Chapter 6: The Doorway Search Finds What The Hallway Could Not Show
I kept the door open with my shoulder while I searched the room’s left side, where the first rows of shelves blocked the floor from the hallway. The maid remained seated beside the threshold, crying softly into both hands. Emily stood behind her, rigid and pale, watching me instead of the shelves. Victoria stayed near the opposite wall. I could feel her attention following every movement I made, but she did not come farther into the room.
The air smelled of dust, wood, and something faintly damp. A single ceiling bulb flickered whenever the hallway light shifted, leaving the rear corner in uneven shadow. I moved slowly, refusing to turn the room into a blur of overturned boxes. The first Lily-related sign lay near the doorway, but it did not tell me how she had reached it or how long she had been there. I needed the floor to answer that.
I crouched beside a stack of folded linens and reached behind the lowest shelf. My fingers touched a hard edge. I pulled out a narrow wooden doorstop, gray with dust except for a clean streak across its middle. One end was splintered. The other bore a shallow crescent where the heavy door had pressed against it.
I set it on the floor and studied the marks. The doorstop had not been lying undisturbed. It had been pushed, dragged, or kicked out of place. The clean streak continued from beneath the shelf toward the threshold, disappearing under the open door.
The maid’s crying faltered. I looked back at her, then at the gap beneath the door. Nothing in the hallway moved except Victoria’s hand tightening against her dress.
I followed the streak on my knees. It led behind a tall cabinet that stood slightly away from the wall. The space was too narrow for an adult, but wide enough for a child to squeeze through. Dust had gathered along the wall except for a broken path at floor level. There were shallow scuffs in the dust, several close together, then one longer scrape that ended beside the cabinet’s rear leg.
I placed my palm against the cabinet and pushed. It shifted less than an inch before catching on something. I bent lower and saw a thin strip of fabric pinched beneath the leg. It was pale and wrinkled, caught in the wood as if someone had pulled free in a hurry.
I eased it out. The cloth stretched, then released with a small tear. I held it under the weak bulb. It was not enough to identify who had worn it, but the fibers were fresh compared with the dust around them. The cabinet had not merely been standing there. Something—or someone—had pressed through that narrow space.
Behind it, the wall ended in a recessed corner filled with empty crates. One crate had been dragged forward. Its bottom left two parallel lines in the dust, beginning at the rear wall and ending near the door. The path formed a rough sequence: movement from the obscured corner, a struggle or hurried passage beside the cabinet, then the doorstop displaced toward the threshold.
I looked at the key ring still in my hand. It had opened the lock. That was certain. But the marks inside the room described more than access. They described a door that had been held, released, or forced to move while someone small was still close to it.
Victoria watched me place the doorstop beside the torn fabric. Her face remained frightened, but fear alone could not tell me whether she had caused the sequence or discovered it afterward.
I rose and kept the door wide with my foot. From the hallway came the maid’s uneven breathing and Emily’s quiet, terrified presence. Inside the room, the scuffed trail ended at the threshold, where the dust gave way to the cleaner floor beyond.
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The second clue narrowed the event without naming its maker: Lily had not simply been left in the room. She had moved through it, toward the door, while the heavy entrance was still part of the danger.
I turned toward the cabinet again. Something dark had fallen behind it, and only one corner was visible beneath the lowest crate.
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