The Circular Staircase | Page 3

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THE CIRCULAR STAIRCASE By MARY ROBERTS RINEHART

THE CIRCULAR STAIRCASE
CHAPTER I
I TAKE A COUNTRY HOUSE:
This is the story of how a middle-aged spinster lost her mind, deserted
her domestic gods in the city, took a furnished house for the summer
out of town, and found herself involved in one of those mysterious
crimes that keep our newspapers and detective agencies happy and
prosperous. For twenty years I had been perfectly comfortable; for
twenty years I had had the window- boxes filled in the spring, the
carpets lifted, the awnings put up and the furniture covered with brown
linen; for as many summers I had said good-by to my friends, and, after
watching their perspiring hegira, had settled down to a delicious quiet
in town, where the mail comes three times a day, and the water supply
does not depend on a tank on the roof.

And then--the madness seized me. 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. I have turned very
gray--Liddy reminded me of it, only yesterday, by saying that a little
bluing in the rinse-water would make my hair silvery, instead of a
yellowish white. I hate to be reminded of unpleasant things and I
snapped her off.
"No," I said sharply, "I'm not going to use bluing at my time of life, or
starch, either."
Liddy's nerves are gone, she says, since that awful summer, but she has
enough left, goodness knows! And when she begins to go around with
a lump in her throat, all I have to do is to threaten to return to
Sunnyside, and she is frightened into a semblance of
cheerfulness,--from which you may judge that the summer there was
anything but a success.
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. Mr. Jamieson,
the detective, said himself he could never have done without me,
although he gave me little enough credit, in print.
I shall have to go back several years--thirteen, to be exact--to start my
story. At that time my brother died, leaving me his two children.
Halsey was eleven then, and Gertrude was seven. All the
responsibilities of maternity were thrust upon me suddenly; to perfect
the profession of motherhood requires precisely as many years as the
child has lived, like the man who started to carry the calf and ended by
walking along with the bull on his shoulders. However, I did the best I
could. When Gertrude got past the hair-ribbon age, and Halsey asked
for a scarf-pin and put on long trousers--and a wonderful help that was
to the darning.--I sent them away to good schools. After that, my
responsibility was chiefly postal, with three months every summer in
which to replenish their wardrobes, look over their lists of
acquaintances, and generally to take my foster-motherhood out of its
nine months' retirement in camphor.

I missed the summers with them when, somewhat later, at boarding-
school and college, the children spent much of their vacations with
friends. Gradually I found that my name signed to a check was even
more welcome than when signed to a letter, though I wrote them at
stated intervals. But when Halsey had finished his electrical course and
Gertrude her boarding-school, and both came home to stay, things were
suddenly changed. The winter Gertrude came out was nothing but a
succession of sitting up late at night to bring her home from things,
taking her to the dressmakers between naps the next day, and
discouraging ineligible youths with either more money than brains, or
more brains than money. 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.