‘I was perfectly all right until that last root. It reached up and grabbed my ankle. Reminded me of those trees in The Wizard of Oz. Remember? They struck out at Dorothy and Toto.’
‘Downright malevolent, some trees are.’
We sat on a felled trunk while I caught my breath. ‘So where do you think this tunnel is?’
‘Well, it would have come out in the parish church, which is just across the river. The vicar says that end has apparently been blocked up; at least he’s never been able to find it. And the entry, in the house, has kept its secret all these years, according to both the vicar and Jim. But.’ He tented his hands and went into his lecturing mode. ‘A long tunnel like that would have had air vents built in, and very likely an escape hatch.’
‘Sure! Rather like an animal’s burrow. Various ways in and out so that, if an enemy was at one hole, the badger or whatever could get out the other.’
‘Exactly. And on one recent foray I found what looked very much like one of those emergency exits. It’s not much farther now; do you think you can make it?’
‘I told you I’m fine. But Alan – you’re not going to make me go into a tunnel, or a cave, or anything like that?’
‘Would I do that to you? No, I just thought I’d rather have you along. I hated the idea of leaving you back at the house all by yourself.’
He sounded apologetic. We’ve worked hard to keep a decent balance between his desire to protect me and my need for independence. Every now and then I get testy about his hovering, but on the whole I find it rather endearing – when not carried to extremes. I patted his arm and we continued amicably.
We were nearing the river now. I could hear the rush of water and smell the freshness. ‘It sounds not quite so . . . fierce, I guess is the word.’
‘It’s gone down a bit,’ Alan agreed. ‘Now watch your step here.’ He guided me around a fallen tree, to the edge of what seemed to be a grassy cliff, if there is such a thing.
‘Erosion of some kind?’ I asked, dubious.
‘I don’t think so. I think it’s a kind of ha-ha.’
A ha-ha, as I learned on a trip to Bath some years ago, is a landscaping device serving the purpose of a fence without creating a barrier to the view. Imagine a lawn sloping away from the manor house towards a meadow where sheep or cows are grazing. It’s a lovely, pastoral scene, but plainly you don’t want the animals coming up and eating all your flowers and shrubs. Nor do you want to see an ugly affair of posts and rails in the middle distance. So you have your army of gardeners (we’re in the eighteenth century at this point, and you’re rich as Croesus) – you have your gardeners terrace the slope so that rather than a smooth incline, the lawn levels off for a few yards and then drops off suddenly, forming something very like a cliff perhaps six feet high. The vertical wall is reinforced with brick or stone, and there you have it. From the house the difference in level is invisible, but the beasts on the other side can’t get to your garden. Somewhere you build a flight of steps so people can get down, if they want to.
‘This is the wrong sort of place for a ha-ha,’ I objected. ‘No lawn, no vista, no livestock.’
‘That’s why I think it’s what we’re looking for. I think they – whoever “they” were, back during the Civil War perhaps – they built this to make possible a concealed door into the tunnel. Or rather out of the tunnel; it would have been used as an exit rather than an entrance.’
‘And you’ve found the door?’ This was getting exciting.
‘I think so. There aren’t any steps left, if there ever were any. I’ll have to lift you down.’
‘Don’t be silly. Help me sit.’
Sitting on the ground isn’t easy when you have titanium knees. They don’t flex as readily as your original equipment. And getting up is even worse. You have to kneel, and that can be very painful. However, I wasn’t going to give in. With Alan’s help I sat, awkwardly, on the muddy, leafy ground and scooted to the edge. Then, using my cane as a prop, I slid down on my bottom.
My slacks would never be the same again, but I made it.
I insisted on getting up without Alan’s help. That required a good deal of manoeuvring, grunting, and at least one yelp, but I was at last standing upright. ‘OK,’ I said, still panting, ‘Show me.’ I brushed some leaves off various bits of clothing.
‘You see that bit of stone? It looked odd to me when I first saw it. Not a match to the rest of the rock nearby.’
I moved closer and scrutinized it. ‘Well – maybe not exactly the same colour. But different rocks are different colours. Aren’t there different sorts of rocks, most places? I never studied geology.’
Alan grinned. ‘It is refreshing, if I may say so, my dear, to discover something you don’t know. In many parts of the country you get a mix of sedimentary and igneous rocks. Those are—’
‘I know what they are. I’m not quite a dunce. Rocks compressed from silt, and rocks created by fire.’
‘Roughly, yes. Well, the fact is, here it’s all sandstone. But this is a piece of much harder stone, and it looks as if it was once part of a building. It doesn’t belong here. So when I discovered it, I tried to work out what it was doing here, and when I came up with the idea of a door, I came back to try to find some way to shift it. I couldn’t, but if I’m right about this, Julie may well have wedged it somehow to elude pursuit. So a spot of force seemed indicated.’ He pulled out of an inner jacket pocket a small but efficient-looking crowbar, and from another pocket a piece of what looked like old lead pipe, and flourished them. ‘Now, if you will hold the pipe a moment while I position the lever . . . good. And I wedge the pipe over the end, thus—’
‘Yes, to extend the crowbar and give yourself more leverage. That much science I know.’
‘Keep your hair on, woman – I wasn’t showing off my male superiority. At least I don’t think I was. You’d best stand back a bit; if Julie mucked about with the hinge points, I may well pull some of the bank down on us.’
He braced himself as well as he could in the mud, took hold of the pipe with both hands, and pushed hard toward the wall to force the business end of the lever outwards.
It was as well I obeyed his injunction to step back. He did bring down part of the bank, but that wasn’t the real surprise. It was the torrent of water that gushed out, shoving the heavy piece of granite aside like a falling domino, and knocking Alan off his feet.
He wasn’t hurt. That was the first thing I checked, the only thing I cared about. Sopping wet, muddy, and smelling like a swamp – an old swamp – he got to his feet with difficulty only because the footing was so slippery.
When I was sure he was intact, I studied him as he looked at me. We both burst into somewhat hysterical laughter. ‘You look like the Tar-Baby,’ I said when I could speak.
‘And you like a most disreputable bag lady. We shall have to creep into the house by a back way.’
‘What I’d like to do is get to the laundry room, strip, and wash all our clothes on the spot. But getting up to our room—’
‘—stark naked, through several acres of stately home—’
That set us off again, but we sobered as we clambered up the bank and squelched off toward the house.
‘You were wrong,’ I said to Alan.
‘I was,’ he admitted.
‘It was a great idea, though.’
‘It never occurred to me that the tunnel would have flooded, though I should have thought of it, given the rains we’ve had.’
‘And the tunnel runs under the river, and might have developed a leak or two in the past several hundred years.’
‘Yes. In any case, Julie could certainly not have hidden in there. I was wrong.’
‘Or,’ I said grimly, ‘if she did, and the flood came later . . .’ I didn’t need to finish the thought. I went on, hurriedly. ‘But assuming she is alive and hiding – or being hidden – somewhere, the question is, where?’
And to that question, neither of us could come up with
an answer.
When we got back to the house, we managed to sneak up to our bedroom without seeing anyone. I was tired, and nearly as wet and dirty as Alan, but when I had shed my impossible clothes and cleaned up a bit, I wanted some tea.
‘Alan,’ I called into the bathroom, where he was relishing a hot bath – his second, the first having removed only the top layer of grime. ‘Alan, we’re out of tea. Will you disown me if I go down to the kitchen?’
‘You could ring.’
‘I’m not very good at that, and besides, I want to talk to Rose. She seemed, this morning, thoroughly recovered from whatever fit of superstition assailed her last night, but I’d like to make sure she’s OK. I promise I won’t let anyone lure me into a closet, and if I’m not back soon, you can come looking for me.’
‘And don’t think I won’t!’ he growled.
I headed for the kitchen.
‘Mrs Martin, what can I do for you?’ Rose Bates was once again her cool, efficient self, disposed to resent my presence in her kitchen.
‘I’m pining for some tea, and I’m sorry, Rose, but I’m just not used to asking someone else to do what I can perfectly well do for myself. It seems really rude to ring a bell and summon you to my side when you’re busy doing something else. Is the kettle hot?’
She pursed her lips. ‘It will be in a moment. I’ll get a tray.’
I had thought we had established friendly relations, and wondered why she was now snubbing me. Maybe now that she had her electricity back and could cook properly, she didn’t want help or companionship. In any case, I’d been put firmly in my place. I sat on a kitchen chair, feeling foolish, while she prepared a tray: cloth, cups and saucers, spoons, sugar, lemon and a plate of biscuits. I didn’t dare protest that after that breakfast I wouldn’t need food for a week. Nor did I comment on the lemon, assuming that the milk was used up, or sour. Electricity or not, it would be some little time before the household routine was back to normal.
When Rose had poured the boiling water and put the pot on the tray, I murmured my thanks and escaped to our bedroom, where Alan was pacing, in his dressing gown.
‘Safely returned from my dangerous mission,’ I said, and put the tray down. ‘My love, I really am sorry to worry you, but you know me.’
‘For my sins,’ he said, but with a smile. ‘You can’t have had much of a talk with Mrs Bates. I’ve only just got out of the tub.’
‘She wouldn’t talk at all – back on her high horse. I don’t think I’ll ever be an Englishwoman, Alan. I just can’t get the hang of “dealing with the servants”.’
‘Good job we don’t have any, then. I gather she was so annoyed with you she forgot the milk?’
‘I didn’t dare ask, but I imagine we’ve run out, or else it’s turned. And I didn’t really want the biscuits, but I didn’t want to offend her. I’m sure they’re homemade, and they look delicious.’
‘They are,’ said Alan, popping a second one into his mouth. ‘Go ahead. You walked off your breakfast.’
‘I’d have to walk home and back to walk off that breakfast,’ I retorted, taking a biscuit. ‘And speaking of home . . .’
‘Yes. I tried once while you were downstairs. No signal. But I’ll try again.’ He found the cell phone, pushed the button for Jane Langland’s number, listened, and shook his head. ‘A signal, but full of noise,’ he said, closing the phone. ‘It’s progress of a sort. Now, are you ready for a nap, or do you want to do some more exploring with me?’
‘Not outside! I just got clean. I have to start our clothes washing, but after that – what did you have in mind?’
He leered at me and twirled an imaginary moustache. ‘What I often have in mind – but later, m’dear, later. For now, how about the case of the hidden mummy?’
TWENTY-FIVE
‘It’s not so bad with lots of light,’ I said in some surprise. We were in the bedroom with the hidden room, and Alan had opened the concealed door – carefully, so the grisly contents wouldn’t fall out again. Alan had invited Tom and Lynn along, so he would have some help moving the mummy, and Ed, to take pictures of all the stages, and of course Pat came along with Ed. Jim and Joyce were there, too – it was, after all, their house, and their mummy, so to speak. So we were quite a little party, missing out only Laurence, who was still keeping to his bed, and the vicar, keeping watch over him.
The room was very cold. Either the central heating hadn’t yet extended to this room, or it hadn’t been turned on here. I shivered, not only from the cold.
Lynn wasn’t terribly thrilled about seeing the horrid thing again, but neither Alan nor Tom would allow her to stay alone in her room, so she and I stayed in a corner of the room, looking the other way, while the men very carefully moved the body out of its prison and placed it on a writing table, Ed documenting every step of the way. Jim and Joyce watched with, I thought, great distaste, while Pat was frankly enjoying the proceedings.
‘I don’t quite understand about the preservation of the body,’ said Lynn. ‘I thought mummification was a complicated process, embalming and wrapping and all sorts of gruesome proceedings.’
‘I don’t know a lot about it either, but I’m sure I read in some book or other that natural mummification can take place when the conditions are right. It would be very dry in there, next to the fireplace, and surely hot when there were fires. The dryness would help, but I would have thought the heat would cause decay, rather than preservation.’
‘But there would have been very little heat, actually,’ said Joyce, who had drifted over to join us. ‘This was one of the rooms that was apparently never used, or not for the past many years, anyway. No one ever told us why not. I suppose I thought it was simply a matter of too many rooms to look after, and never having enough guests to need the space. I know when we first looked at the house, this room and several of the others in this wing looked like Miss Havisham’s parlour, right down to the spider webs. Ugh!’ She shuddered. ‘It almost put me off the place for good.’
‘It’s a pity,’ said Lynn. ‘It’s a lovely room, and once you get the grounds cleaned up, the view will be spectacular.’
‘Yes, but don’t you see?’ I was getting excited. ‘There might have been a very good reason why this room, and the adjacent ones, were shut up and never used. If someone in the family knew—’
There was a subdued commotion in the other corner of the room. ‘Eureka!’ said Pat softly, and Ed chimed in ‘Gloriosky!’
We looked over to see Alan looking gratified. He held in his hands a small dark object, while from his fingers dangled a black chain.
‘We’ve covered her face, ladies, so you can come and see without becoming unduly distressed.’ Alan talks that way when he’s reverted to policeman mode. We moved nearer. I sniffed cautiously, not sure how much of this my stomach could take, but to my surprise the only smell was a faint mustiness, so I got close enough to see properly.
‘This,’ said Alan, holding up the chain, ‘has been blackened by soot, but it will clean up nicely, I think, as I believe it’s gold. I don’t know if you can tell, in its piteous state, but it seems to be a locket. If there are pictures inside, and if they are well-preserved, it may be of great help in identifying our young lady here. However, we may not need it for purposes of identification.’
With the air of a conjuror producing the rabbit, he held out Exhibit B. ‘We found this wallet in her pocket. It contains money, in the old currency. We haven’t counted it, but I saw a pound note and a half-crown. Those haven’t been around for a while, which will help us date the corpse. Most important, however, is this.’ He showed us, in a cracked vinyl window pocket, what was unmistakably a driving licence. ‘Issued in 1958 to one Annie Watkins, born 1940, address Branston Abbey, Branston, Kent.’
There was a quick intake of breath from someone in the room. I couldn’t tell who, and neither, from the look on his face, could Alan. In that moment he might have been a hound who had caught a faint whiff of fox. His head came up and
I could almost see his nose twitch. ‘Did that ring a bell with someone?’ he asked, calmly enough.
Pat. It had to be Pat. She was the only one whose history in the village went back far enough. She would hardly have been born in 1958, I thought, but she might have heard something, might know the family name. She said nothing, however, and her face was utterly bland – which in itself was enough to tell me she was hiding something.
‘Very well. If you think of something, any of you, come and tell me at once, please. I ask this for your own protection. Knowledge of a crime—’ He was interrupted by a loud noise out on the lawn, loud and getting louder. ‘Is that what I hope it is?’ he asked, and strode to the window.
Just settling on the lawn, with that gentle lightness that always seems so inappropriate for something its size, was a small blue-and-white helicopter marked POLICE.
Alan sprang into instant action. ‘Tom, I’ll ask you and Jim to stay here with our poor Annie. Dorothy, I’d like you with me, if you will.’
Leaving the rest to do as they liked, which was to trail after us, Alan sprinted out of the room at a much faster pace than I could manage. ‘I’ll catch up,’ I called to him. He said something and disappeared around a corner. It was left to Joyce to guide us through the maze of corridors and staircases and out the terrace doors.
Alan was shaking hands with the two people who had climbed out of the helicopter. The rotors had, mercifully, been turned off and were slowing to a stop. I panted up to Alan, and he turned to me. ‘Dorothy, these are Detective Constables Price –’ he nodded to the attractive woman – ‘and Norris. My wife, Dorothy Martin.’ We shook hands all round, and Alan went on. ‘The constable in Branston saw our signals and sent for help, and this is the handsome response.’
‘I can’t possibly tell you how glad we are to see you,’ I said, nearly in tears from the relief. ‘I don’t know what Alan has told you, but we’ve been having a pretty bad time here.’
‘I’ve not said anything beyond that. Miss Price, Mr Norris, if you will come into the house— oh, this is our hostess, Mrs Moynihan – perhaps we can take a few minutes to put you in the picture.’
A Dark and Stormy Night Page 17
