They realised afterwards, when they swam across the river from bank to bank, that they could have only advanced a few yards through the tunnel, but now, while they were deep inside it, and inching blindly forwards through the foul darkness, it felt as if it must be miles long. The roof of it scraped their heads and the sides were so close that at times even Magnus, who was terribly thin, had to turn sideways to get through. In one place they had to crouch and wriggle under a spar of timber that had fallen from the roof. When they shone their torch beams upwards, they could see that it was a properly constructed tunnel, the walls lined with lumps of knobbled flint mixed with river stones and the odd brick, all crudely plastered together and shored up with timbers which, amazingly, had not rotted away. Underfoot, they were squelching through what felt like thick mud.
Nobody spoke. All three knew instinctively that all any of them wanted was for the tunnel to end, in daylight, in a blank wall, anything – just as long as they could legitimately turn round and go back. Floss was starting to panic. She had always loathed stuffy enclosed spaces and she tried to avoid going in lifts or up into lofts or in things like ghost trains at a funfair. The fear she hoped she might have conquered was now coming back. It was rising up into her mouth, and it was getting very big. It was threatening to become a scream.
But then, just as she thought she really would have to go back, she heard Sam call out, “Hey, it’s widening out. It’s a kind of room.” And soon they were all standing together in the middle of a rough-walled chamber, with a domed roof, the top-most point of which was considerably higher than the tunnel.
Although there was now plenty of space around them they stood in a little knot, their bodies touching for reassurance, looking round them. “It’s empty,” Magnus said in a small voice. “I thought—”
“What?” Sam’s voice too sounded crestfallen. “Did you expect – human remains? The remains of the boy?”
“Of course not, though I suppose they might be in a cavity, say, under the floor. We might have to dig.”
Floss shivered. It just sounded too horrible, too like hideous murders one saw on the TV news. The police were always digging for people. She said, “We can’t do that, Mags.”
“Why not? The mother wants her son. She wants him to be decently buried. That’s what we’re here for.”
“I’ll go back if you start digging,” she said.
“On your own?”
“Yes, if I have to.”
“Listen. Just wait a minute.” Sam was running the beam of his torch all over the chamber. The floor was made of brick and against one wall a slab of stone had been placed across two smaller stone supports, to make a bench. More slabs of stone, looking like the ruins of a table, lay on the floor, but apart from these things the room really was empty. Directly opposite where they had stepped out of their tunnel, another tunnel began, but they could see from where they stood that it was impassable. It only went in about a foot before ending abruptly in a wall of flints and bricks, all firmly mortared into place, with two great beams driven into the ground to shore the wall up, in the shape of an X.
Sam said, “Perhaps they never took the tunnel as far as the other side of the river. It looks as if they gave up. This must have just been a hiding place. After all, you could have taken a boat across the river I suppose, under cover of darkness.”
Magnus was now working his way systematically round the walls of the chamber with his torch, but Floss’s fear of dark, enclosed spaces was creeping over her again. “Look, you can see that there’s nothing here,” she said. “Please can we go back?” It was enough that she had braved the darkness and come this far. Now she wanted to return to the river and sit in the sun.
“I’m looking for something,” he said. “Not a body. But Miss Adeline told us that her brother used to hide his treasures here. Remember? There’s got to be a little hidey-hole. But where?”
“In the walls, perhaps?” Sam suggested, flashing his big yellow light up and down. But the crude mixture of brick and flint was firmly cemented together. Between them they went over every inch, but there was no loose stone that pulled out, revealing a hiding place.
Next they turned their attention to the brick floor which was raised higher than the floor of the tunnel which was mainly mud mixed with small river stones. The floor of the chamber itself was perfectly dry. Care had obviously been taken in the construction of this little room, presumably built to shelter people who might have had to stay in hiding for weeks. When he could find no obvious place where bricks had been removed, then replaced, Sam squatted down to look at the floor more closely. But Floss, who was now back inside the tunnel, noticed that Magnus too was standing at a distance, viewing the floor as a whole. For a minute or two he said nothing, then he seemed to pounce. “That’s the place,” he said. “That’s got to be it.”
“Why?” demanded Sam. “That’s the one damp bit. No point in hiding anything there.”
“But that’s exactly it! It’s damp because there’s cold air trapped underneath it, so there must be a space. Manholes are always the last things to dry, for the same reason. I bet that’s it. Come on… good thing I brought this.”
But Sam was sceptical and Floss, who could feel her panic rising, was increasingly desperate to get away. They stood side by side, watching as Magnus drove the blade of the chisel into the joists between the damp bricks, working it carefully round each one. Then they saw that he was lifting them out, and placing them beside him in an orderly pile. They crept closer. Floss found that Sam was holding her hand. She gave his fingers a reassuring squeeze because he was shaking as much as she was. Magnus was lifting something out of the hole in the floor.
It was quite large and wrapped in brownish cloth that smelt as if it had been impregnated with oil. Magnus handed this over to Sam who, instinctively, folded it up carefully and placed it on top of the bricks. Then they looked at the box which he was holding up in front of him with the air of one of the Three Wise Men. “Well, I know what that is,” Floss said. “It’s an old travelling writing desk. Aunt Helen’s got one. She’s leaving it to Sam in her will.”
Magnus placed the box on the floor and they all looked at it. The oily cloth had preserved the beautifully figured wood from which it was made, but had blackened the brass plate set into the lid. On this, barely visible, engraved in thin, flowing letters, was the name “Maurice Scott-Carr”. “That’s Miss Adeline’s surname too,” Floss said. “It’s on a little notice next to her front door. Open it, Mags.”
“I don’t know if I can,” he said, his voice steely with tension. “It’s got a keyhole too. It might be locked.”
But as they watched they saw him open the box quite easily. The inside of the lid divided into two halves, each fitting together to make the small leathered slope of a writing desk. Set into the top were two small bottles of ink, and a polished ledge for pens. “It’s just like Aunt Helen’s,” Floss said. “You pull that bit of ribbon and there’s space to store things, underneath.”
“I know,” said Magnus, and he opened up the storage space to reveal a small package, wrapped in the same kind of oily cloth which had protected the box. Carefully he unwrapped it, took out a bundle of yellowish papers tied round with string, and held them in his hands. He was breathing very fast in the silence.
“What are they, do you think?” Sam said. Magnus had handled everything with such reverential care he didn’t dare rush him now.
“I’m not sure. They look like little books. Look, it’s a lot of sections sewn together. But there aren’t any covers. “Of course, nowadays they’d be glued – that’s why books fall apart – but these have been sewn together, with silk I think.”
“The string’s rotten,” warned Sam. “It’ll disintegrate if we try to undo it.”
“I don’t think we should,” Floss said, “at least, not yet. This all belongs to Miss Adeline. Shouldn’t we take it to her first?”
But Magnus was already teasing out something from under the string, a folded piece of paper which looked rather newer than the little silk bound bundles. He opened it and it separated into two pieces, so he pieced the two halves together and held them up in front of his face. “Can you shine your torches,” he said. “There’s some writing on this. It’s a bit faded.”
But he found that even in the wavering light he could read what was written quite easily, because it was in a bold round hand, honest, unpretentious writing, the hand of a boy like Sam, perhaps, who liked climbing trees and being practical.
Magnus read, first to himself and then aloud:
“‘The only known evidence of the existence of the unfortunate William Neale, whose grieving mother is supposed to haunt the Abbey, was uncovered in the 1850s by some workmen repairing a floor. Taking up the boards they came across some papers mixed up with rubble. On examination these proved to be copy books, such as a schoolboy might use, of the Tudor period. Corrections had been made on many of them, in a hand that was identified from other manuscripts, as that of the Lady Alice Neale. Each book was signed “William, His Booke,” and, significantly, nearly every page of them was badly blotched. (Taken from my father, Edmund Scott-Carr’s unpublished History of the Abbey.)’”
“Go on,” said Floss, “What else does it say?”
“That’s it. There isn’t any more. Maurice must have copied it out of something his father was writing. Perhaps Miss Adeline’s got it.”
“But I wonder why he took the books,” Sam said, “and hid them here?”
“He was going to the war,” Floss said, “and his own father was dead. Miss Adeline told us that. Maurice had already inherited the Abbey. But he knew he might never come back, and he didn’t. He was killed. He didn’t know what was going to happen to the Abbey, it could have been sold off, anything. I think he put them here to keep them safe. Only his sister knew where he’d put his treasures.”
Sam was fingering the ancient little books, under the string. “Look, it says ‘William, His Booke’,” he said in wonder. “Look, on the very first page of the very first one. And someone has corrected it. They’ve written over the top.” Everything was in Latin but it was obvious that a grown up had stood over the boy, ferociously crossing out his own pathetic scribblings.
“Poor William, he really was messy,” Floss murmured. “Look at all those blots.”
But Magnus said very sadly, “They look more like tears to me.”