Free Murder at the Bellamy Mansion by Ellen Elizabeth Hunter Page A

said.
    Lonnie gave us an aw-shucks grin. “I’m very proud of my family. The Hudsons have always been first rate citizens. We sent soldiers into every war, starting with the War for Independence.”
    “ You have every reason to be proud,” Jon said. “But we can’t avoid the belvedere any longer. We need to go up there and view the damage from the shooting.”
    “ I’ll never forget finding my pa up there,” Lonnie said with a shudder. “I dread going back up.”
    “ Lonnie, I’ll understand if you want to appoint someone else to handle this,” Jon said kindly.
    “ No, no.” Lonnie shook his head. “It’s like getting back on a horse after you’ve been thrown. Or getting back on a plane after there’s been a crash. It’s something I’ve got to do. I’ll be all right.”
    Jon clasped him on the shoulder. “I’m sure you will. OK, let’s get this over with.”
    We were standing at the bottom of the stairwell to the observatory. The attic hallway was broad and had served as a play area for the Bellamy children. The children’s bedrooms flanked either side of this floor as well, small rooms, one right after another. Dr. and Mrs. Bellamy had been blessed with ten children, nine of whom survived childhood and lived into adulthood.
    There were windows in the hallway that admitted a paucity of light into the bedrooms. Then inside the bedrooms, there were floor-level windows that opened out under the eaves. Had the children found their rooms spooky, I wondered. They were spooky now. The rooms were now securely locked. Through the hallway windows one could see into the small rooms that were being used for storage.
    In one room, lath was exposed. A project for a future day, I wondered. How could the museum ever raise seventy-five thousand dollars to pay off an old debt when it was hard pressed to raise funds for restoration?
    At the far, south end of the attic floor, a loft area overlooked the Market Street side of the portico. Originally conceived to be used as a trunk room, the Bellamy children had appropriated the area for a doll house and a stage for plays. Now, as part of a museum, the platform held old-fashioned leather-bound trunks that would have been common to the Civil War period.
    Jon led the way up the stairs to the belvedere. The staircase was very steep and narrow, the treads shallow. He stepped out onto the landing while Lonnie and I mounted the steps. There was a railing at the edge of the landing that separated the rooftop chamber from the stairwell. A second, security railing had been erected to bolster the original railing which had come loose with age and the many hands that had grasped it for support.
    Instantly I saw the damage that the shooter had caused. The floor of the belvedere was littered with glass where the bullet had shattered one pane on the south side. The bullet had then passed through the belvedere, wounding Willie’s head before exiting through another glass pane on the north side.
    And darkening the litter of glass shards was the rusty brown stain of Willie’s dried blood.
    Lonnie followed Jon into the belvedere, and seemed subdued. “Head wounds bleed profusely, one of the nurses told us,” he said sadly.
    “ The caretaker who let me in told me the cops found the bullet. They followed its trajectory and found it lodged high in a tree trunk over near the slave quarters. Only one bullet. People in the neighborhood said they heard only one shot fired. The forensics guys theorized that the shooter must have feared that firing a second bullet would attract attention and he had to make a quick getaway.”
    Lonnie turned to me with sorrowful eyes as he politely gave me a hand while I stepped up onto the landing. “One shot and he almost killed my pa.”
    I reached out and rubbed his arm.
    “ This is worse than I imagined,” I said. “What do you think, Jon?”
    Jon was trying not to look at the blood, as was I. “We’ve got two window panes to replace,” he said. “I