The Big Steal (11 page)

Michelle and I had taken only a step or two into the hall when, once again, the doorbell rang. “Her number's on my desk,” Michelle said and turned on her heel.

I made the call to Mary Sophie in blessed privacy. It turned out she wasn't coming to the meeting Houseman had called. We agreed on tea at four thirty instead of four.

By the time I returned to the front of the house, Dr. Houseman and a handful of the other board members from yesterday had arrived, including Frederick Graham and Worth Merritt. With Houseman calling the shots, there wasn't time for conversation. In what seemed to be a replay of yesterday, Houseman pulled out his pocket watch, checked the time, and led his troops down the hall. Frank Fox and Peggy Powers hung back.

“We'll talk later,” Fox mouthed nervously before scurrying off to catch up with the others.

“Since I was already here, Alfred invited me to the meeting,
too,” Peggy said. “I think he was a little embarrassed that he hadn't called me. Who knows, it might have been an oversight.”

I couldn't tell if she was amused by the whole situation or was trying to save face.

“And Michelle's going to the meeting, too?” I asked.

“I assume so. Alfred told her to get a notebook and join them. In fact, I'd better toodle-oo off myself,” she said gleefully, adding, “We'll talk later.”

“Oh, I'll be around,” I said casually.

For half a second I thought about going back to further examine the broken items. That had been my intention hadn't it? I threw that thought away. With no one paying me any mind, I was on my own. I was ecstatic. Thank you, Lord, I said, casting my eyes heavenward, which was also in the direction of the attic.

My next thought wasn't quite so pious. Damn. I needed a flashlight.

Surely I couldn't ask to borrow one, or snoop around in hopes of finding one. And where would I look in this huge maze of a place? I had only so much time. My only choice was to retrieve mine from my car.

It only took a minute. I slipped back in and, tiptoeing to keep the heels of my shoes from clopping, started down the hall to the stairs leading to the attic.

I had no more than glanced at the few sheets of paper I had absconded with the day before. Between dinner with Worth Merritt and the unsettling episode at the 7-Eleven, my mindset hadn't been such that I could deal with much else. But what I
had
seen was enough to make me eager to dig further,
to find more. My gut feelings told me more was to be found in those boxes. That's what comes from being an appraiser. You get this eerie feeling—some people call it a sixth sense—that something is right or wrong, even before the evidence is spread out before you. That sense had drawn me to the shoe box at the flea market a couple of weeks ago where I found the Tiffany sterling silver candy bowl marked fifty cents. And the same sense had told me the Oriental figurine with the five-hundred-dollar price tag was plastic, not ivory. Rarely had this feeling led me astray.

Plus there were all those other things up in the attic—the statues and lamps, the bedposts and stacks of chairs I had seen. Their call—like the call of the boxes and cartons—was as strong and compelling as that of Ulysses' alluring sirens. There was no turning back. I tested the batteries in my flashlight. The bulb flickered, then shone. Though it was little more than a penlight, it would have to do. I tucked the briefcase under my arm and started up the steps.

Dear Antiques Expert: At a recent estate sale I saw a prayer bench that looked like it belonged in a Catholic church, but the auctioneer said it was a family piece. It resembled a low chair with a high back. Did families really own such a piece, and what would be its value?

Individual prayer or kneeling benches, known as prie-dieux, usually are considered liturgical furniture. However they were also made for home use, and highly carved 19th-century prie-dieux made for European houses and castles can sell for thousands of dollars in shops and at auction. Less elaborate antique prie-dieux usually sell in the low to mid hundreds, as do most reproductions.

S
O THERE
I
STOOD
, right where my gut feeling had told me I wanted to be. In my nervous state, the attic seemed even larger and darker than before, the sort of space where you could get lost forever. If Michelle hadn't heard my fall before …

But now was not the time to think such thoughts. I needed to figure out where I had been yesterday—but with so many objects and boxes piled on top of, and in front of, one another,
I hadn't a clue where to start retracing my steps. I turned slowly, making a full circle, all the while casting my feeble light from side to side, up and down. The ceilings in the attic had to be nine, twelve, even fourteen feet high where the roof peaked. Such vastness defused the light to the point that it was next to useless.

Venturing blindly forth, I looked about for some object to use as a benchmark to help me find my way back to the steps. It needed to be large. A mirror tilting forward at a catawampus angle caught the dim rays from my flashlight and cast them back. There, reflected in the mirror, I saw the tower of boxes I had toppled over and haphazardly restacked.

I swept away the curtain of cobwebs tangled around a marble statue of some mythological creature for a better look. No more than two feet tall, the statue was a dancing faun like the type found in Pompeii. What I couldn't tell in this light was whether it was truly old, or a replica. Little matter. With ribbons of water cascading from a pouch tucked away under one arm it would be charming. And valuable. Wonder why
it
was in the attic, and those fake Tang horses were downstairs? Lord, I hoped I'd get the chance to do an appraisal of the whole place. I needed to talk to Matt about that. I smiled, wondering just how familiar he was with our Southern homes and plantations. He'd surely find Wynderly fascinating.

I reached the boxes I was itching to get to. Working quickly, I removed them, one from on top of the other, until they were in a row on the floor. I yanked at the top of the box closest to me. Only then did I notice it was securely taped on all four sides.

Slow down, I told myself. I cleared a space on the floor
where I could sit. That's when my sixth sense kicked into overdrive.

The day before, I had noted the paneled wall in the attic and thought it strange, but dismissed it as part of a closet or maid's room that had never been completed. But with the boxes moved, and by my scant light, combined with what sunlight could slip through the casement windows, my curiosity was piqued.

Remembering yesterday, I figured I was safer crawling than walking. I dropped to my knees and edged along the floor. Despite the thick dust and grime all around, from this vantage point I also had a clearer view of how far the wall extended. At eye level, the furniture and boxes stashed sometimes two and three thick obscured anything behind them.

I inched along, shining my flashlight ahead of me as best I could. The light from the French window on the opposite wall helped, but only slightly. When an upright steamer trunk blocked my way, I struggled to a half-standing position to get around it. The further I ventured, the more sinister the attic felt. Beads of sweat broke out on my palms like gum on tree bark.

After what seemed like hours, but probably had been no more than a few minutes, I came to a break in the stacks of boxes and furniture. Surely this was the end of the wall. I wrapped my fingers around the corner edge of the paneling. My hunch had been right. This partition had to be some sort of room or storage space. But how to get into it.

I stood up and inched around the corner. I was now facing the third wall of this strange room that jutted out into the attic. This wall, too, was obscured by things stacked in front of it.

I retraced my path to where I had begun, the first wall that had started my exploration. I edged myself around the things piled in front of it and leaned in, gently tapping in hopes of finding some sort of opening.

It was nothing but solid wall. A wave of frustration washed over me. I had no idea how long I'd been sneaking around, or what time it was. Precious minutes I could have spent foraging through papers and documents were gone. Still, I pushed on. But now, I literally
pushed
on.

The summer I had turned eight or nine, my parents must have decided I needed to see every historic house in Virginia. From Woodrow Wilson's home in Staunton to the Last Capitol of the Confederacy in Danville, we trudged through them, one by one. My favorites had been those with ghost stories, especially when they had secret rooms and passages. At Virginia House in Richmond, I learned the owner had built a hidden staircase leading from the library to his bedroom. I could still see guides pushing against the paneled walls in those rooms. It had been thrilling.

Many years later, Hank and I had taken our children on similar trips. At the forty-two-room Hermitage House in Norfolk, the curators told us they were still looking for secret hiding places they had heard or read about, but whose location had been lost track of over the years.

But I wasn't eight or nine anymore, and I wasn't taking a house tour. I wasn't Nancy Drew and Wynderly definitely was not Twin Elms. This was the real thing, not
The Hidden Staircase
. Still, it was worth a try.

Since my flashlight wasn't doing much good, I turned it off. As an appraiser, I long ago had learned to trust my sense of
touch. Many were the times my fingers had shown me what my eyes had missed.

Like the time I felt the ripples along the top of a newly painted chest—telltale signs that the board had been hand-planed and was much older than it appeared to be. Seems the conniving daughter had slapped a coat of paint on a Hepple-white chest to disguise it when her stepsister came to town to claim her share of the family's antiques.

And back in the 1970s, when silver reached fifty dollars an ounce and silver thieves were rampant, often the thieves would remove or rub out a monogram or coat of arms to make the stolen silver service or set of goblets easier to front in an antiques mall or flea market. What the eye couldn't see at first, the fingers could feel. If the surface of the silver felt wavy, or the thickness of silver grew thinner, you knew to look closer.

I felt my way, inch by inch, wall by wall, until I reached the last wall—the one I had just found, the one furthest away from the steps.

You never would give up, would you Sterling
, Mother used to say.

If this box-shaped protrusion was some sort of
secret
room—and what else
could
it be with paneled walls—the opening would be on the most distant wall where it would be more concealed.

I wiggled in between the old upright steamer trunk and the tall chest of drawers. I fought the temptation to stop what I was doing and dig into the trunk in hopes of finding some great treasure. Instead, I laid my flashlight on top of it, and with both hands began feeling along the wall. I felt something off to the right. I grabbed the flashlight. There, slightly above
my shoulder, was a stubby wooden knob. In the narrow opening, I could barely reach the knob with my fingertips. I tried turning it, but it wouldn't budge. I leaned against the paneling, trying to figure out what to do next.

I don't know what happened first—if I heard the moaning creak of the wood, or felt the wall give way. What appeared to be a loose board had begun moving, then stopped. I pressed against the wall, cautiously at first, then harder. A board of the paneling groaned, giving way to a black hole and a dank, heavy smell.

There was no way I was going in there.

In truth, the darkness was a letdown. After all that time and trouble it appeared that the space was just that—a dark, empty space. I glanced back over my right shoulder to get my bearings, or was it to be sure I had a quick escape route? Then I held the flashlight in front of me and stepped forward.

In the blackness the room seemed smaller, much smaller than I had imagined it would be when I had been crawling around its exterior walls. I cast the light about for clues. It wasn't cedar lined, and no coat hangers were lying about—both of which I would have expected had it been a closet. Without a window of any sort, it certainly couldn't have been a maid's room. I was coming up empty when my stomach jumped into my throat with such force I gasped to find some air.

In the far right corner, leaning against the wall was something thick and lump-like. I shone the light directly into the corner. Was it a burlap sack with a body? I crept forward.

What I feared was a body in a bag was an upholstered seat attached to a tall rectangular wooden frame. The object now appeared to be a low, boudoir-type chair. But along the top
of the frame was a horizontal railing. It, too, was padded and upholstered. Jutting out the way it did would have made it impossible to sit on the low seat and lean back. But you weren't supposed to because it wasn't a chair; it was a priedieu, a prayer bench, the sort pictured in religious paintings and woodcuts. You were meant to kneel on the low cushioned section, and to use the railing to hold a prayer book or Bible, or to lean on as you prayed.

Then I knew what this was: a secret room, sometimes called a prie-dieu like the kneeling bench, but also known as a priest hole.

In sixteenth-century Protestant England it had been treasonous to hide a Catholic priest in your home, but there were still many devout Catholics in the land. A “priest hole” or hidden room, usually in the attic, provided a safe place for holding sacred rites. I had seen such rooms in castles and stately homes in the British Isles—the type Wynderly had been modeled after. Knowing Hoyt and Mazie Wyndfield's passion for all things European, and the depths of their pockets, of course they'd add this little touch for greater authenticity. And Mazie had been from Louisiana. She was probably Catholic.

My equilibrium restored, it was time to get back to more serious business. Oh well, the episode would make a good story, great cocktail party conversation. Then I noticed something different about the wall I was standing by. Lower than the other three walls, it was little more than six feet tall. Suddenly the space felt closed in—but, of course, that was because of the slanting roofline. What was strange, though, was that the wall was tilted slightly outward, rather than being straight up and down. It felt like one of those wonderfully evocative
illustrations of the rooms in the misshapen castles and towers in
Grimm's Fairy Tales
.