The Secret Room of Eidt House (The Foxglove Corners Series Book 13) by Dorothy Bodoin

Author:Dorothy Bodoin [Bodoin, Dorothy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wings ePress, Inc.
Published: 2012-03-06T05:00:00+00:00

Twenty-four

Whenever Crane and I dined at the Hunt Club Inn, always as the guests of Brent Fowler, we always seemed to be seated uncomfortably near the Inn’s most depressing ornament, a stuffed fox’s head on the wall. Its decorations changed with the seasons. Currently they were orange and yellow zinnias entwined with variegated ivy.

Orange and yellow. The colors of fire.

The fox dominated the room, his marble eyes burning with reproach. I imagined he was lamenting the loss of his body. How could this so-called sport continue to flourish in the twenty-first century? How could an otherwise compassionate man like Brent Fowler set his hounds on a small frightened animal? I couldn’t understand it.

Wherever the location of our table, there was no escaping the stuffed fox, no denying I was sharing a dinner with the huntsman. All I could do was concentrate on my plate of roast duck and rice while Brent regaled us with his experience in the secret room of Eidt House.

He had been one of the fifteen spectators present on Miss Eidt’s first tour. At her invitation, he’d related information gleaned from The Thin Air episode with which many were unfamiliar.

“We were a hit,” he said. “All of a sudden, everybody’s talking about Marja Tarrant.”

Lucy said, “I saw that program, and it all came back to me, why I recognized the name. I was researching unexplained disappearances for Through The Woods We Go. That was the strangest case I came across. There was no apparent reason for her to leave the house that day, which led to the belief she’d run away. But, according to her family and friends, there was no reason for her to do that.”

“Do you remember anything that wasn’t in the program?” I asked.

“That episode was pretty accurate. The Tarrant Case was one of those mysteries that captures the public’s fancy, then fades away when nothing else happens.”

“But now something has happened,” I said.

Brent took a long deep drink of the wine he’d ordered for us after an elaborate ritual involving him and the waiter. “People wanted to know why the room was hidden. Miss Eidt said, ‘The mystery is a work-in-progress.’”

I smiled. Almost immediately my smile faded as Brent added, “Miss Eidt said they’d have the answer by Halloween at which time she intends to host a reception and reveal the secret.”

“You have a deadline, Jennet,” Crane said with a twinkle in his eye. “October thirty-first.”

Miss Eidt certainly had faith in my sleuthing abilities. I wished I did.

“It’s still August, but when I go back to school, I’ll be too busy to delve around in the past,” I said.

“I don’t believe that, honey. You always have time for mysteries.”

“I wasn’t comfortable in that room.” Brent searched under his slices of duck for the stuffing. “There were too many people crammed into it. After a while, it was hard to breathe.”

Miss Eydt’s symptom! “Did you ever have shortness of breath before?” I asked.

“Hell, no.” His glare informed me that I’d insulted him. “But all the time Miss Eidt was talking, I kept thinking about woods and lakes.

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