Both corridors had doors leading to the grounds outside. The main entrance, of course, was at the front of the building, where there was a long terrace, with a center portico with high white pillars.

Inside, most of the house was pretty appalling. In the main hall the floor and stairs were white marble, which had to be washed each morning. Indeed, one of my earliest recollections of the place was of the stealthy swishing of wet cloths more or less heralding the dawn. And scattered all over were the pictures, statues, bronzes, tapestries, and pipe organ with which old J.C. Wainwright had successfully hidden the probably excellent architecture of the place.

The west wing contained, in order, a formal French drawing room, a long and gloomy picture gallery, a library—the one livable room there—Maud’s unused morning room and my office at the end; while across the hall were the double doors leading to the vast white ballroom. The east wing had a horror called a Chinese room, filled with teak, red lacquer, and bronze, the state dining room, Tony’s private study, and at the end the cheerful tile-floored breakfast room.

There were other rooms, of course: a small card room, a powder room off the main hall for women, a corresponding retiring room for men, and a room for cutting and arranging flowers. Behind all these and across the court were the service quarters, the pantries, the enormous kitchen, Mrs. Partridge’s sitting room, the servants’ hall, and so on.

The elevator shaft opened onto the west hall. In fact, it was the west side of the house which, outside of meals, was the one in common use. There outside my office was the door which led to the playhouse and the garage, and just inside was the table where the playhouse key was kept. What coming and going there was by the family was by this hall, and the library was the one room downstairs in customary use.

The servants were housed on the third floor, while—outside of Maud’s suite—the second contained the usual bedrooms. Or were they usual? I find on my chart that the end of the east wing on the second floor is left a blank, with a question mark in the center. The space is marked locked suite, and I remember having an idea that perhaps old John Wainwright had died there and that Maud had kept it sentimentally inviolate; like that old aunt of my father’s, who had kept her husband’s room for twenty years as he had left it, including the funeral flowers.

Those locked rooms intrigued me. However, Maud had never mentioned them, and so they remained a mystery during those early months at the Cloisters. I presume they were opened and cleaned at intervals but I never saw this done, and when I learned their real significance it practically changed the world for me.

Chapter Seven

THOSE LATE AUGUST DAYS were pleasant. Maud was better; the heat had passed and the nights were cool. Jim Conway had finally removed the guards from the grounds, but Maud refused a new watchman.