For Whom the Bell Tolls
Rebecca suddenly stopped in the doorway of the Chapel.
‘Wait. No … no … we may be getting this wrong.’ She went back inside and stared again at the window and the frieze.
‘So, Laura, how hopeless a romantic are you?’ She pointed at the inscription Laura had found.
‘The richness of my life lies here… Here, guys, here!’
‘But where?’
Rebecca puffed out her cheeks. ‘This is called the Smugglers’ Chapel because it’s where smugglers used to hide out. So presumably where the Black Monk would hide out?’
‘Should we be expecting the Black Monk to appear?’ asked Drew, trying his best to sound nonchalant and unconcerned but not remotely convincing.
Rebecca did not answer directly. ‘I am about to do something which may or may not be the right thing … Look, if Kraus made the piece of glass, which in turn reveals its secret by projecting onto this frieze … is it not likely that he also created the frieze?’
Drew looked as if scales had suddenly been lifted from his eyes. ‘Of course!’
‘See how the light is still pointing to the same spot on the wall, despite the fact that the sun and shadows have moved elsewhere. I think he designed this glass to do just that. Not X marks the spot, but at any time of day, light marks the spot … that spot.’ She pointed to the place on the wall pinpointed by the beams of light.
‘So?’ said Drew, expectantly.
Rebecca dropped to her knees and grasped the bottom of the frieze. ‘So … pull this away and see what lies behind.’
‘Becks, you can’t!’ cried Laura.
‘Wait!’ Drew thrust out an arm as if to stop her but too late. Rebecca pulled hard and a section of the plaster splintered away easily. Behind it was the bottom of a narrow wooden door.
‘I … you ... I don’t know if this makes you a vandal or a genius,’ said Drew, barely able to believe what he was seeing and what Rebecca had done.
‘No point in stopping now,’ grunted Rebecca and pulled another section away, revealing the rest of the door. There was a black iron handle. She gripped it. ‘Vandal or genius then – which is it?’
She opened the door.
Drew’s torch illuminated the top of a staircase.
Unhesitating, Rebecca led the way down steps slippery with green algae. They emerged into a small, dank cloister, with burial crypts to either side. Rebecca saw something which made her clutch onto Drew for support. A gateway, just like the one in the frieze and from her waking dream! ‘Bricked up in the same way as the chamber we found the coffin in, where Kraus was imprisoned! Look, same sort of stone!’
‘So bricked up at the same time?’
‘By Kraus …’
‘We’ve found it, Campbell! Lytton was pointing to a tower … this chapel’s bell tower. And a gateway … right there!’
As they stood there, a lone, solitary bell tolled in the chapel above. The sound was startling yet somehow inevitable.
‘It’s the bell,’ shuddered Drew.
‘Have to get up early to catch you out,’ said Rebecca.
‘I hate it when you’re right.’
‘You must have a lot of hate in you, then. Just be a man and knock that wall down for us, would you?’
Drew and Rebecca set to work chipping and scrabbling at the wall. Whole lumps of masonry broke away easily in their hands. Laura and Rupert joined in and together they pushed with all their strength. The wall gave with a searing crack and dissolved into a cloud of rubble. There was now a hole large enough to climb through.
Rebecca was first. When her eyes got used to the dim interior, she found herself somewhere even more familiar. Before them, in the middle of a floor, stood a solitary stone obelisk. She stood, transfixed.
Drew’s eyebrows furrowed. ‘What are we looking for?’
‘Dear romantic Laura thinks Nathan carved that legend the richness of my life lies here into the wall because it was where he had buried Emily … I suspect something more material is involved.’
‘The gold? No way. It would have been found before.’
‘Remember Laura told us Jimmy Hendricks said it was the first time since the War it had been opened up, due to subsidence or something. You said yourself this wall is just the same as the other one which was bricked up in 1955. Nobody has been down here.’
‘Give me a hand to shift the lid off this thing, then.’
Grunting and heaving, they slid the lid of the obelisk to one side and peered inside.
‘Bloody hell!’ gasped Drew.
Rebecca smiled, shaking her head in disbelief.
‘The richness of his life…’
In the dim half-light of the chamber, the glint of gold was unmistakeable.