by Paul Finch
O’Calligan pressed on, turning a corner and crawling downhill again, before finding on his right another hinged panel. He paused, asking himself which room this secret entrance gave access to. But before he had the chance to check, the panel was opened. Bright light fell into O’Calligan’s eyes. He had to shield them, but that didn’t prevent his being squirted with a fine spray of some pungent, almost noxious perfume. He gasped, coughed, wafted in vain at the substance. The next thing, the panel was slammed closed again and he heard a bolt being thrown.
At first he was confused, disoriented. He’d dropped his candle, and it had gone out. As he struggled in the blackness, he cracked his head against the low brick ceiling, which fleetingly stunned him. He wasn’t sure how long passed, probably less than a minute, before he then heard something else: a grinding of what sounded like iron wheels, and the groaning of a pulley-system. Another noise followed – like a grating of stone. For some reason, O’Calligan imagined a heavy piece of cage-work being slowly lifted. A chill went through him. What exactly was at the heart of this house? What did this twisting labyrinth of passages finally connect with?
A second later – when he heard the fast-approaching skitter of claws, and the soft brushing of lank, wet fur against brickwork – he realised that he didn’t want to find out. Not in this situation, enclosed in a space where he could wield neither gun nor blade, and drenched with some foul ichor, the sole purpose of which was surely to mark him as prey. He scrambled around and lumbered frantically back in the opposite direction. Whatever he’d heard, however, was coming swiftly. Claws that were surely the size of eagle’s talons, if not bigger, were fairly clattering along the straw-covered brickwork.
He rounded a bend and again saw the grille to Lady Foxworth’s bathroom. He lunged wildly forward tearing the knees from his breeches, scraping the flesh beneath. The thing, whatever it was, was maybe fifteen yards behind when he actually reached the grille. Without hesitation he folded his knees to his chest and kicked at it with the soles of his boots. Two such blows and the grille went through. O’Calligan hurled himself after it, falling full length into the bathroom, landing on the tiled floor beside the tub. He leapt up and staggered away. There would be a door behind one of the curtains, but maybe there was no time for that. He grabbed automatically at the hilt of his sabre, but there was still something else he was looking for – and then he spied it! As in all the rooms here, a bell was present, hanging from the bathroom’s ceiling, perhaps nine feet up.
Then there came a low, sibilant hiss.
O’Calligan froze, before staring back at the high aperture in the wall.
Two burning eyes regarded him from its darkness. They were like buttons, only larger, gleaming with candlelight. The Irishman didn’t wait to see more. He drew his sword, swept it up and struck the bell, which rang three sonorous tones in response. Still, the eyes regarded him. But, a moment later, as he’d fervently hoped, they withdrew into the blackness.
O’Calligan dropped to one knee and leaned on his sabre. His breath came in heaving gasps. His torso was so slick with sweat that his torn and filthied shirt clung to it like a second skin. Not that he could afford to take too long to recover. The time had come to tell the others what he knew.
*
“This had better be worthwhile, O’Calligan,” Judge Prendergast grumbled. He crouched before the drawing room hearth in his housecoat and bed-cap, and jammed a poker into the dying coals. “As if things aren’t difficult enough, now you’re getting us up at three o’clock in the blasted morning.”
The other man present, Rupert, was stripped down to his shirtsleeves, wore his sword and pistol at his waist, and regarded the Irishman with deep suspicion.
“Gad!” the judge suddenly said, wrinkling his porcine nostrils. “O’Calligan, you smell like … well, I don’t know what you smell like!”
The Irishman nodded. “It was almost the death of me.”
“Did someone attack you?” Rupert asked.
“I’ll explain everything shortly.”
A second later Cedric came in. He looked bleary-eyed with fatigue, but he closed the door behind him. “Sorry, my lords,” he began, “but I was … oh, did you wish me to bring her ladyship? Only, I’ve just been up there. She mentioned something earlier about taking a sleeping-draught. I wanted to ensure she hadn’t done, with the murderer still loose.”
“It’s alright, Cedric, “O’Calligan said. “She’ll be quite safe.”
“Well, O’Calligan?” the judge demanded. “Hurry it up, man. We need some sleep at least.”
O’Calligan turned to face them. “I’m afraid there’ll be no more sleep tonight. Not for any of us, and once we’ve finished here, not for Lady Foxworth.” He paused. “Because, much as it pains me to report this … she is the instigator of these events.”
Rupert’s eyes widened. “You Irish rogue! That’s a devil of an accusation!”
“I’d shout less and think more if I were you, Captain Foxworth … I very much doubt that you’d have been leaving this building alive if your sister had had her way.”
“It could be you misspeak yourself, O’Calligan!” the judge put in, equally astonished. “I think you’d better explain.”
“I will, but first a question of the young captain here.” O’Calligan turned again to Rupert. “How long, my lord, has your sister been King James’s mistress?”
There was a stunned silence, before Rupert spluttered in outrage. “What do you … how dare you …”
“I overheard you and she discussing it not two hours ago,” O’Calligan added.
“You spied on us, you blaggard!”
“Until officially removed from my post, it’s my duty to spy. Another duty I had, as her ladyship’s official gaoler, was to accompany her on her many trips to Whitehall. Usually she was summoned there to answer some minor charge of libel. I now realise what the real purpose was, however.” He shook his head, as though the truth had been under his nose for ages and he hadn’t noticed it. “She would spend many lengthy sessions being … interviewed by His Majesty.”
Rupert had turned red in the face, but he was no longer refuting the charge, which Judge Prendergast noticed. “Is this true, Rupert?” the judge asked.
“I can’t deny it,” the young man finally admitted, though it clearly agnonised him. “But I didn’t know myself until this evening, when she told me.”
“Good Lord,” the judge said. “I knew she was profligate with her favours, but King James?”
“The fact that he was king is irrelevant,” O’Calligan put in. “He wasn’t the first king in Lady Foxworth’s bed. His brother Charles had been there before him.”
“His brother Charles had been in every gentlewoman’s bed.”
“That’s the point,” O’Calligan continued. “In Charles’s case there was no scandal. It happened with mundane repetitiveness. With King James, however, the matter is more delicate. James’s daughter Mary is now married to the Prince of Orange, and she is a woman notoriously protective of her mother, Queen Anne. It seems highly likely – and no doubt you share this opinion too, Captain Foxworth – that once Mary has herself become queen, which must now be imminent, her father’s mistresses, of which your sister is only one, will be reckoned with.”
There was another silence as the reality of the situation sank in.
“Contrary to popular belief,” O’Calligan added, “and I freely admit that I shared in this belief, Lady Foxworth does not await the arrival of the new administration with any enthusiasm. If anything, it’s likely to be the ruin of her. The very least she can expect is a loss of influence at Court, but probably a dismissal from all royal favour and patronage as well, and maybe a thorough investigation of her affairs …”
“All this is true!” Rupert interrupted with sudden desperation. “It was a terrible miscalculation by my sister, and as such she now intends to hide her shame by living abroad. But does that make her a murderess?”
“On its own, no,” O�
��Calligan said. “Is it beyond the realms of possibility, though, that she thought she’d rid herself of a few enemies first. Enemies who, once she was overseas, would be beyond her reach.”
Rupert shook his head. “This is madness.”
“Is it?” O’Calligan wondered. “Lord Chillerton caused an uproar by publicly demanding monies from your family because of an unfortunate shipping disaster. Lord Lightbourne sought your sister as his lover, and though he never enjoyed that pleasure, his vicious-tongued wife spread scathing gossip about her. Judge Prendergast, here, sat on the panel that sent relatives of hers to the gallows. I was her prison-keeper, for Heaven’s sake. We all of us had wronged her. Even you were likely to die … because if you lived she couldn’t lay claim to the entire Foxworth fortune, which she needed to finance her new life abroad.”
Again Rupert shook his head. “Pure supposition.”
“I agree. But there’s more … if you’ll come with me.”
O’Calligan led them upstairs to the chill bedroom where the Lightbournes lay. He took a candle, and approached the section of skirting-board where the trapdoor was concealed. With one kick, he’d broken it open. Beyond it, he showed them the black passages that wound worm-like through the innards of the house.
“There are hidden access-ways, just like this, in virtually every room in Silvercombe Hall. Either concealed in the wainscoting, the kick-boards or, possibly in the case of the Chillertons, inside the chimney breast. They are all exceptionally small and skillfully constructed, which makes them very difficult to detect from the outside.”
“But who made them, and how?” Rupert asked, now looking more puzzled than distressed.
“It wouldn’t be difficult,” O’Calligan said. “The tunnels were already there, and your father’s refurbishment, which allegedly covered them, was only paper-thin.”
“What’s their purpose?” Judge Prendergast wondered.
“I’ll show you. Come.”
O’Calligan took them back downstairs into the main hall, then along a passage that veered beneath the grand staircase. A low door was set there. It was locked, but O’Calligan bade Cedric bring tools again, and a moment later the door was down. Beyond it they found the cubby-hole room that the Irishman had entered via the priest’s hole.
“So?” Prendergast grunted. “It’s an under-stair wardrobe. Most homes have one.”
“But this one’s been adapted for a different use,” O’Calligan said. He indicated the row of hanging ropes. “These are bell-pulls, my lord. Each one is connected to a different room. Once they were used to alert Catholic fugitives hiding out at Silvercombe. Now they’re used to alert a very different sort of person. In fact, to call him off.” His expression had become grave. “The bell we heard when Lady Lightbourne was attacked was not rung by her as an alarm. Whoever rung it – and they probably did it from in here – did it to recall her assassin.”
Judge Prendergast still seemed bewildered. “So why didn’t we hear the same when the Chillertons were slain?”
O’Calligan had already considered this. “The Chillertons’ room was the only one on the east wing, whereas the Lightbournes were housed at the very top of the stairs, in a central location.”
“And when Lord Lightbourne, himself, was attacked?”
“There was considerable noise in the drawing room at that moment,” O’Calligan said. “The maid was frantic, there was wild shouting. It may also be that, once an assault is complete, the beast returns to its lair by instinct. The bell might only be used in the event of an emergency.”
“Beast?” Judge Prendergast stuttered. “Lair? What the devil are you talking about?”
The Irishman now crossed the wardrobe to the second locked door. “With luck, this little-used portal will answer all your questions.” He used the same tools as before to remove the door from its hinges. Beyond it, steep steps descended into a dank and dripping shaft.
“What’s this place?” Rupert murmured as they went down, in a voice so dazed that clearly, even though he’d visited Silvercombe many times in his life, he’d never been to this part of the house before.
“The proverbial hidden room, I’m afraid,” O’Calligan replied. “It might once have been connected to the cellars or undercroft, but it isn’t any more.”
Ten feet down, they entered a dirty, dungeon-like area, its low roof supported by heavy brick pillars. A single torch in a wall-bracket cast only a weak, glimmering light, but it was sufficient to show a long work table, and on top of it a variety of curious objects.
“In here, I suspect, the vile work was both planned and executed,” O’Calligan added. “The killer is in many ways a mindless brute. It needed a lure to bring it to its victims. This is that lure.” He picked up a small mixing-bowl filled with brownish, oily fluid.
“What is it?” Rupert asked.
O’Calligan shook his head. “Who knows? Some concoction used as part of the creature’s training.” Next, he showed them a green bottle with a rubber valve attached. “It was sprayed onto me from this perfume-dispenser, or a similar one.” He squeezed the rubber, and moisture puffed into the air. Its odour was quite distinctive.
“It’s the same smell,” Rupert confirmed.
“The same, I imagine, that you’d notice if you burned one of these,” O’Calligan said, sidling along to a pile of tallow candles. “Certain candles in this house have been impregnated with the same agent. I believe one such was given to Lord and Lady Chillerton.”
“By Jove!” the judge blurted out. “There was a curious smell in that room.”
“It probably became evident when the candle had burned half-way down,” O’Calligan said. “A clever device. And just to make sure it wasn’t detected, that candle was later removed. If you remember, Cedric, it wasn’t there when we went back to the room?”
Cedric nodded, almost despondently. “That’s right, sir, it wasn’t.”
“Lady Lightbourne’s pomander had also been taken,” O’Calligan added. “You recall I said there was something missing after she’d died? At the time we looked for jewelry, but actually it was the pomander that Lady Foxworth herself tied to Lady Lightbourne’s wrist as a Christmas gift. You see these ingredients?” And he presented a dish containing dried, sliced oranges, bundles of herbs and what looked like a scattering of cinnamon and nutmeg. “That pomander was made up down here. Almost certainly, it too was laced with the fatal material, so that at some point the smell was given off. We didn’t notice it when we arrived up there because the window was open. The cold air had wafted it away.”
“But if the smell had gone and the pomander been taken, how was Lady Lightbourne’s husband killed?” Rupert asked.
O’Calligan moved to the final item on the work table. It was a block of household notepaper, gold-trimmed.
“We found fragments of paper just like this in his fire.” He glanced up at them. “An element of conjecture is perhaps required at this point. Suppose an unsigned letter was slipped under the bedroom door. Who knows what it contained … maybe a promise to reveal the identity of Lady Lightbourne’s murderer before the night was out. Whatever it said, suppose it intrigued Lord Lightbourne enough for him to keep it secret. Suppose it also instructed him to burn it once he’d read it.”
“You mean the letter itself was imbued with the substance?” the judge said. He sniffed at the notepaper. “Good God, it is.”
“As soon as it burned, the smell became strongly noticeable,” O’Calligan said. “Again, it became a deadly lure.”
“It’s ingenious,” the judge replied.
“And quite fiendish.” O’Calligan moved to a corner, where, alongside another line of bell-ropes, some bulky object was hidden beneath a dingy sailcloth. “Because the real horror, gentlemen, lies under this.”
When he whipped the sailcloth back, even O’Calligan wasn’t entirely sure what he would find. He’d already heard the thing, but he hadn’t seen it. He hadn’t expected, however, to find an empty cage.
It was filthy, packed with straw and sawdust, and all manner of foul detritus, but it was empty all the same. However, as they gazed at it, their eyes took in other things. The cage was large, for example; much larger than the average rabbit-hutch. Also, it had what looked like a gate in its rear section, and, thanks to a rope-and-pulley system, that gate currently hung open, though it only gave access to a wire-grille passage which vanished through a cavity in the wall, almost certainly joining with the labyrinth of priests’ tunnels.
It seemed to take an age before the realisation struck home.
“It’s on the prowl again,” O’Calligan said slowly.
Just as he said this, a shrill scream came echoing down through the vaults of the house, amplified by the network of passages.
“Hannah,” Rupert breathed. “Good God, Hannah!” And he dashed to the stairs.
They raced up through the building, drawing their weapons, and at last reached the door to Lady Foxworth’s apartments. Inevitably it was locked. This time they didn’t wait for tools, but went at it with the hilts of their swords and grips of their pistols, and at last they broke it down and burst through. The opulent living chamber within was bare of life, but on the far side another door stood open on the bedroom. They dashed through it as a group – and were greeted by a scene of nightmarish terror.
The handsome mistress of the house lay twisted across her divan. Her flowing chemise had been torn open at the front, exposing her breasts but also her milk-white throat, now ripped asunder and spouting blood. On the far side of the chamber, crouched in a corner as though trying to hide amid the drapes and cushions, the miscreant was still present.
“Behold, gentlemen,” O’Calligan cried, “the assassin of Silvercombe Hall.”
They gazed, hair prickling, upon a ghastly, misshapen creature. It was a rodent; of that there was no doubt. In fact, by its hooked front teeth, grey matted fur and blood-dabbled whiskers, it was a rat, a buck-rat. But the size of it! Though huddled in a ball, it was over three feet long from nose to tail. Its crimson eyes were pin-points of evil, its claws horribly twisted, as though they’d many times been broken and re-formed. As it gazed back at them, it gave a hideous, hoarse squeal, a deep, guttural thing that seemed to rumble in its blood-filled guts.
