by Morgana Best
John, on the other hand, had taken the traditional route, with an entree of sage crusted vegetarian cutlets on a bed of green lentils, the head chef’s favourite according to John. This information had sparked even more curiosity from me. How did John know the head chef? For the main he chose the Butternut Squash and Rosemary Ravioli with Poblano Sauce.
As we neared the end of our meal, I thought I had better broach the subject. I took another gulp, which brought my glass of the horribly expensive wine to an end. I was no wine connoisseur, that was for sure, but I did enjoy a nice glass of red, or white, for that matter.
“John, are we under surveillance?” Oh dear, not what I meant to say. Why was I so tongue-tied?
“Not as far as I know.” His eyebrows met in the middle. “Why do you ask?”
I was awfully embarrassed. I took a deep breath and then asked, “Why did you show me around the Mausoleum today and then take me to lunch?”
John hesitated for a moment, his spoon hovering near his coffee cup, which had just arrived. “I’m just being neighborly,” he said. “Your aunt and I were friends.” His tone was less than convincing.
I narrowed my eyes and waited for him to continue.
He did not.
Obviously, there was far more to it, and John wasn’t about to tell me.
When John dropped me back at Aunt Beth’s, Aunty June was sitting on the front doorstep.
I said goodbye to John, thanked him, and hurried over to her.
“I got your texts,” she said. “Misty, something’s come up.”
I unlocked the door and stepped back so she could enter. Aunty June followed me to the kitchen and sat down before speaking. “Misty, I have to go back to Australia.”
I was dismayed. “When?”
She looked at the time on her phone. “Soon. I have to leave for Heathrow in a few minutes. Something’s come up,” she said again.
I was debating whether to ask her what had happened, but Aunty June was secretive and I doubted she’d tell me. I didn’t want to put her in difficult position, but I was curious.
While I was considering what to do, she pushed on. “Misty, you know I have premonitions. I don’t want to leave now because I feel your life will soon be threatened.”
“It just happened!” I exclaimed. “Someone nearly ran over me, but Douglas pulled me out the way. He thinks it’s a warning.”
Aunty June studied the table for a moment before speaking. “How do you feel about Douglas?”
I frowned. “Are you asking if I’m attracted to him?”
She nodded. “Or to John Smith?”
I shrugged. “If you must know, I am attracted to John Smith.”
Aunty June did not look pleased. “One of the men is to be trusted, but the other one isn’t to be trusted.”
My stomach churned. “Which one?”
Aunty June stood up and picked up her car keys. “I have no idea. Trust neither of them until you know for sure.”
“And when will that be?”
Aunty June’s face was grim. “When the one who is not to be trusted shows his hand.”
Chapter 13
That afternoon I emailed Cordelia and told her to call me when she could.
Five minutes later she did.
“Misty, you emailed my work email, not my home email!”
I slapped myself on my forehead. “Oh, sorry! I forgot.”
“Don’t worry, I deleted it. I overhead Skinny telling Keith that you needed to rework your West Wycombe Park article, but he said he liked it.”
I groaned loudly. “Why can’t he see through her?”
Cordelia snorted. “He’s too nice and trusting. She’s probably after his job.”
An unwelcome image of Daisy sitting at Keith’s desk presented itself to my mind. I dismissed it.
“Anyway, Misty, spill. What’s happening on the guy front?”
I laughed. “Cordelia, nothing’s happening. Nothing at all.” More’s the pity, I added silently.
Cordelia chuckled. “Well, be careful. I’ll call you later if I can. I’ve got a deadline and I’ve had writer’s block all day.”
“What article are you stuck on?” I asked her.
“No, two things. I’ve got a deadline for the magazine and I’m stuck on the novel. I don’t know what power my heroine can have. Perhaps I could base her on you.”
I laughed. “What, on me? I don’t have any powers!”
“You’re a researcher, and a good one too.”
“That’s kind of you, Cordelia, but I wish being a good researcher was a power.”
Cordelia laughed. “Well, you know that Mary Queen of Scots said she feared the words of John Knox more than all the assembled armies of Europe. The pen is mightier than the sword and all that.”
“Cordelia, she said she feared his prayers, not his words.”
“See, I told you that you are a good researcher! Gotta go, catch you later.”
I wasn’t so disappointed that the conversation was short, as I was keen to get to the computer. I wanted to look up Bible references to the ancient Greek word thelema, meaning purpose, to see if there was any connection with the Hellfire Club or even Aleister Crowley, and also wanted to look up the date of Paul Whitehead’s death.
It seemed pretty obvious that Paul Whitehead had burnt the evidence and then killed himself, perhaps so that no one could torture the information out of him. He was the steward of the club and held all the secrets. There was certainly at least one secret he was party to, and he made sure no one else was able to get it. Perhaps the date would give me a clue.
I was sure Aunt Beth would have a concordance, but I couldn’t find one on the shelves. There was a big black King James Version Bible, several volumes of David Eddings—who knew Aunt Beth was into epic fantasy!—five editions of Pride and Prejudice, just about everything ever written by Shakespeare and Aristotle, and a stack of occult books with authors such as John Dee, Samael Aun Weor, Aleister Crowley, and of course, Arthur Edward Waite.
It looked like I’d have to use an online concordance. I made a cup of tea—not Lapsang Souchong—opened a packet of cookies invitingly labelled McVities Lyles Golden Syrup Creams, and turned on the laptop. I found sixty-four references to the ancient Greek word thelema in the New Testament. I groaned.
My reading glasses perched on my nose, I found that the first reference was in Matthew 6:11, the famous Lord’s Prayer passage.
May your purpose be done on earth just like your purpose is done in heaven.
I looked carefully through the remaining sixty-three instances of the word thelema, and to my great surprise, every instance explicitly referred to God’s purpose. Well, there was one instance where it was the devil’s purpose, but I was struck by the fact there was not one instance of human, mortal purpose. I pondered the significance of this.
I finally concluded that ‘Do as thou wilt’ perhaps wasn’t so much ‘Do whatever you like,’ but rather, ‘Do what you focus on,’ as in, ‘Focus, then act.’ Hmm.
Now to Paul Whitehead. He had received an important letter, the arrival of which had prompted him to burn all his records and then kill himself. It was easy to find his date of death, December 30, 1774. I googled 1774 to see what was significant about that year.
The second entry mentioned the Boston Tea Party, so I googled that. On December 16, 1773, after officials refused to return three shiploads of taxed tea to Britain, some colonists threw the tea into Boston Harbour.
Okay, I pretty much knew all that, just not the date. A web page said that England didn’t receive news of the Boston Tea Party until January 1774 due to transport time in those days, but that the news was not officially announced for two months. I couldn’t find the date in January, so looked up voyage times from America to Britain in the eighteenth century. This was a difficult search. I finally found one source that said the voyage in the nineteenth century would have taken twenty five to twenty eight days.
Horrors. At that point I realis
ed I had eaten all the cookies. Research makes me hungry. The cupboards revealed a packet of cookies called ‘Chocolate Digestives.’ In Australia, a digestive was something that someone would take for an upset stomach. Still, the illustration on the packet looked good, so I opened the packet and took out only five biscuits this time, in an attempt at self-control.
Back at the laptop and refuelled by tea and chocolate digestives, I immediately came across a useful article written by a professor of history. The article mentioned Benjamin Franklin, and said that in those times, voyages across the Atlantic took six to eight weeks.
Whitehead took delivery of the letter on December 23, 1774. If the letter was sent from America, it might have referred to events that happened significantly earlier. On the other hand, the letter was possibly sent from within England.
I sat at the computer for two hours, but couldn’t find anything to tip me off as to what had upset Whitehead so. Sir Francis Dashwood was championing the cause of American independence, and I did find one site that said American revolutionaries were debating whether to break with Britain in November 1774. Of course, I also figured that Paul Whitehead did what he did to prevent something from happening. If he did prevent it, then I’d never be able to find out what it was. It seemed like researching this any further would be pointless.
I got up, stretched my legs, and looked out the window for a car. Aunt Beth’s lawyer was overdue by five minutes. He had called the day before to make a time with me, so he could drop off a package that Aunt Beth had bequeathed to me in her will. I hoped it had something to do with money, and a lot of it.
By the time I got back downstairs, I could see a figure behind the frosted glass of the front door, and made it there just as the doorbell was ringing.
I showed the elderly man into the living room. He looked more like an undertaker than a lawyer.
“Mrs Friday,” he began in a clipped Oxbridge accent.
“Ms,” I interrupted. “I’m not married, and if I were married, I would still be Ms.”
He looked at me like I was an insane and overtly feminist member of the colonies. “Ms Friday,” he said, with emphasis on the Ms, “as I informed you on the phone, I cannot divulge any details of Mrs Banks’s will at this time, but these two packages are for you. The terms of Mrs Banks’s will stipulated that our firm was to hand deliver these packages to you.” He handed me the first one, which was a large, yellow envelope. “Open it now,” he said in an imperious tone.
I did as I was told, and pulled out the veterinary records of Merlin the cat. There was also one thousand pounds.
“You now own the cat,” he said, and one side of his mouth rose in a small sneer. “And that money is to fly the cat back to Australia.”
Merlin walked over, sat at his feet, and hissed at him.
My first thought was to wonder how much a flight for a cat from England to Australia would be, and how much the quarantine would cost. I didn’t know if a thousand pounds would cover it. I shrugged. At least it was better than nothing and was at the least, a sizeable contribution. I had grown attached to the cat and her weird ways.
The lawyer interrupted my thoughts. “I am also asked to have your agreement that you will open the other package in private. The additional terms are that you will agree to keep the jewellery on your person at all times, to keep it out of sight, and you yourself are to agree to bequeath it as an heirloom. It is never to pass out of your ownership. You are not to mention to anyone that you have it. Do you understand and agree?”
“Yes.” I reached out for the package, my hopes of bars of gold and stacks of hundred pound notes cruelly dashed. And another piece of jewellery I had to keep? This was getting weirder and weirder.
The lawyer moved the package out of my grasp. “You need to sign these documents first. Sign in all the places so marked, and I will need to see your passport.”
I handed over my passport, which I had ready for him, and signed next to the crosses. “What about the house?”
The lawyer glared at me. After what seemed an age, he said, “Your aunt did not own the house.”
“She didn’t? Was she renting?”
The lawyer shook his head. “I am not at liberty to divulge that information.” His lips curled into a thin sneer again.
The lawyer rose and made for the door, but Merlin shot between his legs and tripped him. He fell heavily. I hurried over to help him up, but he waved me away and dusted himself down.
As soon as the lawyer was out the door, I raced up the stairs two at a time and leapt onto my bed. My hands were shaking as I opened the package.
I dropped the contents onto the bed. A piece of silver jewellery, a silver fob chain. Antique silver to be precise, and it was clear it had had another piece added on later to extend the length. My parents had been jewellers and also were collectors of antique jewellery so I knew about antique jewellery, not that I had much of it. I found the hallmark readily enough and recognised the piece immediately as made in London. There was no sovereign head, which meant the chain was made either before 1784 or after 1890. I didn’t have a hope of recognising the year mark or the maker’s mark without a book or the net. I’m good with antique silver, but I’m not that good.
There was also an ornate citrine seal, but it was the keys hanging next to the seal that caught my attention.
These were not the usual watch keys, for they were both larger, far more solid and looked like medieval casket door keys. Each stood out like a sore thumb against the fine silver. Engraved on one key was the symbol XXII. I turned the other key over, but found no mark.
Merlin jumped up on the bed and sat on my lap, so I gently tried to dislodge her without being scratched. I got up and crossed over to the little desk in the corner of my bedroom for my notes on the poems that were supposed to be clues to the secret passageway.
Take twenty steps and rest awhile
Then take a pick and find the stile
Where once I did my love beguile
T’was twenty-two in Dashwood’s time
Perhaps to hide this cell divine
Where lay my love in peace sublime.
At first I had thought the XXII engraving meant that there were twenty steps to the passage but twenty-two steps in Dashwood’s time. Now, I realised that the two figures were not related. The XXII on the wall was after the Circle Cave, which was directly after the Tool Store.
Churchill’s poem said the cave was under the Temple. The caves were under the Temple, but anything under the caves would also be under the Temple. Churchill’s poem said there was one passage which could be found only with a clue.
Charles Churchill’s poem also mentioned a maze and tools. I hadn’t noticed the mention of tools before, as I had taken the reference metaphorically.
Under the Temple lay a cave:
Made by some guilty, coward slave,
Whose actions fear’d rebuke,
A maze of intricate and winding ways,
Not to be found without a clue;
One passage only, known to a few,
In paths direct led to a cell,
Where Fraud in secret lov’d to dwell,
With all her tools and slaves about her,
Nor feared lest honesty should route her.
If tools were meant literally, then this was a mention of tools in both poems. Both poems also mentioned a cell. Take a pick. Okay, what did I know about picks? Not much.
I pushed a stack of papers out of the way and picked up the booklet, West Wycombe Caves by Sir Francis Dashwood, the modern Sir Francis of course. This was illuminating. The first page was headed ‘Tool Store’ and said that picks were used for hacking at the chalk, which is hard and comes away in flakes. I had always thought that picks were for digging. The book mentioned crowbars, hammers, and shovels.
I addressed the cat. “Merlin, this must mean that I have to take a pick and hack away at a flake of chalk, presumably a piece of flake in front of a locked door.”
Merlin simp
ly purred loudly and kneaded my lap, her claws not retracted.
I was getting closer to solving the problem, but I still had no clue where to look. Consulting the map again, I saw that tools were kept in two places, the Tool Store (duh!) and the Miners’ Cave. The second poem mentioned ‘slaves’ which might have been a reference to miners. However, the key had XXII on it. I pulled out Churchill’s whole poem and read it through, but still no clue.
I wasn’t getting anywhere.
It was then that the thought suddenly struck me. The seal would have to be a clue, too. It could hardly be a decorative item. I turned it over in my hand. It looked antique but was a modern reproduction and was not hallmarked. I poked and pressed it, and found I was able to open it. Inside was something that looked like a remote car door-opening device.
Okay, I had to get to the caves, but I had to go alone, and that meant public transport. I googled and found that Carousel buses go every hour, thank goodness.
Chapter 14
It was afternoon by the time I arrived at the caves, but I had plenty of time as the caves didn’t close until at 5.30 p.m.
Luckily for me, no one else appeared to be around. I guessed the drizzling rain and gloomy skies had fended off the tourists. After paying the entry fee, I walked into the entrance passage and pressed the button inside the seal, aiming it all around. Nothing. I walked down to the Tool Store and aimed the device in all directions, again to no avail.
I was about to turn left and continue down the tunnel when I noticed a door, which appeared to have been blocked up. Just to the left of that was a wall of chalk covered by weird carvings. I hadn’t noticed these before. They looked like strange symbols, perhaps alchemic or occult symbols. The figure ‘W’ appeared a few times, and so did what looked like bottle shapes.
I was about to walk on after my manic button pressing didn’t open any doors, when I noticed the hole in the floor. It was at the bottom left of the odd symbols. I crouched down and aimed the button into the hole, pressing several times. Still nothing. Damn, I thought I was onto something there.
