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Updated: June 12, 2025
I heard her light steps upon the stairs, and then the door to the room which had come near being the scene of a tragedy, opened and closed. Almost at once a summons came from the up-stairs room for Miss Belle's maid. The rest of the servants were dismissed, and Genevieve signalled over the balusters for me to wait.
As Kitty and Mr. Arbuton passed him, the artist glanced at her with the smile of a man who believes he knows how the case stands, and she followed his eye in its withdrawal towards the bit he was sketching: an old roof, and on top of this a balcony, shut in with green blinds; yet higher, a weather-worn, wood-colored gallery, pent-roofed and balustered, with a geranium showing through the balusters; a dormer-window with hook and tackle, beside an Oriental-shaped pavilion with a shining tin dome, a picturesque confusion of forms which had been, apparently, added from time to time without design, and yet were full of harmony.
In considerable perplexity she descended the stairs again. Mother Fetu was doubtless in the rooms on the first floor, where, however, Helene dared not show herself. She remained five minutes in the entry, which was lighted by a petroleum lamp. Then again she ascended the stairs hesitatingly, gazing at each door, and was on the point of going away, when the old woman leaned over the balusters.
Looking over the balusters, she perceived a light in the hall and inquired who was there. 'Well, it's us two, returned the cook, 'we're just agoin, so good-bye.
But if the murderer was a man, it is just possible that he might have darted out of the bedroom and dropped over the balusters, before the dining-room door was opened, getting clear away without being seen by anybody not even by Miss Heredith. An examination of the staircase of the left wing has convinced me that this feat was possible.
They reached the Hall, but only to find that the flames were literally rushing out of the great dining-room door, on the one side, and running up the panelled walls, setting the beautiful ceiling ablaze, while from the library, on the other, there was a furnace-like roar, as the flames literally charged up the oaken staircase, whose balusters were already glowing, and the gallery and corridor were fast flaring up as the fire licked and darted and played about.
On the stairs behind her the maids were leaning over the balusters, stuffing their aprons into their mouths lest their tittering should betray them. The sitting-room was nearly, but not quite, dark, for a lamp, closely shaded, cast a dim light on a Prayer-book, placed on a small table, behind which stood poor Mr.
Frank shed tears of gratitude upon the General's coat sleeve and threw kiss after kiss to the handsome sailor as she hung over the balusters of the broad veranda and waved them away in their swift-running cabs, and then danced off to her room and threw herself on the bed after a mad pirouette about the spacious apartment, and laughed and laughed until real tears trickled from her eyes, and then gave orders to be called at seven o'clock.
There are two landings on each flight, and from the spiral newels at the bottom the balustrades with ramped rails and heavy, turned balusters swing upward, as do the staircases, to the third floor. One notes with interest the unusual outline of the brackets under the overhang of the stair treads.
Obediently she turned at once, and, glancing up the stairs, noted that Mrs. Fletcher's door must have been suddenly opened, for the light from her room was now streaming on the third-floor balusters. Listening again! What could be the secret of that woman's intense watchfulness? In the parlor the young staff officer was pacing up and down, but his face lighted at sight of Elinor.
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