Annie slipped it into her pocket. So much for her promise not to touch anything.
With a deep breath, she nudged the gate. It creaked open. Annie glanced around for prying neighbors, or another crop of speed-walkers. She wouldn’t have to contend with whizzing bullets or screaming harpies but Annie was trespassing. She was committing a crime.
With not another soul in sight, Annie ventured farther onto the property, crunching across thick blankets of rebellious roses and weeds. She stepped over cement statues and upended lawn furniture as she made her way to the north side of the home, and a partially hidden door. It didn’t face the street, but Annie remained at the mercy of any Chacombe busybodies nonetheless.
Peering over her shoulder, Annie turned the knob. So this was it. She was going inside.
The door stuck.
She tried again, jiggling and pulling. Despite the effort—and the cursing—the door remained firmly locked. So did the next one, and all of the doors after that. It was a lot of security for a home with so many broken windows.
“Good grief,” Annie muttered, clearing the glass from a nearby dormer with her backpack, speed-walkers be damned. “New study finds majoring in literature may result in nefarious behavior.”
Annie tossed her bag over the casement and hoisted herself into the frame. Her years spent as a cut-rate gymnast were finally paying off. Laurel would be proud that all those participant ribbons could so nicely lead to a life of crime.
Holding her breath, Annie pushed aside the heavy black drapes which, according to the book, the duchess doused in oil four times per year. No surprise there, Annie thought. They smelled of something old and faraway.
“Yuck.” She coughed, and then covered her mouth.
Once all the way inside, Annie rested on the sill and assessed the room. Below her were scattered papers, a few books, and what appeared to be a collection of rib cages from small animals. No one could really die in the haunted house from some old book, right?
As her stomach seesawed, Annie jumped down.
She was in a dining room, judging from the long oak table that dominated the space. The chairs were gone. On the walls, rectangles marked the places artwork once hung. Annie treaded down the hallway. As she walked up the stairs, the wood made not a clonking sound but something squishier, like moss. Annie caught her breath at the top step, grateful that her mom wouldn’t have to suffer the stigma of a death-by-burgling obituary.
“All right, Grange,” she said. “Whatcha got for me?”
In the first bedroom, Annie found a bare mattress on the floor, beside it a collapsed bed frame filled with books. Hardy. Proust. Wharton. She was reaching toward one of the Hardys, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, when her hand brushed against something cold.
Annie leaped back. It was a revolver.
Choking and wheezing, she sprinted into the neighboring bedroom. Annie lived in hunt country but she’d never touched a gun.
“It’s just an old piece of metal,” she told herself, heart punching the inside of her chest. “It’s not like it can go off on its own.”
Or maybe it could. What did Annie know about firearms? What did she know about old lady ghosts who liked to shoot them while alive?
“Good grief, get a hold of yourself,” she said. “Ghost stories. Nothing more.”
Annie looped around the room four times in an effort to calm herself down.
“Annie,” she said. “Don’t be such a wuss.”
Inhaling, she surveyed the room. In it sat another bed, its frame intact. Beside the bed was a desk. On the desk, a typewriter. Annie craned her neck to more closely scrutinize the walls. Yep, those were bullet holes.
Aside from its one-inch frosting of dust, not to mention a healthy mountain of black soot accumulated in the fireplace, the room was relatively neat. A bed. A desk. A few pieces of paper. Annie’s dorm rooms were far worse. Where was all the clutter Gus promised? The old lady hoarding? This was starting to look like a waste of a misdemeanor.
Sighing, Annie crouched to inspect beneath the bed. That’s where the good stuff usually was. Even she had had incriminating evidence under hers back in the day. A roommate’s skirt borrowed without asking. A mostly empty vodka bottle. A pack of cigarettes, only one used.
“What, no guns?” Annie said. “Mrs. Spencer. I’m disappointed.”
Aside from dirt and grime and dead spiders, all that was under there was scattered paper, typewritten from the looks of it. With a gnash of her teeth, Annie stretched as far under the bed as she could muster and made contact with a few sheets. After dragging them out, she sat back on her heels, her knees gray from the dust.
“Transcripts?” she said, her eyes scanning the page.
The author’s notes? An interview? Annie flicked through the pages.
Surely you’d encountered the duke at some point.
You met at Blenheim, you said?