The Bell Behind the Wall
The Morrowmere Mysteries — Book 1
Wilbur Marx
Prologue
On the evening of 13 September 1986, Eleanor Vane sat at the narrow desk in her bedroom with three sheets of household figures spread beneath her elbows and the door locked behind her. Rain worried softly at the windows of Morrowmere House, threading silver lines down glass already dark with the reflection of the room. She had copied the numbers twice, once from the restoration ledger and once from the invoices themselves, because the first comparison had seemed too neat to be trusted.
The totals still did not agree with the work she remembered seeing done. Certain repairs appeared twice, others had been charged at sums that bore little relation to what had happened in the house, and one contractor's invoice referred to work Nell was nearly certain had never been completed at all. Until that week, she had thought dishonesty would announce itself with something dramatic—a forged signature, a missing envelope, a confession overheard through a door. Instead it sat quietly in columns of ink, depending on everyone else being too bored to look closely.
She drew a fresh line beneath the last figure and listened to the house settle around her. Somewhere beyond the wall, old pipes clicked as they cooled, followed by the faint metallic complaint of the servants' bell system that had not properly served anyone in years. Nell glanced toward the sound and then at the small brass key lying beside her papers, its stamped characters dulled from handling: E2.
The key had been in her pocket most of the day, though she could no longer remember when she had first picked it up. She rolled it beneath one finger, feeling the shallow ridges of its worn edge, then pushed it aside and pulled a sheet of writing paper toward her. Julia deserved an explanation, but every sentence Nell began sounded either melodramatic or frightened, and she resented both possibilities.
She wrote that the restoration invoices did not make sense and that someone had been pressing her to stop asking about them. Beneath that she added that she had copied the figures and intended to confront him before she left Morrowmere, but her pen slowed at the last word. Leaving was still what she wanted; that part had not changed, although the shape of it had become less romantic over the summer and more like the instinct to get clear of a closing door.
A floorboard sounded in the corridor outside, and Nell covered the copied figures with her forearm before she could tell herself not to be ridiculous. The footsteps continued past her room without pausing, measured and unhurried, until they faded toward the main staircase. She remained still for several seconds afterward, listening to the rain and to her own breathing, then folded the unfinished letter once and tucked it into the hidden compartment of her sewing box.
Her canvas satchel stood open at the foot of the bed, already holding two blouses, a paperback, and the toiletries she meant to take when she went away. Nell picked up the postcard addressed to Sarah Vale and read what she had written earlier: Still stuck at Morrowmere, but not for much longer. The roof men are due in the morning, and after that I'm taking a few days away. I'll explain when I see you. It sounded ordinary enough, which was exactly what she wanted, and she slid the stamped card into the satchel's outer pocket.
Tomorrow the roof contractors would come, the house would fill with the familiar clatter of ladders and boots, and afterward she would deal with the matter she had been avoiding. She told herself that the figures were protection because facts could not be argued out of existence, although the thought gave less comfort than it should have. Someone could deny a conversation, distort a memory, or insist that a frightened girl had misunderstood what she saw, but numbers remained where they had been written.
Nell gathered the copied account figures and squared their edges against the desk. The rain strengthened against the windows, and from deep within the east side of Morrowmere came a small metallic vibration, too faint to be called a ring. She looked again at the E2 key, then closed her hand around it.
By tomorrow night, she intended to make someone explain what the house's records already knew.