And there it was, a connection with the Morningstarrs! Theo elbowed Tess, Tess elbowed Jaime. Nine meowed. Some of the Morningstarr Scouts giggled. Some of them edged away from Nine and her Nine-sized teeth.
“By the 1860s, this area was packed with bars and cheap hotels, riddled with unsavory characters, but the Tredwell sisters refused to move and didn’t change anything in the house except for adding modern plumbing and electricity. Phebe, Julia, and Gertrude lived out their lives in this house. When Gertrude, the youngest member of the family, died in 1933, she left this house completely intact. So, why don’t we have a look around? If you’ll all follow me, we’ll go downstairs first, where we’ll find the family room and the kitchen.” Colton waved them down the hall toward the back of the house.
When most of the crowd was out of earshot, Tess whispered, “Let me see the letter again. What was the bit that Theresa Morningstarr underlined?”
Jaime pulled the letter out of his pocket and read, “‘would be enlightening for all who need it.’”
“That has to be a clue,” said Tess. “Enlightening as in a book is enlightening?”
“Maybe,” said Theo. “Or maybe it’s a pun.” He glanced up and stared at a fixture hanging overhead. “Maybe instead of enlightening as in ‘instructional,’ she meant something that actually sheds light? Like a lamp or something?”
“Or a fireplace,” said Tess.
“Or a candlestick,” Theo said.
Jaime put the letter back in his pocket. “I’m sure there aren’t more than a million candlesticks in a nineteenth-century house.”
They hurried to the back of the house and into the kitchen, where Colton was talking about how all the meals were first cooked over an open fire by the Tredwells’ four servants, and then later on the stove that stood in the fireplace. “A house and a family this size could not have run smoothly without someone to do all the work.”
“Why didn’t they do the work themselves?” said one of the Morningstarr Scouts.
“It was a lot more work to cook dinner in the nineteenth century, when you didn’t have running water or modern appliances. That stove wasn’t even there in 1832.”
Tess sidled over to the large open fireplace, where the stove sat. Nothing seemed unusual about it. There were no strange markings in the bricks, there was no loose mortar to hint at a secret compartment. She looked behind the stove and even under the stove. She risked opening the oven.
“Please don’t open that!” said Colton, gripping his own tie in alarm. His voice went up about three octaves.
“Sorry,” Tess said. She closed the door. A little flutter of worry flapped in Tess’s gut. How were they supposed to know where to look? How were they supposed to know what to look for?
From the kitchen, the group moved into the family room. While Colton was talking about the furniture, Jaime and Theo examined some candlesticks on either end of the mantel and Tess fiddled with a lamp sitting on nearby table.
“Hello! Please! Hello, don’t touch that!” said Colton, startling Tess so much that the lamp tipped and almost fell over. She caught it just in time.
“Sorry, sorry,” said Tess, righting the lamp.
Colton clutched his tie so hard that he made it longer, his overlarge Adam’s apple going up and down. The Morningstarr Scouts went wide-eyed. The middle-aged couple shook their heads, the woman murmuring, “Where are her parents?”
“Okay!” said Colton, getting control of himself. “Let’s move upstairs. Please don’t touch anything.”
“Did you hear that, young lady?” said the pickled man to Tess, plumped lip curling.
“Dabid abi habeabar whabat?” said Tess.
The man blinked. “I thought you spoke English.”
“Abi dabo.”
The man huffed in confusion until his wife dragged him away.
Jaime said, “What language was that?”
Tess said, “It’s Turkish—”
“Irish,” Theo finished. “You put an ab in front of every vowel in a word. If you talk really fast it sounds like gibberish.”
“And it annoys the heck out of people,” Tess added.
“Nabo, rabeabally?” said Jaime.
“Ha,” said Tess. “You guys see any clues?”
“Not so far,” Theo said. “We should probably get upstairs.”
“Yeah,” said Jaime. “There are probably a billion more candlesticks and lampshades to look at.”
Up on the next floor, Colton was telling the group about the front and back parlors. “If you look up, you’ll see beautiful matching chandeliers, or in this case, ‘gasoliers.’”
“What’s a gasolier?” said the girl in the headscarf.
“It’s a chandelier powered by gas!” said Colton.
The Morningstarr Scouts glanced at one another. In unison, they said: “Gas? In a house?”
“Well, in the earlier part of the nineteenth century, scientists and engineers were trying to find the best way to provide power—light the city, move the trains, all of that. They were trying to figure out what kind of fuel was best. The Morningstarrs invented the solar glass and solar cells that we now use to pave the streets, so we get our energy from the sun. But back then other people were experimenting with burning coal and oil and gas. Burning gas could be dangerous, though. There’s an old story that one of the gasoliers burst into flames. There’s even a burn mark on this sideboard.”
Colton kept talking, but Tess was too focused on the gasolier. It was bronze and had six burners, mounted to the ceiling with an ornate medallion. The other Cipher clues were mostly mathematical puzzles, but what if this new Cipher worked differently? What if the clues were riddles or even mechanical clues, hidden writing and secret slots? Maybe one or the other or both of the gasoliers could turn like a clock? But how would she possibly be able to test that without anyone freaking out, and without breaking anything or setting the place on fire?
She could wait until the group was touring the floors above, sneak back down here, climb up on a chair—a priceless chair—and try to turn or pull or otherwise operate one of the gasoliers. If her mother knew what she was planning, she’d be grounded for months.
Tess swallowed hard. Nine rubbed against Tess’s legs. While Colton warbled about sideboards and tables and priceless rococo whatevers, Tess walked Nine to the marble fireplace to look at the argon lamps on the mantel. They had etched glass domes and crystals that hung from them, but she didn’t see anything remarkable about them. But that was the point, of course. And what if the next clue had nothing to do with lights or lighting? What if they had this all wrong?
She wished she could talk to Grandpa Ben. The last time she’d seen Grandpa, he’d—
Nine mrrrowed and nibbled on Tess’s fingers. Colton stopped talking and narrowed his eyes at Tess. “Why don’t we head upstairs. All of us! Together! Looking at the furniture but not touching any of it!”
Tess sighed. And then she noticed that the girl in the headscarf suddenly appeared behind Colton. Colton jumped.
“Hello! Where have you been?”
“Exploring,” said the girl. “I went to the attic to see where the servants lived.”