This remains extremely dramatic, extremely dramatically relayed, and not clarifying much at all. 

MAGNIFICENCE thinks the humans are discussing whether he will get a treat. That is a good conversational topic! He will wait for them to decide that he ALWAYS deserves a treat.

"He came back that August rattled and unraveling. He didn't have any secret meetings anymore. He stopped traveling. He saw a psychiatrist for a few years. He burned his books. He hardly ate. He jumped at shadows and insisted he was being watched. He was... never the same."

"He forbade us from asking about his travels and said more than once that nothing mattered anymore. When Mother died in '32 he barely grieved. After that, he only became more paranoid and frustrated, and then he passed away early this year, a shadow of himself."

"By the time he died he was... his death was a thing that had happened long ago and I had made my peace with it."

Anemone nods sympathetically. Being a dark sorcerer is like that sometimes.

"Do you have any idea where he went, that August?"

"I do not but I do have one lead," Mrs. Winston-Rogers says. She takes out a set of typewritten letters and places them on the table.

The letters are from Savannah, Georgia and they seem to be mostly on the theme of PLEASE WRITE BACK. There are handwritten notes on the letters: lines, circles, and cryptic lists of numbers. This is clearly someone trying to decode the letters.

"These are from a man named Douglas Henslowe, who apparently worked with my father up until August 1924. He must have been one of the people Father met with at the house, time and again."

"Henslowe wrote a few times, always asking my father to write down what had happened, what he had seen. My father never replied. But he kept them, and it looks to me like he studied them carefully."

Carrie stares at the letters to try to figure out whether Mr. Winston succeeded at decoding them, but can't figure it out from peering at them across a table. In retrospect this really should have been obvious.

Anemone does not recall Douglas Henslowe's name from anything. Probably he's a dark sorcerer, let's be real. 

Zoe says, "I have no skill in cryptography but it looks to me like he thought they were written in some sort of code."

"Is that what those numbers are about?" Mrs. Winston-Rogers asks. "I was very puzzled by them. I thought perhaps they were page numbers."

"...is the monkey going to help in your investigations?"

"Well, he's going to come along," Anemone says judiciously. "Whether he helps is up to him, I guess."

Magnificence has been waiting VERY PATIENTLY for the humans to decide he gets a treat and is getting kind of sad about this.

"I assume you've already gone through the rest of your father's belongings and found nothing of interest?" Anemone says. "Although I do wonder if someone with more knowledge of the dark arts might find something of further interest among them."

"The mansion has been mothballed and most of his most... interesting... belongings have been sold at auction," Mrs. Winston-Rogers says. "Frankly, I didn't know what was merely a collection and what was... truly occult, and I didn't want to continue to have something that could... put me in danger."

She looks hesitant, as if she is holding something back, out of fear or pride.

Lacie looks Mrs. Winston-Rogers in the eyes. "Madame, if we are going to help you, we have to have every bit of information. If there's anything you may have forgotten, or are uncertain about, even if it seems strange or offputting, that we might be able to use to help you put this mystery to rest, it would only help all of us, including yourself, if you were to share it."

Mrs. Winston-Rogers bites her lip, and then suddenly smiles for the first time that evening. "There is one other thing. I'll admit that I once thought the mansion was haunted. Shadows seemed to bend and warp, and odd stains appeared from nowhere. I thought I... saw things. Things in the walls."

She shakes her head as if to dismiss it. "But it was all the nervous energy of a frightened girl. I certainly had enough to deal with with my father... being as he was. At any rate, I haven't seen any such things since my father died."

"But they did continue up until his death?" Lacie says.

"They-- You must understand," Mrs. Winston-Rogers says. "I moved into my husband's house when I got married, I spent very little time there as an adult. And at night, the mind becomes frightened by a branch or some clothes draped over a chair... But... yes." She shakes her head. "I did see things."

Zoe and Anemone lock eyes. They know what's up. It is a GHOST. Mr. Winston-Rogers was a dark sorcerer and the house is HAUNTED by the GHOSTS of the UNQUIET DEAD. 

 "I will gladly lend you the use of my plane and pilot, Mr. Kearns, for the duration of your investigation. Time is a factor. Money, less so."

"Sure," Anemone says, then reconsiders. What if Mrs. Winston-Rogers is trying to spring some kind of crazy plane-based trap on them? Anemone is not about that life. 

Zoe follows along and idly considers whether it looks like she could rig a circus apparatus to the undercarriage and do barnstorming.

Everything he learns about Mrs Winston-Rogers adds to the impression of 'literally what the fuck who is this person' but he goes along with it.

A man lies on one of the couches of the plane taking a nap. 

"This is my pilot, Mr. Kearns," Mrs. Winston-Rogers says. "Shall I leave you all to get acquainted? Mr. Kearns, do wake up." She shakes him.
 
 He blinks. "I'm awake, I'm awake."

Zoe attempts to smile coquettishly at him but partway through she gets something in her eye and starts blinking it spastically.

Magnificence wants to know what this human's purpose is. He is NOT one of the humans who was discussing treats earlier.

After some consideration, Magnificence discerns that this human is entirely purposeless. He has no treats. It is very strange.