Aunt Dimity: Snowbound by Atherton Nancy

Author:Atherton, Nancy [Atherton, Nancy]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin USA, Inc.
Published: 2010-04-22T12:44:23+00:00

Twelve

Jamie insisted on carrying the heavy scuttle up to my room for me. He told me to knock on his door when I’d finished my nap, so we could keep our library date, then went to his own room to catch up on the sleep he’d missed the night before. I was fairly sure he’d be out like a light in under five minutes, but I waited fifteen before putting my head into the corridor.

The sound of running water drifted to me from the bathroom. When it stopped, I waited another few minutes to give Wendy time to make herself comfortable in the tub, then switched on my small flashlight and retraced my steps to the head of the main staircase, confident that no one would hear the faint whisper of my doeskin slippers brushing against the thick maroon carpet.

When I reached the stairs, I stood with my back to them, walked straight toward the opposite wall, and pressed a palm against the linenfold paneling. I had to jump out of the way when a spring-loaded door swung silently outward, revealing the landing of a broad, gray-carpeted staircase with a plain wooden handrail and whitewashed walls. The stairs appeared to go down to the ground floor as well as up to the attics.

“Servants’ stairs,” I murmured, and remembered Catchpole telling me that he’d used the back way to show the others to their rooms. Wendy had probably taken note of the hidden door then and used it later to gain access to the staircase, hoping it would lead her to a burglar’s paradise.

I threw a quick glance back up the corridor, then stepped onto the landing and pulled the spring-loaded door shut behind me. The stairwell was lit by a weak trickle of gray light filtering down from above, so I turned off my flashlight and began to climb, pausing from time to time to examine a series of framed movie posters that hung on the whitewashed walls. The posters didn’t celebrate Tessa Gibbs’s many cinematic triumphs, but classic British films from the forties and fifties.

Had Lucasta DeClerke collected movie memorabilia? I wondered. If she had, she’d shown good judgment. Although the posters’ garish colors and lurid graphics were distinctly out of place in Ladythorne’s somber setting, my experience in the world of collectibles told me that the collection as a whole was worth a small fortune.

I’d spent a fair amount of time crawling through the attics of great houses while hunting for old books, and I thought I knew what to expect at Ladythorne—a warren of gloomy store rooms piled high with trunks, hat boxes, discarded furniture, and bric-a-brac, with a few latticed windows set high in the walls for ventilation.

I was in no way prepared, therefore, for the fathomless expanse of white that met my eyes when I reached the top of the stairs. A spotless, modern passageway stretched away to my left and right, far beyond the furthest reaches of my flashlight’s searching beam. The corridor was

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