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Rose refused to give up on her suspicions about Matthew Price, but she decided to hold them a little closer to her chest in the future. She had to agree that if the man was insinuating himself into Great Aunt Trudy’s life, it was in Jake’s best interests to get to know Price as well as he could. It would be doing his aunt a great disservice to ignore the relationship. She just wished he would treat their new friendship with more caution.
But with this position in mind, she had met back up with Crowley after his visit and they enjoyed lunch together and laughed and joked. She told Crowley that her research had turned up another likely spot for the secret dungeon laboratory, and he had humored her. They decided the following day, they would visit Bannerman Island and its ruined castle. She felt it might be the last chance to unravel this mystery, and hoped it wouldn’t be another dead end. The rest of the day had been spent pleasantly relaxing and sightseeing, simply enjoying the chance to spend time together as if they really were tourists. That had been Crowley’s price for continuing her search and she had gladly paid it.
The next day started gray and overcast, a light drizzle making everything in the city dark and glistening, but it wasn’t cold. A light jacket was enough and they ignored the damp as they headed through the streets after breakfast. They picked up another hire car and Rose drove, following the Hudson River north out of the city up the Croton Expressway. They marveled at the sign for Sleepy Hollow along the way, Crowley wondering if it was the same one as the famous headless horseman tale. Further north they passed Peekskill and some fifty miles out of the city they stopped at Cold Spring where Crowley rented a canoe for the day, and strapped it to the hired SUVs roof rack. He took over the driving for the last bit past the Hudson Highlands, along the alarmingly named Breakneck Road. As they neared their target, Rose read from her research.
“It says here that the ruins on the island are the remnant of a Scotsman’s fortress called Bannerman Castle, which he built as an arsenal for his immense collection of weapons rather than as somewhere to live. There’s a sentence I never thought I’d say aloud. Public access was briefly permitted, but curtailed by Native American and Dutch settler’s fear of resident spirits and goblins.”
“Goblins?” Crowley asked with a laugh. “That’ll be a new one for us.”
Rose grinned, pleased they were having fun. “Fingers crossed, then. Maybe we can get a goblin familiar to help us out.”
“With what exactly?”
“No idea, but goblins must be useful for something, right? Anyway, access has been restricted since 1900 for more contemporary safety reasons.”
“Well, they could hardly admit to still being scared of goblins in this day and age.”
“Jake, will you forget about the damn goblins.”
He smiled, enjoying the absurdity. “You started it.”
“Okay, now I’m finishing it.” She scanned through her research a little further. “Apparently there’s a trust working on stabilizing the ruins now, with the hope of reopening the island to the public. It’s officially called Pollopel Island on maps. Six and three-quarter acres of mostly rock, about a thousand feet from the eastern shore of the Hudson. It says here to watch out for the current and make sure to put in north of the island when the current is flowing south.”
“Okay,” Crowley said. “We can do that.”
“The castle was built by Frank Bannerman VI, a Scottish patriot, proud of his descent from one of the few Macdonalds to survive the massacre at Glencoe in 1692.”
“It’s a hell of a story, that one,” Crowley said. “You know it?”
“Not really.”
“Well, in short, during the 1690s, the King of England demanded allegiance from the all the Scottish clans. Supposedly the Macdonalds were not too keen and delayed in giving the English their oath of loyalty. So on behalf of the Crown, the Campbells, a rival clan, set upon the McDonalds and slaughtered all the able-bodied men. Anyone aged between twelve or fourteen or something, and seventy. So pretty much every male past puberty.”
Rose remembered the story vaguely from history lessons and tapped away at her phone for a minute to check, then nodded. “You’re right. And it says here that one McDonald escaped the massacre and ran to the hills with the clan banner. From that day on, his family name was Bannerman.”
“Well, what do you know!”
“The Bannerman family emigrated in 1854, when Frank was three, and settled in Brooklyn. Frank joined the Union army during the Civil War, when he was only thirteen! But after the war, the U.S. government auctioned off military goods by the ton, mostly for scrap metal. Young Frank came to realize that much of what was being sold had a market value higher than scrap and Bannerman’s became the world’s largest buyer of surplus military equipment. Enterprising lad! Their storeroom and showroom took up a full block at 501 Broadway, and was opened to the public in 1905. According to the New York Herald, ‘No museum in the world exceeds it in the number of exhibits.’ Subsequently, Frank Bannerman married an Irish woman and they had three sons. After the Spanish American War, Bannerman bought 90 percent of all captured goods in a sealed bid, and he needed a secure place to store a large quantity of volatile black powder. His son, David, saw Pollopel Island in the Hudson, and Frank Bannerman bought it in 1900.”
“Imagine buying an island,” Crowley said. “Just like that, because you needed some space. It would be pretty cool!”
“Right? During the next seventeen years, Frank Bannerman personally designed the all island’s buildings, docks, turrets, garden walls and moat in the style of old Scottish castles, almost all of it without professional help from architects, engineers, or contractors. He’s quite the over-achiever, huh? It was elaborately decorated, with biblical quotations cast in all the fireplace mantles, and a shield between the towers with a coat of arms. The family sold Bannerman Castle to New York State in 1967. They ran tours for a short while, but on August 8, 1969, a fire destroyed all of the buildings. Since then, the Taconic State Parks Commission has declared it off limits. It says here people should not attempt to visit the island as it a full of buried hazards and unsafe walls, despite a lot of scaffolding trying to prop things up. It suggests taking a Hudson River cruise if you want to see it, and enjoying it from the safety of the water.”
“Well, we’re not going to spot dungeons from a river cruise, are we?” Crowley said with a grin.
Rose shared his excitement. Despite the dangers, she loved these adventures with him. “Let’s just be damned careful, okay? Pay special attention to where we step and stay away from the walls wherever we can.”
It turned out that parking the car out of sight and picking a good spot to enter the river far from prying eyes was easier than they thought it would be, and before long Crowley was hauling the canoe up on to the shore of Bannerman Island, breathing hard from the exertion of rowing against the current for the last few yards to make a good landing.
“Well done, soldier,” Rose said.
“Phew! I need to work out a bit more often. I’ve been lazy as hell lately.”
Rose wondered if he meant that or was genuinely unaware of the shape he was in. “Didn’t you recently swim a mile to an island?”
He laughed. “Sure, but I was puffed out.”
They paused while Crowley caught his breath, then set off through the thick undergrowth toward the castle ruins.
The day had improved as they traveled and while it was still overcast, the light rain had stopped. The gray plastered red bricks of the remains towered over them like broken teeth, long struts of scaffold braced into them in several places, their other ends jammed into the ground and braced with iron spikes and fallen brickwork. Vines and poison oak had encroached well inside the boundaries of the buildings and they stepped carefully, watching out for wildlife as well as the irritating vegetation and any potholes. It didn’t take long to establish that while the ruins were interesting in their own right, despite the massive degradation, there was nothing else of interest to see. Rose stood back and sighed, disappointed.
“Another bust,” Crowley said, putting an arm around her shoulders. “I’m sorry, love.”
She shrugged. “At least we’re getting to see parts of the country we wouldn’t have known about otherwise. And you’re not being chased by armed guards this time.”
“Yet.”
“Well, here’s hoping. I guess we head back? The current will take us a fair way down river and we’ll have to hike back to the car carrying the canoe. Or maybe you can hike back while I wait with the canoe and then you can bring the car back to me?”
Crowley didn’t respond and Rose turned her head to see why. He was looking intently at something off to their left. A rill of nerves fluttered in Rose’s gut as she quickly looked the same way, wondering if maybe guards or police had arrived. But he was looking at a plain wall.
“What is it, Jake?”
“Wait here a moment, yeah?”
Without waiting for an answer he stalked off between two bulging clumps of tangled vines and ran his hand over the wall. Rose watched as he looked closer, then stepped back and checked above. Her brow knitted as he lifted one leg and before she could yell out for him to stop he’d driven a front kick hard into the bricks. He leaped back as the bricks all crumbled in and bits of mortar and showers of dust rained down from above.
“Jake, you idiot!” she yelled. “What are you doing? Get away from there before it all comes down.”
He jogged backwards, not taking his eyes off the wall. Rose held her breath. The dust settled and Crowley turned, smiling at her. “It’s a bricked up doorway!”
“That’s you being careful, is it?”
“As careful as I could be kicking in a wall, yeah. Just as well the mortar was compromised by the damp.”
“Just as well the mortar above it wasn’t!” Rose shook her head, amazed at his foolhardiness. But he had got a result. “Where does it go?”
“Don’t know. Let’s find out.”
They carefully approached the dark aperture he’d made and looked in. Stone steps led downwards, underground.
“That’s the right direction, at least,” Crowley said.
Sharing a quick smile, they both pulled out pocket flashlights and flicked them on, then Crowley started down. Rose kept close behind.
The darkness was damp and cold, instantly different to the dreary but temperate day above. The steps went down about twenty feet, then leveled off. They both shined their flashlights around and saw only a large open basement, maybe fifty feet square, with brick walls and brick support columns every ten feet or so. The space was otherwise featureless, but for dirt and cobwebs.
“Aw, man,” Rose said, genuinely deflated. “For a moment there I let myself hope we’d found something.”
She watched as Crowley paced a circuit of the basement, then return to her, his lips pressed into a flat line. “Sorry. We tried.”
But now it was Rose’s turn to stare. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing at an area of ground near the far wall.
The floor was packed dirt, hard and dry despite the overall dankness of the cellar. The dirt she looked at seemed to be slightly sunken, which wouldn’t have seemed so strange in and of itself, but it was sunken in an almost perfect square.
“I missed that. Hold my light,” Crowley said.
She took his flashlight and held one in each hand, trained on the area of ground, while Crowley grabbed a half brick from the bottom of the steps where he’d kicked the wall down. Using the corner of the brick he scraped at the dirt and quickly revealed a hollow, wooden sound. He redoubled his efforts and in no more than a few minutes had cleared a trapdoor. It was featureless, with no ring to hold and lift it, or any other means of shifting it.
“Maybe I can just jimmy it out?” Crowley mused. He took his universal tool out of his pocket and opened the small metal prong on one side, then began running it along the edge of the wood, clearing the gap between it and the packed earth.
“What the hell is that thing for?” Rose asked. “All multi-blade tools and penknives have one, that metal thing with a hole in it.”
Crowley paused, held it up. “This? It’s an awl. You can make holes with it, or put twine through the hole to pull it through leather for field repairs, that sort of thing.”
Rose’s eyebrows raised. “Well, you learn something new every day. My dad said he reckoned they were for removing stones and mud from horse’s hooves, but I always thought that was nonsense.”
Crowley looked at the tool for a moment, then shrugged. “Well, you could use it for that, I suppose.” He grinned and went back to work. Once he’d cleared it all away he began gently digging the tool under the edges. At first it appeared to be stuck tight, but then shifted just slightly.
“It’s loose but I can’t get a grip to lift it,” Crowley said, frustration evident.
“Wait there!” Rose ran back up the steps, remembering something she’d seen nearby. It took a moment to reorient herself, but she soon spotted it again. A flat piece of metal about eight inches long, with a hole in each end. It was a kind of bracket for connecting some part of the scaffolding, she assumed, perhaps dropped and lost during construction. She ran it back down to Crowley. “Try this.”
He grinned. “Perfect!”
It took a little more digging, but once he could get the metal strip in beside the wood he used it like a crowbar and the wooden cover levered up easily. He lifted it free and revealed a square hole about three feet to a side, and more steps leading down. Rose stood beside him and shined the flashlights down. The stairs were wooden and the walls below them stone. At the bottom they saw a pale gray flagstone floor.
They went down into the dark and shone their flashlights around, each making a noise of shock. But Rose also felt a rush of excitement. Metal mortuary tables filled a space almost as large again at the basement above. Around the sides were metal cabinets, bone saws and clamps and calipers lay forgotten, rusting and dust-covered.
“Well, this is clearly evidence of some kind of surgery and no doubt experimentation,” Crowley said.
“And it’s pretty secret. It would qualify as a lab, I think, don’t you?”
“I guess so. Certainly before it was abandoned, you can imagine there would have been a lot more stuff here. It’s well fitted out, just left to go to ruin now.”
Rose took her phone out and used the flash to record as much of the space as she could. They returned to the basement above and made a record of the access point, then retraced their steps again and photographed the spot where Crowley had kicked in the wall and the area around it. But the excitement of the discovery waned the more Rose thought about it. While they had certainly uncovered something, it had been left well alone for a long time. There were no fresh leads here.
“I think we need to look into Bannerman and his history a lot more,” Rose said. “What we learned in the car seems to be only most public of his activities.”
“Possibly,” Crowley said. “Or someone else used his space, perhaps without the knowledge of the Bannerman family. This was a storage facility, don’t forget. Not a home.”
“True. We’ve certainly got more research to–” Rose was interrupted by her phone coming to life in her hand, ringing. The number was unknown. She frowned, but answered. “Hello?”
“Is this Rose Black?” a man with a broad Brooklyn accent asked.
“Yes, who’s this?”
“This is Sergeant Tony Palmetto from the New York City Police Department, ma’am. I’d like you to brace yourself as I have what may come as bad news to you.”
Rose’s stomach clenched. “What is it?”
“Would you know a woman by the name of Jasmine Richards?”
“Yes! Jazz. She’s my friend.”
Rose heard the police officer suck in a breath and swallow hard. “Ms. Black, I’m very sorry to inform you that your friend has died. She appears to be the victim of a robbery.”
“What? No, that’s not possible!”
Crowley moved to her and put his arm around her shoulders, his eyes creased in concern. Rose had the wherewithal to pull the phone from her ear and tap it onto speaker.
“I’m afraid it’s true, Ms. Black. Miss Jasmine Richards was found in her apartment early this afternoon and there’s evidence she disturbed a robbery in progress. We’re ringing you as she had a slip of paper with your name and number on it in her back pocket, so we wanted to know why that might be. We’re following up any leads we find I’m very sorry, Ms. Black. Would you be able to come to the station and help us with our enquiries?”
Rose felt as if a dagger of ice had been plunged into her heart. She shared a look with Crowley, aware that tears were rolling over her cheeks. “Yes, of course.”
The Sergeant gave her an address, apologized again for the imparting such terrible news over the telephone, thanked her, and hung up.
“Rose, I’m so sorry!” Crowley said, gathering her into a hug.
She cried into his chest for a moment, her mind a whirlwind. “I’m sure Matthew Price has something to do with this,” she said, before second-guessing the wisdom of the statement.
Crowley gently pushed her back, looked into her eyes. “Come on, now. Why? What possible reason could there be for that?”
“Because I asked her to look into him. Perhaps I caused this! Maybe she got too close and poked a hornet’s nest.”
“He’s just an old man, into pharmaceuticals, for goodness sake.”
Rose realized anger was battling inside her with grief, a dangerous combination, but she couldn’t hold her tongue. “You never liked Jazz from the outset, anyway, Jake! I think you’re threatened by her.”
Crowley’s mouth fell open and his eyes darkened for a moment, then she saw him mentally check himself. He pulled back some kind of control. “You know what? I was a little threatened. I’m only human, I guess. But that’s not why I’m questioning your accusing of Price.”
She opened her mouth to berate him further, but he held up a hand to forestall her, then placed his palm on her cheek. “But! Your friend has just died and that’s awful. And who knows, maybe you’re onto something and I can’t see it. I’ve been wrong about stuff often enough before. Let’s get back to the city, and I promise to keep an open mind.”