“Then you go straight up and see if you can find her. I’ll search the rest of the house systematically.”
“Very well, ma’am,” she said, not too graciously. She was a hefty girl and I could tell that she wasn’t charmed with the idea of climbing all those stairs again.
“Off you go then,” I said as she still lingered. “Up on the top floor, correct?” I indicated the grand staircase. She blushed. “Oh, no, ma’am. I shouldn’t use that staircase. I have to use the servants’ stairs at the back.” And with that she set off down the long dark hallway to the back of the house. I wondered if the servants’ staircase had been behind that door I had opened when I had so startled Mrs. McCreedy. That would explain a lot of things—if maybe she had been up in her room, taking a nap when she shouldn’t and had just hurried down several flights of stairs. I knew that not everything has to have a sinister meaning. I just prayed that the girl would find Mrs. McCreedy asleep.
I was going to follow her, to check out that staircase for myself, but I decided that an empty house and permission to search it was an opportunity too good to miss. So I worked my way through the ground-floor rooms. She wasn’t in the salon, the drawing room, dining room, morning room, music room, or library. I half expected to see her feet sticking out behind a bookshelf in the library, but all the rooms lay calm and serene in the afternoon sunshine. I went through a swing door to the servants’ part of the house. I found the back staircase off a side hallway. I also found the door behind which I had seen her startled face, but it was locked. There was nobody in the kitchen, nor in any of the closets, scullery, or anywhere else.
I stood looking out of the back door, realizing that she could have come out this way without being noticed. A picture of her lying dead at the foot of the cliff flashed into my mind. I’d leave that search until I’d been through the whole house. I went up the servants’ stairs and peeked into the bedrooms one by one. Behind one door I heard shrieks. I flung it open to see two little boys jumping on beds with toy guns in their hands while the nursemaid was standing with a look of despair on her face.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I told them they weren’t allowed to play but they don’t listen to a thing I tell them.”
“You know what your parents told you,” I said, wagging my finger severely. “No playing out of respect for your grandfather. If you want to do something fun get out some paper and write an adventure story. Take yourselves up the Amazon.”
Two sets of eyes lit up. “The Amazon? That’s where you find anacondas,” Alex said.
“I can’t spell ‘anaconda,’” Thomas complained.
“Your brother will help you. And don’t forget the illustrations.”
They rushed to get to work. The nursemaid gave me a grateful smile.
“Did you want something, ma’am?” she asked.
“I was looking for Mrs. McCreedy. I don’t suppose you’ve seen her?”
“Not recently,” she said. “And why don’t you write in pencil, Thomas. We don’t want ink spilled on this carpet.”
I left them and finished my tour of the bedrooms. The main staircase did not go any higher so I went back to the servants’ stairs, up another flight, and found myself on a bleak and bare landing.
“Hello, Sarah?” I called. “Any sign of Mrs. McCreedy up here?”
She appeared further down a hallway. “Not yet, ma’am. She’s not in her room. I don’t know where else to look. There’s an awful lot of box rooms and spare rooms up here.”
“Check them all,” I said.
She looked puzzled. “What would she be doing in box rooms? I’ve called her name enough. Surely she’d have heard.”
“Check anyway.”