Free The Secret Staircase (A Wendover House Mystery Book 1) by Melanie Jackson Page A

Kelvin. I hadn’t noticed the paintings before. Perhaps in daylight one wasn’t aware of all the staring eyes. Or that none of the eyes on the wall were human.
    Nothing stirred, no sound and no movement, but I did feel the chill as it began to inch up my legs. Even in summer with much longer days in which to heat the house, nylon was not protection enough from the night air.
    Or fear.
    I turned my light on the front door. No cat. He wasn’t at the back door either. It did not surprise me to find Kelvin scratching at the basement door and meowing impatiently. I had no intention of opening it, even with my witch ball hanging overhead, but I went to the panels and laid an ear against them. I could hear nothing through the thick wood.
    Because there was nothing to hear.
    “Come on, Kelvin. We aren’t chasing mice in the middle of the night and if you have a box down there, well, it’s just too bad. If you need out, it will have to be the back door.”
    But Kelvin didn’t want the porch or the yard. He remained at the basement door, staring and sometimes scratching while I tried to coax him away with kissing noises and leg pats.
    “No way,” I said for a last time and turned back for the stairs. “I’m going back to bed. You can do what you want.”
    After a moment, a sulking Kelvin followed me to the stairs. He stalked ahead of me when we reached the bedroom and jumped onto the bed. He gave me a hard look and lay down. I had to move him from his chosen spot right in the center of the bed and this earned me a cold shoulder when I tried to pet him. I was sorry for it, but there was absolutely no way that I was opening the basement door at night.
    I fell asleep thinking that it was odd that there were so many pictures of animals in the house, but none of any people. Where were my ancestors? Had none of them had their portraits painted? If not, why not?
     
     

Chapter 7
     
    I woke with the sun, having spent the rest of the night in troubling dreams about sinking ships and faceless smugglers hauling barrels of rum from ship to ship while storms raged. I had forgotten to draw my drapes and the bedroom was dazzling with morning light.
    Though feeling very purposeful and resolved on some research, or at the very least finding some photos or paintings of my mysterious ancestors, I made myself fix some eggs and sip some tinned orange juice for breakfast.
    A careful tour of the living areas discovered no portraits in any room. I hadn’t seen any in the basement either, so that left the attic as a possible repository of art.
    The air was stale at the top of the house and I stepped carefully so as to not stir up the dust on the attic floor as I went hunting for photographs or paintings of the family I had never known. Though Hollywood would have us believe that there are as many monsters in attics as in basements, I found the smell of dust to be much less upsetting than damp earth and felt not the slightest stirring of unease.
    My first family find was not a photo album, but rather a painting, a seascape which had been leaned against the wall just inside the door. It was realistic but rather dark, perhaps simply aged or maybe grimed with soot from hanging over a smoky fireplace. I could make out that I was looking at Little Goose, Great Goose, and Goose Haven, though there was no lighthouse and the only building was on Little Goose. There was also a ship sinking in the stormy sea, torn open on Goose Haven’s rocky shore. A lone figure was on the deck. Carrying the canvas close to the tiny window I could make out the ship’s name. It was the Terminer . Abercrombie’s ship.
    If anything should have given me the shivers it was that painting, but I felt not a tremor. Not happy subject matter, of course. I could understand why it had been relegated to the attic. Had Kelvin done it when he thought he was becoming a “Jonah”? It wasn’t pretty, but still, it was my first look at something and someone connected to me, however