Authors: Alison Stuart
Helen took a deep breath and a put out a hand to touch his arm. “You’re exhausted, Paul. There is nothing we can do tonight. Have some supper and go to bed and we will meet at breakfast.”
Paul shook off her hand and sat down at the kitchen table, while Sarah busied herself with warming soup and cutting bread. Helen sat down across the table for him and poured them both tea.
“What time did the accident happen?” she asked.
“She must have been on her way to bed. She was wearing her dressing gown and slippers.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “If she’d screamed or cried out for help, I might have heard her but it was Sarah who found her this morning while I was–” he looked at Helen, “–out riding.”
Helen flinched. He had been meeting with her in the clearing.
“Her bedroom is above the library. Perhaps she heard something? Was the light on in the library, Sarah?” she asked.
Sarah frowned and shook her head. “No. Just the paintings on the floor like you saw ‘em. You don’t think her ladyship cut them up?”
Helen shook her head and looked at Paul. “You have to finish the diary.”
“I don’t have to do anything, Helen,” he muttered, his eyes on the soup bowl.
“The answer’s in the diary, Paul. Would it take you long to do?”
He looked up at her and she saw the deep lines of exhaustion on his face. “A couple of hours.”
“He’s not doing anything tonight,” Sarah growled. “If you’re not careful, sir, you’ll be down with a migraine.”
Paul glanced at Sarah but didn’t argue. “She’s right, Helen. I’m in no state to do anything about the diary tonight.” He pushed back his chair. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
Chapter 25
Paul set the telephone back in its cradle and turned to find Helen watching him from the stairs.
“How is she?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Still unconscious but they don’t seem to think she’s any worse.”
“Well that’s something,” Helen said. “Paul, don’t blame yourself.”
He looked away, unable to face her sympathy. Charlie and now Evelyn. He had failed them both.
“Are you ready?” she asked.
He brought his gaze back to her. “You still think Evelyn’s accident is something to do with Suzanna?”
“I’m certain of it.”
“Then for your sake. Let’s get on with it.
She joined him, looking up at him with bright, eager eyes.
“If I’m right,” she said, “And Suzanna never left the house, her body must be somewhere in these walls.”
Paul looked around at the intricately carved wainscoting of the Great Hall. “This place is riddled with priest holes. Charlie and I spent several long summer holidays trying to find them all. I’m sure there are some we haven’t discovered.”
Helen frowned. “But we’re not talking about a priest hole. We have to find the tunnel. We know from Suzanna’s diary that it ran from the library to the crypt. Surely it can’t be that hard to find?”
“With the help of a couple of hefty men and a few sledgehammers?” Paul suggested. “I’m not knocking holes in the wall, Helen. I’ll never sell it.”
“I am sure it is not that inaccessible or Suzanna wouldn’t have been able to use it with such ease. Let’s start in the library?”
The sun streamed in through the library windows and the room looked peaceful, just as it had always looked, except for the ruined paintings leaning against one wall.
“Where are the clay tablets?” Helen asked, noticing the absence of the wooden boxes.
“I’ve sent them back to Woolley while I sort out my affairs here. Shall we make a start?”
Feeling foolish, Helen followed Paul around the room, tapping on panels, lifting carpets, knocking on floorboards but nothing budged, nothing gave the slightest indication of being the entrance to a secret tunnel.
“What are you doing?” Alice appeared at the doorway.
“Looking for a secret tunnel,” Helen said. “Want to help?”
“I’m not sure that it’s wise to involve Alice,” Paul said.
“Oh, please,” Alice begged. “I’m bored.”
By midmorning, they sat in the chairs beside the fireplace staring at the mantel. Alice sat cross-legged on the floor flicking through a large folio of animal prints. They had tapped on every panel, pushed and pulled any protuberance but nothing moved.
“I was so sure we would find it,” Helen said dispiritedly. “Perhaps if we try the crypt?”
“Must we? I hate that place,” Paul said.
“That’s where the other entry is. It may be more obvious”
Paul rose to his feet. “I’ll find a flashlight and a crowbar and we’ll pay a visit to my dead ancestors.”
They made a strange procession, armed with tools, rope and a flashlight as they crossed the churchyard. Paul retrieved the key from the verger and unlocked the gate. Helen entered the crypt without hesitation but Paul stopped in the entrance, his hands on the lintel as he contemplated another dark, dead place.
“Paul?” Helen looked up at him. “Are you all right?”
“Of course,” he said brusquely.
Helen put her arms around herself. “What a dreadful place for a romantic tryst.”
Alice, who had followed them, slipped under Paul’s arm and stood next to him on the top step. He caught her by the waist and planted her back outside.
“This is no place for you.”
“Just wait for us out here,” Helen said.
Paul descended the short flight of stairs and switched on the flashlight. He held it up, scanning the shelves with the disordered coffins. One side of the crypt was shorter than the other with what looked to be the buttress of the church interposing into the wall. Paul crossed to it and brought ran the beam across the stonework.
“Helen what do you make of this?”
He pointed to a crude etching of a bird on the stonework about four feet from the floor. Helen looked up at him and he could hear the catch of excitement in her reply. “It’s a martlet,” she said. “Do you suppose it means something?”
Paul handed her the flashlight and placed his hand on the engraving.
“It’s the martlet from the coat of arms. Let’s see what happens if I push on it?”
He applied some force and jumped back at a creaking sound and the grating of stone on stone. He took a steadying breath and pushed again. The block beneath his hand moved revealing a narrow entrance, only four feet high and less than two feet wide.
Although disused for over a hundred years, the stone pivoted back with surprising ease. The entrance to the tunnel yawned before them, a dark, uninviting hole exuding a dusty, dank smell of long neglect.
Paul spoke first. “So, it was true.” He sounded surprised.
“You didn’t think it would be?” Helen said. “Shall we see where it leads?”
Paul took a step back. He could feel the band around his chest tightening. “Helen, I can’t down there.”
“Why?” Helen asked.
“I...” he paused. “A section of trench once fell in on me and to be honest, I’ve never been fond of enclosed spaces since then. I can’t even bring myself to go down into the trenches on the dig.”
Even as he spoke, the hand holding the flashlight began to shake. He touched his other hand to his forehead, his fingers coming away damp from the sheen of sweat that had broken out. He hated having to admit this weakness but his fear was real and he hoped she understood.
She laid a hand on his arm. The touch of her fingers, even through his shirtsleeve, heated his skin like a brand.
“It’s all right, I’ll go,” she said.
He looked at her and managed a smile. “I suppose nothing I can say will dissuade you?”
She gave him an impish grin and for a moment, he saw a flash of the Helen Charlie had loved. “I come from a family of boys. I grew up climbing trees and exploring old gold mines.”
He reached out and touched her hair. “You never cease to surprise me, Helen.” He dropped his hand and glanced at his watch. “It’s nearly lunchtime. We’ll go back to the house and come back after lunch.”
They closed the door and the gate of the crypt and stood for a moment in the churchyard, breathing in the fresh air.
The vicar’s wife, seeing them from the vicarage, hurried over to invite Alice for lunch and the afternoon with Lily. Helen agreed and she and Paul walked back to the house.
* * * *
Paul waited downstairs in the Great Hall as Helen changed into jodhpurs and riding boots and a warm jumper. He looked up as she hurried down the stairs and he felt what had now become a familiar ache at the sight of her slight figure. He wanted her arms around him again, the touch of her lips on his again. The physical longing caused him to look away and begin striding out of the door before she had reached him.
“Paul!”
He heard her behind him and stopped to let her catch up. As she reached him, she caught his arm.
“Can you hear a dog?” she asked.
A frantic barking came from the direction of the church. They both looked toward the little gate and as they did so, a black and white cocker spaniel raced down the path. He stopped a good distance from them, barking furiously.
Paul felt the color drain from his face.
“Are you all right?” Helen asked.
“It’s Reuben,” he said through stiff lips.
“Reuben?”
“Charlie’s dog. I’d know him anywhere.”
She stared up at him, her eyes huge in her pale face. “Reuben was Charlie’s dog?”
“He died just before Charlie left for Australia,” Paul said.
Their eyes met and as one, they turned to look at the spectral dog that waited for them at the gate to the churchyard, whining frantically, his plumed tail waving in agitation.
Without exchanging another word, they both began to run to the church. As they crossed the churchyard, Lily Bryant came flying out of the church door, tears streaming down her face. Paul caught her and crouched down, bringing himself to the child’s level.
“Lily, what’s happened?”
Lily snuffled and wiped her nose on her sleeve.
“Alice said you’d found a secret tunnel,” she said. “I said I’d like to see it, so after lunch we went into the crypt. She said she could hear someone crying and picked up the flashlight you left and...and...” Lily started to cry again.
“And?”
“I told her not to go but she went through the hole in the wall and then...and then...there was a terrible noise and I heard her scream. I called and called but she didn’t answer...”
Paul looked up at Helen but Helen had already gone, running into the church and down into the crypt, calling Alice’s name. Paul caught her before she hurled herself down the dark hole.
“Wait,” he said. “If there’s been a collapse, you’ll only make it worse.”
He stood at the entrance to the tunnel and called the child’s name. They waited, breath held but only an all-encompassing silence surrounded them.
Helen looked up at Paul, her face twisted in anguish. He couldn’t let her go down the tunnel. In her distress, he could end up losing both of them. He looked into the dark cavity and felt the fear crawling through him, but it was not a time for self-indulgent phobias.
He took her by the arms and looked into her eyes. “Stay here. I’ll go.”
“But...”
“Stay here.” He made it an order and saw the answering agreement in her tear- filled eyes.
Paul turned to the yawning cavity and without another word, ducked and stepped over the lintel, groping his way down narrow stone stairs.
At the bottom of the stairs a cramped corridor, not tall enough for him to stand, stretched blackly before him. Any residual light from the crypt would only illuminate a few yards. He crouched down, his breath coming in short gasps, fighting the growing nausea.
There is a child down here who needs you
, he told himself and forced his breathing to normality.
His fingers inched along the wall feeling rough brick beneath his hand. The floor of hard packed soil beneath his knees was damp.
“Paul?” Helen’s anxious voice echoed down the tunnel, muffled by the darkness. To reply he would have had to stop and turn. He decided against it and crept forward through the suffocating blackness.
For a moment, he thought his eyes deceived him and he blinked but just ahead he could see a faint light. He quickened his pace and rounded a slight corner. The flashlight, still switched on, lay on the ground and just beyond it, the tunnel ended abruptly in a fall of earth and brick. He let out his breath with relief.
Alice lay on her stomach in the mud, quite still, as if she had turned to run when the roof caved in. Her legs were partly trapped by the fallen debris, her arms out flung and her head turned to one side.
He crawled to her.
“Alice!” he whispered, smoothing the hair away from her mud streaked face.
When she didn’t respond, he felt for the pulse in her neck and was rewarded by a steady beat. He sent a quick prayer of thanks to God and began to clear the mud and bricks away from her legs with as much care as the urgency of the situation allowed.