Amanderella and the Mystery of the Silent Statue.Chapter 8.

Chapter Eight.

 

The next room.

 

They stepped back out onto the landing, closing the bedroom door behind them until it clicked back into the seamless white panelling.

Amanderella didn't move. Instead, she looked back down at the narrow strip of carpet between the bedroom and the bathroom door on their right.

“Look at the floor again, Sir Cottam,” she said, pointing. “I missed it before because I was looking for the deepest turn. But there isn't just one path of wear here. There are two.”

Sir Cottam bent down to peer at the grey wool. Sure enough, just a couple of feet before the bedroom door, there was a second, slightly narrower patch where the pile of the carpet had been rubbed flat by years of daily use.

“Of course!” said Sir Cottam, striking his thigh. “The dressing room! A man like Werlyn would need to fetch his trousers and his collars every morning. It stands to reason he went in there just as often.”

“And if he used it as his office too, his desk and all his private papers are inside,” Amanderella added, her eyes narrowing as she studied the blank white panelling on their right. “But he clearly didn't use a simple push-catch for this one. He wanted his paperwork protected.”

She ran her fingers along the smooth white dado rail that ran horizontally across the panelling at waist height. It looked completely identical to the rest of the corridor, but Amanderella’s fingers were searching for the slightest bit of play in the woodwork.

She paused at a section of the moulding directly above the worn carpet patch.

“Werlyn was a creature of habit,” she murmured. “If you enter a room multiple times a day, carrying clothes or books, you want a lock that opens with a single, natural movement. Something your hand does without thinking.”

She placed her hand on the decorative wooden peg that sat in the coat rack moulding just beside the hidden seam. It looked like a permanent, fixed part of the woodwork. She didn't press it, instead, she gave it a gentle, clockwise twist.

With a delightful, rhythmic clack-clack-clack, like the sound of a winding clock, a mechanism turned inside the wall. The entire section of panelling slid sideways into the wall by a foot, opening up a doorway.

“A rotary latch,” Amanderella said, a satisfied smile touching her lips. “Disguised as a common peg. Simple for him, impossible for anyone who doesn't know to twist it.” Sir Cottam stared at the opening, awestruck. “My dear… how did you know?”

Amanderella stepped through the doorway.

“Because,” she said, “if you want to hide something properly, you put the door exactly where everyone thinks they’ve already looked.”

The room beyond was smaller than the bedroom, but it had been used far more recently.

Amanderella stepped inside. It was a straightforward dressing room: a narrow wardrobe on the left, a washstand with a shaving mirror, a row of collars in their boxes, shirts hung neatly in order. Everything practical. Everything in its place.

But the right‑hand wall told a different story.

An escritoire stood there, the sort of piece a man buys because it fits the space rather than because it is fashionable. The wood was scratched, the leather writing surface worn smooth in the middle, and the pigeonholes were stuffed to the point of untidiness.

Sir Cottam adjusted his spectacles. “Ah, an escritoire. Essential for any man who deals with correspondence. Mine is in my study at home.”

Amanderella nodded. “A writing desk. The sort with too many little drawers and nowhere sensible to put anything.”

Amanderella opened the fold‑down front. Inside was the quiet clutter of a man who worked with words every day:

- squared paper covered in half‑finished crosswords

- envelopes addressed to puzzle magazines

- a dictionary with a cracked spine

- a well‑used thesaurus

- pencils sharpened down to stubs

- a ruler with notches cut into one edge

- a blotter covered in tiny letters

“This is where he earned his money,” she said. “Not much, but enough.”

Sir Cottam nodded. “He sent puzzles to all sorts of magazines. He was rather proud of it.” Amanderella pulled out the escritoire’s chair and sat down. It creaked faintly under her weight, as though surprised to be used again. She began opening the little compartments one by one — not cubbyholes, exactly, but the small pigeon‑holes and drawers that every escritoire seemed to collect over the years.

Most held the expected things:

- old envelopes

- pencil stubs

- half‑finished clues

- a dried‑up ink bottle

- a few collar studs that had wandered in by mistake

Nothing that resembled a will.

She checked the shallow drawers beneath the writing surface. More paper. More notes. A few coins. A broken pen nib. Nothing of importance.

Sir Cottam hovered behind her, trying not to look disappointed.

Amanderella was about to close the last drawer when she noticed a small wooden oblong box sitting neatly in the corner of the desk, half‑hidden behind the dictionary. It was plain, unvarnished, and no bigger than her hand.

She picked it up.

It rattled.

Sir Cottam leaned forward. “What’s that?”

“A puzzle box,” Amanderella said. “I had one just like it when I was a child.”

Amanderella closed the lid of the puzzle box, but did not put it down. She turned it over in her hands, thoughtful, weighing not the wood but the meaning.

“This box,” she said at last, “is the key to the whole thing.”

Sir Cottam blinked. “I don’t follow.”

Amanderella drew a slow breath. “I never met him, so all I can go on is what you’ve told me and what we’ve found in this house. Stop me if I’m wrong.”

Sir Cottam nodded, solemn as a magistrate.

“Werlyn was the sort of man whose enthusiasms took over his life,” she said. “He collected things, anything, everything. You said he wasn’t stupid, so he must have known most of it was rubbish. But he liked it, so he bought it. Quality didn’t matter. Only the thrill of acquiring.”

Sir Cottam nodded. “That sounds very like him.”

“And when the money ran out,” Amanderella continued, “he needed something else to fill the space. Something to occupy his mind. He found puzzles. And puzzles became the new enthusiasm.”

“He was certainly enthusiastic,” Sir Cottam agreed. “But I don’t understand all this.” He waved a hand to indicate the hidden doors, the mechanisms, the whole eccentric architecture. “Why make the entire house a puzzle? It would only make life difficult for whoever inherited it.”

Amanderella held up the puzzle box.

“Because the house is based on this,” she said. “He built his home the way he built his puzzles. Layered. Locked. Sequential. He assumed the person dealing with his estate would enjoy the challenge.”

Sir Cottam gave a small, pained laugh. “Then he misunderstood me altogether. Yes, I like puzzles, word puzzles, Acrostics. But these mechanical contraptions? I could never have got into the house at all without you.”

Amanderella nodded gently. “No. He didn’t understand you. He understood himself. And he assumed everyone else’s mind worked the same way.”

She set the little wooden box down on the desk, turning it so the panels caught the light.

“This is the pattern,” she said. “A series of small movements. One piece unlocking the next. Nothing obvious. Nothing labelled. You only find the answer by doing the steps in the right order.”

Sir Cottam sighed. “I suppose that is exactly how he thought.”

“It is,” Amanderella agreed. “And he rebuilt the house the same way. Not to be difficult, but because it pleased him. He thought he was giving you something enjoyable to work through.”

Sir Cottam gave a short, rueful laugh. “Well, he was wrong about that. I like a word game. I like a good acrostic. But this—” he gestured at the walls, the hidden doors, the whole strange house, “this is another world entirely.”

Amanderella folded her hands on the desk. “He didn’t expect you to do it alone. He expected you to enjoy it. That’s the difference.”

Sir Cottam looked at her, puzzled. “Enjoy it? Why on earth would I enjoy being locked out of a house?”

“Because he did,” Amanderella said simply. “He enjoyed the challenge. He enjoyed the cleverness. He enjoyed the feeling of solving something that no one else could. And he assumed you would feel the same.”

Sir Cottam rubbed the bridge of his nose. “He really did misunderstand me.”

Amanderella gave a small smile. “Yes. But he didn’t misunderstand himself. And that is why this box matters.”

She tapped it lightly with one finger.

“This is the model for everything he built. A sequence. A chain. One clue leading to the next. He didn’t scatter things at random. He left a trail.”

Sir Cottam looked at the wooden box again, more thoughtfully this time. “So, the house is… a larger version of this?”

“Yes,” Amanderella said. “And the will is at the end of the sequence.”

She slipped the folded clue, Press the shadow--,into her pocket.

“And we’ve already taken the first step.”

Sir Cottam let out a slow breath. “Then we follow it.”     Amanderella didn’t move. She glanced back at the escritoire, her expression sharpening, “But first,” she said, “there has to be something more here.”

She picked up the notched ruler she had found earlier in the desk pigeon‑holes. She turned it over. On the smooth back, written in Werlyn’s precise, angular handwriting, was a short, inked verse under the heading: An Enigma for the Secretary.

“Sir Cottam,” she said, passing it to him. “Look at this. He didn’t just leave a puzzle box in this room. He left something for you.”

Sir Cottam adjusted his spectacles and peered at the wood. He read the lines aloud, his voice falling into the measured cadence of a classical scholar:

“To speak aloud, the statesman’s art,

Yet strip the school where sages part;

No living breath inside me lies,

Though stone-faced to the changing skies.

Law binds my form, yet still I stand,

A silent guardian of the land.”

He blinked, reading it through a second time. A sudden, sharp spark lit up his eyes, replacing his earlier bewilderment. The rueful look vanished from his face, replaced by the intense focus of a master at work.

“Oh,” Sir Cottam whispered, a slow smile spreading across his face. “Oh, you clever old dog. He’s given me a proper classical charade.”

“Do you understand it?” Amanderella asked.

“Perfectly!” Sir Cottam said, his voice rising with excitement. “It’s an architectural pun, Amanderella! Listen to the first two lines: ‘To speak aloud, the statesman’s art / Yet strip the school where sages part.’ To speak aloud or declare is to STATE. But the school where sages part, that is the University, the great U, and the line says to strip it or drop it out. But wait, look at the Latin double meaning!”

He began to pace the narrow dressing room, counting on his fingers, entirely in his element now.

“The old Roman law, Amanderella! Statum—that which is established, a decree or law. ‘Law binds my form, yet still I stand.’ The root of the word is stare, the Latin verb meaning simply to stand. A monument that stands immutable, dead but mimicking life—‘No living breath inside me lies, though stone-faced to the changing skies.’”

He stopped pacing and pointed triumphantly at the ruler.

“It’s a triple play on the letters and the Latin! STATUE! A standing figure! It fits every single layer of his riddle.”