Amanderella and the Mystery of the Silent Statue.Chapter 6.

Chapter Six.

 

Back inside.

 

 

They stepped back into the hall, the door closing behind them with its usual, faintly smug click. Sir Cottam glanced around as if hoping the staircase had appeared in their absence. It had not. He sighed. “I had hoped that opening the picture wall might reveal something. A clue. A crack. Anything. But it all looks exactly the same.”

Amanderella shook her head gently. “The picture was never meant to reveal anything. It was meant to distract. The real clue will be something the hall has been showing us all along.” Amanderella’s gaze drifted along the panelling. “I imagine he smiled to himself when he designed this,” she murmured. “It is a very neat trick.”

Amanderella stood very still, letting her eyes travel over the panelling, the skirting, the shadows in the corners. “The main stairs won’t be hidden,” she said quietly. “Only the way to reach them.”

Sir Cottam nodded, relieved to have something definite. “So, we’re looking for a passage. A door. Something that leads off this hall.”

“Something that doesn’t want to be noticed,” Amanderella said.

“A door?” said Sir Cottam.

Amanderella shook her head. “No. We’re looking for something pretending to be part of the wall. If this was meant to push us outside,” she said, walking up to the picture wall, “then the real way must be hidden in the part of the hall the picture was distracting us from.” Her gaze travelled along the panelling, not searching for a door, but for a flaw. And there it was: a single panel where the grain didn’t quite match its neighbours. Too neat. Too deliberate. Amanderella touched it lightly. The panel clicked.

Sir Cottam jumped. “Good heavens, is that it?”

“It’s something,” she said. She pushed, and the panel swung inward, revealing a narrow, steep stair.

Sir Cottam peered up. “It looks… unpleasant.”

“Which means it’s probably right,” Amanderella said. “After you, Sir Cottam.”

He smiled. “If someone had told me that I would spend half my morning exploring a puzzle‑ridden house and climbing up the servants’ stairs, I would never have believed them.”

Amanderella didn’t look back. “Then it’s fortunate no one warned you.”

The staircase was tiny and incredibly steep. It was squeezed into a dark, narrow gap in the wall, with just enough room for one person at a time. The steps were made of plain, unpainted wood, turned almost black with age. They climbed straight up at a sharp angle before twisting tightly around a corner. In the middle of each step, the wood was worn down into smooth hollows where generations of servants' boots had trodden. There was no proper banister to hold onto. Instead, a thick, rough rope was threaded through iron rings along the wall to stop people from slipping. The air inside smelled of cold stone and old dust, and it was so quiet that even their breathing sounded loud. Far above their heads, a tiny slit of a window let in just enough grey light to see the steps ahead.

The stairs ended abruptly at a blank wall of panelling. For a moment Sir Cottam thought they had reached a dead end, but Amanderella pressed her palm against one of the boards. It swung inward with a soft groan of old hinges, opening into a narrow, dimly lit side‑passage.

The air changed at once, warmer, but still carrying the faint tang of soap, starch, and old linen. The passage was barely shoulder‑wide, lined on one side with shallow cupboards and on the other with a stretch of undecorated plaster wall. A single iron hook held an empty water jug. The floorboards here were scuffed and unpolished, the kind that never saw beeswax.

Sir Cottam stepped through and looked around in mild disappointment. “This isn’t quite the sweeping vista I was expecting.”

“Werlyn probably never used this route,” Amanderella said. “He would have considered it cheating. Puzzles are to be solved in the order intended.”

Sir Cottam gave a faint, weary nod. “That does sound like him. He once sent a magazine a double acrostic so complicated the editor returned it with a note saying, ‘We cannot print this. It is unkind.’ He gave it to me.” He straightened a little. “I solved it, you know. Took me three evenings and most of a Sunday, but I solved it.”

Amanderella paused, turning back to him with a warm, approving smile. “Three evenings and a Sunday?” she said, her eyes twinkling with amusement. “Then I shall consider myself entirely safe in your company, Sir Cottam. A man who can conquer an ‘unkind’ acrostic is precisely the sort of ally one needs when dealing with a house that throws its guests into the garden.”

Sir Cottam beamed, visibly buoyed by the compliment, and adjusted his spectacles with renewed confidence.

“Good,” Amanderella said, turning back to the narrow passage. “Because this part of the house was never meant to be welcoming. Let us see where this bit of unkindness leads us. This is where the servants paused before entering the main rooms. A place to put down a chamber pot, or a coal scuttle, or anything else the family didn’t want carried across the landing.” She ran her hand along the wall. “No drafts. No smell. The door at the end would have kept everything contained.”

The door itself was plain, unpainted, and fitted with a simple latch, the kind that made no noise when lifted. A strip of light showed beneath it, bright enough to promise the landing beyond.

Sir Cottam lowered his voice instinctively. “So, the maid would come up the back stairs, slip into this little passage, and wait until the coast was clear?”

“Exactly,” Amanderella said. “Invisible service. The house is full of it.” She moved toward the door, her steps soft on the unpolished boards. “And this,” she added, “is how we know we’ve come the wrong way. Werlyn didn’t intend us to arrive through the servants’ route.”

Sir Cottam sighed. “Does that mean we have to go back down those,” he shuddered, “those awful stairs and start again?”

Amanderella turned her head just enough to look at him, one eyebrow lifting. “Those kind of awful stairs,” she said, “are probably used every day by the servants in your own house. They carry chamber pots, coal scuttles, hot water, laundry baskets, all up and down passages exactly like this. Usually before breakfast. And usually without complaining.”

He coloured slightly. “I wasn’t complaining. I was… observing.”

“Then observe this,” Amanderella said, tapping the rough rope handhold. “This is what keeps your household running. Narrow stairs, bad light, and a rope instead of a banister. If they can manage it while carrying half the house on their backs, I think you can manage it once without fainting.”

Sir Cottam drew himself up, stung but trying not to show it. “I wasn’t going to faint.”

“Good,” she said crisply. “Because we’re not going back down yet. We’ll finish this floor first.” She lifted the latch and pushed the plain door open, letting the bright landing spill its light into the narrow passage. “After that, you can decide whether you’d like to brave the stairs again, or admit that servants are made of sterner stuff than you.”

Sir Cottam muttered something inaudible and followed her out.

They stepped out onto a bright, well‑kept landing. Sunlight poured through a tall window, falling across a polished table with a single vase of dried flowers. The air smelled faintly of beeswax and lavender polish, a world away from the dusty servants’ stair behind them.

Sir Cottam looked around in mild confusion. “Where are all the rooms? I thought there would be doors.”

“There are,” Amanderella said. “Just not here.”

Straight ahead of them was a single, closed door. To their left, the floor turned into a long, narrow corridor that stretched down the length of the house. All the bedroom doors ought to have been lined up along the left side of this passage, looking like a row of silent guards, but there were none. The corridor was perfectly plain: smooth plaster, polished floorboards, a runner that had been laid with almost military precision. No handles. No hinges. No frames. No sign that a single room opened off it.

Sir Cottam stared. “This is wrong. There should be doors. Bedrooms. Dressing rooms. Something.”

“Oh, the rooms are there,” Amanderella said. “Werlyn hasn’t removed them. He’s just… concealed them.”

“Concealed them?” Sir Cottam repeated, as if the idea were personally offensive.

“Of course,” she said. “He wouldn’t want visitors wandering into private rooms by accident. And he certainly wouldn’t want us to find anything too easily. It’s all here. Just hidden. He’s turned the entire bedroom corridor into a puzzle.”

Sir Cottam swallowed. “Do you mean to say that every door is disguised?”

Amanderella nodded. “Except one. And if we want to explore this floor, we’ll have to find out how to open them.”

And indeed, the landing itself showed only one door: a modest, white‑painted one with a frosted glass panel at the top. The bathroom. She nodded toward the lone door in front of them. “That one’s real. The only one Werlyn left visible.”

“Why that one?” Sir Cottam asked.

Amanderella gave him a look that suggested the answer should be obvious. “Because even Werlyn wasn’t cruel enough to make anyone solve a puzzle when they were desperate for the bathroom in the middle of the night.”

Sir Cottam blinked. “Oh. Yes. I suppose that would be… unfortunate.”

“Unfortunate?” Amanderella said dryly. “It would have been a disaster. So, he left the bathroom door honest and hid everything else.” She stepped toward it. “Come on. If there’s one door we can trust on this floor, it’s this one.”

Sir Cottam hovered behind her. “Do you think it’s safe?”

“It’s a door on a landing,” she said. “Not a tiger pit.”

“That’s not a no.”

She turned the handle. The latch clicked with a polite little sound, and the door swung inward on well‑oiled hinges. They both leaned in.

It was the bathroom. Or at least, it looked like one: a neat, tiled room with a claw‑footed bath, a pedestal basin, and a frosted window that let in a soft, milky light. Everything was spotless. The towels were folded with military precision. The soap dish held a single unused bar. The mirror gleamed.

“Well,“ said Amanderella. “That’s a surprise. Werlyn may not have kept the rest of the house clean, but he certainly liked a hygienic bathroom.” She turned slowly, taking in the immaculate tiles, the untouched towels, the faint scent of lavender that seemed to come from nowhere.

Sir Cottam nodded. “He was always immaculately dressed, clean-shaven, hair brushed, so, I suppose to find his bathroom clean and tidy is not unexpected.”

Amanderella gave a small, thoughtful nod. “Yes… but even so, this is too clean. Too arranged. Werlyn never kept anything this tidy unless he wanted it to be noticed.”

Sir Cottam looked around again, more carefully this time. “You think it’s staged?”

“I think,” she said, lifting one of the folded towels and examining the perfect crease, “that this room is meant to reassure us. To make us think the rest of the floor is just as straightforward.”

Sir Cottam frowned. “But it’s only a bathroom.”

“Exactly,” she said. “The one room he wouldn’t dare disguise.” She stepped back onto the landing. “This room is honest. Everything else on this floor won’t be.”

Sir Cottam followed her out, casting one last glance at the immaculate tiles. “So, the puzzle begins in the corridor.”

Amanderella nodded toward the long, blank stretch of wall where the bedroom doors should have been. “Yes. And if Werlyn hid every door on this floor, then the first thing we have to do is find a way into one of them.”

Sir Cottam drew a steadying breath. “Well,” he said, with the air of a man trying to sound braver than he felt, “I suppose we should start looking.”