The Mystery Guest

“Yeah,” says Stark. “I do.” She produces it from her coat, and Jenkins eyes it for a moment before giving it back to her.

“Jenkins, would you mind terribly if I had a look around, too?” I ask. “It would mean so much to me. I have such fond memories of this place.”

“You might be the only person who does,” he says. Turning to Stark, he asks, “Have you figured it out yet—who poisoned Mr. Grimthorpe?”

“No,” Stark replies. “But we will. It’s only a matter of time.”

Jenkins nods, the deep lines in his visage a map of untold secrets. “You can come in,” he says. “I’ll be in the parlor, cleaning it out. No love for old things nowadays. Change is nigh.”

“Thank you, Jenkins,” I say as he moves the box of discarded objects, allowing us to pass. Overhead the shards of the modernist chandelier are so covered in cobwebs the entire fixture looks more like driftwood than glass.

“This way,” I say to Detective Stark, as I lead her up the main staircase. The steps are even creakier than they used to be, groaning and heaving under every footfall.

We reach the top of the stairs. “Follow me,” I say as we walk down the hall, the lights turning on automatically—at least the ones with working bulbs. The damask wallpaper in the corridor is faded and dull. I once saw eyes in its pattern, but I can’t see them anymore. Were they ever really there, or did they exist only in my imagination?

We pass bedroom after bedroom, the doors all open but the curtains drawn in every single one.

“It’s filthy,” Detective Stark says.

Every nook and cranny, every wall sconce is coated in a thick layer of grime and dust. “There has not been a maid in this mansion for a very long time,” I say. I wonder to myself if Gran was the last. Maybe Mrs. Grimthorpe trusted no one after firing her.

We make it to the room at the very end of the hall. I walk over to the window, pull back the curtains, and let the light stream in from the floor-to-ceiling window.

This room is not what it used to be. The books are neglected, a layer of dust coating every leather-bound spine. Detective Stark takes it all in—the ladder on wheels, the dust-covered nymph holding up a grubby lampshade, the bookshelves lining all four walls. She spots the anomaly quickly, the one book that juts out awkwardly and that isn’t covered in dust—the shiny Oxford dictionary on the fourth wall.

“This it?” she asks, pointing to it.

“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 teetering stacks 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 bound with 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.