The Wolf Gift (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 1)

"I looked right at this and I didn,t see it."

"I did too," she said. "And then it hit me. And how many other things do you think have been brought here or taken from here over the years without anyone noticing? I think he,s been here. I think he left this book here. If Marrok could get into this house secretly, if he could hide himself in this house, then Felix might have often done the same thing."

Reuben paced in silence, trying to make sense of it, trying to know what, if anything, he could do.

She sat down at the table. She was paging through the little paperback.

"Are there notes?"

"Little check marks, underlining, squiggles," she answered. "Same light strokes as in the Keats. Even check marks and underlining have the stamp of a personal hand. I think he is very much alive, and you can,t know who or what he is, or what he might do or want."

"But you know what Marrok said, what he accused me of."

"Reuben, the guardian was in a jealous rage," she said. "You,d had his precious Marchent. He wanted to make you pay. He thought he,d left you to die. Very likely he didn,t attack by accident at all. He couldn,t finish you off, no, but he thought the Chrism would likely do that. He didn,t call 911 to save you. He called on account of Marchent, so her body wouldn,t lie there alone and neglected until Galton or somebody else found it."

"I think you,re right."

"Reuben, you are so gifted. Don,t you know jealous rage when you see it? The monster,s words were steeped in envy. All that about how he would never have chosen you, never given you a second glance, about how it was your fault that he turned his back on Marchent. That was envy from start to finish."

"I understand."

"You can,t know anything about this man, Felix, from what the monster said. Look at it squarely. If Felix did write this letter, if he,s alive now as this letter seems to indicate, he,s allowed you to inherit this house. He hasn,t sought to interfere by hook or by crook. Now why would he do that? And why would he send that unpleasant little creature, that strange little beast, to see to it that the owner of the house was killed, and the house lost to the probate courts again?"

"Because he,s taken the only things he wanted?" Reuben offered. "The diary and the tablets? He took them right after Marchent died?"

She shook her head. "I don,t believe it. There is so much more here, parchment scrolls, ancient codices, they,re everywhere. So many odds and ends that Felix collected. Why, who knows what,s really in the attics, or in other places in this house? There are trunks up there you haven,t opened, boxes of papers. There are secret rooms in this house."

"Secret rooms?"

"Reuben, there have to be secret rooms. Look, come into the hall."

They stood at the place where the southern hall met the western hall.

"You have a rectangle of hallways here - the west, the south, the east, the north."

"Yes, but we,ve been in all the rooms that open off them, more or less. On the outside you have the bedrooms, and on the inside, you have linen closets and extra bathrooms. Where are the secret rooms?"

"Reuben, you are scientifically challenged. Look." She crossed the hall, and opened the first of the linen closets. "This room is scarcely ten feet deep. It,s the same all the way around the inside of the rectangle."

"Right."

"Well, what,s in the middle?" she asked.

"My God, you,re right. That has to be a huge square space in the middle."

"Well, I searched this afternoon when you were with Jim. I went into every closet, bathroom, stairwell, and nowhere did I find a door opening to the middle of the house."

"So you think there are things here, hidden in some secret rooms, things he may still want?"

"Come. Let,s try something else."

She led the way into the bedroom that had become her office. She,d moved a small desk from the wall to the windows, and her laptop was open there.

"What,s the actual address of this house?"

He had to think. It was 40 Nideck Road. He,d memorized the zip when he,d been ordering equipment for the office online.

At once she typed this into the search window with the words "satellite map."

As soon as an aerial view of the coast and the forest appeared, she zoomed in on the house itself. She clicked on the house until the image got larger and then larger. There was a great square glass roof, plainly visible, surrounded and concealed by the gables that faced the four points of the compass on each side.

"Look at that," she said.

"My God, I didn,t know anybody could do that!" he said. "It,s not just a room, it,s a huge space. And the gables completely hide the glass roof from view. Can you zoom in tighter? I want to see the details of the roof."

"It,s not going any tighter," she said. "But I see what you see. Some kind of trapdoor or something on that roof."

"I,ve got to go upstairs, I have to check out the attics. There has to be some way to get in there."

"We,ve been all through them," she said. "I didn,t see any doors. But there,s no telling how many times over the years that Felix or Marrok may have come here and gone into that secret part of the house through this trapdoor or some other secret entrance we have yet to find."

"That explains it," said Reuben. "Marrok was inside the house the night Marchent died. They couldn,t find any evidence of anyone. But he was in that middle room or rooms."

"Look, maybe there,s just more of the same in that space, you know? More shelves, bookcases, whatever."

He nodded.

"But you don,t know," she said. "And as long as you don,t know, there,s hope that you have something to bargain with here. I mean Felix may want what,s in that space; he may want his entire house. And he won,t get it back simply by killing you. It will go on the market again, go to strangers. And what,s he going to do then?"

"Well, he can keep sneaking in as he,s done in the past."

"No, he can,t. As long as the house belonged to his niece he could keep sneaking in. As long as it belonged to you, perhaps. But if the house goes to an absolute stranger, somebody who wants to turn it into a hotel or, worse yet, demolish it, well, he stands to lose everything here."

"I see your point - ."

"We can,t put together a complete picture," she said. "This letter just reached here. Maybe he doesn,t know himself what he wants to do yet. But I doubt seriously that the man these people have been describing ever sent that sinister Marrok to put an end to our lives."