Midnight in Austenland (Austenland 2)

Shut up, Charlotte, she told herself.

She pointed at the sofa. “It was there.”

Eddie didn’t speak. Perhaps if he had, he would have rambled too. Instead, he approached the sofa cautiously (almost as if the sofa had eyes and Eddie didn’t like the way it was smugly glaring) and lifted the velvet coverlet.

Nobody. No body at all. Not even a severed hand.

Charlotte’s relief was chased from her chest by an aggressive stampede of disappointment and confusion.

“But … there was … I swear …”

Eddie looked around. “I don’t know that we should be here. This is a bit of an underbelly, isn’t it? Like seeing backstage.”

“But it’s real, Eddie. Everyone thought I was crazy, but the room is real.”

He nodded, eyeing the wobbly stacks of chairs and old sofas with ripped covers. He knelt at a box and pulled out a fencing foil with stubbed tip.

“Ooh,” he said.

Charlotte examined the velvet coverlet and what wasn’t underneath it. She shut her eyes and saw again the hand, lit up silver by the well-timed lightning. It had been real, just like the room. Right? There was nothing on the sofa now but the coverlet, and its fringe could hardly imitate five fingers and a palm.

“I’m sure I saw … I touched it.” Her stomach squelched. “Oops. Excuse me.”

Eddie put back the foil. “Come along, Charlotte darling, I will escort you to breakfast. Breakfast should always come before sleuthing.” He went to the door … or what was an outline of a door. There was no knob.

“How exactly do we extract ourselves from the belly of the beast?”

“I’m not sure.” She studied the wall. “It was dark. And I think I was, well, flailing around.”

The wainscot was carved. She

pressed it until she found a rounded bit that gave way under her hand, and the door swung in.

“Look out—that is alarming each time,” said Eddie.

The door clicked shut behind them. They’d just taken a step toward the stairs when a non-secret door opened and Mary peered out. She saw them, and her face turned very red.

“Hello, Mary,” said Charlotte.

“I’m … I’m in my room,” she said and shut herself back in.

“She’s perpetually jumpy,” Charlotte whispered.

“Let us keep the secret room a secret, shall we, Charlotte?” said Eddie, taking her arm and walking to the stairs. “Mrs. Wattlesbrook does not like guests to see anything dusty or untidy.”

“But … we should call the police. The secret room is real! So that must mean the body was real too.”

He took her hand and looked at her with concern.

He has brown eyes, she thought. So does my real brother. But Eddie’s have more honey in them.

“Are you certain, Charlotte? Are you absolutely certain you encountered a murdered human being last night?”

Yes! She was! They’d been playing Bloody Murder in a dark and creepy old house and she’d fallen into a secret room and naturally there’d been a dead body. Well, she’d only seen the hand. Now that she thought about it, the hand had felt odd. Not that she’d ever encountered a real corpse before, but did they all feel so … so rubbery? It had seemed to be attached to something, and she’d assumed it had been a body, and again had assumed that the deceased person had been murdered and hidden away. Wow, she had assumed quite a bit. But if it hadn’t been real, then why was it gone? Why would someone put a prop corpse on a couch in a secret room and then move it between midnight and morning?

“I … think so.”

“Mrs. Wattlesbrook is sensitive. If you call the police, and they come search the house and find nothing, well, it will be disruptive and very hard on her. I just want you to be certain.”