up when we leave.”
Mayhew wasn’t thrilled by her suggestion, but who was he to argue with a wealthy trustee who had just given the house a gift worth several hundreds? “You do remember how to set the alarm, don’t you?”
They went off together for a refresher course on the proper setting of the system while Benton and Angelo gathered up their coats to follow and said that they hoped we would have word of Cal by morning.
When Betty Ramos returned to the parlor alone, she said, “Before you get started, want to come upstairs? I’m dying to see how the coverlet looks on the bed.”
I hadn’t yet seen the Rose Bedroom myself, so I quickly agreed.
We climbed the curved stairs to the second floor, passed the mannequin that represented Elizabeth Morrow’s brother, then took the surprisingly narrow flight of stairs to the third floor. There were discreet light switches and concealed lights along the way. “The house was actually wired around 1920,” she explained, “but when my husband and I donated the new heating and cooling system, we upgraded the wiring as well. The electrician told us that we were probably just one power surge away from a major fire.”
“Sounds like a very generous gesture.”
She shrugged. “Well, it’s not as showy as swords and guns, perhaps . . .”
“Not that it’s a contest or anything,” I said wickedly.
“Oh dear, is that what it sounded like?” She saw my smile and gave a sheepish smile of her own. “I’m afraid Nathan Benton brings out the worst in me. He’s always finding these perfect little treasures at yard sales and flea markets and makes a big show of how clever he’s been to pay so little. As if ”—her voice slipped into a clipped British accent that perfectly mimicked Benton’s—“ ‘I say, chappies, anyone can slosh money around, but spotting authentic pieces dead on takes a discriminating eye, what?’ I mean, he’s just so bloody proud of everything he finds. And poor Frederick. It humiliates him to death that he can’t match Nathan’s generosity. He’s found a couple of nice things over in Tennessee himself, but I’m afraid his pockets aren’t as deep as he’d like.
“Now, Catherine Schmerner—did you meet her?
Short, white-haired woman? I think she was wearing a purple coat?”
I shook my head.
“Well, she and Suzanne have given the house quite a few items, too. In fact Catherine gave us an ebony-and- silver hand mirror just last month that could easily have belonged to Peter Morrow’s wife, but she would never brag about it. I was so pleased when Suzanne held it up this afternoon and Catherine got to take a bow, too.
Jonna found a picture of one just like it on an English antiques site. They were asking a hundred pounds for theirs.”
Up on the third floor, the Rose Bedroom was the one nearest the landing and it was quite charming. So named for the rose silk that lined the walls, its only furniture was a bed, a chest of drawers, a couple of chairs, and a bed table that held a hobnail milkglass lamp. I was surprised to realize that the reason the bedroom doors were re- cessed so deeply in from the hallway was because they all contained proper closets. The one in this room was at least five feet deep and of course there was no light inside.
Even with the door open, it must have been hard for Elizabeth Morrow to find her favorite dress, but it certainly beat the old freestanding wardrobes so prevalent when the house was built.
“Peter Morrow was a very practical man,” Mrs. Ramos agreed. “There’s an amazing amount of storage space in this house. Did you notice that he added closets under the main staircase? It was originally freestanding, but he 26 decided it could be more useful to close it in and use it for storage.”
I sniffed when I turned back from the empty closet to the room itself. Dwight said they had smelled the ghost’s faint gardenia perfume earlier today, but all I smelled was the sizing on the new fabric. The drapes picked up the pink of the walls for a background that was overlaid with greenery and deeper shades of pink roses. The same ma-terial was used for the coverlet, and I helped Mrs. Ramos fit it on the bed.
“It’s so pretty,” I said. “Really warms up the room.”
She seemed pleased by my praise. “I do love giving things to this house and watching it come back to life. It’s almost like a dollhouse for adults, isn’t it?”
By the time we returned to the main hall, we were on a first-name basis. As we circled the staircase to get back to the office, she pointed out how Peter Morrow had put the wasted space beneath the stairs to practical use. I had walked past this area several times without noticing because the wainscoting and decorative molding matched the rest of the house so perfectly that even when you knew the doors were there, it was hard to see them. Betty pressed on one of the rosettes and a door swung open to reveal a space crammed with cardboard boxes marked
“C’mas decorations.” Another held the folding chairs and yet another the usual odds and ends. Although the staircase was quite wide, the closets seemed comparatively shallow.
“That’s because there’s a matching set on the other side,” said Betty. “My husband thought we should’ve run the new ductwork through the cupboards under the stairs here, but Jonna pitched a fit. Said it would be criminal to put vents in this molding. It cost a little more to run it between the floor joists and up the outside walls, but she was probably right.”
We walked around and she opened a couple of the closets to show me spaces lined with shelves that held boxes of stemware and the punch bowl set.
“I hope Morrow’s wife appreciated him,” I said.
Betty closed the doors. “I’m afraid there were times when she didn’t. One of his letters to his Philadelphia cousins said she was most ‘grievously unhappy’ at the changes he had made to her grand hall, but that he hoped she would come to agree with his decision.”
While Betty tidied away the food and dishes from the reception, I fired up Jonna’s computer and went looking.
I’m no expert, but it’s like driving a car. I don’t care about what’s under the hood, I just want to turn the key and drive to Dobbs. I know how to do what I need to do—to look up case law and precedents, I can navigate around the Internet for the things that interest me, and for everything else, there’s Google. I was happy to see that
