| “Above the stair, across the hall, Between the bedhead and the wall,” |
and she noticed that the chimney-piece stood on a sort of wide platform, which extended across that whole end of the hall. Could it be that Mr. Marmaduke had meant above this platform, calling it a stair, which ran across the great hall? For years they had taken the direction to mean “up the staircase,” and “across the corridor,” or hall which led to the bedrooms.
Slowly, almost as if afraid, Patty crossed the hall, stepped up on the platform, and examined the old chimney-piece. She couldn’t tell, positively, but surely, surely it looked as if it might once have been the headboard of an ancient bed. It certainly was different in its workmanship from the wood carving that decorated the apartment.
The top of it was well above her head, but might it not be that the old rhyme meant between this bedhead and the wall?
Here they had never looked. It must be that it was not generally known that this mantel was, or had been, a bedhead.
Still, as if in a daze, Patty went and sat in a chair facing the old chimney-piece, and wondered. She intended to call the others in a moment, but first she wanted to enjoy alone the marvel of her own discovery.
As she sat there, scrutinising every detail of the room, the lines kept repeating themselves in her brain:
“Above the stair, across the hall, Between the bedhead and the wall.”
If the secret pocket was between that bedhead and the wall, it was certainly above the stair across the hall! Why had that stair or platform been built across the hall? It was a peculiar arrangement.
This question Patty gave up, but she thought it might well have been done when the bedhead was set up there, in order to make the chimney-piece higher and so more effective.