by Holly Martin
He nodded and watched her go.
Milly joined Cameron back in the kitchen and he stood up, his eyes scanning over her for a brief moment. She doubted it was an appreciative gesture. She was wearing long denim shorts, a red and white polka dot shirt and purple sequined Converse trainers. It was a defiant gesture, sticking two fingers up at the professionalism he so desperately wanted. Besides, she doubted whether anything she wore would gain his approval. He really didn’t seem to like her much. The chemistry she had felt between them was very clearly one sided.
He was right though, making breakfast for him was a bit too domesticated. Despite his hostile attitude to her staying with him, somehow she felt at home here, she felt completely at ease pottering about his kitchen making tea and food and it made no sense to feel like that. But he didn’t like the cosy arrangement and she could understand why, so maybe it would be best to eat separately from now on.
‘I think we should go back out to the hole first, get an idea of which direction the tunnel was going in. The parts of the passage that I could see through the rubble seemed straight, so once we have an idea of which area of the castle the tunnel was pointing towards, that will tell us where to start looking.’
‘Good idea.’ Cameron nodded.
Well, he was clearly going to try to be pleasant and polite even if he didn’t want her here. At least for now.
He opened the door for her like the perfect gentleman.
‘By the way, for your information, I am wearing a bra.’
His face split into a huge genuine smile. ‘That’s good to know.’
She strode ahead of him. Despite the earliness of the morning the heat hit her almost as soon as she stepped out. There was no shelter from it here on the cliff tops and she liked the way the castle seemed to bask in the sunlight. With its blue roofs and pale sandstone walls, it had a slightly Mediterranean feel.
Cameron caught her arm and nudged her in a slightly different direction.
‘Here, watch your step, the hole is right in front of you,’ he said. ‘We don’t want a repeat of last night. I’m surprised you didn’t hurt yourself – that was quite a big fall.’
She stopped and knelt next to the hole, poking her head in to try to see which direction the tunnel went, but she couldn’t see it at all. The area under the hole was too big and she couldn’t see any of the walls.
She sat back on her heels to look at Cameron and he was watching her with a smile of amusement on his face.
‘I need you to hold my legs and lower me into the hole.’
The smile slipped from his face. ‘You want me to lower you, upside down, into the hole?’
‘I don’t think we’ll be able to see the tunnel from this angle.’
He sighed. She got on to all fours and he knelt behind her, grabbing her heels, then she shuffled head first into the hole.
‘When we spoke on the phone and you said you would do a thorough investigation, I never thought for one minute I would be holding you by your heels and dangling you into a hole.’
‘I didn’t think when I came here that you would immediately grab my breasts, so I guess that makes us even.’
Cameron didn’t say anything in reply but somehow she knew he was smiling. Holding her ankles tightly, he lowered her slowly and carefully into the hole.
‘Ok, got it, pull me back out.’
She was yanked out quite quickly. Cameron held her ankles above his head and she laughed as she dangled helplessly in front of him. ‘It’s that way.’ She pointed towards one of the windows in the corner of the castle.
He laid her down carefully on the grass in front of him and then offered her his giant hand to help her back up.
‘That’s the original castle kitchen and the larder.’
‘You never showed me that yesterday.’
‘There’s not a lot to see. It’s a tiny empty room where they used to keep various foods to keep them cool.’
‘I need to see all the rooms, to give me an idea of when this castle was originally built. It might not seem important to you but something as small as the slabs they use in the kitchen could be a huge clue for me in dating the castle.’
‘Very well. I’ll make sure you see everything, you did see most of it.’
‘Well let’s start with the kitchen.’
‘We can go over the drawbridge, it’s quicker.’
‘Why do you have a drawbridge?’ Milly asked as they headed over that way.
‘I have no idea.’
‘Did it ever have a moat?’
Cameron shook his head. ‘Not that I can tell.’
They thudded over the huge wooden door and Cameron pushed open a smaller door to the left of a tiny courtyard.
‘This was the old kitchen,’ Cameron said. There wasn’t a lot to identify it as a kitchen, since it was completely empty, but there was a large shallow arch mantelpiece over a fireplace at the end of the room which would have been used for cooking food. There was a spit rack and several hooks hanging off the top for pots and pans. The walls and the top of the fireplace were blackened with years of smoke. There were several shelves and hooks around the rooms for holding cooking utensils, all of which were now gone. She looked around at the stone bricks and the floor. This appeared to be a lot older even than some of the oldest rooms she had seen the day before. Her first thought had been that the banquet hall was the oldest room, built in the mid to late sixteenth century, but hugely renovated over the years. This kitchen, which wouldn’t have been privy to the modernisations over the centuries because it was beyond the realm of the lords and ladies that lived here, seemed to be pretty much as it had been when it was first built. Milly stared around her. She thought it might date back to the fourteenth century. She swallowed down the shock of this sudden unexpected discovery.
It was possible that Castle Heritage or their sister company, National Heritage, might take this place on after all. She’d seen it done before where they had helped to restore an old building to its former glory, but the recent modifications of this castle would probably be too much to remove. And how much would be left? Would it just be the kitchen and maybe a few other smaller rooms around it? She needed to ascertain how big the original building was. Maybe Cameron had some books or documents somewhere that might give her some clue. But finding this little undiscovered gem was even better than finding a secret passageway.
‘You ok?’ Cameron asked, obviously concerned by the way she was frozen in the middle of the room.
‘I can’t believe you didn’t show me this yesterday. This room is years older than some of the other parts of the castle. It’s something like this that could be the difference between Castle Heritage helping you or not.’
‘I’m sorry, I just assumed …’
‘It’s ok, but if I’m going to help you I need to know everything, even if you think it’s trivial, it’s probably not.’
He nodded, suitably chastised.
‘Um … here’s the larder.’
He pushed open the little door in the corner and they stepped out onto the top of the stairs that led down below the surface of the ground into a very small, cool, dark room with no windows. There was a large, wide wooden shelf running up one end of the room, fitted over a jutting out stone wall, a few hooks and a couple of smaller, thinner shelves, but nothing else at all. The room was notably cooler than the other rooms in the castle, which served its purpose of preserving the food.
‘I can’t see a secret passageway coming from the larder, there’s nothing in here.’ Cameron said.
‘But that’s the point of secret passageways, they’re not supposed to be obvious.’
She walked down the short flight of stairs and looked around, though she had to agree with Cameron that there didn’t appear to be anything that could turn out to be an entrance to a tunnel. She ran her hands along the walls, hoping one might be loose and be the much needed switch that she was looking for. Nothing happened. She pulled on the hooks hoping they might be switch
es too. Nothing.
‘Maybe it’s in the kitchen,’ Cameron offered, moving back out to the other room.
She slid her hand underneath the wooden shelf but just as she was ready to give up, her hand bumped across what felt like a bolt. She pulled the handle back towards her and something clicked, although what it was, she wasn’t exactly clear.
She tried to lift the wooden shelf up and to her surprise it came clean away from the wall underneath, revealing a set of stairs leading downwards and round a corner out of sight.
She squealed with delight and gave a tiny little dance before she regained her professional face.
‘Cameron, I’ve found it.’
She heard his footsteps come running and his eyes lit up when he appeared in the door of the room and saw the secret steps leading below the castle. Any sign of the grumpy man she’d come to know had suddenly vanished and in his place was a big kid who had just learned that Christmas had come early.
‘Are you kidding me?’ he said, running down the stairs from the kitchen.
She shook her head and quickly clambered over the wall. Cameron was already throwing his leg over to join her. She tentatively crept down the stone stairs and he followed.
They reached the bottom and as they rounded the corner, they could clearly see the caved in area of the tunnel ahead of them and the light from the hole that Milly had fallen down beyond that.
‘Careful,’ Cameron warned as she took a step down the passage. ‘If it’s caved in already, I doubt the rest of it is that secure.’
She hesitated. He had a point and there was nothing else down this tunnel worth investigating, no other routes or rooms led off it. But what an exciting find.
She turned back to him and smiled at the wondrous grin on his face. Sharing this little secret together, she felt an overwhelming urge to hug him. She liked Cameron like this, smiling and worry free, even if it was only for a few minutes. She wanted to do anything possible to keep that smile on his face.
‘You do know what this means, don’t you?’
He frowned and shook his head.
‘If there is one secret passageway from the castle, there are likely to be several more.’
His eyes widened. ‘Seriously?’
He went back up the steps and she followed him. When he reached the wall, he climbed over easily then turned and lifted her out as if it was the most natural thing in the world to have his hands round her waist.
She tried to ignore the feeling of his hot hands on her body. ‘Well, your castle is very unconventional, but there’s never normally just one. I wouldn’t be surprised if we find a tunnel that leads to the maze too, as that was quite popular in old houses with mazes.’
‘How will we find them, what do we look for?’
‘Bookshelves are a great place to start.’
‘You mean, like in those films with books that you pull out that act as a switch for a secret doorway, those things are real?’
She nodded. ‘I’ve seen several passageways like that, or fake book spines which cover a door handle.’
‘And should we be looking for light fittings that are handles and secret buttons inside the heads of statues?’
His eyes twinkled as he spoke, she loved the way he teased her.
‘Don’t rule anything out. I think we should split up, see what we can find.’
‘Ok, but no exploring any rooms or tunnels without the other person, we’ll let each other know if we find anything.’
She nodded and he ran off, obviously keen to find his own secret passageway. She smiled at his enthusiasm.
She walked out of the kitchen and into the hall that led to the banqueting room. She could see Cameron moving around in there, running his hands over the walls, so she decided to try the study and the library first, since both rooms had bookcases.
She headed upstairs and into the study. There was a large desk and several chairs around the room and a whole wall of bookcases along one side.
She carefully examined the books on the shelves for any that looked out of place or fake. It would take a while to try every single book in here, but she should be able to spot something that looked a little odd.
It was the third bookcase that caught her eye. It was set back from the others by about two centimetres. It wasn’t something that anyone would notice unless they were specifically looking for it. It didn’t mean that it was necessarily a secret doorway, but the faint scratches on the floor suggested that something was amiss.
She scanned her eyes over the books, trying to spot any that looked suspicious.
Many were various shades of red, green and brown but one at the top was a pale blue.
She couldn’t even reach it. Loath as she was to climb up onto this bookcase that was clearly hundreds of years old, the more she looked at the book, the more she was convinced it needed further investigation.
She climbed up onto the first shelf, and reached out for the book. It was stiff, stuck fast between the two books either side. She leaned up a bit more and tugged at the top of the book. It moved upwards and as it did so, the whole bookcase spun round, with Milly attached to it. A second later she was plunged into darkness as the bookcase clicked into place, now in a different room entirely.
Crap.
If she’d had any foresight she would have at least brought a torch with her. Feeling a bit panicky over what she couldn’t see in the darkness with her, she tugged on the book she was still holding in the hope that it would have the same effect but in reverse, taking her back to the study again, but though the book moved upwards, the bookshelf did not.
Her heart thumping a bit uneasily, she stepped down from the case and peered around. She could see nothing; she didn’t know if she was in a secret room or the entrance to a passageway.
She blinked in the darkness and could just make out a tiny slither of muted light from around the bookcase, which gave the room a slight grey tinge. She waited patiently for her eyes to become accustomed to the dark. Slowly she could pick out features. She was standing in a stone room about two or three metres wide. On the wall opposite the bookcase, she could just make out a wooden door. Something pale sat in the corner and she shuffled closer to it. Unease and fear spread quickly in her gut and erupted out of her throat in a terrifying bloodcurdling scream that echoed round the chamber.
She couldn’t take her eyes off what was clearly the skeleton of a child.
Chapter Six
Cameron heard the scream just as he was investigating a suit of armour he’d never even looked twice at before.
It was a sound of pure fear and panic and it didn’t stop. He ran from the room and took the stairs two at a time. He hesitated at the top for a second as he tried to ascertain whether the scream and the accompanying thumps were coming from the study or the library, but the noise was so loud, he was left with no doubt.
He burst into the study and it was very obvious which shelf Milly had gone through as the bookshelf was no longer there. In its place was a blank wooden panel. The screams for help and thumps that were coming from the other side of it were also a big clue.
Milly had obviously gone through and got trapped but he was surprised that this would cause her to scream so much, since she was a feisty little thing that didn’t seem to get upset by anything.
He ran his hands over the wooden panel to see if there were any switches or buttons that would release her but he couldn’t find anything.
‘Milly!’ he shouted through the door, but he doubted she could hear him over her own screams. He raised his voice. ‘Milly!’
‘Get me out!’ she screamed.
‘How did you get in, was there a lever or button somewhere?’
‘Get me fucking out of here,’ she sobbed.
There was a time for reason and calm and this was not it. The only thing that was going to solve this problem was sheer brute force.
‘Stand back.’ The thumping and screaming stopped, but the whimpers and sobs did not. ‘Stand back, ok?�
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He didn’t hear any arguments so he threw his whole body weight against the wooden panel. It cracked but didn’t move. He took a few steps back and ran forwards and threw himself against the wood again. This time it gave way. It spun on its axis, revealing a room beyond that was in complete darkness. He didn’t have time to investigate it as the next moment he was hit hard in the stomach by a tiny blonde figure.
He wrapped his arms round Milly and was stunned to feel her trembling all over. He held her tight against him.
‘What happened? Did you see another ghost?’
She was shaking so much, she couldn’t speak. He ran his hands down her back, stroking her soothingly.
Eventually she pulled away to look at him and he hated that she had tears in her eyes. He wanted to hold her forever and protect her from anything that might cause that look of anguish again.
‘You know you said you saw the ghost of a small boy up here in the study?’
He nodded, his hands still running up and down her back.
‘I think I’ve just found his body.’
His mouth went dry. ‘A corpse?’
She nodded. ‘His skeleton.’
Fuck.
‘I better take a look.’
Her fingers dug into his shirt. ‘Don’t go in there.’
‘If you’re right, we’ll need to call the police.’
She nodded and stepped back. Shit, he really didn’t want to go into a room with a corpse. He was likely to scream and cry like a girl too. But they couldn’t exactly leave it there.
Milly was watching him, waiting for him to be brave. He took a deep breath and squeezed through the gap.
Sure enough, propped up against the corner was a small skeleton. He felt sick. He shuffled closer, holding his breath against any smell of rotting flesh. In the light from the study, he could see something metallic on the elbow joint. As he moved closer he realised it was some kind of hinge or spring. There were similar metal joints and hinges on the shoulder, knees and ankles too. This wasn’t a real skeleton at all. He reached out to touch it to make sure and could clearly feel that the bones were made from plastic.
