Page 73 of The Mystery Guest

“Yes,” I say. “The secret doorway, a portal to another dimension.” I step forward and push it. The fourth wall springs open to reveal Mr. Grimthorpe’s study.

“Get a load of that,” Stark says, her face wide with surprise.

His desk is in the same spot it always was. On it are teeteringstacks of black monogrammed Moleskines. They’ve multiplied considerably since the last time I was here. There are stacks on the desk like before, but now there are more on the floor, some of them piled waist high. The room is so filled with Moleskines that the only empty space is a narrow pathway to Mr. Grimthorpe’s desk and another leading to his bookcase on the far wall.

“Whoa,” says Stark. “This is bonkers. Was Grimthorpe a hoarder?”

“In a way,” I say. “The lord of everything. And of nothing.”

She picks up a Moleskine, opens it gingerly to a random page filled with scribbles and doodles and unintelligible scrawl. “Indecipherable. Just like the one Cheryl sold,” she says.

Stark checks a few other Moleskines, and I do the same, though I’m loath to besmirch my hands with grime. The contents are exactly as I remember—scrawls and scratches, not handwriting or even code, and certainly not any novel written in long-form.

“There’s nothing in here that anyone could have typed up,” Stark says.

“Exactly,” I reply. “And Mr. Grimthorpe never typed. It was always his secretary typing away, unseen, while these notebooks multiplied, untouched.”

The detective spots something on Mr. Grimthorpe’s bookcase on the far wall, another book that stands out, the only one on the shelf that is clean—a second Oxford dictionary. She walks over and presses on it. A wall springs open.

“What?” I exclaim. “I never even noticed that was there!”

“Glad I’m good for something,” Stark replies. She walks through the narrow doorway into a modern office, spotlessly clean and gleaming white, the contrast extreme. I follow behind her. There’s a spiral staircase in the corner that leads down to the mansion’s side door. Modular Ikea shelves line one wall, and in each cubby are stacks of printed manuscripts, perfectly organized and boundwith elastic bands. There’s a cubby for each of Mr. Grimthorpe’s past books, the titles printed neatly above each stack, all of them ordered by year of publication, from the most recent on crisp, white paper to his biggest bestseller,The Maid in the Mansion,the paper yellowed with age.

“Looks like his novels in manuscript form,” Stark says as she crouches for a closer look.

She stands and walks over to a simple desk at one side of the room. There’s a rose-gold Mac laptop on it, closed, and a printer to one side, nothing else.

Then I see it. In an arched niche behind the desk sits an old typewriter. On the wall above it is a single photo in a simple gilded frame. I approach for a closer look.

What I see is an utter surprise, but in some ways it all makes sense. There she is, the woman in the blue kerchief and gloves, standing with her arm around a young girl who looks her spitting image. “That’s her,” I say. “The lady in blue, his previous personal secretary. When I was a child, she came here every day through the side entrance. I could never figure out where her office was, but I heard her typing away.”

Stark approaches and leans into the photo. “But who’s that child beside her?” she asks.

Yet again, I know something before Detective Stark does. I put two and two together and come up with a sum that is more than I thought it could ever be. “You don’t recognize her? Look closely.”

Stark squints. “Jesus,” she says. “Is that her?”

“Yes,” I reply. “The resemblance is uncanny, isn’t it? That little girl,” I say, “is Ms. Serena Sharpe.”

“How very nice of you to trespass. Please make yourselves at home while you snoop around my office.”

Detective Stark and I both jump and turn around. Standing in the doorway is Ms. Serena Sharpe, car keys clinking in one hand.

“The man downstairs let us in,” Stark explains.

“So I hear. May I ask what the hell you’re doing in my office?”

“I knew your mother,” I blurt out. “Or rather, I didn’t know her. But I saw her here when I was a child working alongside my gran. She was Mr. Grimthorpe’s personal secretary. This photo—you’re her daughter,” I say as I point to the picture on the wall.

Ms. Sharpe sighs. “Yes. That’s my mother. So what?”

“You never mentioned that before,” Detective Stark says.

“And you also failed to mention that your mother is the real author of Mr. Grimthorpe’s books,” I add.

Ms. Sharpe affixes me with her sphinxlike gaze. Then she strides across the room to stand in front of the niche containing hermother’s typewriter. She puts one finger on the letterI. “How did you figure that out?” she asks.

“The Moleskines,” I say. “They’re filled with nothing but doodles, and yetrat-a-tat-tat-tat.Your mother was always typing something. Every single day.”

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