The Vanishing Stair

The second installment in Maureen Johnson's Truly Devious trilogy alternates between the present-day story of teenage detective Stevie Bell at Ellingham Academy, a prestigious boarding school on a remote Vermont mountaintop, and flashbacks to the 1930s, when the school's founder, Albert Ellingham, lost his wife Iris and daughter Alice in a kidnapping that also resulted in the murder of a student, Dottie Epstein. The case was never solved.

The novel opens in 1936. Francis Josephine Crane, a wealthy student at Minerva House, one of Ellingham's student residences, eavesdrops on her housemistress Miss Nelson's alarmed phone call after Dottie fails to return one evening. After midnight, Francis slips through a secret passage beneath Minerva's spiral staircase into a narrow underground tunnel. She meets her boyfriend, Edward Pierce Davenport, a reckless poet from a wealthy Boston family. Together they trail Albert Ellingham to the unfinished gymnasium, where they overhear him telling Miss Nelson, his secret lover, that Iris and Alice have been kidnapped.

In the present, Stevie is back in Pittsburgh after her parents pulled her from Ellingham following the events of the first book: the death of YouTube star Hayes Major, Stevie's investigation revealing that fellow student Element Walker (Ellie) wrote Hayes's show, and Ellie's unexplained vanishing from a locked room at the Great House, the school's main building, through a hidden passage. Stevie studies a battered tea tin she found in Ellie's room containing 1930s artifacts: photographs of two students posing as Bonnie and Clyde, an unfinished poem titled "The Ballad of Frankie and Edward," and a single word cut from a magazine, "US." The cut-out word mirrors the construction of the famous Truly Devious ransom letter, suggesting a student, not the kidnapper, may have authored it.

Stevie arrives home to find Senator Edward King, a powerful politician her parents support, in her living room. King announces he has funded a new security system at Ellingham and offers Stevie a ride on his private plane back to Vermont. During the flight, King reveals his true motive: His estranged son David has been acting out at Ellingham, and King believes Stevie's presence will stabilize him. The deal is explicit: She keeps David at school and King ensures she can stay.

Stevie returns to find her friends Janelle Franklin, a gifted engineer, and Nate Fisher, a struggling novelist, relieved to see her. David's room is dark; the others describe his erratic behavior. She conceals King's involvement. Her adviser, Dr. Charles Scott, arranges for Stevie to work as a research assistant for Dr. Irene Fenton, a University of Vermont professor updating her book on the Ellingham case. Security chief Larry shows Stevie the campus's new surveillance system, demonstrating that her every movement is tracked.

Further 1936 flashbacks reveal the origin of the Truly Devious letter. Francis and Edward create it as a prank, inspired by Francis's true-crime magazines and a conversation with FBI agent George Marsh, who mentions that a cut-out-letter note would be memorable. They assemble the letter wearing gloves, sign it "Truly, Devious," and mail it from Burlington. On the morning after the real kidnapping, when their prank has been swept into an actual crime, Francis is evacuated from Minerva before she can retrieve her hidden materials from behind a baseboard, and she never returns.

In the present, Stevie identifies the students from the tin as Francis Crane and Edward Davenport using school archives. She discovers that Edward died by suicide in Paris in 1940. David releases squirrels into the library as a diversion and persuades Stevie to search Ellie's room, arguing that Ellie could not have escaped the remote campus alone. In Ellie's room, Stevie finds a hidden hollow behind a baseboard, large enough to have held the tea tin, but containing nothing useful.

Stevie meets Fenton in Burlington. The professor gives her over 300 research items to verify and insists nothing be communicated electronically. Fenton's nephew Hunter, a University of Vermont ecology student, drives Fenton and gives Stevie his number. After a week in the Ellingham attic, Stevie returns with her completed work. Fenton reveals a discrepancy between official phone records and a former student's account of the kidnapping night, indicating a call to Minerva was deliberately omitted. Fenton also confirms that Minerva had a tunnel and tasks Stevie with finding it.

On Halloween night, Stevie, dressed as the fictional detective Hercule Poirot, connects a riddle Ellingham left before his death, "Always on a staircase but never on a stair," to the tunnel entrance beneath Minerva's stairs. She finds the outline of a hidden door and, with David's help, forces it open to reveal a hatch leading underground. In the passage, David opens up about his past: his mother Becky's alcohol addiction, his half-sister Allison, and Edward King's cruelty. They reach a sealed hatch and kiss in the darkness. On the return, Stevie discovers a branching passage containing fragments of black garbage bag plastic and the decomposed remains of Ellie. Ellie has been dead in the tunnel all along, having entered from a connecting hatch in the Great House basement and become trapped. David insists he found the body alone, protecting Stevie and Nate. The residents are evacuated for the night.

Security chief Larry reveals he knows Stevie was in the tunnel, having found the fake mustache she dropped. He agrees her presence need not be reported but warns her to follow every rule. Stevie visits David, who sobs as he grieves Ellie. Walking back, David's pointed questions reveal he suspects King's involvement, and Stevie, consumed by guilt, confesses the deal. Devastated by her concealment, David walks away.

Hunter reveals that Fenton believes in a codicil to Ellingham's will promising 10 million dollars to anyone who locates Alice, dead or alive. He warns that Fenton had a previous contact at the school and may be motivated by the fortune. Days later, Stevie finds David bloody on a Burlington sidewalk; he tells her he is not returning to Ellingham. Larry is then fired. On his last day, he gives Stevie his personal number and warns her to be careful.

Stevie reads Fenton's notes, which record that Ellingham's last words to his secretary Robert Mackenzie were "It was on the wire." A climactic flashback depicts Ellingham's final afternoon. He examines the Sherlock Holmes book Dottie was reading when she died, noticing her deliberate pencil mark under a line about the brain being "like a little empty attic." He sails out on Lake Champlain with George Marsh on a boat rigged with explosives and confronts the FBI agent: Marsh, in gambling debt, orchestrated the kidnapping using hired criminals. The plan went wrong when Dottie, hiding where Marsh came to collect the ransom, recognized him as the "attic man," a term her uncle used for cops who get the drop on criminals. Dottie tried to flee, fatally cracking her skull. Marsh admits he found Alice but refuses to reveal her location. He lights a cigarette on the rigged boat, and the explosion kills both men.

In the present, Stevie realizes "on the wire" refers not to a radio broadcast but to a wire recording machine. She locates the machine in the attic after spotting a miniature version of it inside a dollhouse replica of the Great House and asks Janelle to repair it. The recording plays back Dottie telling Ellingham about the "attic man." Stevie confirms the underlined passage in Dottie's book and understands that Dottie's dying message named George Marsh as her killer.

Stevie calls Fenton to share her breakthrough, but Fenton answers slurred and agitated, hissing "The kid is there!" before hanging up. Larry calls: Fenton's house has burned down from an apparent gas leak. Fenton is dead, and Hunter was found injured, his condition unknown. The novel ends with Stevie possessing the solution to the 1936 case but facing immediate danger. The deaths around her may not be accidents, Larry is gone, David has vanished, and Edward King's surveillance cameras see everything. The story continues in The Hand on the Wall.