The Wing-And-Wing Book

The Abandoned Room is one of those locked door mysteries that I love published in 1917 and written by Wadsworth Camp. Good luck finding out much about him that will fill more than a few lines of type. These are a few of the very few things I can find about him, His name is Charles Wadsworth Camp, but he dropped the Charles when he was writing books, I don't know why. He was a journalist, writer and foreign correspondent whose lungs had been damaged by exposure to mustard gas during World War I. Every place I look mentions that mustard gas, not every place I look mentions that he was born in 1879 in Pennsylvania of all places, where else would you want to be born? He didn't die here though, he died in Florida in 1936, thanks to that mustard gas I suppose. Also, his novels and stories that we never hear about were made into movies, seven of them. He was the father of the writer Madeleine L'Engle. That part of him being the father of Madeleine L'Engle meant nothing to me, I had to go look her up too. At least you can find things about her, she even has her own web site, and no, I've never read any of her books, obviously or I'd know who she was. If she wrote like her father though, I should like her writing, until ghosts start showing up that is, don't worry I'm almost at that. Looking for Wadsworth Camp I came across a Camp Wadsworth. Camp Wadsworth was a World War I-era training facility for the United States Army located near Spartanburg, South Carolina. It has nothing to do with the writer or the story, but I found it interesting, and confusing at times. Anyway, the book I read is The Abandoned Room so I'll move on to that.

Right from the beginning the title had me thinking, how do you abandon a room without abandoning the house? It seems as if it would be hard to totally ignore one room of your house while still living in all the other rooms. I am in the family room just now, a few minutes ago I was in the kitchen, does that mean the kitchen is now abandoned? I have to move on and think of other things. There is no mystery of who is murdered in this book, at least not after the first line:

The night of his grandfather's mysterious death at the Cedars, Bobby Blackburn was, at least until midnight, in New York.

See what I mean? It's no big secret, Bobby's grandfather is dead, and it's not from old age. His grandfather is at the Cedars, their family home, his cousin Katherine Perrine is also at the Cedars, Katherine is too young - 20 years old - and light-hearted to take care of Old Silas Blackburn, at least that's what we're told, but she's there anyway. Oh, and the servants are at the Cedars. The only person not there is Bobby, he is in New York making his grandfather angry. As the story tells us:

He was held there by the unhealthy habits and companionships which recently had angered his grandfather to the point of threatening a disciplinary change in his will. As a consequence he drifted into that strange adventure which later was to surround him with dark shadows and overwhelming doubts.

The Cedars was old, unlucky, and haunted apparently. Bobby and Katherine had often urged Silas to give up and move somewhere else, anywhere else, but he would answer that his ancestors had lived there before the Revolution, and what was good enough for them is good enough for him. So there they are, most of them anyway. For a few days now the old man had been acting oddly. He ate practically nothing at all, and couldn't keep still, he would wander from room to room. His fingers tremble, his voice quavers, he is afraid. When Katherine asks him what he is afraid of all he says is that he expected Mr. Robert (Bobby) to be there that night, but since he hadn't shown up, Silas had decided to change his will leaving his money to the Bedford Foundation. His lawyer would be coming in the morning to draw up the papers. He tells Katherine that it is sad to grow old and have no one to care for you, only for your money. He tells her he is too afraid to sleep in his own room that night, whether all this means he is afraid of Bobby I'm not sure:

"Where are you going?" she whispered.

He turned at the entrance to the corridor.

"I am going to the old bedroom."

"Why? Why?" she asked hysterically. "You can't sleep there. The bed isn't even made."

He lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper:

"Don't you mention I've gone there. If you want to know, I am afraid. I'm afraid to sleep in my own room any longer."

She nodded.

"And you don't think they'd look for you there. What is it? Tell me what it is. Why don't you send for some one'a man?"

"Leave me alone," he mumbled. "Nothing for you to be worried about, except Bobby."

"Yes, there is," she cried. "Yes, there is."

He paid no attention to her fright. He entered the corridor. She heard him shuffling between its narrow walls. She saw his candle disappear in its gloomy reaches.

She ran to her own room and locked the door.

She runs to her room because now she is afraid, afraid of the old bedroom, the one that has been abandoned. The old bedroom is in the opposite corridor than the one her bedroom, and the bedrooms of her uncle and cousin are in. It was seldom used, for it was the oldest part of the house and too many legends had gathered about it. The old bedroom, the abandoned one, had it's own private hall, and a narrow, enclosed staircase, descending to the library. I suppose you could call it a secret staircase if everyone in the book didn't already know about it. Long ago it had been where the head of the family would sleep and the furniture was still there. For years no one had slept in it, because of all the suffering that had gone on in there. It seems someone was always dying in that room, and not peacefully, so the smart thing seemed to be to lock the door and sleep somewhere else, anywhere else. But now Silas Blackburn is afraid of something and decides that the best thing to do would be to sleep in the abandoned room. It isn't. During the night Katherine thinks she hears something and goes to the room, but can't get her uncle to answer her, the door is locked of course, so is the one going to the secret staircase, so she gets one of the servants to break the door down, and they find that Silas isn't afraid of anything anymore. Silas has been killed, but by who, and how did they get in the room?

Meanwhile, Bobby has gone to his apartment in New York and finds the letter from his grandfather telling him of the change in his will if Bobby doesn't come to the Cedars that night. But Bobby has a dinner engagement and decides to think the situation over until dinner is over. Good idea. Unfortunately that dinner is with the friends who had been leading him in ways that made his grandfather mad in the first place, and now they again draw him into a corner and offered him too many cocktails. So Bobby goes off with his friend, Paredes, and has too many cocktails, and they go and meet a woman Paredes knows, Maria, and he has more to drink, and he never does go to the Cedars. Instead, he wakes up the next day in an abandoned house only a few miles from the Cedars. How he got there he can't remember. He remembers nothing after the dinner with Maria. But he can't go to the Cedars looking the way he does now, so he heads back to the train station planning on going back to his apartment to change clothes before coming back. He doesn't make it that far, the police stop him first. Bobby is the obvious suspect, he has the best motive by far, if his grandfather had been alive this morning, he would have changed his will, and Bobby would have lost everything. What more of a reason for murder could there be? But Bobby can't remember what happened.

Everything was going along fine, I was enjoying myself, by now an inspector in our book who seemed to think it would be a good idea to stay in the room himself to see what would happen is no longer with us. I guess he found out what would happen. I'm waiting for the next person, Bobby, or perhaps Hartley Graham, a good friend of both Bobby and Katherine's and also Bobby's lawyer, or the next inspector to decide to stay in that room, just to see what would happen. And I'm right, one of them does. Why is it, I wonder, that no one ever listens to me, I'm pretty sure I was yelling by this time, "don't stay in that room!" I had decided that the way things were going we would know who the murderer was when he was the only one left from all the others taking a turn sleeping in the death room. But that's not what happened. Unfortunately, what happened was that after the murder, after the police came, and the coroner came, and there was an inquest about the whole thing, and they finally buried poor Silas, he came walking into the room. Yes, we have poor Silas back from the dead. It appears that the only person who doesn't know that Silas is dead is Silas, and they have a hard time convincing him that he can't be there. They finally all go out to the cemetary and dig up the grave again just to prove to Silas that he's in there and this is what they find:

"Take off the top plate. That will let us see all we want."

Jenkins climbed out.

"I shan't look. I don't dare look."

Silas Blackburn touched Bobby's arm timidly.

"I've been a hard man, Bobby'"

He broke off, his bearded lips twitching.

The grating of the screws tore through the silence. Rawlins glanced up.

"Lend a hand, somebody."

Groom spoke hoarsely:

"It isn't too late to let the dead rest."

Robinson gestured him away. Graham, Paredes, and he knelt in the snow and helped the detective raise the heavy lid. They placed it at the side of the grave.

They all forced themselves to glance downward.

Katherine screamed. Silas Blackburn leaned on Bobby's arm, shaking with gross, impossible sobs. Paredes shrugged his shoulders. The light wavered in Robinson's hand. They continued to stare. There was nothing else to do.

The coffin was empty.

OK, we have Silas back from the dead, but we still have to figure out who killed him, right? And we have to figure out who killed anyone else dumb enough to sleep in that room, unless they come walking in the door that is. And how did the murderer get into a locked room anyway? I'm not telling. Read the book, I'm moving on to the next one. Happy reading.