Ten Lords A-Leaping: A Mystery Part 23

"The other one, more likely, I would think," Tom reflected. "The one path leading towards Abbotswick. She lives in the village after all."

Jane glanced over her shoulder at him. "Is it possible she ...?"

"I ... I don't know." Tom's impulse was to exempt the fair s.e.x from brutal displays of physicality, but strong emotion he was certain could trump any physical disadvantage. "She was, I could sense, under strain, but of course she's only just lost her brother. I don't think she was happy to see me with Marguerite, however.

"And she said the oddest thing, Jane. When I offered my condolences and expressed the hope that she would receive some justice, she said, 'Rough justice may have already prevailed.' "

"Rough justice," Jane repeated. She had reached the top of the stairs and turned to him. "That's provocative."

"She certainly looked alarmed when we heard the voices coming from the drawing room, and after Roberto was taken away and I went back to the kitchen with Marguerite to fetch some eggs to bring back to the Hall, she had vanished." Tom joined Jane on the small landing. " 'Likes to start her cleaning in the upstairs rooms,' Marguerite said."

"I wonder if we should be concerned?"

"For Marguerite's well-being? I don't know. Oddly, Marguerite asked me to keep my having seen Anna to myself-which, obviously, I've dishonoured."

"For good reason, perhaps, Tom."

"There was some ... undercurrent between the two women, but not, I don't think, a fraught one. I suppose I could be wrong."

"Marve knows everyone in the village. I'm sure if she thought this Anna posed some sort of danger, she wouldn't be pa.s.sive about it."

"Yes, I expect so."

Jane glanced at her watch. "We're having tea at the dower house later this afternoon. We can press Marve for details then. And I strongly hope Anna will still be there. I have questions for her! You didn't ask her for a description of this John Phillips, by any chance?"

"That would have implied I didn't believe her."

"I suppose that's true," Jane sighed. "Well, here we are. This is it."

Tom observed a wall of brick. "There's nothing."

"Not really." Jane groped along the wall until she found what looked to be an iron handle well concealed among the projecting bricks, seizing it with one hand and pus.h.i.+ng. A portion of the wall began to give inwards, making a dull grating noise as it moved.

"Cunning," Tom remarked as they slipped into what was a small garret room, with a low arch-braced roof, a plain unvarnished oak floor, and a deeply recessed double lancet window.

"The priest's room, so called," Jane said. "And that slab of wood under the window was the altar, according to Hector, though it looks very unfinished."

"And appropriately east facing, too." Tom went to look out the window. He could see the edge of the Labyrinth, below, and the police tape surrounding it. Evidently PC Widger had secured it sufficient.

"Now, let's see," said Jane behind him. "Oh, the kids have been here. Look."

Tom turned from the window. One of the timber beams in the plaster wall was pivoted outwards; secreted in the brickwork behind was a cavity large enough for a man to crawl into. Tom flashed his torch along it and shuddered with horror imagining a priest lying with racing heart in that black recess, the beam closed behind him, as the pursuivants, the king's men, ransacked the house. Who knew how long one would lie there, cramped and sore, half starved, barely daring to draw breath.

"Apparently, there's a way of shutting yourself in from the inside, but Hector had it removed-just in case. And somewhere in this wainscoting are tiny holes for tubing to pa.s.s through to deliver water or refreshment. Can you imagine? It would be like hiding in a coffin."

Tom peered at the wood, too, and ran his hand over its silky texture, unable to detect any openings. "Ingenious the workmans.h.i.+p, horrible the need for it. But where are Miranda and Max?"

"Wait!" Jane held up a cautionary finger. "This room has other secrets. I'll bet they've gone down the hidden staircase."

"Miranda will be in her element. Alice au manoir hante is one of her favourite Alice Roys. It has hidden staircases galore." Tom looked around the plain room. "Clearly, the one here is very hidden."

"Very." Jane crouched and plucked at several of the floor nails in succession. "It's one of these," she said, shuffling to a new set of floor nails along the wide slats.

"Can I help?"

"Try tugging at the nails where you are. Several of them are loose, if you can get your fingers under just so. If you find one, you'll see what happens."

But it was Jane who first succeeded. "Here we go," she exclaimed, pulling a nail fully out, and gesturing to Tom. "Try the one on that board, and then the one on the board next to that."

Tom did. The nails were pivots and the heavy oak slats revolved around them to reveal a narrow but artfully constructed staircase descending into darkness. An aroma of must flew up to meet his nostrils.

"They have been here." Jane let her torchlight run down to what appeared to be a small landing about six feet below. "You can see the dust's been disturbed."

Tom s.h.i.+vered. "I'm not sure I'm happy about Miranda wandering down there unsupervised."

"Hector has seen to the safety of these hidden pa.s.sages. I think he's considering opening them up to the public as an added attraction."

Tom grunted, not entirely satisfied. "Have you travelled them yourself?"

"Yes, on a previous visit. It's quite the journey. Shall we? Do you think your foot can stand it?"

"Why not? This boot is working very well."

"I'll lead the way."

"Where does it end?" Tom watched Jane tread carefully on the steep, narrow steps, the beam of her torch dancing along the wooden walls of the narrow chute.

"I'll let you be surprised."

From the small landing crowding the two of them, she pushed through a narrow door into blackness revealed by the light to be a constricted pa.s.sageway lined with rough brick and mortar and heavy with the scent of damp and dust. The beam of light disappeared into darkness and for a moment a kind of animal dread clutched at Tom's heart, as if doom in some fas.h.i.+on waited somewhere off in the very near distance.

Noticing his hesitation, Jane said, "It's not so claustrophobic as it seems. You'll see in a minute. You'll have to bend your head a bit-you're taller than the average Tudor."

They were, Tom realised-ducking under the sill and pulling a cobweb from his hair-about to move through the vast thickness of Egges...o...b.. Hall's walls. The dust was more evident here under the beam of his torch, and the aroma stuffy, yet the atmosphere was not so suffocating, nor the darkness so Stygian, as he had dreaded, and after a moment following Jane he understood why. Here and there, the brick flushed with pinp.r.i.c.k radiance, like a star-scattered night sky. Light and air seeped through tiny openings into the walls of adjacent rooms, no doubt, Tom thought, well concealed in the highly decorated plasterwork.

"Careful," Jane said, casting a narrow puddle of illumination from her torch onto another set of narrow steps. They turned a corner, and then another, followed by more narrow steps downward. Before long, Tom's sense of direction had vanished. The pinholes were too small to permit a pa.s.sing glimpse of the rooms, but there were no forks in this fusty pa.s.sage to further befuddle. Egges...o...b..'s secret pa.s.sage was not a maze offering choices at every turn; it was a labyrinth leading to a single destination, whatever that may be.

"Look through here." Jane flashed her light on a c.h.i.n.k in the brick.

Tom squinted. "The great hall!" He could see the ornate minstrel's gallery opposite glowing in the light and felt an odd sense of vertigo. The pa.s.sage they were walking was about halfway up the interior wall of the room. "What am I looking through that wouldn't have been noticed by pursuivants on the other side?"

Jane laughed. "You're looking between the legs of one of the hundreds of figures on the ornamental screen."

"Ah, no eyeball would be detected that way." Tom felt the tips of his eyelashes brush the opening. "Look, there's Hector crossing the room. At top speed, I might add. Should I say something? I feel like a Peeping Tom."

"You're a Tom at any rate, but I doubt Hector would hear anything more than a m.u.f.fled noise even if you shouted."

They continued on, around, and ever downward. Before long, Tom detected a greater movement of air along his face, a faintly sweeter, yet drier aroma suggesting perhaps some egress to the out of doors. And yet the blackness did not recede. Soon they were down a short set of stairs, stone, these ones, and-the twin beams of their torches revealed-in a narrow, barrel-vaulted room not much wider than the stairs, the walls brick.

"Do you know where we are?" Tom asked, turning his light towards the source of the cooler air, flowing stronger now. He noted a new set of stone stairs leading to a brick-lined pa.s.sage that sloped gently downwards and curved out of sight.

"Near the old servants' quarters. I think this might be the old wine cellar."

"Then that"-Tom kept his light on the sloping floor-"must be a tunnel."

"Yes. Would you like to see where it goes?"

"Very much. The alternative is climbing our way back up to the garret, yes? And surely Miranda and Max have come this way."

"I think actually there are some concealed entrances into other rooms in the Hall, but I haven't a clue where they are. I've only had the tour once."

"You've done well to remember this."

They stepped down to the pa.s.sage, Tom noting a new sound, the crunch of gravel under their feet, but they'd barely turned the corner into the tunnel proper when they saw two beams of amber light flickering over the bricks and heard the approach of excited voices.

"Daddy!" Miranda's torch dazzled Tom's eyes as it pa.s.sed over his face. He felt an unexpected surge of relief to hear her excited voice in this dank place and the scrunch on gravel intensify as she and Max broke into a run towards them.

"Have you been exploring?" he asked.

"We've been treasure hunting, my dear chap," Max's voice came out of the gloom. Tom flashed his torch on the boy and noted the pith helmet and khaki trousers and s.h.i.+rt. He looked like a miniature edition of Lord Carnarvon exiting the tomb of Tutankhamen.

"And did you find King John's missing jewels or the Holy Grail?"

"I believe King John's jewels are in the Wash and the Holy Grail is at Glas...o...b..ry, at least according to legend."

"Yes, apparently." Tom reflected that the boy could be a trifle ponderous.

"Then did you find any treasure?" Jane asked.

"Regrettably, no."

"We found something, though," Miranda insisted. "Un indice, peut-etre, Papa."

"Vraiment?" Jane responded in his stead. "Comme Alice Roy?"

"Oui."

"Un indice de tresor?"

"Non, desole. Pas de tresor." Doubt inflected Miranda's tone.

"I say, all this French is giving me mal de mer." Max marched ahead, out of the penumbra of torches into darkness. "Do let's go inside."

There seemed no other course than to follow his fading footsteps, but when the rest of them regained the tunnel entrance, Tom was intrigued by what had seemed improbable before in the sealed blackness of the chamber: A sliver of light s.h.i.+mmering against the lower wall of the barrel-vaulted s.p.a.ce swelled by degrees into a rectangle so dazzling it hurt his dark-adapted eyes, until relief came in the form of a pith-helmeted silhouette.

"Come through," Max commanded, his face turned to them in the frame of light. "It's really very simple," he continued, antic.i.p.ating questions. "There's a lever there." He pointed, and Tom aimed his torch behind a wine rack where a bottle had been. "Which one pulls and what-do-you-say, the bally thing causes this door to open. Wizard, what? Come through, come through."

Miranda easily pa.s.sed through the opening, but Jane and Tom were obliged to bend low to enter into the bright corridor. Blinking against the dazzling light, he saw plainly he had stepped into a familiar pa.s.sage in the old servants' quarters. There was the old kitchen, now tearoom, to the left, past Jane's head. There was the sign to the Egges...o...b.. souvenir shop next to Miranda. He turned to see Max pus.h.i.+ng shut on well-oiled hinges-so silent was the movement-what appeared to be a section of the wainscoting. He bent to examine the wood. The light in the pa.s.sage really wasn't so strong after all, once one's eyes had adjusted, so Tom ran his hand over the patterning of the oak.

"Remarkable!" he couldn't help saying. He could detect no seam. "A jib door. But how do you open the door at this end, should you want to go into the tunnel?"

"Thus," Max said, moving to lift a floorboard cleverly fitted with hidden hinges. As the floorboard rose, the door opened in rhythm.

"Who knows about this?" Tom asked.

Max pushed back his helmet. "Well, I do. And there's Pater and Mater, of course. Grandmama ..."

"Anyone else? Staff?"

Jane, who had put her hands on Max's shoulders, flicked Tom a frowning glance.

"I do believe I told Gaunt and Mrs. Gaunt." Max tapped his chin. "I'm not certain who else ..."

"Why, Daddy?" Miranda interrupted.

"Oh, simple curiosity." Tom made his voice light as he gently urged Miranda forwards down the pa.s.sage towards the door to the yard.

"What was that all about?" Jane murmured as the children scrambled ahead.

"You remember me talking about following a dew path yesterday morning?" Tom dropped his voice to a whisper. "Well, the footprints ended at this part of the wall where the opening is. I thought the wet had simply dried at that point, or that whomever I thought I saw had gone up the stairs and into the Hall." He watched Miranda and Max to ensure they weren't listening. "Where does the tunnel end? And do I still need to be surprised?"

Jane made a face. "The stable block."

"Oh." The word came as a groan.

"Yes," Jane said. It was as if they were possessed by the same unhappy thought: proximity of the stable block and the dower house and what that might mean.

"But the stable block was built in the eighteenth century after restrictions on Catholics were eased," Tom said. "The tunnel is from Elizabeth's reign or James the First's."

"I understand the present stable block was built on the site of whatever building preceded it. They incorporated the entrance to the tunnel into the new building." Jane frowned. "Where once the tunnel was useful to protect priests and recusants, in late-Victorian and Edwardian times it became the way for the servants to come and go, so their masters wouldn't have to see or hear them.

"Quel suppose indice as-tu trouve, Miranda?" Jane took a seat at one of the outdoor tables.

"Max has it. Max?"

Max had wandered away. "What?"

"In your pocket. Top one, right."

"Oh, that." Max pushed his hand past the flap of his jacket pocket. "I say, this could be like a magic trick. What do you think, Mr. Christmas? Perhaps a rabbit will appear. Or a dove!"

"Judging from the size of the bulge, I'd say more likely a sparrow." And a dead one at that.

"If only one had a wand." Max's hand continued to brush his pocket tantalisingly. "Hocus, pocus-"

"Mocus, focus, autumn crocus."

"I say, that is good."