Chapter 26

 

Helen stood looking down at the man on the bed. She hadn’t intended to intrude into his bedroom but there had been no response when she had knocked on the door and the nagging anxiety about his state of mind, caused her to enter his room.

Paul lay sprawled across the bed cover, still in his muddy clothes as if he had reached his room and just fallen on to the bed. His face was half turned away from her and she reached out and touched his hair, gently stroking it away from his forehead. For the first time she noticed the faint line of a scar high on his temple at the hairline. Her finger traced it, wondering, not for the first time, how many scars he bore.

His hand clamped on to her wrist as he jerked awake, rolling into a sitting position with such rapidity, Helen took a step back.

He let her go.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” she said.

He fell back on the bed. “A soldier’s reflex,” he said. He covered his face with hands. “How’s Alice?” he asked, his voice muffled.

“Bruised and a bit shaken but all right,” Helen said. “I’ve put her to bed. How are you?”

He drew his hands down his face and she saw the lines of pain etched around his mouth. The pupils of his eyes were pinpricks.

“I’m sorry...you’ve got a migraine haven’t you?”

His lips tightened and he gave a barely perceptible nod. “It’s been threatening for a while.”

 “Is there anything I can get you?”

“No. It’ll take its own time.”

“Are you sure...?”

“Quite sure. Just leave me, Helen.” He closed his eyes.

She found a blanket and threw it over him before pulling the curtain shut and tiptoeing out of the room, closing the door behind her. Outside in the corridor she leaned against the wall and swore. Paul would be out for at least twenty-four hours. She was on her own now.

* * * *

That night Helen slept badly. In the dark hours of the morning, she found herself tossing and turning as her mind replayed the events of the previous day. She had so nearly lost Alice and then Paul–why had she let him go after Alice, knowing what she did about the trench collapse?

Charlie had written to her that four men had died in the collapse and they had barely got Paul out alive but he’d been patched up and sent back to the lines as if nothing had happened.

With the ability of children to bounce back from adversity, Alice showed no ill effects from her adventure the day before, except for some bruising on her forehead and her legs. She chattered brightly as Helen helped her dress.

Helen sent her down to the kitchen for breakfast and stopped in the hall to make two phone calls; the first to the hospital to enquire after Evelyn and the second to the vicarage to see if Alice could spend a couple of nights away from Holdston. She explained to Mrs. Bryant that Evelyn’s condition had not changed and that she felt in the circumstances with their concern over her, Alice would be better off with more cheerful company. The Bryants were happy to oblige.

 In the kitchen she found Alice already tucking into a bowl of porridge. Pollard sat at the table reading the paper. He stood as Helen entered and she gestured him back. Sarah, busy at the stove, turned around. Dark circles under her eyes made Helen wonder if Sarah had also slept badly.

“How’s Paul?” she asked Sarah.

 “Not good. You’ll not see him today.” Sarah shook her head. “I swear they’re getting worse. Sooner he’s back in Mesopotamia the better. It’s this house that does it to him.”

“It’s not the result of the war?”

Sarah shook her head. “No. He’s had migraines since he was a boy.”

When Helen told Alice that she would be going over to the vicarage after breakfast, Alice looked down at her plate and then back at her mother.

“I want to stay here,” she said.

“I think it’s for the best, love,” Helen said. “Uncle Paul and I will have to go to the hospital to see Grandmama.”

“I can stay with Sarah.”

“Sarah has better things to do than look after you, Alice. Lily is looking forward to having you to stay.”

Alice gave Helen a mutinous glare as she got up from the table and stomped out of the room to pack her bag.

Helen poured herself a cup of tea and sat down at the table. As she drank, her mind went over her thoughts of the early hours of the morning.

“Sarah,” she said at last, “I need paper and a pencil.”

Sarah found the items and Helen sketched a rough plan of the library.

“The tunnel supposedly ran from the library to the crypt. We found the crypt end of it so we know it exists. So if the other entrance is in the library, there’s only one place it can be...somewhere in this wall.” She indicated the fireplace wall dominated by the two massive bookshelves. “If you look at the entrance to the courtyard, it’s the thickest wall. It would be quite easy for something to be concealed within it–priest hole or tunnel.”

“You’re not going looking for it again?” Sarah said.

Helen looked up at her. “I have to know why this–thing–is so bent on us not discovering it.”

“What happened yesterday, do you think it was the–thing?” Sarah pulled up a chair to the table.

“Don’t be stupid,” Pollard said from behind the table. “It was just an old tunnel that gave way. Nothing funny about that.”

“Except for the crying woman,” Helen said.

“Crying woman?” Pollard laid his paper down.

“Alice heard a woman crying. That’s the only reason she went down there.”

Pollard shook his head. “Child’s got a good imagination.”

“I’ve heard the crying woman and it was my first encounter with the third presence.” She thought it best not to mention spectral dogs.

Sarah’s lips tightened. “So I’m right, there is a third force at work here. A bad ‘un.”

Helen looked back at the sketch of the library and tapped the pencil on the paper. “Suzanna and Robert have both showed me the library. The clue must be there.”

Sarah stared at her. “Do you mean to say, you’ve been seeing the house as it was back then?” Sarah said in disbelief.

Helen nodded. “I’ve seen it twice.”

She closed her eyes and visualized the man lying sprawled across the desk, the pistol in his hand, the blood dripping on to the carpet. The fire burned in the grate and candles in the sconces above the fireplace flickered across the shelves of books. The slender figure of a woman standing by the fireplace also played across her memory. Suzanna had turned and disappeared through the bookcase. The bookcase held the key!

“One of the bookcases–” She opened her eyes and looked at Sarah, “–one of the bookcases was only half full when Robert died.” She stabbed a finger at the drawing, indicating the left hand side of the fireplace. “That one.” She pushed her chair back. “I’m going to take Alice over to the vicarage and then can I meet both of you in the library in half an hour?”

* * * *

They stood in the middle of the worn carpet looking at the two massive bookcases. At first glance, Helen saw nothing to distinguish them. They were identical in form, made of solid mahogany, containing similar, heavy leather bound books filled the shelves.

“I know what it is,” Helen said after flicking through samples of books from both cases. “The books in the left hand case are all nineteenth century books. In the right hand case are the books from the purchased eighteenth century library. The left hand bookcase must be later than the other one. If Robert died in 1815 and it was only half full at that time, then it must have been more recent.”

“We can always check the household books. They’re all in the estate office,” Sarah suggested.

Helen turned to Pollard. “While we check the records, can you start emptying that bookcase?”

Pollard looked around the silent room. “You’re wanting me to stay here, alone? Place fair gives me the creeps.”

“We won’t be long,” Helen said.

At least two centuries of household books were kept in the heavy oak cupboards in the estate office. Sarah threw back the doors, revealing shelves of large leather folios, the spines imprinted with the Morrow coat of arms and a date in gold lettering. Like those at Wellmore, Helen assumed that the household accounts of Holdston recorded every minutiae of life within the four walls as it had been in its heyday.

She would love to have had the time to go through them but now she was on a quest. She selected the volume that read 1809-1815 and flung it down on the desk, scanning the pages with rapidity.

“Sarah, I was right.” She pointed at an entry written in neat copperplate.

“1812, Nov 8, Payment to Jas. Hutchins, carpenter of Birmingham for bookcase for library, 25 pounds, 6 shillings and 8 pence.”

“That’s only months after Suzanna disappeared. Robert must have ordered it to conceal the tunnel entrance?” Helen felt almost jubilant at having her hypothesis confirmed.

Sarah frowned. “So you think Robert Morrow may have had something to do with his wife’s disappearance?”

“I’m sure he did. I am now certain Suzanna never left this house and her body is in that tunnel. Robert could have discovered her affair and we know from her diary he had already been violent to her in the months leading up to her disappearance. Who else could have done it?”

Sarah straightened. “I don’t know. It doesn’t sound right to me. Who’s the third one, the one what’s causing the trouble?”

Helen touched her wrist. The physicality of the third spirit set it apart from Suzanna and Robert. It seemed to have the power to move objects and to harm people. Suzanna had a mischievous power, she could move objects and, apparently, trip people up but this third had physically hurt her and probably caused the tunnel collapse. Had Evelyn’s fall been an accident? She shivered and willed herself not to think about it.

Back in the library, Pollard had emptied the lower shelves, stacking the books neatly against the far wall. He fetched a ladder and a bag of tools and, grumbling, climbed up to the higher shelves, handing the dusty books down to the women.

Emptied of books, the bookcase was still a massive piece of furniture, eight feet high and six feet wide.

“There’s no way we can move it.” Pollard declared standing back to look at it.

“We are just going to have to take it apart, shelf by shelf,” Helen said.

“Are you sure?” Pollard asked.

“Don’t argue, Pollard. Let’s just do it.”

By lunchtime, the last piece had been unscrewed and moved away revealing the thick stone wall. Helen stepped into the cobwebby recess and ran her hands over the wall.

Her fingers found the faint indentations about four feet from the floor. Pollard passed her the flashlight and she knelt down, brushing the dust of the century away. In the beam of the light she could just see the faint etching of a martlet in the stonework, just as it had been in the crypt.

She stood up and stepped back, brushing her hands against her skirt. She knew all she had to do was to press the stone but her courage failed her. It could wait for the moment.

“Let’s have some lunch,” she suggested. “I told the hospital I would be in to see Lady Morrow for afternoon visiting hours. Any further exploration can wait till I’m back.”

* * * *

Helen’s first sight of Evelyn’s heavily bandaged head shocked her. With all her other concerns Helen had assumed her indomitable mother-in-law would recover but faced with the reality of Evelyn’s injuries, all she could do was to sink on to the chair beside her bed. She picked up the thin bird-like hand and curled her own around it.

“No change?” she asked a passing nurse.

The woman shook her head. “No, poor lady. She’s not moved since they brought her in.”

“Evelyn,” Helen whispered. “I’m going to stop this thing before it hurts anyone else.”

There seemed little point in staying except to keep vigil and finishing what she had started that morning took on a new urgency.

Returning to Holdston, Helen changed into her jodhpurs and an old jumper, and joined Sarah and Pollard in the library. They stood in a semi-circle looking at the engraving on the wall.

“What do we do now?” Pollard said.

“Put your hand on the etching and push,” Helen instructed.

Pollard complied and just as it had in the crypt, they heard the sound of stone grating on stone. Pollard jumped back as if bitten and gave Helen a quick glance. She nodded and the man pushed again and an identical entrance to that in the crypt swung open. Pollard stepped back and the three of them stood staring at the dark hole in the wall as the trapped air rushed out smelling of damp and something else, indefinable and unpleasant.

“Pass me the flashlight, Pollard,” Helen said. “We should have a look.”

She took a deep breath and lay down on the floor playing the beam over the dark void.

“What can you see?” Sarah asked.

“There’s a straight drop of about eight feet. Wait, I can see rings and narrow stones sticking out from the brickwork like a sort of ladder. Then there’s a ledge about three feet wide and then another hole so it can’t be the bottom.”

“It would have to have gone down a fair way to get under the moat,” Pollard observed.

Helen stood up, brushing the dust from her trousers. “I’m going down there.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Mrs. Morrow,” Pollard said. “If anyone’s going down, it’ll be me.”

His wife looked at his imposing bulk. “You’re too big. You’ll never fit in that space.”

“I’ll do it,” Helen said.

Sarah straightened, shaking her head. “No, Mrs. Morrow.” Sarah turned her eyes up to look at the ceiling. “Wait until the Major’s up and then we’ll decide.”

“We can’t wait,” Helen said, feeling defiant. She knew that after yesterday, Paul would have had very definite thoughts about her current activities. “We’ve got to end this now.”

She lay down on her stomach and shone the flashlight down the hole again. Her breath stopped as the light picked up a gleam of a lighter colored object on the narrow platform.

She held her breath, playing the light across the object, immediately identifiable as bone and a human skull.

She sat up and looked at the Pollards. “I was right. She’s there. We’ve found Suzanna. Now all we have to do is bring her up and she can have the proper Christian burial she deserves.”

Sam Pollard and his wife, both took their turn at inspecting Suzanna’s tomb.

“I still think you should wait till the Major’s up,” Sarah’s brow creased in concern.

“I wouldn’t expect him to go down there,” Helen said. She rose to her feet, brushing her hands on her trousers. “Now what’s the best way of getting down there?”

Pollard scratched his chin. “I wouldn’t trust those handholds, lass. How about I tie a rope around you so if they give way I’ll have you held fast?”

Helen nodded and turned to Sarah. “Sarah, can you fetch a basket or something we can put the bones in and bring her up?”

“Oh, Mrs. Morrow, you shouldn’t...it’s not proper.”

“I’m not afraid of dead bodies, Sarah. She deserves to be properly laid to rest.”

Sarah twisted her hands in her apron. “I don’t like this,” she said, looking around the library. “It’s here. It’s watching you. I’ve a bad feeling.”

“What can it do?” Helen said with more bravado than she felt.

“You know what it can do. It’s hurt Lady Morrow and Miss Alice. It’s not like the others. It’s got a force to it.”

“I’ll be fine. We can’t leave her down there. Let’s just be quick.”

The Pollards left her and Helen sat down cross-legged looking at the hole in the wall.

“Who did this to you, Suzanna?” she asked aloud.

For answer the curtains at the windows fluttered, even though the windows were shut fast. She looked around. Nothing–but she knew they were watching.

Pollard returned with a heavy rope and Sarah with a basket containing a folded sheet. They pulled the heavy oak table over toward the hole and Pollard looped the rope around one leg of the table to act as a cantilever, tying the other around Helen’s waist.

Sarah Pollard’s face was creased with worry.

“I’ll be fine, Sarah.” Helen smiled. “I spent my childhood climbing trees and rocks.”

Helen’s resolve wavered as she crouched down looking into the darkness. Tentatively lowering her legs over the edge, the toe of her boot touched the first foothold and she twisted, letting herself drop over the edge, her fingers grasping the rings that served as handholds. They held fast and giving the Pollards what she hoped was a confident smile, she began to lower herself, her feet slipping on the slimy wall as she sought out each toehold. She thought of Suzanna who had made this journey many times on her way to tryst with her lover in long dresses and without the benefit of the rope securely preventing her from falling. It would have taken courage. One missed step and she would have fallen.

As her feet touched the security of the ledge, Helen looked up at Sarah’s anxious face peering down at her from the opening.

“What can you see?” Sarah asked.

“Just give me a moment,” Helen unhooked the flashlight from her belt and swung its beam around the cramped space.

The brick-edged opening to the right revealed rough-hewn steps that descended into dark, murky water where the moat had flooded the tunnel. Maybe yesterday’s collapse had been nothing more than an accident, the result of years of water infiltration?

Helen took a deep steadying breath as the light revealed what she had seen from above, a disordered pile of bones, probably scattered by rats over the years. A moldy leather portmanteau lay beside the skeletal remains. Crouching down to examine the remains, Helen played the light on the skull. The breath caught in her throat. Even without touching the skull, it was obvious that the back of the head had been staved in. She looked up at the entrance and wondered if this had been an accident and Suzanna had slipped and fallen. It would have been easy to miss a foothold and without a rope she would have fallen hard. She looked around. Without knowing anything about injuries, it looked as if Suzanna had hit the back of her skull on something long and thin, maybe the edge of the ledge?

Helen stood up and undid the rope around her waist, calling up to Sarah, to pull up the rope and send down the basket.

Sarah complied and the basket, secured by its handle, skittered down the wall. Helen untied it and replaced it with the portmanteau, giving a quick jerk of the rope to indicate for Sarah to pull it up. The portmanteau disappeared from the place it had lain for one hundred years.

With care, Helen unfolded the sheet and laid it in the base of the basket. She knelt down beside the skeleton again and steeled herself. Despite her bravado, she fought the natural human revulsion for dealing with the dead and it took her a moment before she could bring herself to touch the bones.

“It’s all right, Suzanna,” she whispered, “I’ll be gentle.”

Fragments of light cloth that crumbled at her touch and a small, black leather slipper gave humanity to the pitiful remains as she gently laid the bones in the basket. The right femur was broken in two. Helen frowned and looked up again at the drop. A broken leg and a smashed skull? Had it been enough to kill her or had she died slowly in agony? She shivered at the thought of the young woman possibly lying here for days.

She sat back on her heels. If Suzanna had fallen on her way to meet her lover, would the entrance above have been open or closed? Could it be opened from the inside?

As she pondered Suzanna’s fate, a door slammed in the library above her and the temperature in the musty hole plummeted. Above her, Sarah cried out in alarm. She looked up in time to see the heavy stone of the entrance slam shut with such force, the whole wall reverberated under the force.

Helen froze, unable to move or scream, as the darkness closed in around her. Something cold touched her ankle and she flashed the light downward to see fingers of the dark, fetid water begin to creep across the narrow shelf on which she stood.

The flashlight in her hand flickered and Helen launched herself at the wall, scrabbling to find the rings and toe-holds. In her haste, the flashlight dropped and fell with a splash into the water that now swirled around her knees. In the utter blackness, sobbing in terror, she began to climb. Clinging to the topmost ring, she used one hand to push on the wall. It didn’t move. Behind the immovable stone, she heard the sound of scraping on the wall and muffled voices shouting her name. Pollard would be trying his best to shift the opening with the crowbar but it held fast as if mortared in place.

“Water,” she screamed, finding her voice at last. “The water is rising.”