Fethering 08 (2007) - Death under the Dryer (26 page)

“Quick tour, looking for obvious hiding places,” said Jude. “You do downstairs, I’ll do up.”

But they both looked crestfallen when they met again at the foot of the stairs. Every available door and cupboard had been opened. Not only had they not found anyone, they hadn’t even found a space big enough for anyone to hide in.

Carole looked nervously at her watch. “Nearly forty minutes gone, from the time Mopsa drove off. What do we do now?”

“Well, if there is a secret entrance…the Face-Peril Gate…we haven’t found it. Come on, you’re more logical than I am. Tell me what I should be thinking.”

Carole was touched by the compliment—though she thought it no more than an accurate assessment of her character—and concentrated hard to come up with something that would justify it. “Presumably what we’re looking for is a hiding place that has something to do with the mine workings. The Wheal Path…that’s where Prince Fimbador was going to hide…”

“Right.”

“So logically we should be concentrating on the side of the cottage that is nearest to the ruins of the mine buildings.”

“I like it. This is good.”

“Maybe there’s some secret entrance in the new extension…though I think that’s unlikely…It looks like it was built in the last twenty years, and I’m not sure how many modern builders are up for making secret passages.”

“Something in the older part would also make more sense, because it might have some connection with smuggling. Most of the secret passages and hidey-holes around here would have been built for hiding contraband goods.”

“Good point. So if it’s not in the extension…” Carole moved through as she spoke, “…the place which is closest to the mine workings is the kitchen…” Jude followed her in, “…and this one must be the closest wall?”

They both looked at it. There was a door to a larder, but Carole had already checked that. Otherwise, it was just a stone wall that could have done with another coat of whitewash, about a third of whose width was taken up by a deeply recessed fireplace. The floor was stone-flagged, and the individual slabs looked too heavy to hide any cunning trapdoors.

“There’s something here, there’s something here…I can feel it.”

“Oh, Jude, you’re not about to tell me the place has an
aura
, are you?”

“No, I know you too well to bother saying that. Mind you, it does have an aura.”

“Huh.” Carole sat defeatedly on a kitchen chair and fiddled with a pencil and piece of paper that lay on the table. “If only…if only…” A thought came to her. “Just a minute…”

“What?”

“Well, look, I got the ‘Biddet Rock’ anagram because the words looked funny. That’s how you usually spot anagrams in crosswords. The words don’t look quite right—or their juxtaposition doesn’t, so you start playing with them. Yes, I think whoever invented ‘The Wheal Game’ likes anagrams. ‘Biddet Rock’ sounds and looks funny…Good God, so does ‘Face-Peril Gate’!”

Carole scribbled out the letters in a circle, the first two opposite and the others next, going round clockwise in turn. It was the way her father had done anagrams for his crosswords and one of the very few things that he had passed on to his daughter. She looked at the ring of letters and narrowed her eyes, hoping that the solution would leap out at her.

“No, it won’t come. I can get ‘place’ out of it.”

“Well, that’s good, isn’t it? We’re looking for a place, aren’t we?”

“Yes, but then the rest of the letters…it doesn’t leap out at me.”

“Well, maybe there are too many letters? Maybe you shouldn’t be using all of them?”

“That’s not how anagrams work, Jude. You’ve got to use all the letters, otherwise…Oh, my God…” Carole’s jaw dropped as she moved forward to the paper. “You’re right. Forget the ‘Gate’. Just concentrate on ‘Face-Peril’…which is an anagram of…‘fireplace’!”

They both turned to look at the shadowed space, blackened by centuries of cooking and heating. Jude moved excitedly forward, saying, “And Mopsa had a streak of soot on her hand! There must be something here!”

Close to, there were definitely vertical lines either side to the grate, lines that could be the outline of a door. And the soot had been worn thin along the lines, as though the edge had been moved quite recently.

“It’s here! It’s here! This is the Face-Peril Gate. But how on earth do we open it?”

“Is there a keyhole?”

Jude, oblivious to the soot that was smearing her hands and clothes, scrabbled away at the back of the fireplace. Her fingers found a narrow slot. “Yes, yes, there is! But what do we use to open it?”

“Presumably,” said Carole, “we use the Key of Clove’s Halo.”

“And what the hell is that?”

This one came easily. “Forget the ‘Key’. And the ‘of’. Is there a ‘Coal Shovel’ anywhere, Jude?”

There was. An ancient implement, rather too narrow to be practical for lifting much coal. The scoop was curved and thin, more like a garden tool for cutting plant-holes than a coal shovel. It was black, except where, abraded by familiar grooves, the dull original metal shone through.

“I’ll see if it fits,” said Jude. “I’m so filthy already, a little more soot’s not going to make any difference.”

The end of the coal shovel slipped into its predestined slot with the ease of long practice. Tentatively, anticipating resistance, Jude turned the handle to the right. But no resistance came. The smugglers of the nineteenth century had known their craft. The key turned.

Cunningly counter-weighted so as to move as lightly as a cupboard door in a designer kitchen, the great plate of soot-covered steel gave way, moving almost soundlessly on rollers, to reveal a set of stone steps leading down into the void.

B
oth knew they should have made some kind of plan, but they hadn’t. After all, if their surmise was correct, they were about to confront a young man who might well be a murderer. Having guarded his privacy so fiercely for three weeks, how was he likely to react to the discovery of his hideaway? If he had already killed Kyra Bartos, would he be worried about the killing of two inquisitive middle-aged women, so long as it kept him safe from the attentions of the police?

The opening of the door at the back of the fireplace, though quiet, had not been entirely silent. It was a sound their quarry would know well. Mopsa had quite possibly told him that she was going out, so he would know they were intruders. The welcome he was preparing for them could be ugly.

And yet still neither of them said anything. Instinctively, Jude drew back and let Carole lead the way. They didn’t even look around for a torch. From whatever was at the bottom of the steps a thin light flowed.

They had not defined in their minds what they were expecting to see, but neither had anticipated the bright airy space they stepped into. The light was natural, sunlight streaming in individual, focused beams through narrow fissures in the natural rock of the walls. These openings, created by the erosion of the exterior cliff face, were too high up the walls to offer any hope of escape. But the chamber their light illuminated was not the primitive cave Carole and Jude’s imaginations had suggested. It appeared to be a section of a circular vertical mineshaft, some twenty feet across, which would have reached the surface right next door to the Lockes’ cottage. But, many years before, the space had been separated off by a wooden floor and ceiling to form the hidden room. The carpentry had not been professional, there was a rough-hewn quality to everything. But it looked sturdy and secure. The smugglers of Treboddick had known what they were doing when they constructed the Wheal Chamber.

These were the peripheral impressions of a nanosecond, because what arrested the attention of both women was the figure sitting at a table facing the sea. They had seen the family photographs and had no doubt that it was Nathan Locke.

The shock they both felt, though, arose from their assumption that he had hidden away of his own accord. They hadn’t expected the chain from an iron ring on the wall which was attached to the boy’s ankle.

W
hoever Nathan Locke had expected to come down the stairs into his lair, it wasn’t a pair of middle-aged women. He looked at them in frank amazement. But rather than reacting with violence, he remained seated and asked politely, “I’m sorry, but who are you…?”

No time for aliases now. “My name’s Carole Seddon. This is my friend Jude.”

The blankness on the boy’s face told that he had never heard of either of them.

“And what are you doing here? Are you from the police?” His natural good manners couldn’t completely exclude a note of disbelief from the question. He looked scruffy, a wispy three-week growth of beard around his chin, but not as though he had been maltreated.

“No, we’re nothing to do with the police. You don’t need to be frightened. You’re quite safe with us.”

He let out a bitter laugh. “I think I might be safer with the police than I am here.” He gestured to the chain on his ankle. It gave them a moment to take in the space in which he was incarcerated. There were loaded bookshelves, a cassette player, even an ancient-looking television. Jutting out from one wall was a shed-like structure with two doors, possibly leading to a kitchen and bathroom. The area had more qualities of a furnished flat than a prison.

Jude moved forward alongside Carole. “Listen, Nathan, we know who you are and we know why you’re here.”

“Oh, do you? I sometimes wish I did.”

“It’s in connection with the death of Kyra Bartos.”

The name hit him like a slap. His lip trembled and tears glinted in his eyes. At that moment he looked less than his sixteen years. “Kyra? What do you know about Kyra?”

“That she’s dead.”

“And that I killed her? Do you know that? Just like everyone else who seems to be so sure of it?”

“We don’t know that. But we’d like to talk to you about it.”

“Would you? Well, there’s a novelty.” The bitterness was back in his voice. He still wasn’t being overtly rude to them, but there was in his voice a deep weary negativity, an acceptance that he had entered a world in which normal logic did not operate.

“A novelty, why? Because nobody else wants to talk to you?”

“Nobody else wants to talk except to give me orders. No one wants to listen to what I have to say.”

“We’d very much like to hear what you have to say.”

He was tempted by the sincerity in Jude’s voice, but his scepticism remained. “Oh yes?”

Carole decided it was her turn. Jude had been trying the good cop approach, without marked success. Maybe something harder might be more effective.

“Listen, Nathan, you know you’re in a lot of trouble. Circumstances dictate that you’re the major suspect for Kyra Bartos’s murder. And the fact that you’ve run away only exacerbates the problem.”

“Excuse me.” The boy looked affronted. “What’s all this ‘running away’ business?” He indicated the chain round his ankle. “Does it really look as though I’m stuck down here voluntarily?”

“Are you saying you were kidnapped?”

“Not exactly. No, I came down to Cornwall of my own accord. In all the confusion of what happened—and the kind of mental state I was in—yes, lying low for a few days did seem a good idea. In retrospect I’m not so sure it was, but I wasn’t thinking very straight after I heard about…what happened at the salon.”

“Who did you hear about it from?” asked Carole.

“My uncle.”

“Rowley Locke.”

He looked at them curiously. “Are you sure you’re not police?”

Jude promised that they weren’t.

“Because you do seem to know rather a lot about me.”

“Everyone in the West Sussex area knows a lot about you. There’s been blanket coverage in the papers and on television.”

“Yes, I suppose there would be.” He sighed and gestured to the ancient set. “That doesn’t work. Not that I’d get Sussex local news down here anyway.”

“No.”

Carole picked up his narrative. “So you were saying…you came down here of your own free will…?”

“Yes. More or less. Uncle Rowley can be very persuasive.” Both women shared the thought that they were sure he could be. “But when they got me here…suddenly he says I’ve got to be chained up.”

“Does it hurt?” asked Jude.

“Not really. It’s quite slack. Only hurts if I try to get out of it, and I gave up on that idea after the first couple of hours. And the chain’s long enough so’s I can get to the bathroom.” He grinned wryly. “No, as prisons go, I suppose this is a very humane one.”

“But don’t you get bored out of your skull?”

“Well…” He gestured to the bookshelves. “I’ve got plenty to read. And I keep comforting myself with the thought that it’s not for ever.”

“For how long, though?” asked Carole. “Did your uncle give any indication of that?”

Nathan shrugged. “Not precisely. Presumably he’s just keeping me here until the police find out who actually did kill…” Again emotion threatened. Something in his throat rendered him unable to speak his late girlfriend’s name.

“Hmm.” Neither Carole nor Jude was persuaded by the explanation.

“Uncle Rowley did say I was being kept here for my own good. He said if the cops got their hands on me, I’d never escape. They’d stitch me up good and proper.” That sounded in character from what Carole had heard of Rowley Locke’s estimation of the British police force.

“I have to listen to what Uncle Rowley says,” Nathan continued lamely. “He does know what he’s talking about.”

This was a tenet of Locke received wisdom to which neither Carole nor Jude subscribed. They both had strong suspicions about Rowley Locke’s agenda.

“Well,” Carole announced practically, “the first thing we should do is get you free from that chain.”

The suggestion brought a light of paranoia into the boy’s eye. “Oh, you’d better not do that. There’s a girl—my cousin Mopsa who—”

“We know all about Mopsa. She’s gone off shopping.” Carole consulted her watch. “She won’t be back for at least another twenty minutes.”

“So,” asked Jude, “should we find some tools upstairs to cut through the chain?”

“You don’t have to bother with that.” He gestured towards the foot of the stairs. “There’s a key to the padlock hanging over there. Just about six feet beyond my reach. Don’t imagine I haven’t tried to grab it.”