Morning all. Didn’t sleep well so eagerly awaiting coffee. Let’s just jump into the prompt while waiting. Timers set for fifteen minutes and off we go.
And now I am going to be wondering what is in the trunk for the rest of the day. I think this might be either a ghost story or a mystery.
Thursday, June 26th: There was a leak in the roof.
There was a leak in the roof. Beth sighed. ‘Of course there is,’ she thought. She went to the basement and found a collection of buckets. Given the number of them she suspected his wasn’t the first leak the roof had. ‘And probably not the only one,’ she decided. Beth stacked several of the buckets into two columns of plastic and took both columns upstairs thinking that if there was more than one leak she would be prepared without another trip down to the basement.
Beth climbed the stairs out of the basement crossed the ground floor and climbed the next set of stairs. She kept climbing. Between the roof and attic there were three floors for the family that once lived her and then the servants floor Then on top there was the attic space. The basement and attic were each full floors on their own. There were no crawl spaces at Hamerson House. The basement housed the wine cellar and collections of odds and ends now but before there had been a huge food storage area for not only putting up produce canned on the estate but to hang sausages and meats to cure and age. Now those spaces were full of broken and discarded bits that she would have to make time to go through at some point.
The attic too was filled with odds and ends. When she finished her climb Beth took a deep breath and set her too columns of stacked buckets down. She pulled the top bucket from one of the columns and placed it under the one leak she knew about. The water plinked hitting the plastic with a thud. Thunder rolled overhead and lightning flashed as she scanned the attic. The lights were nothing but bare bulbs on wires but they cast enough light. She saw a couple of more leaks and placed the buckets accordingly, shifting other items out of the way to make space. When she was certain she found as many as were currently leaking, she decided that one of the storage chests that had gotten wet in the drips ought to come down and at least be wiped dry.
The chest was heavy and old. It had a rounded top and she remembered someone telling her that the gentry favored rounded topped chests so their items could be stored on top and be easily accessible. With a flat top other chests could be stacked on top of them.
‘Someone wanted to be top of the heap.’
She dragged the chest to the small stair opening and eased it into place. She switched off the lights and left the buckets to fill. She tugged the trunk down the stairs, letting is slowly bump over the wooden treads as it descended. When it was on the floor, she closed the hatch into the attic and went to get the furniture dolly from the other room.
Ten til Midnight 