Page 49 of Winterset
“I believe you.” Enough oddities had happened in this house that I could notnotbelieve him.
“Can it be cleaned?” I asked.
“Perhaps,” he said. “But certainly not before church.”
I cursed. Although I was disappointed, I had others, though this was my favorite and most expensive hat. “Fetch me another.”
Charlie’s gaze met mine, wary. “I’m sorry, Granger. But they are all like this.”
A pit formed in my stomach. “No.No, no, no.” Not my hats.
I ran through the connecting sitting room to the white room, skidding to a stop. I peeked inside each hat and found that every one of my twenty-seven hats had been turned upside down and were filled with dirt and a twig.
My hats were being used as planting pots.
I gritted my teeth. I’d spent a small fortune on these hats. Charlie had been meticulous in his care of them. I tunneled a hand through my hair.
“Stop!” Charlie said. “Your forehead. Yourhair.”
I carefully withdrew my hand and checked my pocket watch. Services started in less than half an hour, and we needed to leave immediately. “I can’t go without a hat.”
“Perhaps there is one in the attic,” Charlie suggested. “I can search, if you’d like?”
“Seeing as mine are unwearable at present, yes. Thank you.” I didn’t relish the idea of wearing another man’s hat, but attending church without one would be inexcusable.
“Right. Of course. Give me a minute to look, and I will meet you in the entrance hall,” he said and hurried down the corridor toward the attic stairs.
I inspected my appearance one last time before I went downstairs. My hair did not look terrible, and my stitches were hidden. I had a little time before Charlie would be down, so I went to assess the damage my candle had caused to the carpet last night.
Sunlight streamed through the library windows. The carpet had been smoothed back into place, but there was a hole where my candle had dropped and caught fire. Another thing to add to my endless list of repairs.
I eyed the bookshelf across the room where I’d seen the lady floating. Like the drawing room, this room did not seem so strange in the light of day—just some furniture, a bunch of books, and a rolling ladder. Although, what was that on the floorbeneaththe ladder? A book?
How had it fallen?
I glanced at the shelves directly above. On the top shelf, there was an empty space, and another book was partially pulled out of its place too.
I walked around the study table in the center of the room and stooped to pick up the book.
Disquisitions on the Decline and Fall of the Roman Republicby James Cowper. It was a dense book, and I couldn’t picture Mrs. Owensby or Bexley reading it for pleasure. I opened the book, meaning to flip through pages but paused on the first page, confused by what I saw. Was that a drawing of a flower?
I turned the page and then another and found they were all filled with charcoal drawings of flowers. Roses and lavender and daisies covered every page. I stared down at the simple sketches. They were quite good. I could not help being impressed.
Who had done this?
The artist had not signed their work, but I knew of only one artist who had lived in this household: Miss Katherine Lockwood.
“Granger?” Charlie stood at the library door, holding a hat by the brim at his side.
I distractedly waved him inside. “Come look at this, Charlie.”
He walked over, and after I handed him the book, he examined several pages. “Are all the books like this?”
The thought had not even occurred to me. I pulled a book off the nearest shelf. To my disappointment, there were no sketches inside it, nor in the several more books I skimmed from the lower shelf. But the book with the drawings had likely fallen from thetopshelf.
I climbed the ladder and grabbed a book from the highest shelf. It, too, was filled with drawings, as were the ones next to it and the ones next to that.
“Are they all ruined?” Charlie asked.
