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Where We Left Off:
The Winchester-Nabu Detective Agency wrapped up Year Nine with a big renovation of the outside fort.
The Hidden Staircase:
Perhaps the most famous and puzzling residence (now museum) in the United States is the Sarah Winchester Mystery Mansion which can be debated extensively. Is the mansion in San Jose, California really haunted? Was Sarah compelled to continuously build nonsense designs to confuse ghosts? Or, did the mansion suffer from damage and need repairs? Was Sarah passionate about architecture but forbidden from being a professional because that’s not what women did back then?
It would be reasonable to assume that Oliver Winchester would have visited this historic masterpiece of a home, but to my knowledge, he hasn’t. I know Gus and I haven’t. I think the elders would love it, but there’s no way The Cook is going on a plane. Imagine all of us on a family road trip in Scooby-Doo style. We would drive each other insane. We already do.
Year TEN of our investigations has a bit of similarity to the famous Winchester Mystery Mansion. The reality is, this house and the buildings and landscaping are never done. That’s pretty normal. What makes architecture a mystery is what you do with it. Let’s say you’re building your dream house. Everything is finished and you move in. It might be perfect and complete for a while. Then a pipe breaks. Drywall needs patching. Critters move into the walls. The basement floods (or worse). Life happens including fires, hurricanes, and floods. Something always needs to be fixed. The building is never actually done.
It reminds me of how many times artists are asked, “When do you know your piece is finished?” The answer is the same every time. “It’s never finished. I just have to stop working on it.” The same is true with writing and revisions. Houses being perpetually worked on can happen because there’s no end date. There could be a “move in date” or deadline, but that house will always be in need of construction.
It wasn’t surprising when Gus discovered a mysterious staircase to nowhere recently. I would classify it as fun and peculiar, but not a surprise.
The Grumpy Old Man was working in a section of the cellar. Gus had to check on his progress and be ready in case any mice dared to show up. It was explained to me what the work was but I basically heard it in Charlie Brown adult voice and didn’t understand. Something-something-electrical-hot-water-something-boiler-something-furnace. Whatever the reason, the Grumpy Old Man was near the breaker box.
Gus sniffed around the wall. His whiskers moved at air currents changed.
“Hey!” Gus said. “Did you ever notice this drafty outline in this wall?”
“Sure,” his grandfather said.
“What’s behind it?” Gus paced between the man’s legs and the wall to feel the shift in the air that was able to sneak through the barely perceptible gaps.
“Should be dirt and a lot of rocks by now.” The Old Man kept working.
“I think it’s a door!” Gus yowled. He didn’t think he was being taken seriously. “A DOOR!”
“Yeah, probably is.”
Was there nothing that his grandpa found strange about a door behind an electrical panel? Clearly, Gus needed to force attention to this situation.
“Stop what you’re doing and open it!” Gus moved over to the side allowing the man to feel around the embedded mystery door.
His large hand found a notch where a simplistic latch probably hung two centuries ago. He wedged a finger into it. As his pulled the frame, the dusty wood creaked. He picked up his lamp and moved it into the blackness.
“STAIRS!” Gus didn’t hesitate entering the space to begin climbing and sniffing every crevasse. “Where do they go?”
“They go up,” the Grumpy Old Man*.
Gus decided he immediately needed to get me to document this discovery. He found me on the second floor working at my desk. Oliver was sleeping on my bed. Both of us jumped at the thundering sound of Gus running into the room. He gestured wildly, walked in a circle a few times, all the while talking. He finally came over by my chair and reached his claws up to my leg. Obviously, I had no choice but to follow him. Ollie followed to a point. He stopped at the top of the cellar stairs and wouldn’t go beyond that point.
I agreed with Gus. These stairs were a fascinating discovery. The Grumpy Old Man explained the history of such stairs to us. Some houses had coal chutes and windows in their basements at the ground level. Other houses, like this house, didn’t have those. This house used to have exterior storm doors before people had to worry about break-ins or locking their doors. Wide doors like that also made it easier to get large appliances like hot water heaters or furnaces into a basement.
“I remember doors like that,” Gus said. “Back when we didn’t have mean neighbors up the mountain, we were allowed to visit up there. The house had a small porch on the back side with a slanted ramp that allowed me to look in the windows and check that things were okay.”
“Those were the storm doors, Gus,” the old man said.
“I bet we could have gotten in that way.” Gus sounded like he missed an opportunity, but he absolutely did not.
I reminded him. “Gus, we had keys. And you were inside that house once or twice.”
“I really liked that house,” the little detective said.
“Me too,” I quietly spoke only to myself.
Gus, Ollie, and I reconvened back in the office to go over the discovery of the staircase and what it could mean about the house. The stairs lead nowhere now. There’s a room over them leaving no security vulnerabilities. Small critters are the only ones who have been able to penetrate these walls.
Case Findings:
While working in part of the cellar, Gus and the Grumpy Old Man discovered a staircase behind a wall. The stairs used to open to storm doors which seem to be a relic of past architecture and not included in residential buildings anymore. They were double doors that opened outward on side hinges and slanted between a porch and the side of the house. That mystery is solved.
Now this hidden staircase can be used for something else. What should we use the space for?
Case Status: Closed
* I hope you get that reference.