Serafina and the Twisted Staff (The Serafina Series) (11 page)

‘I’m so sorry,’ Serafina said again, her heart filled with an aching, shameful pain. ‘I don’t know what happened. The plant attacked me.’ But even as the
words slipped out, she knew how immature they sounded. Lady Rowena just stared at her, taking it all in, too smart and well poised to actually smile, but seeming to be on the edge of it. Serafina
looked around her at the plants and the other objects in the room. She didn’t understand it. She had spent her whole life prowling in this house, ducking and darting, and never once had she
ever knocked over or broken anything. And now, just as she was starting to come out into the upstairs world, just as she was wanting to show Mrs Vanderbilt how much she appreciated her friendship,
she did this horrible, stupid, clumsy thing. She wanted to run back down to the basement and cry. It took every ounce of her courage to remain standing there in her shame.

Finally, Mrs Vanderbilt looked at her nephew on the floor, trying to clean up the mess. ‘Braeden,’ she said, ‘I’m afraid it’s not going to work.’

Sensing the gravity of his aunt’s mood, Braeden slowly stopped his efforts.

‘You do not have time for this,’ Mrs Vanderbilt said. ‘You and Serafina are expected to speak with Detective Grathan.’

Serafina had never seen Mrs Vanderbilt act so cold and businesslike to Braeden or anyone else, and it was totally her fault.

‘I’ll take Lady Rowena for a walk to the conservatory,’ Mrs Vanderbilt said. ‘You and Serafina go down to the library immediately.’

Mrs King, the head housekeeper, entered the Winter Garden and spoke directly to Mrs Vanderbilt. ‘I’ve asked a maid to get a broom and dustpan to clean up the broken vase,’ she
said, her voice level and professional. As the highest-ranking servant at Biltmore, the matron possessed a commanding presence. Wearing a practical olive-green dress with mother-of-pearl buttons
and a sash round her waist, she kept her hair pulled back in a tightly controlled bun behind her head.

‘Thank you, Mrs King,’ Mrs Vanderbilt said appreciatively. ‘Please take the children to the library.’

When Mrs Vanderbilt called her and Braeden ‘children’, Serafina saw the satisfaction in Lady Rowena’s face.

‘Come this way,’ Mrs King instructed Braeden and Serafina. It was the kind of voice that was used to being obeyed.

Mrs King had been running Biltmore for years, even before Mr Vanderbilt married and Mrs Vanderbilt arrived. As Serafina followed the matron through the Entrance Hall, she wiped her teary eyes
and tried to think about what her pa would tell her at this moment.
Quit yer snifflin’ and get your wits about ya, girl
, he’d say, and he’d be right. If she was going to be
questioned by an investigator for a murder that she’d been a part of, she had to pull herself together.

Serafina studied Mrs King as she followed her down the long length of the Tapestry Gallery towards the library, for she had seldom been this close to her.

One of the things that had always mystified Serafina about Mrs King was that she lived in an area of Biltmore that Serafina had never seen. She was the one and only inhabitant of the mysterious
second-and-a-half floor. Serafina couldn’t imagine how a whole floor, or even half of one, could exist between two other floors. But she’d learned long ago that all manner of both grand
and wicked things were possible at Biltmore. The palm trees, for example, were particularly untrustworthy.

She couldn’t help but notice the key ring hanging on Mrs King’s sash. It was a large brass ring with all the keys of the house, for every door, cupboard and secret hatch, from the
basement to the top floor. Serafina had always been mesmerised by the jingling, jangling sound of the hanging keys. But just as she was looking at it something tiny pulled a key from the ring,
darted down Mrs King’s dress, and shot along the floor quicker than two blinks and a sneeze. The little brown creature had been so small and had moved so fast that Serafina barely saw it. And
she was quite sure that no one else had. But she’d been C.R.C. long enough to know what it was: a mouse. Sometimes mice move so fast that they’re just a flash and then they’re
gone. Already, she started doubting that she’d actually seen it. How in the world could a live mouse run down Mrs King’s dress? And what was it doing? Stealing a key to the cheese
cupboard?

But she had bigger problems to face. As she and Braeden plodded along behind Mrs King, Serafina looked over at Braeden. His lips were pressed together, his face filled with worry. It felt like
Mrs King was taking her and Braeden to their trial, sentencing and execution. She had half a mind to turn and run, just get out of there while she still had the chance. She’d be as gone as
yesterday’s breeze before Mrs King even noticed she was missing. But she knew she couldn’t leave poor Braeden behind, so she trudged glumly along beside him, not knowing what else to
do. She felt like she was tied up in a poke sack and was just about to get chucked into the river.

As they entered the library, Serafina gazed across the familiar room. Thousands of Mr Vanderbilt’s leather-bound books lined the walls of intricately carved wood and sculpted marble-work.
The books reached all the way up to the angelic Italian painting on the ceiling some thirty-five feet above their heads. But there was no one in the room. The globes of the brass lamps were lit,
and a fire burned in the massive black marble fireplace, but the library was completely empty.

When she glanced at Braeden, it was clear that he was as confused as she was. But the stalwart Mrs King appeared undeterred. She led them along the bookcases built into the western wall, then
turned right and stopped. They were now looking at a section of the room’s oak panelling. It took Serafina nearly a second to recognise that it wasn’t just a wall. It was a door. And
the carving on the door’s centre panel is what disturbed her: a robed man holding a finger to his mouth as if to say,
Shhh!
There was blood dripping down his head and a knife stuck in
his back.

‘You may step through the door,’ the matron said. ‘They are expecting you.’

S
erafina stepped cautiously into the dimly lit room. It was a cramped, closed-in den with leather furniture, shades blocking out the setting sun
and a dark ceiling patterned like the bones of a bat’s wing. This was not his usual office, but Mr Vanderbilt sat behind the desk.

She had been watching the master of Biltmore all her life, but she’d never been able to figure him out. He was a man of immense wealth but quiet word, a refined, bookish gentleman with a
slight frame and slender hands. He had shrewd, dark eyes, black hair and a black moustache.

‘Come into the room,’ he said gravely. He seemed to be in a grim and unforgiving mood.

As she and Braeden stepped slowly forward, she saw something out of the corner of her eye: a man sitting in the shadows, unmoving, studying her. She couldn’t help but pull in a breath. Her
heart began to beat heavy in her chest, marking time like a slow, powerful drum.

As her eyes adjusted to the darkness of the room, she began to see the stranger’s features. To her surprise, it wasn’t the elderly man she’d seen walking into the forest with
Mr Vanderbilt. This man’s straggly rat-brown hair fell to his shoulders, and he had a short goatee. He stared at her with intense, unrelenting eyes. He might have been handsome in the past,
but so many raised grey scars traced his face that she could see an entire history of battle there, against both blade and claw – it was a wonder that he had survived them. His brown woollen
coat and shoulder cape were matted and wind-worn, tattered at the edges, like he’d been on the road for many years.

As the man looked at the scratches on her face and the bite wounds on her hands, it felt like something was crawling up her spine. The muscles in her body twitched and tensed, wanting to fight
or flee. He could see too much. Terrifying images flashed through her mind: the grey-bearded man in a wide-brimmed hat stepping onto the road, the snapping jaws of the white-fanged hounds, the
black silhouette of a figure sitting in the carriage as it pulled away.

Had this man looked out from the carriage and seen her? If he had seen her at all, he could only have caught a glimpse of her as she ran away. She was wearing different clothes now, and her hair
had changed. Whatever it was, he seemed as uncertain about her as she was about him.

In his hand, he held a cane with a spiralling shaft and a curving antler handle. There was something about the cane that made her think it was far more dangerous than it appeared. But it seemed
to be a different style than the one she’d seen the night before. It was like there were little flaws in her memory. Had she seen a gnarly stick or a more formal, spiralling cane with a
hooked horn handle like this one? Could it change shape?

‘Sit down,’ Mr Vanderbilt instructed. He pointed to the two small, bare, wooden chairs in the middle of the room. Serafina had seldom heard Mr Vanderbilt so stern, so sharp of tone,
but she couldn’t tell if it was because he was angry with her and Braeden or because of this detective’s unexpected presence in his home. Mr Vanderbilt had welcomed all sorts of guests
to entertain themselves in the magnificent mansion he had built for that purpose, but he himself had a tendency to withdraw from revelry. He often sat in a quiet room by himself and read rather
than imbibe with others. He was a man of his own spirit. And now here was a stranger, a detective, a man of the road, come to call with words of murder, and Mr Vanderbilt seemed none too pleased
about it.

As she and Braeden sat down in the two chairs, she glanced over at her friend. He looked scared and alone. Mrs King had instructed him to leave Gidean outside the room. He seemed vulnerable
without his canine protector at his side, which made Serafina more determined than ever to make sure this Detective Grathan did not get the better of them.

Mr Vanderbilt looked at her and Braeden. ‘Detective Grathan is investigating the disappearance of Mr Thorne. He theorises that Mr Thorne did not take his leave of Biltmore of his own
accord but encountered foul play while he was here.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Braeden said, trying to sound steady, but Serafina could hear the quiver in his voice. There was no doubt in her mind, either, that if they made a mistake here they might
be arrested and charged with conspiring to murder Mr Thorne. She had led him into the trap. And Braeden owned the dog that had helped kill him.

‘I recommend that you answer all his questions truthfully,’ Mr Vanderbilt said.

Serafina glanced at Mr Vanderbilt, for the tone in his voice had an unexpected edge to it. On the face of it, he was telling her and Braeden to do the right thing, to cooperate with the
detective’s investigation. But in another way it seemed to her that he was signalling them, warning them that they needed to be very careful, as if saying the man might possess the power to
discern truth from lie.

‘Detective Grathan,’ Mr Vanderbilt said as he turned to the man, ‘everyone at Biltmore will, of course, cooperate with your investigation. This is my nephew Braeden Vanderbilt,
my late brother’s son, and his friend Serafina. Along with the others you’ve already spoken to, they were present on the day of Mr Thorne’s disappearance. You are free to ask them
any questions you deem necessary to complete your investigation.’

The detective nodded, then spoke to Mr Vanderbilt in a serious tone. ‘You do not have to be present for this questioning.’

Whoa
, Serafina thought. He just asked Mr Vanderbilt to leave the room.
No one
asked Mr Vanderbilt to leave anywhere. It was
his
house. Serafina could sense the tension
increasing between the two men.

‘I will remain,’ Mr Vanderbilt said unequivocally.

Detective Grathan looked at him and seemed to decide that for the moment he would not argue with the master of Biltmore. Instead, he pivoted his head slowly towards Serafina. She swore she could
hear the sound of ticking cartilage as his head turned. The man studied her for several seconds, seeming to pull every detail of her apart, bit by bit. She noticed his fingers wrapping slowly round
the antler handle of his cane. Then he spoke.

‘Your name is Serafina – is that correct?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she said.
And your name is Mr Grathan
, she wanted to say in return.
Do you and your master own five mangy, overgrown tracking hounds with teeth like daggers?

‘Did you know Mr Thorne?’ he asked.

‘Yes, I knew him,’ she replied truthfully, ‘but I only spoke to him a few times.’

The man studied her. He held his cane – or staff or stick or whatever it was – as he spoke to her. Then he slowly pivoted his head and looked at Braeden. ‘And did you know Mr
Thorne as well?’

‘He was my friend,’ Braeden said, which was also the truth.

‘When did you last see him?’

‘At the party on the night of his disappearance,’ Braeden said. It seemed that he, too, had picked up on his uncle’s warning. When Braeden glanced at her with a knowing look,
she was sure of it. In that moment, the two friends silently agreed what course they must take: to give the detective no advantage, to speak the careful truth but nothing more.