Free The Cottage in the Woods by Katherine Coville Page A

you, Fairchild. I can do that at least.”
    “That would be fine, Bess, and bless you for it. Now, where’s the master? He’ll be waiting to hear.”
    From my perch on the balcony, I heard the kitchen door shutting, and then silence.

9
A Theft, and a Mystery

    I stayed rooted to the spot for another minute, trying to make sense of what I had overheard. What had the notice from the Anthropological Society said? I scanned my memory. I had read it in its entirety. It was to announce a meeting—a meeting that would have taken place last night. I felt sure this was “the society” Fairchild had spoken of—the one whose public notice had been the start of all the trouble in town—and it must be that Fairchild’s dire prediction referred to some dastardly plan of theirs. I marveled at the realization that the stuffy old butler had risked his own neck to infiltrate the group and bring news of their doings to the master. What an unlikely hero he seemed—quiet, straitlaced Fairchild. And what would the master do with this information? Did I even want to know? My curiosity had already led me into matters far over my head. I had denied my fears of the night before, but this was all too real and could not be denied; there was trouble in this seemingly peaceful place.
    I returned to my bedroom, washed, and dressed in freshclothes. My toilet completed, I reached to the desk for the locket I had placed there the night before.
    It was gone. My mother’s silver locket, my prized possession, vanished.
    I searched frantically, anywhere it could have fallen, anywhere else I could conceivably have put it—even though I was certain I had left it on the desk—but it had truly disappeared. My sense of loss was bottomless and desolate. I thought of losing my mama all over again. This was my talisman to remind me that she was watching over me. Along with the loss went all the carefully constructed arguments with which I had convinced myself that no one had been in my room last night. Someone
must
have been in my room, right there, only a few steps from my bed, so close they might have almost reached out and touched me, and they had taken Mama’s locket. My defenses shattered, I gave way to tears.
    I could have cried the day away, but the hallway clock struck the quarter hour and I knew I had no time. I splashed my face with water and dried it, checking my appearance in the mirror, wondering what to do next. Could I go to the master about the locket? Surely the theft would prove that I had not just imagined the presence in the night, and yet I, still the newcomer, shrank from the prospect of telling him there was a thief in his household. The mistress, then? She seemed much more approachable, and it was she who managed the servants. Perhaps she would handle the matter with more understanding.
    Only then did it occur to me that a solution might be looking me in the face. “Mirror,” I said as I rapped smartly on the shiny surface. “Mirror. Do wake up. It’s urgent.”
    My reflected image was obliterated by dark, churningclouds. I knocked again. And again. Finally a dim outline of the carnival-mask face appeared, as if it were too much effort to create a full picture.
    “What is the password?” came the surly response.
    I cast about for the answer, but could remember only that it was something short and silly. “I don’t have time for nonsense. Wake up and pay attention.”
    “Come on, give it a guess. This is the only fun in my humdrum life.”
    “Mirror,” I said, “I must know who was in my room last night.”
    “Oh?” the supercilious voice drawled. “Do you mean you want me to SPY on someone?”
    “I just want you to tell me who was in my room meddling with my things. That’s not spying.”
    “I beg to differ. You want me to tell you someone else’s whereabouts and what they were doing. That is unquestionably spying. If anyone else asked me where YOU were and what you were doing, you would certainly call that