Page 19 of The Silence of Hell
“I like this one,” Harriet said from opposite. Then her jaw dropped open. “Lavender, you better see this.”
I hurried over with the others on my heels. My mouth fell open. “No way.”
“Am I imagining it?” Harriet asked.
“Nope. They look genuine, too,” I whispered.
“That’s a Madame Alexander Eloise doll in Christian Dior clothing,” Emory announced, shocked.
“There’s two of them! They’re worth five million each!” Dan gasped.
“Oh word, isn’t that a Marina Bychkova Enchanted Doll?” Kelly questioned, his eyes wide.
“Yup,” I answered, feeling faint. There were easily ten million dollars of dolls in this room. “Remember your NDAs,” I ordered.
“If you think I’d ever tell anyone when I can get a chance to handle one of them, you’ve another thing coming,” Dan stated.
“Shit. We’ve seen some expensive dolls, but those three alone…” Heidi shook her head.
“Okay,” I said, locking the door. Those three dolls changed everything. I noted which room they were in. I needed security on the estate to protect this.
“Let’s head to the next floor,” I suggested. Somehow, I was dreading what I might find there. This level should have prepared me. There were two rooms of Star Wars toys, some of which Dan instantly recognised as rare and valuable. A bedroom was filled with perfume bottles, and pill boxes and another with coin boxes. Add in two rooms of Steiff teddy bears, a room full of duplicated train sets, and the rest, once again, held dolls. But they were all Barbie and Sindy dolls. And in a room sitting all alone was thepièce de résistance.
A full-on Astolat Dollhouse Castle.
“That can’t be here. That’s in a museum,” Emory declared, eyes wide.
“The original took thirteen years to produce,” Dan said.
“There’re letters,” Harriet announced, picking it up.
I opened it and read it. “Well damn, it appears Aunt Aggie had one made at the same time as the original. Elaine Diehl agreed to create two simultaneously. One was secret, and she was paid an extortionate amount of money. The secret one was delivered here for any little girls that arrived in the family. Holy crap. Aunt Aggie planned to give this to me!”
“Wow,” Kelly exclaimed.
“This letter states that Elaine merely ordered/made two of everything and changed the colour of some of the items to make them different,” Heidi said.
“That’s so sad that you never got to play with it. I guess you didn’t, or you’d have recalled it,” Harriet added.
“No, I didn’t.” Tears had lodged in my throat, and I needed to escape this sadness. How tragic.
I gazed at the door leading to the widow’s tower and ignored that for the attics. Something told me I wouldn’t be able to handle that today. I turned my attention away from it.
Damp had left some third-floor rooms unfurnished. It must have existed in Aunt Aggie’s time, and she’d not dealt with it. I made it a priority to get someone up here.
I shoved open the attic’s door and heaved a sigh of relief at the humongous, empty area. Aunt Aggie hadn’t got up here! The ten large rooms of the attics all had huge amounts of space, and there wasn’t a trace of mould again. It was just the third-floor front rooms affected by it.
“I find it strange there’s nothing up here,” Emory said, looking around.
“Yeah. After everything downstairs, this is empty,” Dan agreed.
“There is a secret room containing clothing,” I revealed and headed for the room hidden away. Inside that were trunks upon trunks of clothing.
“Okay, there’s that,” Kelly stated, amused.
“Let’s head down, order dinner, and make a plan where to start in the morning,” I ordered.
My belt was weighted down by all the keys I was now holding, each of them labelled up. I also needed to get surveillance here asap.
