EG02 - The Lost Gardens

by Anthony Eglin

  When all else failed, Kingston fell back on what he called his ‘crossword puzzle logic’—teasing answers from confusing and complicated clues. His fundamental premise was that, once, there had been two ways of entering the catacombs: one through the chapel, the other from somewhere in the house. He had searched the house but that proved little. Knowing, now, how cleverly the chapel entrance was designed, he would have been surprised if he had found anything. His conclusion was that a secret entrance via the house still existed, or it had long since been sealed and—unless the house was dismantled piece by piece—would be all but impossible to find now. If the latter were true, then it would suggest that, at one point during his days at Wickersham, Ryder might have given up trading in art. He could have had a falling out with Girard; the market in high-priced paintings had crashed in the early nineties and values had decreased by as much as half at some auctions. Another likelihood: with all the recent publicity and attention focused on stolen art, it became too risky a venture. He could think of many reasons for Ryder having gone straight.

  Given these presuppositions it was not surprising he had found nothing yet that resembled a secret storage area. If such a place existed, it would probably be closer to the house than the chapel. Sound or not, this conclusion bolstered his optimism as he found his way back to the chapel. He reminded himself to bring a compass on his next visit.

  Kingston lowered the pew and watched it drop back into place with a dull clank. For a few seconds, he stood and stared, admiring its simplicity. Considering its age, it was a remarkable piece of engineering. He went to the pulpit and returned the panel to its original position, concealing the release latch. Picking up his tool bag, he started up the aisle. At the door, he stopped. It was … open. He stood for a moment looking around the interior, certain that he had closed the door when he first arrived at the chapel. He even remembered wondering whether he should lock it or not. And just before stepping down into the catacombs, he had checked it again, to make sure. Someone had been there. And that someone now knew the secret of the chapel.

  Back at the cottage, Kingston picked up the phone and called Jamie. For the next several minutes he told her about his discovery, describing precisely how he had found the hidden latch, about the pew, and what the catacombs were like. After he was finished, she congratulated him, offering a thin apology for doubting him. She wanted him to take her there that very minute, but Kingston managed to dissuade her using the late hour and absence of lighting as an excuse. They agreed to meet at eight thirty in the morning, giving him time to rig up temporary lighting and be better equipped to explore. Kingston waited till the end of the conversation to ask the all-important question.

  ‘Was anyone looking for me this afternoon, after I left you? Anyone come to the house?’

  She paused before answering. ‘Only Roger Ferguson.’

  ‘Ferguson?’

  ‘Yes. He came back to get his camera. He’d left it on the coffee table. The thing’s so tiny, I’m not surprised, he should have kept it in his pocket.’

  ‘Did he leave right away?’

  ‘What are you getting at, Lawrence? Yes, I suppose he left right away. I didn’t look out of the window to see if he drove off, if that’s what you mean.’ She paused. ‘Why, is it important?’

  ‘I don’t know, it could be. It’s just that I believe there was someone in the chapel while I was down below.’

  Unlike the gloomy day before, it was a sparkling morning when Kingston left the cottage at eight o’clock on Tuesday. Despite the prospect of a warm day, he wore his old wax jacket over a wool turtleneck knowing how cool it was down in the catacombs. He had told Jamie to dress warmly, too.

  Walking up the path to the house he stopped and bent down to study the leaves of the yellow Alchemilla mollis that spilled over the gravel. Each leaf resembled a delicate bone china cup, filled with a teaspoon of rainwater. The sight never failed to stop him in his tracks, in awe and joy at this sculpture of nature.

  Last night, after his fifteen-minute dinner, catered by the local fish and chip shop and washed down with two glasses of Pinot Grigio, he had dwelled on the fallout that would ensue when word of the discovery of the old priory’s underground rooms hit the press. Wickersham would become a madhouse. Every newspaper, magazine and TV station would be clamouring to take pictures, demanding interviews, letting nothing get in their way in order to get a front-page story.

  His mind flashed back to a conversation that had taken place two years ago, in Alex and Kate Sheppard’s living room, when he had told them that the blue rose they had just discovered in their garden was about to turn their world upside down and that their lives would be forever changed. The chapel and the circumstances surrounding Wickersham were different, but nevertheless pandemonium could and certainly would break loose unless immediate steps were taken to head off such a catastrophe. Word would spread like wildfire and the resulting media frenzy on top of all the local nosy parkers could have a devastating effect on the gardens, not to mention Jamie’s privacy and life in general on the estate. He would have to sit down with her right away and draw up a plan of action. First they would have to inform the local council members, the police and emergency services. Controlling the influx of traffic would be the first problem to address. He could think of a dozen others.

  When would he tell Ferguson? In fairness, he should be among the first to know. But how much did he know already, Kingston wondered? It could have been him at the chapel yesterday. He admitted to being on the estate before, the time when Kingston and Jamie were gone. The more he thought about it, the more the idea of Roger’s going behind his back seemed ludicrous—totally out of character. The man was an archivist, a scholar. Naturally he would have an all-consuming interest in such a discovery. For him, this was a once-in-a-lifetime historical and archaeological breakthrough in which he was directly involved. That said, Kingston couldn’t dismiss entirely the suspicion that Ferguson knew more than he was admitting.

  Chadwick, too, should be told about the chapel. He would hear about it soon enough but if—as Kingston was now almost certain—the catacombs revealed Ryder’s secret cache of paintings, then police involvement would be essential.

  At the house, he found Jamie ready and waiting in the kitchen. She was wearing blue jeans, a black wool pea coat over a cream turtleneck and a red wool scarf, loosely knotted in the front. A navy woollen hat concealed her hair.

  ‘You look very fashionable, I must say,’ observed Kingston, smiling.

  ‘Well, you said to dress warmly.’

  ‘No, I approve. You look great.’

  ‘Okay, then,’ she said, taking one last glance around the kitchen, ‘let’s go see this chapel of yours.’

  ‘Of yours, I believe.’

  ‘I’m not so sure. From what you’ve told me, the place is likely to become some kind of archaeological shrine. Somehow we’re going to have to separate it from the gardens.’

  ‘You’re right. I’ve been thinking about that. It’s obvious we won’t be able to keep it a secret for long, so the sooner we start thinking about dealing with it the better.’

  In five minutes they reached the chapel. Kingston unlocked the door and they stepped into the cool silent interior. It was the first time in his many visits that he had seen the stained glass windows in their full glory. The morning sunshine streaming through them lit up the room with kaleidoscopic colours. Whether by accident or design, the effect was spiritually uplifting.

  At the pulpit, Kingston showed Jamie how he had spotted the subtle difference in the wood graining of the pews, then made a modest ceremony of releasing the catch and starting to raise the pew. As the pew began its upward arc, Jamie gasped. She watched as it locked into the vertical. ‘Amazing!’ she breathed. ‘Awesome!’

  ‘Well, Jamie, here it is,’ Kingston said, as they both stood at the top of the stone steps, looking down into the darkness. ‘Let me switch the lights on and we can go down.’The night before, after their phone con
versation, Kingston had gone to the garden workshop, picked up some cables and low-voltage lighting apparatus, and taken it to the chapel. Within an hour, he had managed to string temporary lighting almost a hundred feet into the catacombs. From there on, they were going to have to rely on a portable Coleman lamp, good for at least eight hours of light, and a flashlight that Jamie carried. With Kingston leading, they went down the steps.

  The lights made navigating the hall much easier and far less daunting than on his first visit. After recovering from her initial awe and uttering a few more exclamations of amazement, Jamie followed silently. Every now and then, aided by illumination from the Coleman lamp, they stopped to look into one of the side rooms. Now, construction and workmanship details could be seen clearly; far more advanced than he’d thought. As they walked silently along the cobbles Kingston was gaining a much greater appreciation of the extent of excavation and engineering that had gone into the construction of the catacombs—and all of it by hand. It seemed unlikely that the monks could have done it unassisted.

  Soon they reached the point where the halls branched off to the left and right; also where the temporary lighting ran out. As they continued down the central hall with Kingston holding the lamp aloft, the surroundings took on a more sinister turn. With their shadows dancing off the walls and pitch darkness only several feet ahead of them, they were walking into the unknown. The brittle silence amplified even the tiniest sound: a pebble dislodged somewhere behind them, a creak of what might be a door sagging on its hinge, or a single drip from condensation or leaching on the walls.

  ‘You sure you want to keep going?’ Jamie said, in a loud whisper, as they passed yet another room on their right.

  ‘I think we should, Jamie. Are you okay?’

  ‘Yes. I’m fine.’

  ‘I don’t think it can go on much farther. We’re a hell of a long way in as it is. It has to end soon.’

  No sooner had he said the words than the hall took a sharp right turn. Round the corner, the hall was considerably wider. The ceiling was higher, too—like a gallery. A half-open door appeared on their left. Kingston shoved it with his foot and walked in, holding the lamp as high as he could. He caught his breath. This room was different from all the others—markedly different. To start with, a metal conduit ran up one wall and across the ceiling. In the centre of the ceiling was a wide, cone-shaped lampshade, the electric light bulb clearly visible. But that wasn’t all. The few pieces of furniture in the room were all modern. No question that they were from the twentieth century.

  Jamie had joined him. ‘What do you make of this then?’ he asked.

  ‘Weird. Looks like it was an office of some kind.’ She looked up at the ceiling. ‘I wonder where the electricity comes from?’

  ‘I can only guess it comes from the house. We’re probably standing right underneath it.’

  Jamie pulled the door back. ‘There’s a switch here,’ she said, flicking it up and down.

  ‘Probably disconnected.’

  ‘Right. What do you think this was, then?’

  ‘I’m not sure. My guess is that, at one point, Ryder discovered these underground rooms and decided that they would make the perfect place to run his art-dealing operation. Can you think of a better set-up?’

  ‘If you’re right, then chances are that they were accessible from the house.’

  ‘Almost certainly, I would say.’

  ‘So we should be able to get into the house from down here, then?’

  ‘Unless he closed it all up.’

  They left the room and continued along the gallery and entered another room on the right. Save for a six-drawer metal filing cabinet pushed up against a corner, it was empty. This room, too, was wired for electricity.

  Kingston had a gut feeling that, in the next few minutes, they would discover Ryder’s secret cache: where he stored his paintings while they were waiting to be sold on the illicit international market. When they finally opened that door, would they find any paintings? Would Fox and his client Girard be proved right? Would it reveal anything more about the mystery surrounding Ryder? Contemplating these thoughts, Kingston ushered Jamie out of the room and they continued along the gallery. How much farther could it go on, he wondered?

  The answer came sooner than expected. Ahead, the light from the lamp was dancing off a wall some thirty feet in front of them, blocking their path. As they approached, a hollow feeling welled up in Kingston’s gut, the kind when the winner’s name is announced and it’s not yours. Glancing sideways at Jamie, he could see that she was experiencing a similar emotion.

  Now that they were closer, they could see that the gallery ended in a solid wall of stone. Kingston took a deep breath, exhaled loudly and put a hand up to his forehead. This was it then: a dead-end in the true sense of the word.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Kingston stood staring at the wall, the lamp hanging by his side. His reaction was confusion, bewilderment and exasperation. He had come so far to find this?

  The disappointment registered on his face was clearly obvious to Jamie, who had chosen not to say anything but instead had gone up to the wall to examine it more closely. As he watched her studying the grey stone, he tried hard to overcome the bitter taste of defeat that in a few seconds had deflated his optimism like a shrivelled balloon. All that was left now was to retrace their steps back to the chapel. Holding the lamp up higher he went over to join Jamie.

  She turned to face him. ‘Look at this,’ she said, placing a hand on the wall just above her head. ‘The stone is the same but the cement or plaster looks newer on this section.’

  Kingston held the lamp close to the wall, moving it horizontally along the line of the cement. ‘You’re right,’he said. ‘It’s been sealed up. I bet this is where the entrance to the house was. Behind, there’s probably a flight of steps like those in the chapel that lead up to a room in the house. It makes sense. It was relatively easy to run electricity down here to this end of the catacombs. And once that was in, he could run power tools, a simple heating and ventilation system—the works.’

  ‘Maybe his hiding place was the other side of the wall. That way he could still get to it from the house.’

  ‘It’s possible. But I still think it makes more sense for it to be on this side. That way the room would be completely closed off from either end.’

  ‘So where is it, then?’

  Kingston shook his head. ‘I wish I knew.’

  ‘I suppose we’d best start back, then.’ She reached a hand out. ‘Why don’t you let me carry that back,’ she said, taking the lamp.

  Kingston sighed. ‘Not much else to do here by the looks of it. At least for now, anyway.’

  ‘One thing’s for sure. Your friend Ferguson is going to have the surprise of his life when he sees all this. Can you imagine?’

  ‘I’ll call him when we get back to the house. I’m sorely tempted to call Chadwick, too, but that can wait.’

  They had reached the door of the second room, the one with the filing cabinet. ‘Let’s take another look,’ said Kingston. He pushed the large iron-bound door all the way back and entered. Jamie followed. A quick glance told them that they hadn’t missed anything the first time: the room was empty.

  Jamie looked up at the glass lampshade hanging from the ceiling. Remembering the first room where she had found the light switch behind the door, she walked over and pulled the door back, fully expecting to see a switch. ‘Jesus—Lawrence,’ she gasped. ‘This is it! I think I’ve found it. We just didn’t look hard enough the first time.’

  Behind the entrance door, hidden when it swung back against the wall, was another, smaller, much newer door.

  Two steps and Kingston was at her side.

  ‘My God! This has to be it.’

  Together, they studied the door, Kingston caressing the smooth surface as if it were the patina of a fine antique. There was no question that it had been installed for security purposes. With no handle or doorknob, the only fe
ature on the flat surface was a circular brass key escutcheon the size of a 10p coin. The key to open it would have to be small, like a padlock key. Kingston traced his hand over the surface then knocked on it with his knuckles. ‘Sounds like metal,’ he said. ‘Hard to tell.’

  ‘How are we going to open it?’

  ‘Get a locksmith down here—or take a stab at trying to drill through it, I guess.’

  ‘Isn’t that difficult?’

  ‘It is. Damned tricky. If you don’t know precisely what you’re doing, you can bugger up the lock and then you’ll never get it open.’

  Jamie watched while Kingston examined the escutcheon again. Staring at it, he was actually thinking back to a time over thirty years ago when he was a captain in the army. Whatever had possessed him at the time he couldn’t imagine but he’d done a stint with Special Forces which, as part of its rigorous training regime in covert operations, survival training and commando techniques, had included, of all things, a course on picking and opening locks. Could he still remember how to do it? He knew that there was an optimum position to drill—and only one. It could also require two different types of drill bit. Jamie broke his train of thought.

  ‘Do we have a cordless drill?’

  ‘I’m sure there’s one in the workshop.’

  Jamie touched his arm. ‘Let’s get out of here. It’s starting to give me the creeps. We can talk about it on the way back.’

  They left the room and retraced their steps back to the chapel. Within ten minutes they were back at the house, and Kingston took off to find a drill. Luckily, Eric Newsome, the gardener in charge of the vegetable garden, was in the workshop when Kingston arrived. He found a cordless drill immediately but the only drill bits they could find were for wood. Kingston called Jamie on his mobile and told her he was taking off for Taunton to buy the drill bits.