“There’s a light beneath it,” Mercy whispered into his ear, distracting him for a few seconds with the warmth of her breath.
“There is. I suspect that I was overly hasty in ruling out a secret passage,” he whispered back.
“Oooh!” She squeezed his arm excitedly, moving with him when he carefully edged his way over to the black shape of the desk, where his laptop sat. On the seat of the chair was the tool belt he’d been wearing earlier in the day while trying to fix a leak in Fenice’s bathroom. He extracted a screwdriver, and, as an afterthought, a hammer.
“What are you going to do? Pry it open?” Mercy asked softly.
“If I have to. I’d rather locate the mechanism that opens it, assuming there is one.” He made his way back to the window seat, adding, “It might be that there’s no opening, you know. The seams of the wood could have simply pulled away and are allowing some light to come up from below.”
“Yes, but light from what? Lady Sybilla is over on the other side of the house.”
“That is exactly what I intend to find out.” Using the screwdriver, he gently felt along the front length of the window seat, but with no result. No panel opened, no secret switch was uncovered, and no hidden mechanism was triggered. It was simply an empty storage area with a glowing line of light along one edge.
“Well, that’s just anticlimactic as hell,” Mercy said in an annoyed whisper when he sat back on his heels.
“I’m not sure what else I can do,” he said, staring into the dark void presented by the opened seat. “Short of bashing down the sides of it, that is.”
“Don’t do that.”
“I don’t intend to. I have enough fixing to do in this house without creating more work.”
“Let me try. I was always good with those boxes that had secret drawers.” Mercy took his screwdriver andproceeded to tap, prod, and attempt to pry up the entire front length of the seat before she, too, sat back in frustration.
“Maybe just a little bash at the side wall,” she said, disgust filling her voice.
“No bashing walls. We’ll leave this until morning, and take a look at it in the light of day.” He put both hands on the edge of the seat in order to get to his feet, and was halfway up when from the depths of the seat came a clicking noise, followed by a groaning, low rumble.
The light burst upward into the darkness of the room, dazzling Alden for a moment.
“You did it!” Mercy said with a clap of her hands, then immediately whispered an apology for speaking loudly, and added a more subdued, “Holy cow, it really is a secret passage. Look, stairs! In your window seat! Oh my god, this is just like something out of my childhood Nancy Drew books.”
Alden knelt next to the window seat, one hand rubbing his chin as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing. It was indeed a staircase, a narrow spiraling wooden staircase that was illuminated from below by the golden light they’d seen in the seam of the window seat. The light didn’t waver or flicker, leaving him to believe it was not a candle or a lamp. What was a staircase of all things doing leading up to his window seat? “Mercy, go over to the toolbox in the wardrobe. There’s a torch in there.”
“Torch? Oh, you mean flashlight.” Mercy hurried over to the wardrobe, poking around in its depth until she came back with a flashlight, a small saw suitable for use on branches, and her dressing gown, the last of which she slipped on after handing him the flashlight. “I feel just like I’m Nancy Drew.”
“Does that make me one of the Hardy Boys?” he asked, pulling on a T-shirt and his shoes before tucking the hammer into his back pocket.
“No, you’re Ned Nickerson, Nancy’s handsome but beefy boyfriend. Hang on, shoes are a good idea. Where are my sandals?”
Two minutes later, with a warning to Mercy not to descend until he told her it was safe to do so, Alden began his descent down the creaking, dusty wooden staircase. He had to duck to fit himself under the edge of the window seat, but since the spiral stairs had a steep descent, it didn’t take but a few more seconds before he was able to straighten up. As he descended, he could see a light glowing along one wall, clearly hung there for a purpose. The stairs ended abruptly, the light disclosing a small alcove, with two narrow, dark passageways leading away into inky nothingness. He eyed the light closely, shining his torch on the wall to reveal black cables snaking off in either direction. “How very curious.”
“Alden!” Mercy whispered loudly from above him. He looked up, and saw her pinched face peering down over the edge of the window seat. “What’s going on?”
“I was just looking at the light. Someone has put in quite a bit of work to bring lighting to this secret passageway. Come down, but drag the duvet over to hang into the window seat before you do.”
“Why?”
“It’ll keep the floor from closing on us.”
“Oh. Good thinking, Ned.”
She disappeared, but was back in a few moments, her sandaled feet pattering down the narrow spiral stairs quickly, followed by a long, bulky shape of the duvet.
“Oooh,” she said when she got down to his level. Sherubbed her arms even though she was wearing her dressing gown over the nightie. “Secret passages! Do you think we’re inside the walls of the house?”
“Possibly, although the windows would keep the passages from running the length. A bigger question is, who put in these lights, and why?”
Mercy examined the light on the wall. “Huh. Obviously, whoever did it meant to use the passage for something. Maybe wartime activities?”
