56 Weeks with Nancy Drew - The Hidden Staircase - Part 1/2

Week 2, Book 2

Welcome to the 56 Weeks with Nancy Drew series! If you are new here, welcome. You can find my introductory post to this series here. Please note I will be including plot spoilers in this review series. I explain my reasoning at the start of this post. I should add that this discussion is a two-parter. Part Two can be found here.  

Edition pictured: Revised text (20 chapters, 182 pages)

Illustrated by: Rudy Nappi

Revised text publication date: 1959

Original text publication date: 1930

Ghostwriter: Mildred A. Wirt Benson

Editor: Edward Stratemeyer

Revised by: Harriet Stratemeyer Adams

Setting: River Heights & Twin Elms (Colonial mansion) USA

Originally published in 1930 and written by Mildred Wirt, I will be reviewing the revised text edition of The Hidden Staircase, published in 1959 and pictured above.

Nancy Drew's close friend, Helen Corning, needs a detective. Mysterious things have been happening at Twin Elms, the estate owned by Helen's great-grandmother, whom everyone calls Miss Flora. Strange sounds, music playing, footsteps heard in empty rooms, and now an heirloom pearl necklace has gone missing. Is the house haunted by a thief as well as a ghost? Since closing the case on The Secret of the Old Clock, Nancy has been hungry for another mystery to solve and is eager to take on this new challenge.

Meanwhile, Nancy's father, Carson Drew has been hired by the railroad to do some legal work in a property debate that resulted when they bought land to build a new bridge. One of the property owners, Willie Wharton, claims he didn't sign a contract of sale. The problem is, Willie Wharton has gone missing, and the lawyer initially sent to get the contract signed died a few hours after getting Willie Wharton's signature and both failed to have it witnessed, and to get the certificate of acknowledgement notarized. Carson Drew needs to find Willie Wharton.

This would all be in day's work for a successful lawyer like Carson Drew, but Nancy has been warned that her father is in great danger. How is Nancy supposed to both keep her father safe and investigate the goings-on at Twin Elms?

In this book Nancy investigates the haunting of Twin Elms, sees a crook brought to justice, convinces a frightened eyewitness to talk to the police, extracts two confessions in record timing, finds multiple secret passageways, and still has time to deck herself out in fancy dress, dance a minuet, go to church, take a quick swim, capture an owl, prepare food, wash dishes, do some gardening and cleaning, appreciate nature (for a whole 10 minutes), eat 15 meals, have one tea party with dainty sandwiches, enjoy a slice of ice cold custard pie, and find an alternative use for an old fashioned buttonhook. And here I didn't even know what was the primary use of a buttonhook before reading this book!

Similar to The Secret of the Old Clock, nowhere in The Hidden Staircase are we explicitly told what time of year it is. However, there are a few clues. The first one is at the very start of the book.

    Nancy Drew began peeling off her garden gloves as she ran up the porch steps and into the hall to answer the ringing telephone. (1)

In some regions, garden work can be done at just about any time of year, but I think we can rule out winter straight away.

As Nancy drives Helen and herself to Twin Elms, her friend provides the directions, pointing out the house when they have driven 10 minutes outside of the town of Cliffwood. Side note: I'm thinking they must have hit a lot of red lights between Cliffwood and Twin Elms for it to take them 10 minutes to drive the two miles that Helen says is the distance (25).

    From the road one could see little of the house. A high stone wall ran along the front of the estate and beyond it were many tall trees. Nancy turned into the driveway which twisted and wound among elms, oaks, and maples. 

    Presently the old Colonial home came into view. Helen said it had been built in 1785 and had been given its name because of the two elm trees which stood at opposite ends of the long building. They had grown to be giants and their foliage was beautiful. The mansion was of red brick and nearly all of the walls were covered with ivy. (25)

Although, I do not doubt for a second that Nancy would be able to identify tree types from a distance without foliage, this quote does tell us the trees are in leaf. From this, we could assume it is not autumn because surely we would get a description of the colour of the leaves if they were changing. However, we get an indication that we can rule out autumn when Nancy is awakened by a sound in the night and tiptoes to the window to look out on the moonlit grounds of Twin Elms.

    Shadows made by the tree branches, which swayed in a gentle breeze, moved back and forth across the lawn. The scent from a rose garden in full bloom was wafted to Nancy. (58)

The rose garden is in full bloom, so it is looking more and more like this book is set during the summer. Later when Nancy realizes time is running out for her to help her father with his case, she takes a moment to collect her thoughts. I'm going to share the full quotation because it is a rare moment of tranquility for Nancy and as someone who appreciates the importance of spending time outside in nature, I think it is a lovely section outside of the information we can glean from it.

    She breathed deeply of the lovely morning air and headed for the rose garden. She let the full beauty of the estate sink into her consciousness, before permitting herself to think further about the knotty problem before her.

    Long ago Mr. Drew had taught Nancy that the best way to clear one's brain is to commune with Nature for a time. Nancy went up one walk and down another, listening to the twittering of the birds and now and then the song of the meadow lark. Again she smelled deeply of the roses and the sweet wisteria which hung over a sagging arbor. (133)

First of all, Nancy listens to the "song of the meadow lark". We have no way of knowing for certain if she is listening to the Western Meadowlark or the Eastern, but I have a hunch that the fictional town of River Heights is relatively close to Chicago, Illinois, while still being far enough away that when Willie Wharton has been spotted there, Carson Drew opts to fly, instead of taking the time to drive. If River Heights is in the state of Illinois, then it is most likely in the southern end of the state and we know that Twin Elms is not far from River Heights because Carson Drew offers to stop by to see Nancy on his way back home from the airport (23-24).

We do not know how far away Twin Elms is from River Heights, but it cannot be too far as Helen has been back and forth, once with her Aunt Rosemary to visit Nancy (6-11). When Helen and Nancy drive there Helen shares the news that she is engaged. Much to Nancy's surprise, as she has not only not met the man in question, this is the first time Helen has mentioned him. I love Nancy's reaction. 

    "Why, Helen, how wonderful! Who is he? And tell me all about it. This is rather sudden, isn't it?" (24).

Anyway, we don't get a definite trip length, but we do know, 

    The two girls discussed all sorts of delightful plans for Helen's wedding and before they knew it they had reached the town of Cliffwood (25).

So it could be argued that they haven't left the state and they are still in southern Illinois. Only the Eastern Meadowlark is found year round in the southern part of the state and since Nancy is listening to the bird's song and not the call, it could be argued that it is May or June, the months when most of the recordings have been made of the Eastern Meadowlark's song. If you are interested in hearing what the Eastern Meadowlark's song sounds like, you can find multiple recordings here.

And yes, I did suggest the first book in this series, The Secret of the Old Clock, was also set in June. In theory, the two storylines cannot be happening at the same time. But The Secret of the Old Clock takes place over 11 days and The Hidden Staircase is set over eight. Simple math tells us that Nancy Drew cannot solve all 56 mysteries in this series before her nineteenth birthday. Because remember, Nancy Drew is 18 years old in every one of these books! (In the original editions, she is 16.) In Nancy Drew Land time has no fixed place in reality, so we just have to suspend our disbelief and embrace the concept that in these books time is fluid.

Nancy is not just enjoying the sounds of nature, but also the smells, taking deep breaths of the roses and wisteria. Wisteria blooms before the leaves in late spring to early summer, and blooms throughout the summer in the province of Ontario, according to this source. Southern Illinois is in plant hardiness zones 6a-7a, so wisteria may be blooming a little earlier in spring there than in southern Ontario, which has a zone range from 5b-7a, if I have interpreted this map correctly. For those of us who are not expert, or even novice gardeners, preferring to romanticize gardens rather than get our hands dirty in them, a hardiness zone is simply a geographic area with an average annual minimum temperature within a certain range. 

We don't know what varieties of roses are in the garden, but roses generally have a number of bloom cycles throughout the season, starting in May. So given all of this information, the trees in leaf, the song of the meadowlark, the roses and wisteria in bloom, I believe it is safe to assume The Hidden Staircase is set in late May or June.

While I do enjoy learning about birds and plants, I am neither an ornithologist nor a botanist, so feel free to leave a comment if you think I'm completely off in any of my wildly uneducated assumptions. 

Of course, I have build this entire theory on a foundation of straw, since we do not know with any certainty that Twin Elms is located in southern Illinois, as I based that information on my assumption from this book and clues from other Nancy Drew books that River Heights is somewhat near Chicago. 

But Mildred Wirt, the writer of this book and twenty-two other Nancy Drew books was born in Iowa and it has been argued that she set River Heights there. In which case, Nancy may have been listening to the song of the Western Meadowlark instead. Thankfully, either bird will work for this book to be set in late May or June. But the hardiness zones of the state of Iowa range from 4b-6a, so if River Heights is somewhere in Iowa, then it is more likely this book is set in June rather than May.

If River Heights is somewhere else in the United States, then who knows! But isn't it fun to look for clues and come up with theories? It may be just a tad geeky. But I think Nancy would approve!

In Part Two of my discussion of The Hidden Staircase we will be talking about what makes Nancy Drew both a good detective and a stellar houseguest. I will also be sharing my favourite quote. And let me tell you, it is a doozie!