The Missing Stairs

Previously

…In fact, he felt a strange, almost reluctant, urge to revisit her. Perhaps, he mused, a conversation, a genuine exchange of information, might be more productive than his initial, rather haughty, pronouncements. The seed of doubt had sprouted, and Arthur Pendelton, for all his pride, was a scholar who respected the truth, no matter where it might be hidden. He had a feeling he would be seeing young Clara again, and this time, he would be listening. The missing stairs, once a figment of a novice archivist’s imagination, were beginning to feel like a tangible, albeit elusive, reality. And that, for Arthur Pendelton, was a most intriguing prospect indeed.