“My husband Bentley is ill in bed, so I would appreciate your being as quiet as possible while taking a peek into the rooms on the second floor. I will show you which door not to enter, and-”
“I wonder if they share a bedroom?” came a voice from the foreground.
“What about the dungeons?” demanded an anemic-looking woman in the accusing voice of a reporter.
“Sorry. Dungeons are one medieval convenience we don’t have at Merlin’s Court.”
A rustle of disappointment. Two women lifted eyebrows in unison, tightened their coat belts, and stalked out. But as they exited, two others came in. One was Miss Gladys Thorn.
“Mrs. Haskell, such a thrill! I have been unable to sleep for nights.” Miss Thorn went into one of her curtsy dips. I also spied Mrs. Hanover from the pub and Froggy-pardon me, Shirley-Daffy, wife of Vernon Daffy, estate agent. Was she here at his behest, in hope of persuading us to sell?
The group broke into twos and threes and wandered around the hall as though it were a museum. Every table leg was respectfully surveyed. Mrs. Bottomly stage-whispered in my ear. “Decent of Millie Parsnip to accompany Shirley Daffy, don’t you agree?”
“Frightfully.” Goodness knows why, but agreement was so much speedier than questions, and speed was vital when… the cheese straws! They would be burned to a crisp!
“One has to applaud Shirley for staying in the mainstream at a time like this.”
Mrs. Bottomly drew me toward the bannister and Rufus, the suit of armour.
“Mrs. Haskell, you did read in Tuesday’s Daily Spokesman that Mr. Daffy has disappeared? He went out jogging and hasn’t been seen since.”
“I didn’t know.” An awful phrase popped into my mind-third time’s the charm. Dreadful! Poor Mr. and Mrs. Daffy! Even more dreadful was the realisation that at that moment, I was marginally more concerned about my cheese straws than a neighborhood tragedy. If they were burnt, could I curry them?
1:08 P.M. I sped down the stairs after breaking the news to Magdalene that a couple of dozen women were rampaging through the house. All she said was, “We all live our lives differently, Giselle.” Ben, thank the blessed saints on the windowsill, was still asleep.
“Do continue to make yourselves at home, ladies. I have taped a piece of paper to the door of my husband’s bedroom. And the kitchen is also off-limits because I am whipping up a few cakes for tea… in case the vicar should chance to call.”
I slipped around Millicent Parsnip and past Mrs. Daffy. Mrs. Bottomly was posing for a photo, her arm around Rufus. I hoped she wouldn’t crush him.
1:13 P.M. Bless Bunty’s blond head. She had let herself in the back door. Dressed in a leopard-skin waistcoat over a black leotard, she was shaking cheese straws off their baking trays onto cooling racks. I wondered if I should throw her an apron as a hint she was welcome to stay on for the next couple of hundred stuffed grape leaves?
“Hey, El, this is kinda fun. And Li will be so proud of me; he’s got such lofty ideals about helping the oppressed!”
1:35 P.M. All that exuberance had me fooled. Bunty wasn’t any better at this than I was. So far, we had sixteen spinach balls the size of golf balls, thirteen the size of walnuts, and forty-one pellets.
2:00 P.M. Bunty and I were discussing where we might locate a suitable pop-up cake for my role in the Aerobics Follies, when a voice caroled, “Don’t mind me. I couldn’t resist a peek at the kitchen and… my, isn’t it…”
2:01 P.M. Shaking with flour and fury, I marched into the hall to speak to the Historical Society. Typically, my timing was off. The women were all clustered around Rufus. All, that is, except Millicent Parsnip, who stood in the middle of the Turkish rug, saying, “Smile!”
The camera flashed. There were the usual complaints. “I wasn’t ready!” “My mouth was open, I’ll look like I was catching flies!”
I tiptoed behind Mrs. Parsnip, lest I be invited to be in the photo. To subdue my frustrations, I tapped on the ledge of the niche by the drawing room door. The Egyptian urn that once reposed there had been replaced by a statue of an unfamiliar saint who looked nearly as unhappy as I.
“Everyone set?”
A pang, as I remembered Dorcas taking our wedding pictures. Then, a gasp-I’m not sure if it was mine-widening to a ripple of consternation. Mrs. Bottomly swayed, caught at a bannister rung and, amid screeches of alarm, disappeared, taking with her a section of the floor, Rufus, and the two closest ladies aboard.
It was a distressing moment. The scramble of the rest of the party to terra firma! The shrieks of distress. And the sound I dreaded most-Magdalene, calling over the railing, “Giselle, would you mind asking your friends to be a little more quiet? My boy is trying to sleep.”
It isn’t enough to say I was numb. I was standing outside myself, watching this other Ellie Haskell go straddling over the legs of those women who were prone on the floor.
“Excuse me, please!” said this Ellie as she joined the braver members of the Historical Society in staring down into a dark void approximately three foot square-or to simplify, the size of one flagstone. A whisper stirred through the group, but there was silence from the grave… I mean, below. The other Ellie opened her mouth, then closed it. A section of flagstone was sliding out from the under belly of the floor. Horribly, instantly, there was no more void. The silence that Magdalene had urged now engulfed the hall.
I was stunned, but my extensive reading in the field of gothic novels was decidedly in my favour. I sensed what sort of gadget I was up against and summoned up a mental picture of where the ladies of the Historical Society were standing at the crucial moment. I had been alongside this niche, my hand on the stone ledge. Repositioning myself exactly, I thought back… yes, my eyes had been on Mrs. Bottomly as she clutched the bannister, the second bannister up… The loose bannister! The one first brought to my attention by Mr. Vernon Daffy at the wedding reception and the source of many Roxie complaints. But surely the bannister of itself could not be the catastrophic catalyst? Were it so, the hall floor would be forever dropping out from under. No, the bannister had to work in conjunction with something else. My fingers clenched the stone ledge; I felt a give and in that moment had the answer.
“Mrs. Parsnip,” I called across the room, “would you kindly twist the second bannister from the bottom?” As she did so, I depressed the ledge. Seconds later, a ripple of wonderment washed through the hushed group. The void had reappeared.
Millicent Parsnip cupped her hands around her mouth and inquired tremulously, “Anyone down there?”
Silence. Then a flicker of hope. Way, way down in the blackness we could see a tiny splurt of light. Could it be…? Yes. Someone had struck a match; voices set up a cheer.
“We’re alive! Uninjured! Not even a dent in the armour!” There was a sound of pulleys churning, and the tiny flame glowed brighter. The survivors were being elevated to the surface.
“And,” boomed Amelia Bottomly triumphantly, “we have found the dungeons!”
There were those in the group who made it plain they were convinced I had known all along about the secret entrance. But they managed to work off their irritation by discussing what a vast improvement ours was on the oubliettes of old, which provided no safety net when the floor dropped out beneath the hapless victims at the whim of any sheriff, duke, or king who didn’t have better things to do with his time.
“Come now, Mrs. Haskell,” Mrs. Bottomly’s eyes were like suction cups. “There has to be more than twiddling a bannister. I swear I cannot leave this house until you tell me the nature of the Open Sesame.”