I let the detective in at the front door, making a mental note to lock the front gate next time I came in. “Welcome, gentlemen.”
“Hello, Kate,” Detective Reynolds said. The man had a square haircut, a square jaw, and a square suit to match—though I had to admit it became him. He stepped inside, and his analytic gaze swept over the library and front parlor visible from the foyer, then landed on the central hallway extending behind me. “The body’s in the kitchen?”
“Yes. To be accurate, the body’s behind the wall in the kitchen. We haven’t touched it.”
“How many people are here with you?”
“Well, there’s Carroll Peterson—the researcher; you’ve met her—and the contractor I was interviewing for the restoration project, Morgan Wheeler. He’s the one who found the body in the wall. And I think Josh is over in the carriage house, if you need the full manifest. Carroll went over there to find him, but she should be back soon. So, what do you want to do first?”
He almost cracked a smile. “Why don’t you show me the basic layout of the area, and we can decide how to retrieve the deceased? You said it was an old body?”
“I think so. From what little we could see, it’s like a leathery skeleton with clothes on. But I don’t know how long it takes for a body to get that way.” I turned and led the way toward the kitchen, where Josh and Carroll had arrived and were making small talk with Morgan. Everyone greeted everyone else briefly, and I was happy to see that Carroll had returned with some peach tea and a small stack of waxed-paper drinking cups. They might have been thirty years old, left in the carriage house by someone several caretakers ago, but at the moment, I didn’t much care.
“Show me the deceased, please,” the detective said, looking at Morgan.
“Happy to,” Morgan said. “I can show off my spy camera again.”
The two men conferred over Morgan’s device, then moved over to the wall. Morgan inserted the scope with its LED attachment into the hole he’d made earlier, then handed the small screen to Detective Reynolds. “Take a look,” he said.
“Ah,” said the detective, studying the screen. He took his time before handing the control box back to Morgan. He clicked a small handheld recorder extracted from his suit pocket and spoke into it. “I see the remains of an adult male, essentially desiccated, lying on a wooden staircase that appears to lead from the kitchen to the second floor of the house. It’s crudely built, maybe three feet wide. The body’s head is pointed toward the bottom of the stairs. From this vantage point, I cannot see any door or other means of exit at the upper end, nor do I see one at the bottom end here. What can you tell me about the history of this house, Kate?”
“As I understand it, this was once a farmhouse, which Henry Barton bought after the Civil War ended. He started up the shovel factory in town, and after a few years, he was wealthy enough to turn the original building into what you see now. He married at some point, although we don’t know much about his wife. She died well before he did, and I think he lost interest in the house, although he was successful professionally, as you know. They had no heirs, and the house has been vacant for over a century, until recently. I may be getting ahead of myself, but it looks to me as though that wooden staircase was part of the farmhouse, and it was, well, swallowed by the expansion of the new house, which should provide an approximate date for the death. The body was clearly hidden, if you ask me. And that’s all I’ve got.”
“An excellent summary, Kate. Mr. Wheeler, you know construction. Do you have anything to add?”
“From what I’ve seen of the kitchen wall here, it was built with care, not just thrown together. Nobody was in a panic to hide the body. I don’t know if that means anything. There’s plenty of land around here—I wonder why whoever killed him didn’t just bury him in the woods somewhere. If it was a murder, I mean.”
Reynolds kept his eyes fixed on the wall, which had looked so ordinary a few hours ago, and now held an old secret—and the potential to derail my renovation plans. “Our next task is to extricate the body from the wall. Kate here has asked that we not damage the house itself, for her own reasons, and I will honor that request insofar as it is possible. Once we have the body out, we will attempt to identify the deceased.” He clicked the recorder off, returned it to his pocket, and nodded to the staff sergeants behind him. “Floyd, Eaton, we’ll need to check the basement and the second story to see if there is any apparent access to the staircase.” The two young men nodded, and Reynolds went on staring at the wall a few seconds longer, until I spoke up.
“Thank you, Detective. That works for me. But I have to ask: Are we all coming? I have a certain responsibility for taking care of the property, so I’d like to be there.”
“I have no problem with that. I doubt you’ll be destroying any evidence,” the detective said. “Let’s start in the basement.”
We all trooped out into the hall—the detective and his men, Morgan, Josh, Carroll, and I—to the doorway beneath the grand staircase that led to the basement, and down the stairs. When we were all gathered in the basement, I said, “You can see that the masonry changed when the house was expanded. The kitchen is directly above us, in this corner, and it looks as though the masonry was earlier. Do you agree, Morgan?”
“I do. So, if that staircase predates the mansion, there should be some section that was boarded over, under the staircase—unless of course they rebuilt the whole floor, but that seems unlikely.” He pulled a small flashlight from a pocket and walked slowly toward the corner, peering upward. “Here,” he said.
We followed his lead, and there was indeed a solidly built patch in the subflooring over our heads. “Is it the same age as the rest of the house?”
“Most likely. Certainly not much newer—the lumber matches, and it was secured with cut nails, as was the rest of the subfloor. So in my opinion, the staircase was walled in about the time the kitchen for the new-and-improved house was built.”
“We can assume no one pushed the deceased up into the stairway space from down here,” Reynolds remarked.
“It would be difficult, but not impossible,” Morgan told him. “Shall we see what’s above the staircase?”
“Follow me,” I said, and led the way back up.
The second-floor hall was wide and high-ceilinged, with richly molded doors spaced every ten feet or so. Clearly, no expense had been spared on this floor, despite the fact that few people would ever see it. Once again, we took a moment to orient ourselves. The main staircase, with its handsome mahogany railing, came up from the front of the main hall beneath, so the kitchen below would be at the far end on our right. We knew from what we’d seen in the kitchen that the upper end of the old staircase had to be at the rear, so that was where we headed. The bedroom door opened onto the hall at the near end of the room, so we walked in and continued along the wall until we reached the corner.
Morgan’s eyes glowed like those of a hunter. He laid his hands gently on the wall and searched with his fingertips. “In case you’re wondering, I’m looking for where a door might once have been. This would have to have been the outer wall of the staircase, else the hall up here would be significantly narrower. I’d bet they built the bedroom up against the staircase, but nobody ever noticed that the bedroom was a bit small.” He started knocking on the wall, and yes, it too sounded hollow, like the space beneath.
“No door?” I asked.
“Not that I can see. Whoever did the construction work did not intend to use that staircase, it seems, but for whatever reason, he was too lazy to tear it down.”
“Or he knew the body was there and was in a hurry to make sure it stayed hidden,” I countered. “What do we do now? Since this wallpaper is both lovely and in excellent condition, I would suggest removing the body from below—the cellar patch will be no loss to architectural history. Detective, will that work for your crew?”
“Since any forensic evidence is no doubt long gone, I think that would be the easiest approach. If there were bloodstains on the stairs, or any artifacts, it would be easy enough to retrieve them from below as well.”
“Are you going to do that now?” I asked, hating how anxious I sounded.
“I think it can wait until tomorrow. I’ll leave an officer here to keep watch, in case anyone is curious, and I know you’ve replaced the security system recently. You weren’t planning to spend the night here, were you?”
“With a dead body in the place? No, thank you. Carroll and I are staying at the bed-and-breakfast in town. I told Josh he could stay at the carriage house if he wanted, but he’s welcome to join us at the B&B. And, Morgan—you said you live nearby?”
“Right, a couple of towns over, so it’s not hard to come back and forth. I’d like to do a bit of research on local houses of this era, in case there are any other surprises. Detective, would you like me to come back tomorrow?”
Detective Reynolds eyed him. “It wouldn’t hurt, in case there’s something crucial caught on a nail, or a pool of blood in the wrong place. Say ten o’clock?”
“I’ll be here.” He tipped his cap to the detective, then turned to Carroll and me. “Ladies, are you leaving now?”
I looked at Detective Reynolds. “Do you need us?”
“No, but you should be here tomorrow. And I know where to find you if anything else turns up before that.”
Carroll and I fled before he could change his mind.
It wasn’t as if I were squeamish about bodies or blood. And the poor dead man hardly seemed human—more like a piece of leather. I didn’t know him, and he didn’t mean anything to me, at least not in any personal sense. How this might affect the renovation phase of my grand project remained to be seen. The presence of a hidden dead man could work for or against me—it added a thrill of ghoulish excitement, but a tale of historical murder might become a distraction from the glory of the building itself and its potential as a tool for learning. I’d have to give that some thought. Would this man, whoever he was, become part of the official narrative of Henry Barton and his marvelous mansion?
Morgan, Josh, Carroll, and I had all convened on the front porch and stood in awkward silence for a moment, without a clear image of what to do next, separately or together.
“I don’t feel like eating at the B&B tonight,” I announced to no one in particular. “Can we eat out? Josh, you up for it?” He nodded. “Morgan, do you want to join us, or do you have someone to go home to?”
“The missus is at book club this evening. I’d be happy to join you, if you know of a decent restaurant nearby.”
“It’s slim pickings, but I think hunger beats gourmet food tonight. Just follow me.”
We found a fast-food place on the highway outside of town and ordered lots of hot, greasy food. Forget about calories and cholesterol: we’d spent a couple of hours investigating a dead body who definitely should not have been where he was, so we didn’t have the energy to question our junk-food extravaganza. And the investigation wasn’t over yet.
“So,” I said, my mouth full of fries, “tomorrow the police drag the poor man out of the staircase. Think we’ll learn anything?”
Carroll answered, trailing a fry lazily through a small lake of ketchup on her tray. “We know he’s dead. We know he’s not Henry Barton. We think somebody put him there and covered up the evidence. What we don’t know is how he died. Accident … or murder?” She stabbed the fry straight down into the tray for emphasis.
Josh had been uncharacteristically quiet since he’d joined us, but he piped up now, compacting an empty wrapper into a tight ball in his hands. “Henry seems to have been a law-abiding kind of guy. If someone had fallen down the stairs and died, wouldn’t he have reported it to the authorities?”
“Or, even if it was an accident but he didn’t want to call the cops,” Carroll added, “why wouldn’t he remove the body from the house and bury it somewhere? I can’t imagine living in that house for years knowing there was a body next to the kitchen. Too creepy. No, thank you.”
“If Henry left the body there on purpose, does that imply he knew the guy, or that he didn’t know him?” I wondered out loud. My eyes scanned the brightly lit menu on the wall across the room. We needed some apple pies if we were going to crack this case. I stood, intending to indulge the collective sweet tooth, then sat back down as a new thought occurred.
“Maybe it was someone who had a long-standing grudge against Henry, dating back to the war, and he came back to exact his revenge, and Henry was forced to kill him?”
Carroll’s eyes widened as she sucked bright orange liquid through her straw. “Or the guy had gone broke and lost the farm that Henry bought, but still thought it was rightfully his and came back to reclaim it?”
Morgan chimed in, “Any chance he was a former slave?”
“How would that figure in the story?”
“I can’t say with any certainty, but maybe there was some conflict involved. I can well imagine the ill will an enslaved person might bear toward a wealthy white man—even a stranger, even years after the war. Old memories die hard.” He took the last bite of his veggie burger and wiped his hands on a handkerchief produced from a pocket.
“Well,” I said, my head now thoroughly spinning with opposing notions, “it should be possible to at least figure out his skin color when we get a better look at the body.”
“Ick,” Carroll said. “I don’t think I need to be standing around in the room when that happens, if it’s all right by you. I’ll get back into research mode tomorrow and start on the genealogy side of things. I’ve got my work cut out for me, tracking down details about Henry, Mary, their families, and also the property itself. Not to mention making another pass through the house to check for any personal documents we might have missed. Six bedrooms could contain a lot of nooks and crannies.” Her eyes went dreamy in a way I recognized—the house’s secrets had led to many flights of fancy in my own mind, often in the minutes just before falling asleep. After a moment, she snapped back to our conversation. “Kate, what are your plans?”
I took a long swig of soda before answering—I was still feeling dehydrated from earlier. “Well, first, I need to officially ask Morgan here if he’d like to work on this project with us—assuming your prices are fair, of course. You definitely know your nineteenth-century buildings, and more importantly, you seem to like them. That’s what I want for the mansion. Of course, I’d still like to see a proposal from you, if you’re interested. But if you’re in, and the police drag their feet tomorrow getting the body out, maybe you and I can do a more detailed walk-through of the mansion, while we have the time?”
“Miz Hamilton, I would be delighted to work with you.” He nodded sagely, like a monk. “I’ll try to be fair, but you already know this is going to be expensive. I think it will be worth it, though.”
“Good! One more thing I can check off my list. Has everybody finished eating? Because I’m having trouble keeping my eyes open.” They all nodded in agreement, and we stood to dispose of our trash by the exit. I lingered by the swinging door, letting Morgan and Carroll go through first, and then buttonholed Josh. “Hey. Are you coming back to the bed-and-breakfast?”
“Happy to, if I’m welcome.”
“Of course you are. I just like to know your plans. And at least I can promise you breakfast. We can all rendezvous at the mansion before ten tomorrow morning, and see who comes out of that wall.”