The Water Haulage Man

Abstract

Declan Steeple no longer lives in the family mansion where he was born fifteen years ago. His stepmother won't hear of it too many memories. So his father has built them a common and garden split-level at the bottom of the hill upon which Steeple Hall stands. His father keeps up the big house as a kind of personal museum. Sunny, Declan' s little sister, likes to visit Steeple Hall. For her, it is an endless funhouse, but the fun has long gone from the old place for Declan. It is the home from which his birth mother left years ago just ran off into the night. Or so he has been told. Then one afternoon, he and Sunny find the body of a dead man in the grand entrance hallway. A thief, crushed under a massive oak bookshelf. Apparently, in trying to reach a valuable bust sitting on the top of the shelf, he has pulled the whole thing down on himself. He has drowned, as it were, in a green and gold sea of Grandfather Steeple's law books! Desperately, Declan tries to dig out the man. That is when he realizes the thief is not entirely a stranger. He has met him before. . . .