The Case of The Perplexed Painting

The Library

"It's gone!" I screamed.

My cry echoed throughout the whole first level of the house, which caused both Mister Genoa and Miss Hansen to come into the library.

"What's gone?" John Genoa asked.

I pointed to the wall where the painting of the three witches once hung. It had once been above the fireplace in the library, but now it was missing.

Mister Genoa immediately blamed Miss Hansen. He started screaming at her and asking questions like, "Where did it go?" and "What did you do with it?"

She started shaking her head back-and-forth frantically as if she was trying to get something out of her hair. She denied everything, even though she knew what was directly behind that cheap painting. 

Miss Hansen placed her face in her hands and her knees on the floor. 

Teresa Cross went around my Uncle Merton's desk and grabbed the wooden chair with the red cushions that had been behind it. She picked Miss Hansen up gently and sat her in the piece of furniture. 

Miss Hansen continued to cry for another minute or two before she was finally able to compose herself. She continued to say to all of us, "I don't know," and she repeated that phrase about three or four more times in a row.

Miss Hansen confessed to knowing what was behind the painting, but she said she never once thought about coming into the house and stealing it. 

"You have all the keys to the house," Genoa reminded her. "You are the one person who could have gotten in here and stolen the painting."

As Genoa continued to interrogate her, I continued to look around the room to see how the thief could have gotten in. A window was unlikely as all of them were sealed shut from the inside. 

The floor was a likely choice, as directly underneath us was my uncle's pool room. Even if one stood on top of the pool table, he or she would not be able to reach the ceiling. The thief would have to stand on a ladder while avoid being hit by the lamp that was directly above the table.

Then, I thought about the fireplace. I began to feel around the inside of the fireplace, but there was nothing there. Next, I started feeling the gray bricks along the fireplace, but none of them moved half a centimeter.

Miss Cross watched me and it wasn't until I pulled down on one of the gargoyles on the top of the left side of the fireplace mantle when she gasped.

The bookshelf near the gargoyle started to make a grinding noise. The shelves were coming out and they were forming a set of stairs.

Genoa smiled. "So, that's how someone was able to reach the painting without a ladder," he said before asking me to pull on the other gargoyle.

I did and the back of the seventy-six-inch fireplace started to open.

"I had no clue that was there," Miss Hansen said as if she were trying to defend herself.

"We'll see about that," Genoa said before he picked her up by the back of her collar and pulled her over to the fireplace. She complained that he was hurting her, but Genoa merely replied by telling her that if she didn't want him to hurt her, she would go through the secret passage first.

She agreed and with those forty inch long legs of hers, she brought them back down to the floor and she crawled in the secret passage way first.