Carola Dunn (8 page)

“I’m not surprised,” hissed Angel as the vicar lent his daughter a supporting arm. “My head was swimming in there, and I
never
faint.”

Mrs Sutton decided that her daughter needed fresh air, so they soon made their farewells.

“I hope I never have to enter that room again,” asserted Catherine in heartfelt tones, as they drove homeward.

“He is not a conciliating person,” said the vicar mildly, “but he has had a deal to bear. I do not think his doctor’s advice is sound.”

“Certainly not!” snorted his wife. “Light and air and moderate exercise would do both body and temper a world of good, and so I shall tell him if I see him again. I am only sorry I was too taken aback by his manner to do so this time!”

Between pouring rain, chores, and the preparations for the trip to Penrith, Angel did not see Beth that weekend except to nod to her in church. So appalling was the weather, with howling gales that took a couple of slates off the roof and lashed the tall yews into an alarming frenzy, that Mrs Sutton considered postponing the outing. However, there were a number of household items, unobtainable in Patterdale, without which she could manage no longer.

When they left, late on Monday morning, downpour had diminished to drizzle, and by the time they reached Penrith, a few promising patches of blue sky were visible. Angel was happy to find that a previous guest at the Gloucester Arms had been Richard III. She shuddered in anachronistic dread when permitted a peek into the wainscoted chamber where the wicked king had once laid his weary head, even though Catherine insisted that he had been much maligned.

The room they shared was also lined with elaborately carved panelling. Angel was immediately convinced that somewhere among the oaken roses, leaves, and bunches of grapes a secret catch must be concealed, one which properly manipulated would move aside a section of the wall to reveal a hiding place.

“It is forever happening in novels,” she pointed out as she prodded and twisted in vain. “There will be a niche containing a manuscript with the confession of some awful deed, or perhaps a lost will. No, I know! Mary Queen of Scots stayed nearby, so there must have been a hiding place for Papists in Penrith. I’ll wager there is a priest’s hole behind this.”

“If so, I hope you find it,” said Catherine generously, laughing. “But come now, Angel. Papa and Mother will be waiting.”

Between shopping and sightseeing, Angel had no leisure to investigate until the following evening. Sleepy after an entire day in the open air, they all decided to retire after dinner. Catherine helped Angel to undress, then thought of something she wished to say to her mother.

“I won’t be long,” she said. “Do you lock the door when I leave, and I will knock when I return.”

Angel went straight to work hunting for the secret hiding place. Catherine’s amusement had deterred her before, so now she seized the opportunity offered by her cousin’s absence and poked and prodded and twisted. She was beginning to give up, when she pressed the centre of the umpteenth flower and distinctly heard a grinding noise.

Breathless with excitement, she pushed harder. Slowly, so slowly, an entire panel swung noisily aside, and there before her opened no mere paper-stuffed niche but what must surely be a fully fledged priest’s hole. That would show Catherine!

She was in half a mind to wait to explore until the sceptic’s return, then she thought of a better idea. She would hide in the tiny room, push the door nearly shut, and make ghostly groans and wails. Taking her candle to make sure of a good light, she stepped over the sill and looked around. There was nothing to see but bare, whitewashed walls, no skeleton, no ancient parchment scribbled with cries for help, not even a dry water jug and a crust baked hard with age. Still, it was a priest’s hole.

Catherine must surely return soon. Angel shut the door, all but an inch-wide gap. It moved much more easily closing than it had opening. There were footsteps in the corridor, followed by a knock upon the chamber door. She had forgotten that it was locked. So much for her plan! Hurrying to let her cousin in, she stumbled against the panel, felt it move smoothly under her hand, and heard a solid click as it slid into place.

“Bother!” she said aloud, and looked for the latch. The blank wall stared back.

The muffled sound of knocking came to her straining ears. A swift glance around convinced her that the other walls were equally featureless.

“Help!” she shouted, beginning to feel dreadfully closed-in. The knocking paused, then resumed slightly louder. Catherine must surely be calling to her by now, but she heard no voice. How long would it be before the landlord permitted her uncle to have the door broken down? Would they be able to hear her directions as to how to open the panelling? Could she even remember which flower it had been? How long would the air last in this coffin-like room?

“Panic will get you nowhere,” she told herself sternly. “Calm down and look more carefully.”

The floor was wooden, a simple parquetry pattern in pale oak. Oak parquet in this hidey-hole? Angel studied it more closely. One rectangle was of a darker hue.

Heart in mouth, she knelt and pressed it. There was a familiar grinding noise, and a section of the floor folded down to reveal a steep stairway.

Angel gasped. Well, it was not precisely what she had been looking for, but any port in a storm. Candle held high, she started downward.

At the bottom was a square of floor scarce two feet wide, surrounded by the horribly familiar whitewashed walls. The floor was of plain boards. She sat on the bottom step, set her candle on the floor at her feet, and leaned forward to rest her head despairingly in her hands.

The riser of the lowest step was carved, with three roses just like those in the inaccessible chamber above! Not pausing to wonder whether she might emerge in her nightgown in a taproom full of tipplers, Angel crouched on the tiny floor and pressed the center of the left-hand flower. Nothing happened. Perhaps it worked the trapdoor above. She tried the middle flower. Silently the riser of the second step swung down. In the cavity it had concealed were two bulging leather bags.

At any other time, Angel would have been wildly excited. Now the need to escape was overwhelming. She pressed the third knob.

The wall to her right slid aside and there, caught in the act of loosening his cravat, stood Sir Gregory Markham.

“Good evening, Sir Gregory,” said Angel.

* * * *

The baronet had had a tiring day. He had left his Derbyshire estate early that morning and ridden all day, arriving at Grisedale Hall late in the afternoon. There he had found that his uncle’s bailiff had left undone an extremely urgent piece of business, so, stopping only for a bite to eat, he had ridden on to Penrith. The only thing in the world he wanted was to step into the steaming hip-bath that awaited him and rest his saddle-sore limbs. The bootboy had pulled off his boots and left with them. And then a hole appeared in the wall of his chamber and through it stepped Miss Evelyn Brand, née Lady Evangelina Brenthaven, only daughter of the Marquis of Tesborough, in her nightgown.

For a moment he stared at her in disbelief, then he exploded.

“What sort of damned silly lark is this, young woman? Get out!’’

“I can’t,” said Angel, rather annoyed. “I do not know how to open the door upstairs, and you cannot expect me to wander about the inn like this.”

“You appear to be doing just that!”

“Well, but I did not mean to. I found a priest’s hole and got locked in.”

In spite of himself, Sir Gregory was interested. He listened attentively as the whole story came out.

“And I nearly forgot,” Angel closed, “there are two bags of treasure in there. At least I think they must be treasure. Wait a minute, I’ll get them.”

A few moments later she emptied onto the dresser a gold crucifix encrusted with rubies and emeralds, a gold chalice set with diamonds and pearls, and a pile of gold and silver coins stamped with the profile of Queen Elizabeth.

They stood and looked in silent awe. Then Angel sighed and broke the trance.

“And now we have to smuggle you back to your chamber before anyone finds out you have been in mine, you tiresome child,” said Sir Gregory brusquely. “I suppose I shall have to go out and see what is going on. Wait here, and don’t open to anyone but me. Dash it, I’ve no boots!” Casting a darkling glance at his unwanted visitor and a longing one at his rapidly cooling bath, he went our.

He was gone for a good quarter of an hour. Angel had time to pass from indignation to new wonder at the jewels, and then to worry, before he returned.

“I spoke to your uncle,” he reported. “They were on the point of calling the landlord but had not yet done so. We will go up your secret stairs and see if I cannot find the catch.”

“I’m taking the treasure,” Angel announced belligerently.

“You don’t trust me with it?” For the first time since she had burst in upon him, Sir Gregory looked amused. “By all means, take it, but hurry. I shall go ahead.”

As she scooped the money back into its sack, she heard him mounting the hidden steps, which creaked under his weight. When she joined him at the top he was looking around at those bare, bare walls. The room seemed even tinier with his large figure in it.

“I hope they only sent small priests to England,” said Angel, squeezing out of his way.

“How did you open the trapdoor?”

She showed him the block of darker wood. The rest of the floor was all of the same paler shade.

“I can’t see anything else,” he admitted helplessly. “There is nothing for it, you will have to wrap yourself in my coat and go through the corridors and up the main stair.

“You could fetch my clothes for me.”

“And stand outside the room in my stockings while you dress? No, the less coming and going there is, the better. I hope you are not going to be difficult,” he added as she pouted, “or I shall put you over my knee and spank you.”

“You would not dare!”

“Try me, Miss Brand.”

Angel’s resistance collapsed. Then a thought struck her. “It will not be the least use for me to go up,” she pointed out gleefully, “for the key is locked in the chamber and we still cannot get in!”

Already halfway down the stair, Sir Gregory groaned.

“I wash my hands of the whole business. You may borrow my coat to go to your aunt’s room and then I leave the matter in your hands.”

“You are the most odious man I have ever met! Oh, there must be a way to open that wretched door! The priest was supposed to be hidden, not imprisoned. Why should the exit be so difficult to find?”

“Suppose the lower entrance was found, it would delay the searchers and perhaps give the fugitive time to escape.”

If Angel had nor disliked him thoroughly by this time, she would have applauded this ingenious theory. As it was, she snorted disbelievingly. “I’ll look one more time,” she sighed, and went back up.

This time she saw the answer as her eyes reached the level of the floor. The grain of the wood ran lengthwise on all the rectangular blocks but one, where it went across. Sir Gregory must have been standing on it last time she came up, and looked down on from above it was scarcely distinguishable. In a pet she stamped on it, and a moment later stepped out into her chamber.

* * * *

The next morning, when the gaping landlord had been informed of his inn’s newly discovered tourist attraction, and the cross, the chalice, and the Elizabethan money had been turned over to the nearest magistrate, Mr Sutton thanked the baronet for his part in the adventure.

“It was sheer luck,” he said, “that she entered the room of someone who respected her innocence.”

“Believe me, sir,” responded Sir Gregory, “the only danger she was ever in from me was that I might wring her neck.”

Though she did not hear this, Angel was angrier with him than ever. It had been thought wise that her name should not be publicly associated with the business in any way, so Sir Gregory had reaped all the glory.

“It is most unjust!” she stormed to Catherine. “I suppose if there is a reward for finding the treasure he will get that too.”

“He will certainly turn it over to you. Angel, tell me, do you never consider the consequences of your actions?”

“What’s the point? I was trying to be helpful when I lit the stove and all I did was fill the house with smoke. And this time I was kicking up a lark and I found a treasure! So you see, it is no use whatsoever considering consequences.”

To that, Catherine found no answer.

Chapter 7

“Another grey day!” groaned Angel at breakfast on Friday. “It is too bad! I vow it is enough to give one the megrims.”

“Are you meeting Lady Elizabeth today?” asked her aunt.

“This afternoon, perhaps. She is busy this morning. And when I was with her yesterday that odious Mrs Daventry never left us for a moment, and then Lord Welch came, so we scarcely exchanged a word. Catherine, will you go for a walk with me?”

“Not this morning, Angel. I have some mending to do and I want to read a little more of the history of Richard III that I bought in Penrith.”

‘‘History! How dull! I wish I had a novel by me.’’

“I must go to Patterdale this morning,” said Aunt Maria. “Should you like to come with me?”

“I suppose so,” replied Angel ungraciously, then, seeing the beginning of a frown on her uncle’s forehead, “I beg your pardon, Aunt. Yes, I should like to come. Are you going to visit the Weird Sisters?’’

“If you mean Miss Weir and Miss Swenster, I shall probably drop in for a few minutes. Mrs Applejohn mentioned that they had called while we were away.’’

“Did not Miss Weir say that they read a great many novels? Perhaps they will lend me some.” Angel brightened.

John Applejohn drove them to Patterdale in the gig. A couple of hours later, when Mrs Sutton was ready to return, Angel begged to be allowed to walk home.

“I’d like to go down to the lake for a few minutes first,” she said.

Her aunt looked dubious. “I cannot think Louisa would like me to let you walk alone about the countryside.”