Read The Hidden Window Mystery Online

Authors: Carolyn Keene

Tags: #Women Detectives, #Detective and Mystery Stories, #Mystery & Detective, #Juvenile Fiction, #Mysteries & Detective Stories, #Fiction, #Women Sleuths, #Adventure Stories, #Drew; Nancy (Fictitious Character), #Mystery and Detective Stories

The Hidden Window Mystery (9 page)

BOOK: The Hidden Window Mystery
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“I bought the house furnished,” Sheila said, “and intend to renovate when I can. But for now—” She shrugged, then went on. “Annette and I always lived in hotels until recently.”
“But never again, I hope!” Annette said fervently. “I love Ivy Hall and never want to leave it.”
“Unless we’re forced to,” her mother said sadly.
“I’m sure it won’t come to that,” Nancy said.
French doors at the end of the living room led to a walnut-paneled library, practically bare of furniture. Bess glanced at its bookless shelves and shuddered inwardly. The room, a dark one, was eerie looking.
Sheila hurried her guests out of it, led them through a modern pantry and kitchen, then out onto a screened porch off the dining room. Here, she said, they spent a great deal of time in mild weather.
“I would, too,” Nancy commented, glancing at the comfortable lounge chairs.
Annette pointed out the old slave quarters, a hundred and fifty feet away, now tumble-down and covered with ivy. “That’s where all the cooking was done in the old days,” she explained.
“How interesting!” Bess murmured.
Sheila sighed. “The gardens are dreadful, but we have no help. I put every cent we could spare into buying the place, and the upkeep—” She stopped speaking. Apparently a thought she did not want to put into words had come to her.
“Mother and I are sort of camping out here,” Annette said in her direct way. “Even if we could afford it, I doubt that we could find servants willing to come here. We had one and she spread talk of the house being haunted.” Then she added with a smile, “I hope you girls don’t mind having simple meals.”
“Oh, we’ll be glad to help,” Bess offered.
George laughed. “If you make Bess chief cook, you can be sure of always having a real feast.”
Next, Sheila and Annette showed the girls the rambling second floor of Ivy Hall, with its six bedrooms and two baths. Undoubtedly it, too, had once been very beautiful, but now it needed redecorating. The mahogany woodwork was scarred and the long hall carpet threadbare.
“This will be your bedroom,” Sheila told the girls, throwing open a paneled door. “It overlooks the old slave quarters.”
The room was large, its windows adorned with faded but lovely damask draperies. A huge canopied bed and a cot with a flowered quilt stood along one wall. The other furniture was simple.
After lunch Nancy, Bess, and George unpacked. They spent the rest of the day with Annette, wandering around the estate. Nancy was particularly interested in a closed stairway at the end of the second-floor hall. It led to the attic.
“It may come in handy to know about this,” she said half-jokingly, winking at George.
By suppertime the girls had thoroughly memorized the layout of the house and the grounds.
“I could almost find my way around in the dark,” Nancy said, but Sheila assured her that this would not be necessary. There were electric lights everywhere except the attic.
When the visitors said good night at ten o’clock and went upstairs, Annette followed them into their room and sat down to chat. She asked about River Heights and the girls’ friends. Nancy described their home town briefly, and Bess spoke enthusiastically of Ned, Burt, and Dave. Then Nancy mentioned the young man she had seen on the Pattersons’ porch that morning.
“Is he someone you date?” she asked Annette.
The girl looked blank for a moment. Then she said, “Oh, you mean Luke Seeny.”
Bess giggled. “Is he a real cowboy?”
“Yes, he is—from Oklahoma. I met him at a dance. Luke’s been trying to date me for over a week, but I don’t care for him. All he does is brag about his wealthy family back home.”
“Where does he stay here?” Nancy inquired.
“At a hotel in Charlottesville.”
This information surprised Nancy and her friends, who had expected to hear that Luke lived with Mr. Honsho at Cumberland Manor.
“What is Luke doing in Charlottesville?” George asked.
“Oh, nothing special, I guess,” Annette answered. “Just sightseeing.”
The other girls exchanged glances. Luke’s story about doing nothing in particular did not ring true, but they did not mention this to Annette. Presently she rose, said good night, and wished them pleasant dreams.
“I wish so, too,” said Bess, after Annette had closed the door. “Ivy Hall gives me a funny feeling. It’s hard to describe, but even if I hadn’t heard that the place is haunted, I’d have thought so myself.”
“Now, Bess,” Nancy said with a grin, “you don’t mean that!”
George gave her cousin a look of reproach. “You’ll sleep sounder than any of us,” she prophesied, “and in the morning you’ll take back those words.”
Bess and George climbed into the canopied bed, since Nancy insisted that she would sleep on the cot. With the lights out, Ivy Hall seemed extremely dark and quiet. There was not a sound in the house, and outside only the chirping of crickets could be heard. Soon all three girls were sound asleep.
About midnight Nancy was awakened by sounds of someone moving around in the attic. Listening intently, she could distinctly hear boards creaking overhead.
Bess and George awoke too. There was no doubt that someone was walking in the attic.
“The ghost!” Bess shrieked.
CHAPTER XII
A Weird Disappearance
 
 
 
“OH, it’s true!” Bess cried out. “There
are
ghosts in this house.” She dived under the covers and lay motionless.
George turned on the night-table lamp and said, “Shame on you, Bess. We came here to help Nancy solve the mystery. Get up! Let’s go!”
“You—you tell me about it later,” Bess said unhappily.
Nancy was already up and putting on her robe and slippers. George donned her own, then put Bess’s slippers on her.
As Nancy turned the doorknob she said quietly, “Never mind, George. The two of us can go.”
“Oh, I don’t want to be left alone!” Bess cried out. “Wait for me!” She quickly put on her robe and followed Nancy and her cousin into the hall.
Annette, in pajamas, was standing outside her own bedroom, a look of fright on her face. “You heard it, too?” she whispered.
In a low voice Nancy said, “We’re going up to the attic. Want to come?”
“Oh, you’d better not! Something might happen to you,” Annette warned. “I wouldn’t dare go, anyway. I promised Mother I never would.”
Nancy quietly opened the door to the attic stairway. She looked on the wall for a light switch, then remembered there was none.
“You’ll have to use a candle,” Annette said.
On a small table in the hallway stood a glass candleholder with a short white candle in it. Annette picked up a packet of matches beside it and with trembling fingers lighted the candle. Nancy, meanwhile, chided herself for leaving her flashlight in the car.
“Here you are,” Annette said, handing the candle to Nancy, who went at once to the stairway.
The creaking sounds above had not been repeated. Bess, last in line, said in a shaky voice, “The ghost must be hiding!”
The others did not comment. Reaching the top step they looked around cautiously. Several old curved-top trunks stood about, discarded draperies hung on lines, and large paintings in ornate gold frames were propped against the eaves.
Nancy set the candle down on a table in the middle of the room and the three girls began looking behind various objects to see if anyone were hiding. They found no one. Next, Nancy started to open trunks to determine if the “ghost” were inside. As she lifted back the lid of the third one, Bess gasped and Nancy and George stepped back in horror.
A little girl, her eyes closed, lay in the trunk!
For a moment the three stared, horrified. Then suddenly they smiled. The figure was that of a very large lifelike doll! The rest of the trunks were examined but revealed no one hiding inside.
As Nancy and George stood gazing about the attic, wondering if there were any other entrance, Bess became fascinated by a large painting at one end of the room. The picture portrayed a dashing cavalier, his waxed mustache perfectly groomed. The man’s turned-up hat was worn at a rakish angle, with a feather curled smartly over his shoulder.
The cavalier’s eyes seemed to stare at Bess as she walked about. Drawn to it like a magnet, she went to the far side of the attic to examine the gallant gentleman’s face. It looked so real that it seemed almost to be alive.
Nancy and George, meanwhile, had been studying the wall on the opposite side of the attic. It was higher than any of the other three unfinished walls and was paneled. The two girls walked toward it to see if there might be a concealed entrance to another room.
Hearing a slight gasp, Bess turned around. To her astonishment, neither of the other girls was in sight.
“Nancy! George! Where are you?” she called.
Bess’s heart began to pound. Her friends must have gone downstairs without her!
“I’m not going to stay up here alone,” she told herself, and headed for the stairway.
As Bess picked up the candle, she stopped short in panic. A few feet ahead of her stood a swaying form in white.
The ghost!
Bess stared at it, too terrified to utter a sound. Suddenly the figure took a step toward her. With a great leap Bess passed it, dashed toward the stairway, and raced down the steps pell-mell, making a terrific clatter.
Annette, hearing her, hurried to the foot of the stairs. One look at Bess’s terrified expression convinced her that the girl must have seen something frightening in the attic.
“What was it?” she cried out, taking the candle from Bess’s trembling hand.
“A—a—gh-ghost!” Bess wailed and slumped to the floor. Her legs would no longer hold her.
“Then it’s true! The house is haunted!” Annette cried out.
Bess nodded and in a frantic whisper asked, “Where are Nancy and George?”
“What do you mean?” Annette asked. “Weren’t they with you?”
Bess stared in stupefaction. “You—you mean they didn’t come d-down here?”
“No.”
Bess gave a cry of alarm. “Then they’re gone!” she moaned. “The ghost got them!”
The commotion had awakened Sheila Patterson. Now she hurried into the hall in a frilly nightgown. On hearing what had happened, she paced back and forth, waving her arms dramatically and crying out, “Oh, what will we do? What will we do?”
“We could call the police,” said Annette.
Bess, though frightened, realized that if Nancy and George were in trouble, she must help them at once. They could not wait for the police!
Bess’s courage returned. She stood up and said with determination, “Come on, Annette! We’ll have to go back to the attic and rescue Nancy and George!”
Sheila grabbed her daughter’s arm. “No, you mustn’t go! I won’t let you!”
“Mother, we have to do
something!”
Annette urged. “Nancy and George were willing to come here and risk their lives to help us. It’s our responsibility if something has happened to them!”
“Oh, I know—I know!” moaned Sheila.
A thought came to Bess. “You know, my cousin sometimes plays tricks on me,” she spoke up. “Maybe George found a sheet in the attic and played ghost to scare me!”
Somewhat reassured, Sheila finally agreed to allow her daughter to go up to the attic. As Bess started up the steps, the actress’s conscience began to bother her.
“I’m going along,” she said.
Bess reached the top and held the candle high. As she paused to look around, a current of air suddenly blew out her light.
Standing almost paralyzed in total darkness, she heard a door somewhere in the old house squeak eerily, then close with a terrific bang!
 
Ten minutes earlier, Nancy and George had been walking across the attic toward the panel wall. Without warning, the floor had opened beneath their feet!
The girls found themselves shooting down a steep wooden slide into pitch blackness. A trap door above them closed quietly. They landed abruptly on a hard surface at the bottom of the chute.
“Oh, my head!” George groaned. “Nancy, are you all right?”
“I guess so. I banged my shoulder a little.”
The two friends untangled themselves and slowly stood up. Both groped around and could feel with the tips of their fingers a dank ceiling a few inches above their heads.
“Where do you suppose we are?” George asked.
“In the cellar, probably.” Nancy smiled. “That was a fast ride!”
George sighed. “Where do we go now?”
Nancy ran her fingers over the slippery surface of the slide. “We never could crawl up that long chute,” Nancy replied. “We’ll have to try getting out of here some other way.”
The girls stood still a few minutes, waiting to see if Bess would also shoot down the slide. They braced themselves to catch her. Nancy called up the opening, telling Bess what had happened.
“Turn on the light in the cellar and open the door, will you?” she shouted.
There was no answer. “I suppose,” said George, “that when Bess missed us, she got out of the attic in a hurry.”
“No doubt. George, what I can’t understand is why the trap door opened all of a sudden. I’m sure we walked over it several times before.”
George whispered in Nancy’s ear, “There’s only one answer. That ghost we were trying to find must have opened it.”
“Which means,” Nancy replied in a low tone, “that he may still be at the top of this slide in a niche. Well, George, we’ll have to rescue ourselves. Let’s start.”
Nancy ran her hands along the ceiling, floor, and side walls. “I think we must be in some kind of a tunnel. Maybe it was an old one used by the slaves years ago and led from their quarters to the main house.”
“Well, the sooner we get to the end of it, the happier I’ll be,” George replied. “Let’s go!”
BOOK: The Hidden Window Mystery
5.88Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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