The three of us practically met at Ty’s door, and I lifted my fist to knock.
I couldn’t quite believe we were about to see Ty again after a week of waiting and worry. We’d repeatedly tried to get hold of her before Christmas with no success, so it was hard to believe the moment of contact was actually here. I tapped, then rapped on the door. And, of course, there was no answer.
Now wasn’t the time for privacy. Nel turned the handle and we all piled in.
Ty’s room, like Henry’s just a few weeks before, looked as if it had just been left. A little fire burned in the grate, the remains of a cup of tea stood on the bedside table and there was a bathrobe slung over the desk chair. (‘Damp,’ said Nel.) The dressing table was a whole mess of make-up and hair products, some with the tops left off. ‘Yup,’ I said fondly, ‘that’s Ty.’ In the bed, half hidden by the rumpled covers, was the sleep mask she wore, with a self-referential design featuring a pair of closed eyes, and the wardrobe drawer was pulled open to reveal a colourful tangle of underwear. Ty, it seemed, had dressed in a hurry.
‘Well, she has been here …’ I said.
‘… but she ain’t here now,’ finished Nel.
‘I guess she’s already down at the stables,’ said Shafeen, walking to the window.
‘Or she’s tied up in the cellars,’ I said darkly.
‘Your imagination really is working overtime these days,’ said Shafeen. ‘In the cellars? Why would she be in the cellars?’
I couldn’t really explain, but I’d had a funny feeling when we’d been talking to Bates at the top of that dark stair. ‘Well,’ I said, making it up as I went along, ‘if she is the prey for today, they’re going to have to make sure she doesn’t make a run for it before the right moment, aren’t they?’
‘I suppose,’ said Shafeen, ‘but the cellars would be a bit Gothic, even for them. Besides, they were packed full of all that Veuve Clicquot ’84. Did you see how much they had?’
‘Man, all that wine must be worth something,’ said Nel, who was always interested in wealth-related stuff. ‘Let’s find out.’
‘I don’t know that we really have time …’ I began. But Nel had already flipped out her Saros and was tapping and typing as expertly as ever. I was pretty much out the door when she said, ‘Hmm. That’s weird.’
I closed the door again. ‘What’s weird?’ I asked.
She scrolled and scrolled, her acrylic nail tapping smartly on the screen. ‘It doesn’t seem to exist.’
‘Huh?’
‘That champagne,’ she repeated patiently. ‘It doesn’t exist.’
‘Do you mean that it’s not available?’ asked Shafeen. ‘Maybe the de Warlencourts bought the whole lot.’
‘No, it’s more than that.’ She flashed a picture at us. It seemed to be some sort of golden staircase; magical fairy-tale stairs, framed in an archway, leading to nowhere. It was the gilded version of the dark stair we’d glimpsed earlier at Bates’s back.
‘This is the staircase of the champagne cellars at Veuve Clicquot at Reims in France,’ Nel explained. ‘Each step is carved with a date, for every year the cellars produced a vintage.’ She pinched and expanded. ‘Look closer.’
We did. The steps went from 1983 straight to 1985.
‘See?’ said Nel. ‘Veuve Clicquot 1984 literally doesn’t exist. According to this, they never made a 1984 vintage. There just isn’t one.’
‘But – they ask Bates for it all the time.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But have you ever seen him bring it? Have we ever tasted it?’
I thought hard. Nel was absolutely right. ‘I guess … well, no.’
‘Maybe,’ said Shafeen, twitching Ty’s robe into place over the chair, ‘the vineyard made some in secret especially for the de Warlencourts, and consequently it’s so rare it’s massively expensive. That sounds quite Medieval, doesn’t it?’
‘I suppose,’ said Nel doubtfully.
‘Anyway, this is all very interesting,’ I said, anxious to get everyone back on track, ‘but it doesn’t help us find Ty. Let’s get changed and get down to the stables. She’s got to be our priority.’