed it at the objects.
“Huh. The crew didn’t see anything in here. And that’s because … well, there isn’t anything, really. Except those.” I leaned forward and extended a hand, picking up one of the objects. It was about the size of a pea, very pale beige, and had a slight ridge running around its circumference.
“I think it’s a … cherry pit?”
Morgan looked closer as I turned the tiny object between my fingers. “I suppose that could be. Now what do you think that means?”
“I don’t know. Maybe nothing. To be honest, I might be imagining a wild significance to everything around me in my state of hunger. But … I’ll hang on to it for now.” I slipped the thing into my pocket. Morgan nodded at me gravely, laid one finger beside his nose in a joking spy gesture, then turned back to his work at the kitchen table, whistling faintly. I resolved to wait for Carroll outside.
The day was fine and bright as I stepped out onto the front porch. I looked to my left, where the structure wrapped around the building, creating a whole extra room in the open air. I wondered if Henry and Mary ever took their afternoon tea out here, the sinking sun casting floral shapes against the outer wall through the decorative brackets. Had they sat in wicker chairs, reading aloud to each other—George Eliot, the Brontës? Or was Henry, being business-minded, more of a John Stuart Mill fan? I found myself wishing they had kept diaries; even with the abundance of physical objects left in the house, it was so hard to get a feel for the texture of daily life in this place.
I craned my neck a little farther to get a view of the driveway, but saw no car approaching. Noting a slight cover of clouds appearing over the sun, I decided to walk the grounds of the estate as I waited. Carroll could always call my cell when she arrived. I walked along the side of the house and then strode onto the broad lawn behind it, taking in the vista stretching before me. The carriage house stood about fifty feet beyond and to my right, and the crest of an enormous chestnut tree rose just behind it, alone in its great height.
Carroll’s car horn jolted me from my contemplation of the grounds, cheekily bleating out the “shave and a haircut, two bits” rhythm. Very funny, Carroll. I turned and walked back toward the front of the house and found her peeping around the corner at me, holding a bag of food that looked as large as a carry-on suitcase. I grinned and followed her into the house.
We took up residence in the kitchen—which seemed like the room with the fewest precious objects we might get stains on—and I told Carroll all the details of our morning. Carroll nodded as she produced from the greasy paper bag a miraculous bounty of grilled chicken sandwiches, spinach salads, coleslaw with sesame-peanut dressing, and even small tubs of faintly spicy creamed corn; I felt a new respect for Ted’s humble luncheonette in downtown Asheboro. Morgan ate quickly and excused himself to make phone calls; I was glad he was taking our time line seriously and trying to assemble a team as soon as possible.
“So there was nothing else in the staircase?” Carroll asked, gesturing with the remaining half of her sandwich.
“What, like a murder weapon? I’m afraid not—no candlestick, no vial of poison, no bloody knife. Judging by the injuries the ME described, it seems like he just … fell down the stairs.”
“And then somebody built a new wall around him. Nothing suspicious there.”
“Right. Now, as to the matter of whether he fell on his own or was pushed—that’s an open question.” I wondered what could have brought violence into this idyllic setting—a business deal gone wrong? An old enemy, returning to make good on a grudge? Or a madman, come howling out of the night from the woods beyond the property line? I crunched into a spear of orange bell pepper, lightly dressed in vinaigrette. “But I did find something in there, after everybody left.” I produced the small round object from my pocket. Carroll furrowed her brow, and then her eyes widened.
“It looks like a fruit pit!” she chirped.
“That’s what I thought.”
She wrinkled her forehead in thought, and then her eyes popped open and she turned to face me directly. “I’m remembering now, in the stacks of business correspondence from Henry’s estate, there was a whole pile of household receipts—handwritten, of course. A pretty interesting inventory of stuff coming into the house. Tools, horse and carriage equipment…” She seemed momentarily lost in the recollection.
“And?” I demanded, polishing off the creamed corn and barely restraining myself from licking the container.
“One of the first things he brought in, once they were flush with shovel money, was a big shipment of fruit trees to be planted on the property. Including, if I remember right, half a dozen cherry trees. Maybe that’s where your pit came from.”
“Huh.” I tried to picture the grounds of the estate, where I had just been strolling, lined with the cheerful stalks of young trees. And what else might Henry have put in? Vegetables, an herb garden, leafy ornamentals—a bounteous array of flora, to ensure his beloved Mary would never want again? Suddenly, I felt a little silly. The whole romance of Henry and Mary was an invention of my own mind. What had they really been like as people, as a couple? I had to admit I didn’t know. It was just as possible that Henry, the shrewd businessman, had been a domestic tyrant, keeping his poor wife cooped up in their lonely mansion on the outskirts of town, never taking her to the music halls and playhouses in the nearby city. Maybe he forced her to do all their washing by hand, to save money. I shuddered at the thought, never having ironed a shirt in my adult life. But that thought reminded me: Weren’t there servants’ quarters in the attic?
I turned to Carroll, who had balled up our empty food wrappers, placed them tidily back into the bag they’d come in, and was now squatting in front of the hole in the wall, as Morgan and I had been doing earlier.
“Compelling, isn’t it?” I asked. “Who knew that thing was there?”
“Somebody did, but they aren’t talking.”
“Hey, are you suitably refreshed by that delicious lunch? If we’ve both got our strength back, there’s something I want to show you in the attic.”
Carroll turned to me and grinned. “I thought you’d never ask.”