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

distantly, and I decided to bring it downstairs and hang it again. Later I would ask Harris about getting it cleaned.
    I turned next to the trunks and crates that lined the wall, making the room feel smaller than it should. The first chest opened with a blast of camphor. It held musty textile treasures, each wrapped in aging fabric. There was a fur caplet that must once have been white but was now very yellow and balding. I rather liked the black Astrakhan coat, but it was too large and a bit tatty for wearing in public. And anyway, it would be hard to wear it and not think of the newborn sheep that had died to make it.
    Though careful while unwrapping the yellowed muslin, there was still a bit of an explosion as I opened the last article in the trunk. Inside the old linen, there was a molting muff made of disintegrating bird feathers which started me sneezing but provided Kelvin with some entertainment as he chased the strays around the room. He was getting dusty, but I figured if there were any mice, Kelvin would keep them in hiding so I didn’t shut him out of the room while I worked.
    Someone had been busy. I found a box with hundreds of crocheted doilies done in all colors not found in the rainbow. Old as they were, the dyes remained garish. Too nice to throw away, but too ugly to use, they had been banished to the attic.
    Some of these things should be thrown away, but it didn’t seem my place to do it. Not yet anyway. The clothes weren’t harming anything; they could stay until either someone else took care of it, or I felt less presumptuous about attending to the task myself.
    There was a bride’s chest suffering from water damage that was filled with yellowed sheet music. A quick look showed me that it wasn’t for spinet but rather for harp. I had a quick glance around, but none of the shrouded shapes that lined the walls resembled a harp and I knew there was none downstairs. When had it gone from the house and who had been its owner? The era was about right for Great-grandpa Kelvin’s wife, but might also have belonged to my grandma. Grandma Mac had never shown any musical inclination though, so I doubted it was hers.
    Curious now, I began pulling away tarps from the furniture along the wall. I found a cradle and some elaborately carved wooden chairs that needed refinishing. There were eleven of them, which seemed odd until I looked closer and saw that the varnish on the remaining chairs had been scorched and even blistered by heat. The twelfth chair must have burned beyond saving. I couldn’t repress a small shiver, thinking of Harris’s words about the fire that killed Abercrombie Wendover’s son. Not liking that I was feeling fey, I still backed off from the burned furniture and left the damaged chairs alone.
    There was a wardrobe too, a great blocky thing carved with wheat and fruit that was probably once attractive but one side of it also showed blistering of the varnish. The finish could be restored, which was why it was upstairs, I supposed, but I doubted that I would be the one to do it.
    It was placed inconveniently, right in the middle of the wall, as high as a door and deep enough I had to step around it as I dragged out the various boxes for examination. I thought about moving it aside, but it was filled with taxidermies, moth-eaten animal masks and mounted fish, and I was afraid it would be too heavy to move unless I emptied it first. Since I had no desire to touch the rotting things, I decided that the wardrobe would stay in place.
    The second crate opened reluctantly but was worth the effort. It was lined in cedar and filled with heavy damask that was embroidered over in silken thread. Each panel was made of pieced fabric, the cloth only being about two feet wide, though the seams were cleverly hidden. The workmanship was exquisite, the miniature flowers and birds so clear that I believed that I could pick them up. The style was a sort of tree of life, but along the bottom there were ocean