'I found all his books in the attic when I was little. Mostly he had rotten taste–pulpy thrillers with a bit of pornography that I didn't understand, printed abroad. And a set of unread Dickens.
'But there was this one beautiful book that I adored. To me that was his real book. And it was, wasn't it! He must have bought it to find out just exactly what he'd got his dirty hands on.'
She stopped, and looked at him in anguish.
'Clever David!' she said bitterly. 'You guessed right, didn't you?
And now you've got the one extra little bit of evidence you need from the villain's daughter. But you did try to soften the blow, you really did. And that was kind of you.'
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He pitied her. She must have known subconsciously the moment he had mentioned Troy, and then had blundered on until her conscious mind had picked up its own warning signals. It was a cruel way to come to the truth.
And what made it worse was that he still couldn't blame Steerforth in his heart. It had been just loot to him. But to her it would always be the unforgivable crime because it had betrayed childhood love and admiration, however she tried to rationalise it.
'Never mind,' he said 'We'll set the record straight: we'll get it back.'
VII
The geese awoke Audley from an uneasy, confused dream. Yet he knew as he woke that it had not been a dream really, for he had never been completely asleep. It had come from the no-man's-land between thought and sleep, a mere jumble of the day's undigested experiences.
He remembered that he had been reading Ceram's Gods, Graves and Scholars, which had been the only thing on his shelves which mentioned Schliemann and Troy in any detail. And Ceram's words had fed his tired mind with images–images of the original panic-stricken burial of the treasure, which had been so hasty that the keys were still in the mouldered locks of the boxes; images of the Schliemanns working feverishly and secretly to hack their prize out of the deep trench in the mound at Hissarlik, with the wreckage of dummy4
six later Troys and three thousand years poised above them.
And images of Steerforth working no less feverishly to hide that prize . . .
And then he had thought irrelevantly of the animals in Berlin zoo, caged not far from the treasure, with the Russian shells bursting about them. Had the Berliners eaten their elephants in the end, like the Parisians in 1870?
It was the beginning of a half-nightmare, which switched back to the trench at Hissarlik. But as he looked down into it, it became the wooden staircase in Morrison's shop. No treasure for Morrison . . .
Then his mind registered the shrieking of Mrs Clark's geese.
At first he thought it was morning, until he saw the moonlight streaming in through his open windows. The damned birds had woken him once before in the night, protesting at some prowling cat or fox, and there was no stopping them once they had started.
All one could do was to shut out as much of the noise as possible.
He reached out for the light switch, only to discover that it no longer seemed to work. He fumbled for his spectacles and shuffled towards the window, cursing under his breath.
He stopped dead a yard from the window, shocked totally awake: someone was crossing a moonlit patch of lawn just beyond the cobbles.
He blinked and drew to one side of the window, covering the lower part of his face with the dark sleeve of his pyjamas–white faces showed up even in darkened windows. The figure, moving delicately across the grass, disappeared into the shadow beside the dummy4
barn. Ten seconds passed like an age, and then two more shadows crossed the moonlit patch from the driveway entrance to the safety of the barn's shadow.
The geese still cackled angrily and Audley felt his heart thump against his chest. Three was too many for him. He had no gun in the house–he had never needed or desired a gun. Faith was asleep just down the passage. If mere burglary was the intention–God! He hadn't even put the Panin file in the safe. But if it was burglary he might frighten them off by switching on the lights.
But the light hadn't worked, he remembered with a pang of panic.
And if it wasn't burglary ... he saw Morrison again, in unnaturally sharp focus, at the bottom of the stairs. This sort of thing just doesn't happen! They'd got no reason –but he didn't know what reason they'd got.
I mustn't think–I must act, he told himself savagely. If you can't fight, run away. If you can't run away–hide!
He whipped his dressing gown from the bed, stuffed the torch from his bedside drawer into his pocket and sprinted down the passage.
She was lying on her side, snoring very softly, one white shoulder picked out by the moonlight. He shook the shoulder urgently.
'Faith! Wake up–and be quiet!' he whispered.
She moaned, and then came to life, startled.
Before she could speak he put the palm of his hand to her mouth.
'We've got visitors,' he hissed as clearly and quietly as he was able.
'Three visitors. We're not going to wait to find out what they want . . . we're going to hide . . . if you understand what I'm saying dummy4
— nod.'
She nodded, wide-eyed.
'Hide your clothes, smooth down your bed–and I'll meet you outside your room in half a minute!'
She nodded again.
He slipped out of her room and raced down the passage again to his study, blessing the day he had chosen to transfer it to the first floor. Pausing only to grab his brief-case he flew back to his bedroom, hurriedly bundled his clothes into a drawer, and pulled up the bedspread.
Faith was waiting for him, pale in the moonlight and hugging her dressing gown round her. She followed him obediently as he made his way to the deeply-recessed window at the head of the stairs.
Audley handed her the brief-case and the torch. Very gently he released the heavy iron catches which held back the shutters and closed out the moonlight. Then he took the left-hand catch and began to turn it anti-clockwise.
Oh God, he prayed, it's always worked before–let it work now!
He gritted his teeth and pulled. Very slowly, and with the smallest subdued rumble, the whole section of the wall between the window and the carved oak newel post which ran from floor to ceiling began to pivot outwards. Behind it was a second wall of smooth stone, broken only by a narrow aperture set low down in the outer corner.
'In you go,' he whispered. 'Crawl along for about ten feet and you'll come to some stone stairs. Wait there–and mind your head!'
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She stood irresolutely, looking from him to the pitch-black hole.
'Where does it go?' she whispered back urgently.
'For God's sake, don't argue–remember Morrison!'
Reluctantly she bent down and wriggled into the aperture, shining the torch ahead of her. For a moment Audley stood in the darkness, straining his ears. The geese had temporarily run out of abuse, and the silence was thick and heavy. Then from somewhere below him, inside the house, there was a muffled click.
Audley pulled the wall almost shut and eased himself backwards into the hole. Mercifully it was always easier to shut than to open.
He reached up and felt for the iron ring on the inner face, and then fumbled for the locking bar. They could turn the iron catch until domesday now.
Awkwardly he crawled backwards along the cold, dusty stone floor until he was able to lift his head and turn round at the foot of the flight of stone steps. Faith was sitting hunched about halfway up.
She shone the torch into his eyes.
'David, I'm not going a step further until you tell me where the hell we are.'
'We're perfectly safe now.'
'I don't care how safe we are. Where are we? What is this–place?'
'It's a priest's hole.'
'A priest's hole?' She shone the torch around her. Cobwebs and dust and rough stone.
'Go on up the stairs. But mind your head until you get to the top.
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T
here's a room there.'
At the top of the steps they emerged into a tiny room, barely big enough for the polythene-covered mattress which was its sole contents, apart from a pickaxe and a battered pewter candlestick with a new candle in it and a box of matches beside it. The room was doorless and windowless, but there was a faint draught of air from two small pigeon holes. It was dry, but cold.
Audley lit the candle and turned off the torch. Then he stripped off the plastic covering from the mattress to reveal an old army blanket.
'Wrap that round yourself,' he said, squatting on the end of the mattress.
She looked at him in the light of the spluttering flame. From her expression he was not sure whether she was going to burst into tears or laughter.
'A priest's hole! I've never seen one before!'
She wasn't going to cry.
'It's not surprising, really. It's an early sixteenth century house, and this was an obstinately Catholic district. Once it was a much bigger house too–we're living in what used to be the servants' quarters, next to the old barn. The rest was burnt down years ago.'
'David–it's romantic! Did the secret pass from father to son, right down to you?'
'Quite the opposite, I'm afraid. My family didn't move here until the Prince Regent's time, and no one told us any secrets. I'm probably the first person to know about this room for centuries.
And I only found it by accident.'
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'By accident? You opened that crazy door, or whatever it was, by accident?'
'Nobody opens that door by accident, Faith. It's designed not to be found even if you're looking for it.
'No, they built this room by adding a false wall to the end of the barn, where it joins the house. Except for this room and the passage to it, that wall's over ten feet of solid masonry, only the barn's so long you don't notice it until you measure it accurately.
And that's how I found it.'
He pulled his dressing gown tightly round him. In the little stone box of a room spring had not yet begun to thaw out winter.
'I had an idea of building a squash court in the barn. It cost too much, but I found out that the outside length didn't match the inside one. I had a feeling that there might be a room here then–no one builds walls ten feet thick. But I couldn't even find an echo. I had to cheat in the end–I broke through the roof, and then through the ceiling.'
He pointed to an irregular patch of new plaster above her.
'So I learnt how the door worked from the inside: the catch turns a diagonal bolt on a ratchet. But you can lock the bolt from the inside–and there were dressed stones ready to pile up in the entrance hole so there wouldn't be any echo there if the priest-hunters started knocking around.
'And the whole wall there is wedge shaped–the false wall–and built on an iron plate. The old owners probably had servants to help swing it out, but I've fixed a little roller at the bottom, underneath.
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And the whole thing pivots on the newel post. It's–rather clever.'
She smiled at him in the candlelight. 'There was a good Catholic David Audley in Elizabethan times, obviously! Did you find any relics in here?'
'Relics?' He stared at her. It was hardly the moment to admit that he had actually hoped for long-lost treasure, and had been bitterly disappointed at finding only a few bits of worm-eaten wood and a candlestick. 'No, I'm sorry to say that the hole was very empty.'
'And this mattress? Is that a precaution against . . . visitors?'
'Good God, no! This sort of thing's never happened to me before. I simply slept in here one night, out of curiosity. I never thought I'd have to take refuge here.'
'Who are they, David–those men outside?'
'I haven't the faintest idea, Faith. This is out of my experience, I'm afraid. But after what happened this afternoon–after what may have happened, I mean–I didn't fancy staying to find out. I know that's not very heroic–but I'm just not heroic . . .'
She put a hand on his arm. 'But very sensible. And far too good-natured to remind me that you had me hanging round your neck anyway!'
She was certainly an understanding wench, thought Audley. And more than that!
'If I'm not heroic, then you make up for it,' he said.,'Not many young women I can think of would sit here as cool as you are with three Russ—' He stopped too late.
'Russians?' She completed the word for him. 'Is that really what dummy4
you think they are?'
He shook his head uneasily.
'It doesn't add up, Faith. It just doesn't add up. Morrison–and now this. And all for a heap of museum loot–I don't care how valuable you say it is.'
She sighed. 'You still don't understand, do you, David? If it was some silly plan for some silly rocket, or the details of a secret treaty, you'd believe it at once. But with something that is truly worthwhile you just can't believe your eyes. Well, perhaps your high-up Russian doesn't have such schoolboy values. Perhaps he thinks this is more important –and naturally he doesn't trust you!
'But we've been all through that, haven't we! And as for being cool
— I'm absolutely frozen! How long do we have to stay in this arctic hole? Your old priests must have been made of stern stuff.'
He stood up stiffly. Another hour might be enough, but in the meantime he ought to try to make her comfortable.
'Here–you stretch out on the mattress, and I'll wrap the blanket around you,' he said.
'What are you going to do?'
He wrapped the loose ends of the rug round her legs. 'You try and snatch some sleep. I'll be quite all right sitting against the wall.'
Actually he was not all right. The unevenness of the wall gouged into his back and the cold stones spread their chill through him. He hunched his shoulders and wrapped his arms tightly across his body.
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'David?'
He grunted.
'What's the pick for?'
The pick?' He tried to think. 'Just insurance. If the door jammed we'd have a job getting out.'
'Couldn't we shout through the air holes?'
'The air holes have got a double right angle in them. It might be days before anyone heard anything.'
She shivered, and he relapsed into unhappy silence. The door jamming had been his special nightmare in the past. That it had worked at all had always rather surprised him. If it failed now, forcing him to hack his way out–that would be the ultimate humiliation. Was it Murphy's Law or Finagle's Law that recognised the malevolence of inanimate objects towards human beings?
'David?'
He grunted again, miserably–what could the woman want?
'Your teeth are chattering.'
He gritted his teeth. 'Sorry.'
There was a pause.
'You can come in with me if you like, under the blanket.'
Audley sat bolt upright, unable for a moment to believe his ears.
But there was no mistaking the invitation: she was holding up the edge of the blanket. The flame of the candle flickered and her shadow danced on the wall behind her.
At length he shook his head.
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'I'm cold and I'm tired and I feel a hundred years old, my girl. But I'm still flesh and blood. And when I crawl under a blanket with a woman it'll never be to stop my teeth chattering. You just try and go to sleep.'
She raised herself on one elbow, looking at him.
'I'm cold and tired too, David. And I'm frightened and I've mixed myself up in I don't know what. And I think my father stole something so big it makes me sick just to think of it ... And–and I'm flesh and blood too.'
She tossed back her pale blonde hair and he saw with surprise that same curiously haughty stare which he remembered from the churchyard. Yet the offer of comfort in exchange for comfort could hardly have been more explicit. Bafflement, rather than any last ditch shred of conscience or caution, held him back.
She wasn't wearing her glasses!
The
contradiction which had plagued him since she had knocked on his door the previous night dissolved: it wasn't haughtiness–she simply couldn't see him clearly!
Without stopping to analyse the curious mixture of relief and lust and protective affection, he reached out for her, and she met him halfway, and more than halfway.
'You silly, silly man,' she whispered in his ear.
He pressed her gently backwards, feeling the old, long-lost excitement: the softness and firmness of her small breasts, the length of her, the smell of her hair mingling with the faint perfume he had sensed in her room.
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She was shrugging herself out of her dressing gown, out of her nightdress–as it came over her head, loosing the pale hair, he felt the skin move over her ribs, skin that impossibly combined warmth with coolness.
The candle was extinguished suddenly–knocked over, snuffed out, it no longer mattered. And the tiny secret room was no longer cold: it was no longer tiny and no longer a room. It was a velvety nothingness moving in its own time and space, starless and endless, with nothing outside it or beyond it, spiralling into infinity.
And then she was holding him tightly and he felt the rough blanket on his shoulders and the sweat prickle on his chest, and he lay holding her until the darkness stopped revolving around them.
She moved into the crook of his arm and he reached across her to feel for the candle.
The matches spilt as he fumbled for them, one-handed, and he struck one against the stone wall. She lay unmoving beside him with the blanket drawn down, unmoving, strands of hair lying damp across her forehead.
'It can't happen often like that, can it?' she said slowly, without looking at him. 'It can't be so good?'
'I don't know. Never before for me.'
'Nor for me.'
Maybe it was only once in a lifetime, he thought. Maybe only when the need and the desire and the fear are united in exactly those proportions. And the person?
He looked down at her again, and then drew the blanket over that dummy4
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