The Unkindness of Ravens, M. Hilliard [romantic books to read txt] 📗

me feel elderly. It’s not like I was that much older than she was. Maybe five years. I scanned her face. All right, maybe ten. But still. I turned back to the stairs.

“I’m not sure why the stairs don’t connect. This floor has been renovated to create larger rooms. The servants’ stairs stop and start at odd places up here. And I use this stairway because Millicent doesn’t like people trooping through her archives, particularly if they’re carrying food or drinks. We all use this stairway.”

“Mrs. Ames was always fussy. Even when she was only in charge of the raven room.” Officer Webber said.

The raven room was what kids called Horatio Ravenscroft’s study. I loved that room. It was a period piece, set up exactly as it was in the time of old Horatio, gentleman farmer and collector of rare books and Poe memorabilia. The smell of old books, leather, and furniture polish soothed me every time I stepped into it. Sometimes I even got a whiff of pipe smoke. If the reading room was the heart of the manor, the octagonal study was its brain, the bookshelves and dim recesses holding esoteric knowledge and the collective consciousness of the manor. An enormous stuffed raven presided over the room. The thing was a marvel of taxidermy. Glossy, black, and bright-eyed, it always seemed to be looking at you. Generations of local children grew up under its watchful eye. You couldn’t walk into the library without seeing the raven.

“I wasn’t aware you were a native of Raven Hill,” I said to her as we reached the landing. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in the library.”

“I’m not, but I spent summers here with my grandparents when I was a kid.”

“What brought you back?”

She took a second before answering.

“Family. And what brought you here, Ms. Hogan? Quite a change from what you’re used to.”

“Paycheck. I left the city for grad school. But you already know that.” I wanted to see how much digging she had done. Her face remained impassive. “Anyway, it seemed like a nice place. I thought it would be peaceful. Had I but known.” I trailed off. Still no expression. The Mary Roberts Rinehart reference was clearly lost on her.

The door to the attic stairs was closed as it had been yesterday. I stood before it, remembering how I’d yanked it open. I hesitated, knowing there would be nothing on the other side this time, but still fighting a sense of dread.

“It’s been cleaned up,” Jennie Webber said. She moved next to me as I reached for the knob and opened the door. It swung out soundlessly. I looked up the dark passage. Once again, nothing but murky shadows until very near the top, and then flickering daylight.

“The light was off yesterday, too,” I said. “I thought that was odd.”

“Why is that, Ms. Hogan?”

“She would have needed it to go up. Unless she went up when the sun was coming straight in the window. I don’t think that’s possible if I saw her in the reading room at four. What was the time of death?”

“We have to wait for the autopsy. How late could she go up these stairs without turning on a light?”

Wait indeed. I’d put money on the police having a best guess on the time of death before Joanna’s body left the building. But after her slip yesterday, Webber was giving away nothing.

“I’m not sure at this time of year. I’m usually not up here much later than one.”

I flicked the light switch and climbed into the attic. In front of me was a large window with an old-fashioned shade, both of which were usually closed. Today the shade was only halfway down. The police must have needed the light. To the right was a wall of floor to ceiling bookshelves. The heavy wooden shelves were on sturdy brackets and were usually stacked with odds and ends collected throughout the year for the Friends’ annual jumble sale. Today a shelf was missing. I studied what remained and recognized the doll and top I had seen yesterday as well as other familiar items. There was a small embroidered footstool on the floor next to the shelves that had never been there before. It was faded and threadbare, the carved wood frame worn. It must have come from another part of the attic. The doll and the spinning top must have, too, I decided as I surveyed the items on the shelves again. They were the only things that looked like they were from a previous era. Everything else fit the Friends’ “current and gently used” request. So, why were they there? I turned and took a few steps into the room.

The attic was a set of interconnecting rooms filled with the detritus of several generations of Ravenscrofts. Anything of known value or historic interest was downstairs, but Millicent still occasionally unearthed something worth cleaning and adding to the local history collection. She had ceded space to the Friends grudgingly, roping off the sections that still contained Ravenscroft possessions. Right now, I was interested in things that looked out of place. As I stared into the dim room, I heard a window open behind me. I raised an eyebrow at Webber.

“It was open yesterday,” she said, “Is that typical?”

“No. Not only has it been raining for weeks, Millicent would have a fit at the very thought of sunlight or bugs or damp air. She sees the attic as an extension of the archives.”

Officer Webber looked around. “Looks like the stuff we cleaned out of my grandparents’ barn.”

“Well, she has found a few things of importance, and the terms of Horatio Ravenscroft’s will make it hard to get rid of anything related to the manor.”

“So, does anything seem out of place?”

I gestured to the shelves.

“The footstool, two of the toys. They don’t go with everything else. They had to have come from another part of the attic.”

She studied the assortment.

“I see what you mean. Couldn’t someone have just