A moment later, he once again peered into the compartment beneath the stairs, the location where he’d found Alice hiding last week. Disappointment went through him as he swept the flashlight beam all around the dark three-by-five-foot space. It was mundanely empty, save some cobwebs in the corners. If Lynn Durand had ever used the castle’s secret places to hide anything besides her daughter, it wasn’t in this spot.
Several years ago during a visit, Deanna Shrevecraft had shown him not one, but five secret hidey-holes in Castle Durand. Deanna owned a bed-and-breakfast called the Twelve Oaks Inn down the coastline. The Twelve Oaks had been built by the same architect as the castle, but on a smaller scale. When Deanna had visited Castle Durand once, she’d demonstrated to Dylan how alike the two houses were, right down to several secret rooms and compartments.
The door to Addie’s old room opened with a loud squeak. He immediately walked toward the large wall unit he’d had built during redecoration. It covered one entire wall. The new unit was constructed from glowing cherrywood, and included an entertainment console, deep cupboards, and bookshelves. Most people wouldn’t realize the unit had been designed around a smaller original built-in bookcase. Dylan had asked the carpenters to apply new exterior woodwork that matched the rest of the unit, leaving the interior intact.
He opened the second drawer, stuck his hand into the back of the cabinet, and found the latch. There was a muffled click.
The entire nine-by-four-foot section of the shelf swung forward several inches. He pried open the heavy door.
He exposed a much larger hidey-hole than the one beneath the stairs. Dylan had never discovered if the architect of Castle Durand and Deanna’s bed-and-breakfast mansion was just secretive by nature, or if he’d designed the hidden spaces by request.
He stepped over the threshold, an odor of dust and stale air entering his nose. He’d only been in here twice, once when Deanna had cheerfully revealed the secret to him, and once just before the carpenters came to build the new shelving unit. There hadn’t seemed to be much of interest inside the little room; the hidden quality being its only real curiosity. Deanna had been of the opinion that bootleg liquor might have been stashed in here during Prohibition, but Dylan doubted it. A much more likely candidate for that use would be the secret little room at the back of the kitchen pantry.
Nothing much had changed, Dylan acknowledged as he pointed the flashlight into every corner, revealing dusty wooden floorboards and chipped plaster walls.
This had been a dead end, too, he realized grimly, starting to back out of the dark space. His flash of insight hadn’t been so inspired after all. There were three other secret places—that he knew about—in the old house, although he was losing the steam of enthusiasm and curiosity by the second.
His flashlight skimmed across the floor as he turned to leave. He did a double take. Walking to the far right corner of the little room, he ran his light over a board that was slightly raised above the ones next to it.
He knelt and pried his fingers beneath the floorboard. It gave, and he lifted. He was expecting resistance, but someone had loosened the nails that had originally secured the board in place. The entire three-foot-long board rose as though it had a hinge on one end. He shone the flashlight into the opening beneath the board.
There, nestled between the joists, were four cloth-covered books. His flashlight revealed nothing else of interest, so he gathered up the volumes and replaced the board.
It was probably nothing—some long-forgotten diaries of a lovesick teenager or the hidden financial accounts of a crooked accountant. This was a very old house, after all, with a very long history.
He replaced the fa?ade door and walked under the full light of the glowing chandelier. Immediately, he noticed that while the volumes were old, they weren’t ancient. He opened the first page of the top one.
No. It was something after all.
He stared down at the front page of the top book. There, in a sloping hand were written the words Lynn Charlotte Durand, July 1990.
He turned the page and began to read. Lynn’s journal writing was evocative. It called up an image of her clearly in his mind: her kindness, her elegance . . . her sadness.
Yes. As a boy of thirteen or fourteen he hadn’t understood that sad, poignant quality of a grown woman’s character. But his memories, the part of her soul that was instilled forever in her written words, and the present-day understanding of an adult man all combined, allowing him to see Lynn Durand clearly for the first time.
It wasn’t until the fourth entry that the bombshell struck.