“It’s a pocket door!” I’ve seen these in some old houses in Alderville.
“Yes, and hidden stairs.” She motions me to join her on the narrow wood staircase. I only hesitate a moment—I really don’t want to get in trouble for being here—but I want to figure out this mystery, so I follow her.
“Why are there stairs here?” I ask.
“They’re servant stairs. I guess the maids had to get to the second-floor bedrooms without anyone seeing them. And since the camera is on the main stairs between the first and second floor, it wouldn’t catch Jay that night if he came down from the third floor and went down these stairs.”
At the bottom of the stairs, there’s a door. When Gracie opens it, we’re in a little hall with three doors. The walls are covered with the cheap-looking white paint of the rest of the building.
“Where are we?”
“That”—Gracie points to the door on one side—“leads to the back common room, which I assume used to be the kitchen of this house. And that”—she points to the other door—“leads outside.”
“But I thought there were only the two doors out of the building?”
She nods. “Exactly. Thisisthe back door. Don’t touch it; it’s alarmed.”
Huh. I have never used the back door, so I didn’t notice this mystery door next to it. I frown. “How did he get outside from here? The alarm would have gone off.”
She shrugs. “That part I don’t know. He could have gone out through the common room to the front door.”
“Yeah, but the front-door camera didn’t see him leave.”
She shrugs. “I’ve figured out how he got downstairs.”
She’s right. This is something. I exhale. “Thanks, Gracie. This does actually help.”
After we head back up to the third floor, she tells me she’s going for drinks with Aster. I give her a meaningful look.
“Don’t,” she says, shaking her head. “It means nothing. We’re friends, that’s it.”
I chuckle. “Sure. Just friends.”
“You go,” she says, pushing me to my room. “Go talk to yourjust a friend.”
I’m smiling as I head back into my room. I immediately tell Jay what Gracie found.
Jay:Cool! A hidden stairwell! This place really is a haunted mansion. You even have a ghost you talk to every night.
Aleeza:You’re not a ghost. We’ll solve this. I’m going to see if campus security will tell me anything about that back alarm. Maybe there is a way to disarm it.
Jay:It reminds me of Travis’s family cottage. We all went up there last year. His dad had all these secret passages built into it for fun.
Aleeza:What else did you do with Jack and his friends?
Jay:Regular stuff. Parties, clubs, hanging out.
Aleeza:Did you leave town with them a lot?
Jay:Just Travis’s cottage, that’s in Muskoka. Wild place. And we went on Jack’s boat a few times, but that’s in Toronto harbor. Not out of town.
Oh. Jay’s things were found washed up on Lake Ontario. Maybe he was on Jack’s boat.
Aleeza:Is that the boat Jack lives on?
Jay:Yep. It’s a sailboat. His family has several, but this one was his twentieth birthday present. Once we went on a midnight cruise—we didn’t even get back to the marina until 3:00 a.m. There were at least a dozen of us. It’s a big boat, but still, that’s a lot of people.
Aleeza:Which marina?
