by Sara Rosett
I tugged and pulled on the handle, but the door was solid and didn’t budge an inch. I remembered with a sinking feeling the secure latch I’d seen on the other side of the door when I came down to the office to pick up the papers for Annie.
I pounded on the door a few times with my fist and gathered my breath, then screamed for help, but broke off before I’d gotten more than a breathy syllable out. The effort had caused the single bass note that had been drumming in my head to burst into a full symphony of clanging pain. I thought I would pass out for a moment and rested my head against the cool grain of the wood until the worst of it passed. Then I pushed away from the door. Wherever Dominic was, I didn’t want to summon him back. My screams in the basement wouldn’t be heard several floors above…unless there was some sort of venting or ductwork down here.
The brochure said this area was used as a storeroom. That meant there had to be a light here somewhere. I traced my fingers along the edge of the wall on the side of the door near the handle, but didn’t find a switch. I turned and made my way, again zombie-like, across the flagstones, but this time I waved my arms higher. I stumbled into something cold and chest-high.
I ran my hands over the smooth squared-off metal and encountered several handles spaced down the front—a filing cabinet. It wasn’t locked, and I rifled through the drawers, but only felt paper. I resumed my slow progress, waving my arms in the air. After a few more steps, my fingers brushed against a string. I tugged, and a single light bulb came on.
Pain stabbed through my head at the sudden brightness. It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust, but when they did, I realized the bulb was actually rather dim. It threw a weak circle of light around the room, illuminating a square room with a few more filing cabinets, a set of shelves, and several stacks of cardboard file boxes, but no convenient plumbing lines or vents.
I went back to the door, pulled and pushed and checked the hinges. There was no way I’d be able to get out this way. It was a solid piece of workmanship, built long ago before plastic and pressboard even existed.
I turned away—slowly to keep the nausea at bay—and looked around the room again. That’s when I noticed another arched doorframe on the far side of the room. It was almost completely hidden by a stack of boxes, but it was obvious from the marks in the dirt that they’d been moved recently. Someone had shifted them forward enough to get the door open. And the best part was that the door didn’t have a lock on it, only a single pin dropped down through a latch to keep the door closed.
I removed the pin and dragged the door open. It scraped across the flagstones with a creak, and a chilly breeze swept over me. That creak I’d heard earlier hadn’t been the building settling. It must have been this door to the tunnels groaning on its hinges.
I’d forgotten for a little bit how cold I was, but the draft of air reminded me. The storeroom wasn’t warm, but it was several degrees warmer than the tunnel in front of me. Flannel pajamas are definitely not the best attire for exploring catacombs, but I certainly wasn’t going to wait around the storage room. As I went through the door, my gaze caught on the set of shelves positioned next to the door, which contained mostly file boxes, but a heavy flashlight with several dusty fingerprints visible on the barrel also stood on the edge of one shelf.
I snatched it up and pulled the door closed. It rasped over the flagstones as I switched on the light. I never would have thought that I’d be glad to make my way through catacombs in the middle of the night alone, but it was a definite improvement over being locked in the storage room.
I ran the beam of the flashlight around. I was in a tunnel with rough rock walls and ceiling, which was low enough that I had to duck my head as I walked forward, but not so low that it felt claustrophobic. I could hear the plink of water as it dripped slowly, but this area of the tunnel was dry. The thought of Dominic returning propelled me forward, but I didn’t want to get lost in the tunnels either. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any string or breadcrumbs on me, but as I moved forward in my little circle of light, I noticed a footprint in the dirt. When I placed my socked foot inside it, my foot almost looked petite, so a man’s shoe. It was flat soled and had left a grid print. I bet it was from Dominic’s shoe. From the lack of lights and other footprints, the tunnel certainly didn’t look like it was used frequently.
I moved forward, and the walls narrowed, which made me nervous, but then the passageway widened. I came to a junction where the flashlight picked out several other tunnels branching away from it. I stood uncertainly for a moment, then shifted the flashlight to the ground. Someone in large shoes with a grid pattern on flat soles had walked across the open area to the tunnel that branched to the left. The footprints weren’t in a neat unbroken line, but there were enough of them that I could see someone had walked that direction, then returned.
I crossed the open space and entered the other tunnel following the footprints. After a few yards, I had to slow down to pick my way through debris. Rocks, chunks of what looked like marble and other stones, littered the ground along with sections of pipes tinted orange with rust that looked like the Roman pipes that I had seen in the museum. The sound of water dripping became more frequent. Overhead, tiny stalactites only a few inches long hung down from the ceiling. The passageway turned, and the walls changed from rock to stones set in masonry.
I came to a stone archway, and the passage widened even more. I was glad to see that the walls became smooth with wires and modern pipes snaking along them, but debris still covered the ground.
Ahead, the flashlight’s glow picked out a metal gate. Heart thumping, I scrambled over the last few rocks, expecting to see a padlock holding the door closed. I did not want to have to retrace my steps and risk running into Dominic.
When I reached the gate, I found it was closed, but not locked. The metal latch had been neatly sliced so that the gate swung free at my touch. Someone—it must have been Dominic—had used a bolt cutter or some similar tool to slice through the metal lock. The gate swung back with only a faint squeak.
A whisper of noise made me glance back over my shoulder and swivel the flashlight behind me. But it was only a loose section of wire that I must have disturbed. The end of it slithered off a piece of stone to the ground, and I let out a slow breath.
I felt flushed with the heat of an adrenaline rush and chilled to the bone at the same time. My heart pounded, but the coldness from the stones seeped through my now slightly damp socks, and the layers of my sweater and pajamas didn’t do much to insulate me from the chilly air of the passageway.
Shivering, I tucked my elbows into my sides to conserve a little body heat and moved on. This section of the tunnel was even wider and higher and had more decorative arches and stairs. I heard a noise that sounded like laughter and stopped in my tracks.
Yes, there it was again. I took a few cautious steps forward, and saw a pattern of stripes—shadows—falling on the rough floor of the passageway. I tilted the flashlight up as I hurried forward. A metal grill was set in the ceiling.
The laughter rang out again, a higher pitched tone than Dominic’s deep voice. I zigzagged the light across the grill and shouted, “Hello!”
The light caught the outline of shoes as someone walked over the grill. “Hey! Can you hear me?” I called.
I could hear a male voice suffused with laughter. “Mate, I’ve had one too many. I’m hearing voices.”
“No, wait.” I waved the flashlight frantically. “Down here. Look down. I’m under the grill.”
A face appeared where the feet had been. I couldn’t see much, only a faint pale circle of a young man’s face and a swath of hair that fell forward as he bent to peer through the iron bars. I shifted the angle of the flashlight so that it illuminated more of me than the grill. “Thank goodness. Please, call the police. Ask for Inspector Byron—”
“There’s a girl down here,” he called to someone behind him, and a shout answered him. “No, I’m not sloshed. Well, yes, I am, I suppose. But I know
what I’m looking at. It’s a girl under the grill.” This seemed to strike him as incredibly funny, and he tumbled sideways as giggles overcame him while he repeated the phrase.
“This is incredibly important,” I said, my voice shaking. “You’ve got to pull yourself together and call—”
The guy’s friend reached him. “Up you come. You’re hallucinating.”
“No, he’s not,” I said, and waved the flashlight over the grill again. I gripped the wall below the grill, found a toehold on the cold rock wall, and pulled myself up a few feet. “I’m down here.” But the giggling kid had rolled over the grill.
Then a deep, commanding voice shouted something that stripped the laughter out of both of them. The second guy caught the first guy’s collar and hauled him to his feet as he said, “Come on. We’ve got to shove on.”
I dropped back down to the ground and clicked the flashlight off. What if it were Dominic out there on the street?
I shifted to the darkness away from the moonlight. But wouldn’t it be more likely Dominic was in the hotel? If he was in the hotel, why had he gone off and left me in the storage room? Maybe he was out walking the streets of Bath on some errand. I didn’t want to think about what kind of errand he might be running after leaving me unconscious in the basement in the middle of the night.
If it wasn’t Dominic, it might be a sober person I could flag down and ask for help. I might not have another chance to catch someone’s attention. The streets of Bath weren’t packed in the middle of the night like they were during the day.
I gripped the barrel of the flashlight, ready to click it on in an instant if I could distinguish that the person wasn’t Dominic.
A figure appeared, crouching low next to the grill. Again, the slats of the grill made it hard to see the person, but I could distinguish pale blond hair, not dark hair like Dominic had. I surged forward, clicking on the flashlight. “Wait! Don’t go. I need help.”
“Ms. Sharp, is that you?”
“Constable Gadd,” I said, as a surge of relief washed through me.
“Yes, ma’am. What’s happened? I went to the hotel, but Mr. Bell said you’d gone back to bed and told him to tell me that it was all a mistake.”
I groaned. “Of course,” I said. “He left me in the basement to deal with you. He must have read the texts on my phone and knew you were on the way.”
“I’m afraid, I’m not following you.”
“He killed Cyrus and Mia.”
“Dominic Bell?”
“Yes. I found out that the hotel is connected to the catacombs, and I found a note in a book, Annie’s book, and worked it out. Mia must have threatened to blackmail him. She must have realized that Cyrus never left the hotel the morning he died.”
I wondered if he thought I was a crazy woman, talking to him from underground, but I pressed on, hoping that he would at least understand how dangerous Dominic was. “I think Cyrus was killed and taken to the Baths through these tunnels. Dominic is the only person with the knowledge and the strength to move Cyrus’s body. Mia must have threatened him, so he killed her, too. Then he planted the blackmail note in Annie’s book to throw suspicion on her—at least that’s what I think happened, and it must not be too far off. He hit me and knocked me out when he realized I’d worked it out. I woke up in the hotel’s storage room in the basement. He’d locked me in, but I found the door to these tunnels and got out that way.”
“But Ms. DuPont’s gloves…”
“She lost them, exactly as she said. Dominic must have taken the first glove he touched in the lost and found and put it on before he killed Mia. It happened to be Elise’s glove.”
Gadd rocked back on his heels. “I’ve heard about the catacombs, but never thought…”
“Look, you need to do something quickly. Since Dominic got rid of you, he’ll go back to the storage room, and when he finds I’m not there—”
I heard a faint screeching noise, echoing along the stone passageways, and knew instantly that it was the door from the storage room to the tunnel being dragged across the flagstones as it was pulled open.
I clicked off the flashlight. Gadd must have heard it, too, because he lowered his voice. “He didn’t get rid of me. I’ve already called Inspector Byron.” As he spoke, he pulled and tested the grill. “I was loitering about, waiting for the inspector to arrive before going back to the hotel. That’s when I saw those two youths and told them to move along.”
He sat back on his heels. “It’s no use. The grill is fixed good and tight. Can’t get it up without tools. You find a quiet corner to hide in—should be plenty of nooks and crannies down there—Inspector Byron and I will be along in a moment.”
I nodded, not wanting to speak. The sound of the scrape had been much louder than Gadd’s whispers, but I didn’t want to risk making any noise at all. I had pulled myself up as high as I could to get closer to the grill to speak to Sergeant Gadd, so now I carefully lowered myself to the ground.
I glanced down the tunnel in the direction that I’d come from. Still dark. I took a few steps away from the grill. After I cleared the moonlit patch of ground, I risked turning on the flashlight for a moment then made my way up a short set of stairs, still moving in the opposite direction from the storage room. I went through another gate that was propped open. Here, the passageway bent, and before I slipped around the corner, I glanced back.
A brief flash of light illuminated some stones at the end of the tunnel.
I shot forward along the dark passage, figuring I only had a few moments before Dominic caught up with me. Before I flicked off the flashlight, I had a quick glimpse of what looked like iron support beams that crossed the ceiling overhead. I turned off the light and felt my way into a large open room. I risked another sweep of the light around quickly. It was a good thing that I did.
Several more modern-looking bricked columns marched across the center of the room, reaching up from square brick bases, which were set in what had once been a rectangular pool, to the ceiling above. The flashlight beam glanced on the few feet of murky water at the bottom of the pool and briefly illuminated the mossy walls that dropped several feet down to the water. A few steps in the wrong direction in the dark, and I would have taken a nosedive into essentially an empty swimming pool. A ledge ran around the exterior of the pool, and I moved quickly around the edge, tucked myself up behind one of the square pillars that was on ground level, and doused the flashlight.
I fought to get my breathing under control, thinking I knew the tunnels had to connect to the Baths. Of course, this was the last way I wanted to find out for sure that my hunch was right—running around in the dark cold passages with Dominic looking for me. My back was to the area where I’d come in, but I was completely turned around and had no idea which part of the bath complex I was in. For all I knew, Dominic might circle around and enter the room some other way. I tensed at the tread of feet, and reminded myself to duck to the right, if he appeared in front of me, not left. To the left of me was the sharp drop to the pool.
A flashlight beam swept the room, flickering over the columns. It was behind me, thank goodness, and when it came to me, it threw a solid rectangular shadow of the pillar I was huddled against on the wall opposite. A drop of water plopped onto my head, and I started, but managed to not make an audible noise or move so much that I gave myself away.
He only paused for a second, then the footsteps resumed and faded. I gripped the flashlight with sweaty palms. Should I dart back along the tunnel the way I’d come? Could I make it back to the storage room before Dominic did? I doubted the door to the storage room was locked, but what if he knew a shortcut through the tunnels that would bring him back to the storage room more quickly than the route I would take?
I squeezed the flashlight with my slick palms. Wouldn’t movement be better than sitting here in the dark? It could be hours before Byron arrived at the hotel, got inside, and made his way through all the tunnels.
I didn’t like either o
ption, but as much as I wanted out of the damp darkness, staying put seemed to be the better choice, and I settled in for a wait.
I don’t know how long I sat there, but it felt like forever. When my legs began to get pins and needles, I decided I had to move a little. I hadn’t heard anything for ages except the irregular plinks of water drops.
Using the pillar, I stood slowly, flexing my feet back and forth. A light hit me. It felt like a physical blow after the complete darkness.
“Ah, there you are.”
Chapter 23
DOMINIC’S DEEP VOICE SOUNDED JUST the same—affable, good-natured, almost jokey. “I was beginning to think you’d never come out of your hiding spot. So glad you’ve shown yourself. Saves me from hunting among all the rocks for you before I toss you into the pool. Such an idiotic tourist thing to do, sneak about the Baths after hours. Such a shame you took a header into a deep empty pool,” he said, his tone full of false regret. “Hiding was clever, I’ll grant you that, but you left a nice trail of dusty footprints, and when I realized they’d petered out, I simply retraced my steps until I isolated where you must have turned off.”
The thought flashed through my mind that it was ironic that I’d followed his footprints through the tunnels to the Baths, and then he’d followed my footprints to find me in the Baths. I had thrown up an arm to block the light, but I couldn’t see him. I was on the short side of the rectangular pool, and it sounded from his voice as if he was on the longer side. “It’s no good, Dominic,” I said squinting into the light. “The police know what you did. They’re on the way.”
“Of course, you’d say that,” he said then switched to a falsetto voice, “Don’t kill me—all is known,” He kept the light focused on my face, but I could tell from his voice that he was getting nearer, walking down the long edge of the pool.
I inched away from him, backing up from the pool’s rim.
“Don’t move,” he said, his voice returning to its normal timbre. “I’d hate to have to shoot you first.”
