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“I think so, but probably still in the house somewhere.”
Mrs. Stipe stiffened, pushed them aside, and struggled to her feet. “Help me pack a bag!” she demanded. “Mr. Miller, bring the carriage around. I’m going to my sister’s.”
She rushed around the room opening the doors to her armoire and throwing clothes over her arm.
“What about breakfast?” Raven asked.
“I’ll not spend one more second in this house until those mice are gone!” She snapped at Brax, “Go! Get the carriage.”
He left the room.
She placed a large carpetbag on the bed and began filling it with clothing, all the while scanning her bedroom anxiously.
Raven thought her farfetched plan might be working a little too well.
Helen opened a drawer of the nightstand and withdrew a set of keys on a string. She handed it to Raven. “The key to Aubrey’s room and the other one. Clean them! I’ll send an exterminator once I reach my sister’s place. When he thinks it’s safe for me to return, I’ll come home.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
A short while later, Mrs. Stipe was helped into the carriage and driven away. Standing on the porch, Raven watched the carriage until it was out of sight, then climbed the stairs to begin her search.
She searched Helen’s room first, and then the smelly, dust-filled room once occupiedby Helen’s mother, and moved on to the husband’s room. Four hours later, she’d found nothing—no Declaration of Independence, no hidden panels in the walls, no false-bottom drawers, nothing secreted away in the armoires, the writing desk, hems of the old dresses in the trunks, and no hollowed-out bedposts to hide things in. There was nothing hidden in the books, in the mattresses in the mother’s room, or in the few books on the mother’s desk. She even swept the ashes out of the hearths in Helen’s and her mother’s rooms, hoping to find a hidey-hole in the brickwork, but that proved futile as well.
By the time she and Braxton sat down to dinner, she was disappointed and glum. “What if it really isn’t here?” she asked him.
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“If Welch presented herself as a reasonable person, I wouldn’t worry about sharing my doubts, but nothing about her appears reasonable, which is why we’re in this mess in the first place.”
“True. You did manage to get Helen out of the house, so give yourself credit for that.”
“I suppose.” That small success hadn’t led to the one needed to send Welch packing though. “I still have the hearth in his room to do. I’ll sweep it out after we’re done eating but I doubt what we’re after is there.” Welch’s threats to send the families to jail added more weight toher frustration. “Did Helen say what she wanted to do about the broken bed?”
“Yes. She said she’ll use the one in her mother’s room until she either arranges repairs or purchases a new one.”
“Okay. It’ll be ready whenever she returns. After I sweep out the husband’s hearth, I just want to spend the rest of this evening doing nothing.”
“You can also sleep in in the morning.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh my goodness. I can, can’t I? I can’t laze around until noon, but maybe an hour later than usual.”
“Up to you.”
Raven couldn’t remember ever having such an option while employed. “Is it too much to ask that Helen stay with her sister permanently?”
“Probably.”
“I’ll take what I can get. Let’s clean up these dishes and get started on that hearth.”
When the kitchen chores were done, they returned to the main house and climbed the stairs to Aubrey Stipe’s bedroom.
By the time they were done shoveling, their clothing, shoes, and hands were coated with a layer of fine gray ash once again. “I’ll have to mop in here tomorrow and dust everything down to get rid of all this,” she said, shaking off the front of her apron. The stone floor of the hearth would need to be mopped as well but the flagstones were visible. Raven picked up a lamp,turned up the wick for more light, and crawled inside.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for that hidey-hole.”
Setting the lamp down beside her, she ran her already grimy hands over the surface of the wall, and rising from her knees, hunch-walked into the space as far as she could. “Sometimes these old houses—” Her words petered out as her hand moved over what felt like a lever.
