The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton (27 page)

Patrick looked as if he’d had a revelation.

‘Of course. I was wondering, back there, how on earth my mother moved the table, let alone lifted the door. She was slight and it was damn heavy with two of us. A strong man could lift it at a pinch but not a woman. Anyway, what was she going to do: leave it open for anyone to find who happened to walk into the church? Close it and risk being entombed? Unlikely. But if she entered from another direction,’ his arm swept out dramatically, ‘from somewhere in the house, it’s not impossible. Perhaps something survived of the old house that gave her access to this.’

‘So how is it that nobody except your mother ever found another access? And who blocked it up—your father? And how do we know there’s anything behind here anyway? There might just be a few inches between the stone and the earth. It might just be to buttress the floor above. I should think far and away the most likely explanation is that the crypt resurfaced, as it were, when the church was restored.’

‘Well, archaeologists have learned to formulate a theory and test it against evidence,’ Patrick said. A German intellectual idea, I’m afraid.’

Almost before Laurence had taken in what Patrick was about to do, he’d picked up the candlestick and swung it hard at the centre of the wall, making grit fly everywhere. The noise in such a confined space made Laurence’s ears ring.

‘For heaven’s sake,’ Laurence said, although he was amused by Patrick’s impetuosity. ‘When the police return they’ll have us both in for questioning.’

‘It’s family property,’ Patrick said. ‘They’ve had their chance.’

He was breathing heavily even as he picked up the shaft again.

‘No. Let me.’

Laurence took out his pocket knife and dug away at the mortar around a single stone.

‘It’s soft,’ he said. ‘Damp? Badly mixed? Who knows?’ He rotated the knife blade. ‘Damn. The tip’s snapped off.’ He managed to scrape out most of the mortar with the broken blade. Over his shoulder he said, ‘You’re thinking someone could have brought Kitty underground from the house?’

‘I don’t know.’

When Laurence turned round to take the candlestick from him, Patrick looked uncertain and, in the shadows thrown by the lamp, the bones of his face stood out even more than usual.

‘I don’t know anything,’ he said.

Laurence swung the candlestick at the centre of the stone he’d freed from its mortar. The familiar pain was streaking down his leg, but as the metal hit the wall the stones shook; they both felt it. Laurence aimed slightly higher, at an area where there was more mortar than stone. This time the blow dislodged a chunk and the base of the candlestick broke off. He looked at Patrick.

‘This whole wall may fall on top of us. But it’s been here longer than ten years, I’m certain.’

He looked back at the steps and faint light coming from the entrance.

‘You don’t want to get someone else—David, perhaps, to help?’

But even as he spoke Patrick had taken up the candlestick again.

‘Don’t,’ Laurence said.

It was obvious that extreme physical exertion was no good for Patrick, but his face was set. This time he edged the fractured end deep into the mortar. Laurence put pressure on the metal body and almost fell over when a single stone shifted with a grinding noise and fell back into the void beyond. As he jumped back, Patrick moved forward and, picking up the slender length of wood that had been part of the broken picture frame, he eased it into the hole. It went through and fell down into the darkness on the far side.

He looked triumphant and for a second they stood there like schoolboys looking for treasure. Laurence could imagine the young Patrick, searching old sites with his elder brother: he and Digby digging fearlessly in pursuit of warriors’ gold.

Patrick beckoned. ‘Can I have your torch?’

When Laurence handed it over, he bent to look through the gap into the dark, the torch held close to his face.

‘My Howard Carter time at last,’ he said and again he laughed.

Was he always this volatile? Laurence wondered. Unlike the other Eastons, Patrick’s interest in finding Kitty seemed to derive more from a wish to find support for his convictions than a continuing grief at her loss. Patrick whistled again.

‘Gold beyond your wildest dreams?’ Laurence said.

‘Darkness. But there’s another room. A passage.’

Patrick backed away, stood for a second, looking almost bewildered, and then felt in his pocket. He pulled out a handkerchief and tied it round his mouth and nose.

‘You’d better do the same,’ he said.

As Laurence covered his nose and mouth, Patrick again lifted the broken bit of brass. Instinctively Laurence stood back. It still seemed like folly but he had only two choices: to leave Patrick alone to investigate in his own way or to stay and hope the two of them could deal with anything that went wrong.

Patrick smashed the shaft of the candlestick against the break in the wall and, miraculously, the stones around it crumbled backwards into the dark. Patrick turned away coughing and leaned against the altar, but when he looked up his eyes were full of excitement.

Laurence reached up and felt the ceiling. It seemed stable enough. He took his torch back from Patrick, shone it into the void and saw what Patrick had seen. He knew instantly that it was the further, and larger, end of the crypt. To the left were three stone shelves, divided into niches about eight feet long; to the right was a single, larger one. Some niches had been boxed in, some bore a small heap of debris. He calculated that the crypt could have held a dozen or so interments if it was full.

He shone his torch higher. A few rusty objects, which he assumed were oil lamps, hung between some niches. The ceiling seemed to be partly natural bedrock and partly man-made. Encrustations of white blotched the edges and a few black tree roots snaked down like capillaries from the living world.

His heart was beating fast. He inhaled deeply. The air still smelled fresh. This place had once held the dead, but long, long ago and every trace of them was now gone. He aimed the beam of the torch directly ahead. The chamber appeared to come to an end but there was a dark fissure to the right, which angled away from the light.

He turned around. Patrick was still getting his breath. Again Laurence wondered about the wisdom of all this.

‘Do you want to go back up?’ he said. ‘We can come back later.’

‘Not a chance, old chap. If we leave now it’s possible that the police will return or that the whole damn thing will fall down. We’re going on.’ Then he saw Laurence’s expression. ‘At least, I am.’

Laurence nodded. ‘I don’t think there’s much to see. It’s a medium-sized crypt—a continuation of this chamber; the wall was erected across it. It probably hasn’t been used for hundreds of years.’

‘Do you want to go first—as the church expert?’

Laurence stepped over the remaining courses of stone, bent stiffly and ducked his head. Patrick, slimmer and more agile, got through more easily.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said straightening up. ‘I shouldn’t have got you to smash the wall. We’re a pair of old crocks, really.’

He walked over to the niches and ran some of the accumulated soil through his fingers.

‘My ancestors,’ he said. ‘Ancient Eastons, all their hopes, their catastrophes, all their vainglorious deeds, turned to dust.’

‘If you’re right about your mother having entered this way originally, wouldn’t she have been nervous of the dead? Not many women, or men, for that matter, would have the stomach for it.’

Patrick looked around. ‘Not like you and me, then, who know death as a companion, if not a friend?’

When Laurence didn’t answer he went on, ‘But it’s most likely she never even realised—I didn’t when I first looked through—and, on your estimate, some of these are Catholic Eastons. But if she did realise, well, she was a religious woman. She would probably have prayed for them.’

‘Presumably they stopped using the crypt when the Eastons finally turned away from the Roman Church?’

‘I haven’t a clue.’

Patrick had set his lantern on the floor but now lifted it up to inspect the sealed niches.

‘Do you think this is anything?’ he said. ‘Blocking them up?’

Laurence shook his head. ‘Normal practice.’ He moved the beam of light swiftly over the remaining three sealed alcoves. ‘No, it was all done a long time ago and not interfered with. Look, there’s your coat of arms on that one.’

Patrick walked down the whole length of the space, occasionally touching the wall, but when he reached the far end, his voice suddenly changed.

‘Laurence, it goes on. There’s a doorway, well, not so much a doorway as a gap, and I can feel a very faint movement of air. It’s pitch black, though.’

The fissure was uneven, with a wide base. While the left side was almost straight, the right leaned in steeply. Patrick moved towards the opening.

‘May I have the torch?’ he said, and edging sideways he slipped through. On the other side he turned around cautiously but then, as he shone the torch ahead, he called out, ‘It goes on. Both ways. Hand me the lamp and come in, there’s plenty of room.’ He moved to the right.

Laurence found himself in some kind of corridor. Apparently identical passages led in both directions and after a short distance both angled away so that it was impossible to see where they led.

‘Do you want to go on?’ Patrick said. It was obvious he intended to. ‘Left or right, do you reckon?’

‘From the position of the church, which has its altar not at the east but north-north-east, we must be facing south, more or less, and so if we go right, we should at least be going roughly towards the house, which, if you’re hoping for some connection, makes sense. It’s not unknown for a passage to join up a big house and a church.’

‘Good stuff,’ Patrick said, as they started walking. ‘Do you want to lead? You’ll be used to being in confined spaces.’

There was no reply Laurence could give. Until now he had been surprised to have passed so easily the place where he had found the corpse. Then he had been engaged with the puzzle of the architecture, but now, moving underground, with no idea where they were going or the nature of the passage that they followed, he felt deep unease, acutely conscious that the way ahead could peter out any time and his exit route was blocked by another human being. He wanted to tell Patrick that it was a stupid idea but resisted only because he knew his impulses were born more of fear than good sense, that and the knowledge that the distance between church and house was not great.

The beam of his torch picked out a rock floor and pale walls that might be limestone or even chalk. The light from Patrick’s lamp cast shadows from every protuberance and moved unevenly up and down the stone. Laurence began to feel faintly sick and focused on what he could tell from his surroundings. He wasn’t sure if the structure was entirely a geological formation or man-made, although it appeared more or less to run level. He held on to that; at least they weren’t descending deeper into the earth. But he couldn’t shake off the fact that, to arrive here, they had entered through a place of death.

He could hear Patrick breathing heavily behind him. Soon he lost a sense of time, even though they had probably been walking for only a short while. For the last few minutes the tunnel had seemed to be curving slightly to the right. All of a sudden he noticed that the passage was narrowing ahead. Then, stopping dead, at which point Patrick nearly ran into him, he saw that there was an opening to the right about five feet high. It had a stone lintel, with a tall stone to either side. This was unequivocally man-made.

‘Do you want to go on?’ he said, doubtfully.

Patrick, looking over Laurence’s shoulder, held up the lamp. ‘Yes. Absolutely. Do you want to change places for a while?’

As Patrick squeezed past him, Laurence checked his watch. It was over an hour since they’d entered the church, but then it had taken them some time to decide to attack the wall in the crypt.

Patrick ran his hand down the stone portal, then he stooped slightly to get under the lintel. Laurence knew that if the ceiling beyond was as low as the lintel, he would simply be unable to make himself continue.

Chapter Fifteen

At first he felt relief when the archway simply revealed another chamber but this was followed by dismay as he now had no real justification for turning back. As they came into it they were able to stand side by side. The ceiling was higher than in the previous passage. On either side two smaller archways offered a choice of exits. Perplexed, Patrick looked briefly into each, then returned to swap the lamp for the torch. He shone it over the walls, through first the left-hand, then the right-hand doorway. Just as Laurence was gearing himself up to refuse to go any further, he said, ‘D’you know, I think we could be in some kind of prehistoric structure. Where we were before was obviously part of the church, but now this reminds me of nothing more than a major long barrow.’

Laurence thought back to the expedition to Silbury Hill and the barrow he had been eager to leave after spending only minutes inside. Now he was in a subterranean one and he had no idea how long it might take to get out of it.

‘I wonder how deep underground we are?’ Patrick mused. ‘Probably not very; we seem to have kept more or less level, though you never quite know. But still, was this always underground? Around the world there are plenty of ancient remains that are underground, but around here I’ve only ever seen them on hilltops.’

‘But you said nobody knows what these ancient peoples were thinking.’

By talking, Laurence could hold on to a sense of normality. Patrick seemed unaware of any problem.

‘It could once have
been
on top, of course, land shifts over the millennia.’ Now Patrick was almost talking to himself. ‘The old Easton Hall and its church were built on a rise to take in the view, I suppose. Perhaps the rise they chose concealed this barrow.’

‘It’s perfectly possible early Christians took over a pagan shrine right here,’ Laurence said. ‘Perhaps Eleanor’s right and St Barbara was a god of thunder in some earlier pagan incarnation.’