"The Circular Staircase" by Mary Roberts Rinehart, Chapters 1–6

When I look back over the months I spent at Sunnyside, I wonder that I survived at all. As it is, I show the wear and tear of my harrowing experiences.

The newspaper accounts have been so garbled and incomplete—one of them mentioned me but once, and then only as the tenant at the time the thing happened—that I feel it my due to tell what I know.

Also, I acquired a great many things: to say lingerie for under-garments, “frocks” and “gowns” instead of dresses, and that beardless sophomores are not college boys, but college men.

People are apt to be so unpleasant about their dogs.

The additions to my education made me a properly equipped maiden aunt, and by spring I was quite tractable. So when Halsey suggested camping in the Adirondacks and Gertrude wanted Bar Harbor, we compromised on a good country house with links near, within motor distance of town and telephone distance of the doctor.

I have the usual scruples about coercing people’s servants away, but few of us have any conscience regarding institutions or corporations—witness the way we beat railroads and street-car companies when we can—so I called up the club, and about eight o’clock Thomas Johnson came to see me.

“You’re not going to ask me to lock up, Miss Rachel!” she quavered.

“Just look, Aunt Rachel,” he said with a flourish.

She was too far gone to be indignant, but after a while she came to the door and looked in to where I was composing myself for sleep with Drummond’s Spiritual Life.

She was afraid to speak, however, because of her previous snubbing, and went back, stopping in the doorway to sigh dismally.

“Where? How?” she yelled vociferously, and jumped up.

I had to take Liddy to her room up-stairs, however,—she was quite sure she would find something uncanny. In fact, when she did not, having now the courage of daylight, she was actually disappointed.

It fell with a single muffled crash of its wooden frame, and incidentally ruined itself beyond repair.

The sounds had come from the east wing, and not without some qualms I began there.

Under pretext of learning more about the place, Thomas Johnson led me through the house and the cellars, without result.

She was hardly herself yet, but privately I think she was worrying about the broken mirror and its augury, more than anything else.

The trinket was odd enough, but not intrinsically of great value.

Thomas gave a clutch at his coat, whirled to the sink, filled a tumbler with water and poured it into his right pocket with the celerity of practice.

The old man’s eyes were shrewd under his bushy eyebrows.

Otherwise, he was very good to look at, stalwart and tanned, with the direct gaze that I like.

It was early dawn now, and from voices under my window I surmised that Mr. Jarvis and his companions were searching the grounds.

And while I told her she stood looking out of the window with a look I could not fathom on her face.

The cuff-link had been dropped into a little filigree box on my toilet table.

The other detective, after a short scrutiny of the dead man, busied himself with the outside of the house.

He set the inquest for the following Saturday, gave Mr. Jamieson, the younger of the two detectives, and the more intelligent looking, a few instructions, and, after gravely shaking hands with me and regretting the unfortunate affair, took his departure, accompanied by the other detective.

“I do not know,” I cried, “but be sure of this: Halsey knows nothing of this thing, and no amount of circumstantial evidence can make an innocent man guilty.”

The detective’s tone was imperative. “This is very important, Miss Innes.”

“I have an idea,” he said, apropos of nothing at all, “that at any rate the ghost is laid here. Whatever the rappings have been—and the colored man says they began when the family went west three months ago—they are likely to stop now.”

The prominence of the family assured a strenuous effort to find the murderer, and if we had nothing worse to look forward to, we were sure of a distasteful publicity.

The ghost was not laid: with the murder of Arnold Armstrong he, or it, only seemed to take on fresh vigor.

When the detective left he enjoined absolute secrecy on everybody in the household.

With the father and mother in the west, I find everything devolves on me; and, as you can understand, it is an unpleasant duty.

He shook his head despondently, and I felt that this dried-up little man was the repository of much that he had not told me.

He shook his head despondently, and I felt that this dried-up little man was the repository of much that he had not told me.

I gave up trying to elicit any information from him, and we went together to view the body before it was taken to the city.

The handsome, dissipated face of Arnold Armstrong, purged of its ugly lines, was now only pathetic.

When I went back, Mr. Harton was furtively wiping his eyes.

“The prodigal has come home, Miss Innes,” he said. “How often the sins of the fathers are visited on the children!”

His audacity was the only thing that saved me: his amused smile put me on my mettle, and I ripped out a perfectly good scallop before I answered.

Here was I, Rachel Innes, spinster, a granddaughter of old John Innes of Revolutionary days, a D. A. R., a Colonial Dame, mixed up with a vulgar and revolting crime, and even attempting to hoodwink the law!