The Treasure at Poldarrow Point (An Angela Marchmont Mystery) (17 page)

‘Here,’ he said. He rose with difficulty and led her through to the dim ante-chamber next door. ‘Can’t see a thing in here,’ he said.

Barbara rummaged in her knapsack.

‘I’ve got a torch,’ she said. She switched it on and a beam of light illuminated the panelled walls. She moved the torch around, looking for signs of a door.

‘Keep that thing still, can’t you?’ said Jeremiah. ‘Point it here.’

He indicated a spot behind the armchair, and Barbara did as she was asked.

‘There,’ he said.

Barbara leaned forward and looked closely at the wall, but all she could see was a section of panelling like any other.

‘I can’t see anything,’ she said.

‘Aha,’ said Jeremiah. ‘That’s because it’s hidden.’

He reached out and placed his hand on an ornate little carving in the shape of a lion’s head. To Barbara’s surprise, it slid easily to one side and there, underneath it, was a keyhole.

‘See?’ said Jeremiah in triumph.

Barbara stared at the keyhole.

‘Where does it lead?’ she said.

‘Down to the cellars, so I heard,’ said Jeremiah Trout.

‘Have you never been through it?’

‘Of course not,’ said Jeremiah. ‘I haven’t got the key, have I?’

‘Then who has it?’

‘Nobody. It’s been lost for years, as far as I know.’

Barbara could have torn her hair out with frustration. How were they ever going to get out? She went back into the bedroom and stared hard out of the window. Of course—the window! They were thirty feet or so from the ground, but perhaps there would be something she could climb down. She pulled at the catch but nothing happened. She tugged harder, and then with all her might, but it was no use: the thing was stuck fast.

She let out something that might have been described as a growl, and thrust her hands into her pockets with a peevish expression. Her right hand fell on something hard and unfamiliar, and she brought it out to see what it was. It was the key they had found the other day behind the panel in the dining-room. She had taken it from Angela to examine it, and it must have been in her pocket for days. Barbara’s heart leapt, but she forced herself to remain calm. Why, it was absurd to think that this was the very key she was looking for! Still, there was no harm in trying it. She returned to the ante-chamber, where Jeremiah was gazing blankly about him.

‘Let’s try this key,’ said Barbara, and did so. It fitted perfectly. Barbara could have sung for joy, but contented herself with merely clapping her hands together. After a little struggle, the key turned and the door swung inwards to reveal another flight of steps leading down into the pitch blackness.

‘Well, there’s a thing,’ said Jeremiah.

Barbara turned to him.

‘I’m going to see where this goes,’ she said, ‘and if it leads out of the house I’ll come back and get you. You stay here for now. I’ll be back soon.’

‘All right,’ said Jeremiah, and wandered vaguely back into his bedroom.

Barbara switched on her torch again and stepped into the darkness. The stairs seemed to go on for a long way, but eventually she came to the bottom and saw that she was in what looked like a cellar. She flashed the torch around the walls. The room was quite self-contained, and not apparently connected to the other cellars. But
was there any way out other than back up the stairs to the secret room? The beam of the torch swept over the walls and the ceiling, and finally across the floor, where it came to a sudden stop as Barbara spotted a trap-door very similar to the one in the other cellar. It was covered in dust and evidently had not been used for many years. Could there be another smugglers’ tunnel? She certainly hoped so.

Barbara dropped to her knees and pulled at the cover, which had no bolt. It gave way all of a sudden and deposited what felt like two pounds of grey dust all over her. She leapt back with a strangled yelp and spent a good few minutes coughing and sneezing, her eyes streaming with water. Eventually the attack stopped, and she brushed herself down as best she could. Wiping her eyes, she pointed the torch into the hole, and saw that iron rungs had been set into the rock in exactly the same way as in the other tunnel. Her heart beating in excitement, she tucked her torch into her sleeve and lowered herself into the hole, feeling for the top rung with her feet.

She descended for ten feet or so, and found herself in a tunnel not unlike the other one. It, too, sloped steeply downwards, and she set off to follow it. After several twists and turns she was brought to a sudden halt when she found the passage ahead of her blocked by a rock-fall. Her disappointment was severe. How provoking to get this far only to have to turn back!

She approached the rock-fall and took a closer look at it. It did not look so
very
bad. The stones at the top, in particular, looked as though they might come free with little difficulty. She sighed, and set to work, moving the rocks one at a time, while taking care not to dislodge the whole thing and bring it down on top of her. An hour or so later she stepped back to survey her handiwork, and saw that she had made good progress. Five minutes after that she breathed a sigh of relief when she tugged out a particularly difficult stone and discovered by the light of the torch that she could finally see through to the other side of the blockage. With renewed energy she set to clearing away the rocks, and within half an hour she had made a hole big enough for a man to pass through. She scrambled through it and jumped down on the other side, and immediately recognized where she was. She was in the passage that branched off the main smugglers’ tunnel not far from the house. So that was where the path beyond the rock-fall led—to the hidden cellar and the secret room!

Now to go back and fetch Jeremiah, and then they could escape. Barbara sat on a rock to rest for a minute or two, then retraced her steps to the secret room. When she came to the panelled door that led into the ante-chamber, she stopped to listen carefully, but there was no sound. She went through it and tapped gently on the bedroom door.

She found Jeremiah Trout sitting in a chair with an open book on his lap, drifting into a gentle doze.

‘Mr. Trout,’ she said, ‘I’ve come back to fetch you.’

His eyes opened slowly and he regarded her without enthusiasm.

‘I know you, don’t I?’ he said.

‘Yes, I’m Barbara,’ said Barbara. ‘I’ve found a way out of the house. Don’t you want to leave?’

‘You’re filthy,’ he said.

Barbara looked down at herself. It was true: her hands and her frock were almost black with dirt, and she imagined her face was the same.

‘Yes, well, that can’t be helped,’ she said. ‘Do you want to escape from the house tonight?’

‘Escape? From the house?’

‘Yes!’ she said impatiently. ‘I’ve found another entrance to the smugglers’ tunnel and we can leave tonight, but we’ll have to wait an hour or two until the tide is low enough.’

‘I would like to get back to my garden,’ he said wistfully.

‘Then you must come with me.’ She hesitated. ‘Er—Mr. Trout, do you have any proper clothes you can put on?’

‘Proper clothes?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You’re going to look pretty conspicuous wearing just a nightgown when we come into Tregarrion, and we’ll need to lie low for a while, until I can get hold of the police.’

‘The police?’ he said in alarm. ‘No call to get the police. What do you want the police for?’

‘Why, to arrest your nephew,’ said Barbara. ‘Even if he hasn’t actually stolen anything from you yet, I’m fairly sure there are laws against holding people prisoner for months on end.’

‘The police! Fetch the police!’ he said. ‘Now you come along with me, my lad. There’ll be no more of this funny business where you’re going.’

‘Exactly,’ said Barbara. ‘That’s what they’ll say to him, all right. Now, what about these clothes of yours?’

After some further prompting he eventually rummaged under the bed, grumbling, and brought out a small trunk containing a variety of mismatched garments. Barbara went into the next room while he put them on, then came back in and regarded him doubtfully. In his shabby old things he looked rather like a tramp, although she was
far too polite to say so.

‘Well, you’ll have to do,’ she said. ‘Now we just have to wait for a bit. The entrance to the tunnel is only uncovered at low tide, and that’s not until about one o’clock, so if we set off at midnight we should arrive at the right time, I think.’

‘But it’s my bed-time now,’ said Jeremiah. ‘I’m tired.’

‘Don’t you want to escape from Clifford?’

‘Clifford? Is Clifford here? I never liked him. I always said he’d double-cross us.’

‘Yes, that’s why we’re leaving. Don’t worry about him now. I’ll tell you when it’s time to go.’

She sat down to wait, chin in her hand. After an hour or so she judged it was time, and went over to shake Jeremiah, who had dozed off in his chair. He took some urging, but the promise of being allowed to see his garden again finally spurred him into action, and he declared himself ready to escape.

Together they descended the stairs into the cellar, and Barbara showed Jeremiah the trap-door that led to the second smugglers’ tunnel. He was reluctant to climb down the ladder, but she persuaded him at last, reminding him all the while of his garden, and with a little assistance he eventually managed the descent. It was more difficult to get him past the fallen rocks, but Barbara cleared a few more out of the way and dragged him through somehow, although he grumbled all the while and more than once threatened to go back to his room.

After that, the journey became much easier. They passed through the barrel-chamber and into the lower section of the tunnel, and finally emerged into the cave on the beach. Jeremiah had fallen silent at last, and Barbara stopped for a moment to ponder their next move. She was getting pretty tired now, and wanted nothing more than to go back to Kittiwake Cottage and fall into bed. That was no good, though, for Clifford was sure to come after them, perhaps with Lionel Dorsey in tow, and what could three women and a frail old man do against two determined criminals who perhaps carried guns? And Jeremiah knew where the necklace was. If Valencourt—or Donati, or whatever his name was—got wind of that, the old man would undoubtedly be plunged into even more danger. No, this was a job for the police—for Scotland Yard, in fact. That meant going to the hotel to look for Mr. Simpson.

‘This way,’ she said, and ducked under the cave entrance.

‘Where are we going?’ said Jeremiah. ‘I want to go to bed.’

‘You shall go to bed,’ Barbara promised, ‘but you must come with me. It’s not far.’

She grabbed his arm and pulled him across the beach towards the cliff. He mumbled and muttered but did not resist as they struggled up the steep path that led past Kittiwake and Shearwater cottages.

‘Just a second,’ said Barbara, stopping. It had suddenly struck her that she ought to let Angela know she was safe. She delved in her knapsack and brought out a crumpled bit of paper and the stub of a pencil. She scribbled a note, then ran up the path of the cottage and shoved it under the door. A light was still on upstairs, and she wondered whether it was Angela awaiting her return. But there was no time to stop: they must get to Mr. Simpson as quickly as possible.

‘You wait here,’ said Barbara to Jeremiah when they had almost reached the hotel. Given his shabby state, she thought it best that he remain in the shadows while she went to find Simpson.

‘Where are we?’ he said. ‘I want to go to bed.’

‘Soon,’ she said.

She ran in through the main door. It was almost two and the whole place slumbered. The sleepy man at the desk eyed her askance as she entered, filthy and unkempt, then laughed without humour as she demanded he fetch Mr. Simpson.

‘Ha! That’s a good one, that is!’ he said. ‘What do you take me for, an idiot? Go on with you now, hop it!’

‘But it’s frightfully important,’ said Barbara. ‘I need to report a terrible crime.’

‘Then why don’t you go and find a policeman, ’stead of bothering our guests? But you won’t, will you? I know your sort. You won’t go near the police if you can help it.’

‘But Mr. Simpson
is
a—’ Barbara stopped and bit her tongue. Nobody was supposed to know that Mr. Simpson was an under-cover Scotland Yard man.

‘Go on, get out!’ said the man, coming out from behind his desk with a threatening look and picking up a broom.

Barbara made her escape. It took her a few minutes to find Jeremiah, who had wandered off and was looking up at the windows with interest.

‘I’ve seen this place before,’ he said.

‘Yes, it’s the Hotel Splendide,’ said Barbara.

‘Lots of people with plenty of money here,’ said the old man. ‘I bet they’d be pretty pickings.’

Barbara was not listening, for she had just spotted her friend Ginger, who was working a late night and sweeping the terrace outside the ball-room.

‘Hallo,’ he said when he saw her. ‘What you doing out at this time of night?
Shouldn’t you be in bed?’

‘I wanted to speak to Mr. Simpson,’ said Barbara, ‘but the man at the desk threw me out.’

‘Mr. Simpson? What do you want to speak to him for?’ said Ginger.

‘It’s rather a long story,’ said Barbara. She indicated Jeremiah. ‘This is my grandfather,’ she said. ‘He was hit on the head by a cricket-ball a few years ago and doesn’t remember anything, so my aunt put him in the most awful nursing-home where they were horribly cruel to him and didn’t give him any food or drink for days and days. Now he’s escaped, but I don’t want my aunt to know as she will make him go back and I’m terribly afraid they’ll starve him to death. Look at the state of him!’

The kind-hearted Ginger regarded the old man sympathetically. He was indeed a sorry sight, having managed to smear dirt and sand all over his face and clothes.

‘Pore thing,’ said Ginger. ‘What are you going to do with him?’

‘I’m not sure—that’s why I wanted to talk to Mr. Simpson. He’s my uncle, you see. He’ll know what to do.’

‘Regular family party you’ve got down here,’ observed Ginger. ‘This aunt of yours seems to have caused a bit of bother. Why do you all stand for it?’