“Surely they’ll know about Bill, wouldn’t you think?”
“Probably. But I don’t know who’s to be there, exactly. The note in the diary simply says ‘Donors.’ It might be two people, or a crowd. So I can’t phone them to make sure they know about Mr. Fanshawe, and …” He trailed off again.
I felt sorry for him. He sounded forlorn, and very young. I tried for a moment to imagine being eighteen or so, with no better place to go than a small, not very exciting museum. “I’m sure you’ll deal with them just fine,” I said briskly, and smiled at him. “By the way, I left a lot of bags full of stuff here the other day and forgot all about them. Do you have them?”
He produced the bags. I bundled everything together as comfortably as possible and headed for the door. “Come on, Jane. Home. You can help me when some of these threaten to fall out of my arms.”
She followed silently, slowly, as if reluctant to leave. I could sympathize, but there was nothing more we could do there. I intended to spend the afternoon trying to catch up on Christmas, and then I was going to try to get Jane to take a sleeping pill, by bullying if nothing else worked. Maybe if I thought about something else for a while, and Jane got the first good rest she’d had in days, one of us might have a bright idea.
“I gave him that diary,” she said as we walked home. That was all, but all her fear and worry were somehow condensed into that single sentence.
Alan and I put up the Christmas tree that afternoon. My heart wasn’t in it. The tree was a small one, English style, that fit nicely on a table by the bay window. We’d picked it out a week ago, and I’d looked forward to decorating it. Now it was just a chore. I tried hard to get into the mood, but I kept thinking about Jane and her Bill. I’d hardly known him, but she was my best friend, and the poor woman was coming apart at the seams. She was trying to cling to the hope that he was still alive, but I could see that hope waning. As for me, I felt as useless as I ever had in my life. I was supposed to be kind of good at figuring things out, and I hadn’t come up with one single good idea.
Every time the phone rang, I jumped, hoping it might be good news, fearing it might be bad. And every time it was no news at all, just friends or Alan’s family calling about inconsequential matters. They were kind, pleasant, and friendly. I could have screamed at every one of them.
I wrapped some presents that evening, rather listlessly, and then went over to Jane’s with one of my magic pills.
She was sitting in her kitchen waiting morosely for a pot of coffee to steep. Even the bulldogs were subdued, reflecting their mistress’s mood as animals so often do.
“Late for a visit,” she growled.
“I know. I’m sorry, but I’m worried about you. I mean really worried, Jane. You’re going to be in really bad shape if you don’t get some sleep. Have you ever taken a sleeping pill?”
She shook her head and reached for the coffeepot. Gently, I stayed her hand.
“Jane, listen to me. How many times, when I’ve been upset, unhappy, beside myself with worry, have you held my hand and dried my tears, figuratively, at least?”
“Mmph. Didn’t do anything much.”
“Yes, you did, and you know it. And not just for me, but for virtually anybody in this town who was in trouble. You’ve bullied us, cajoled us, fed us, done whatever was needed, and always for our own good. Now it’s time I did something for your good. Please, for my sake if not for your own, take one of these tonight. They’re not narcotic, but they work. You’ll sleep well, you’ll feel better in the morning, and you’ll be ready tomorrow to help me do whatever needs to be done. I can’t do this all myself, Jane. Please.”
That was a cheap shot, but it did the trick—that, or the quite genuine quaver in my voice. Wordlessly she accepted a pill out of the bottle and swallowed it with a swig of the water I provided.
“Now what?” she growled. “Do I fall over in five minutes?”
“No, you get ready for bed, take a warm bath, read a little—whatever will relax you. In about half an hour you’ll be really sleepy and want to turn out the light. I’ll look in on you tomorrow. And thanks, Jane.”
I slipped out, mission accomplished, and went to bed early myself. I tried, before I dropped off, to think hard about all I’d learned at the museum, in the hopes that some part of my brain would keep working on the problem after my conscious mind had set it aside.
I also said a fervent prayer for Bill, wherever he was, and for Jane.
Maybe it was the prayer that did it, or perhaps my mind did keep on working. At any rate, I woke very early on Thursday, long before dawn, with an idea. It was so urgent an idea that I woke Alan, who was still snoring peacefully.
“Mmph?”
“Are you awake?”
“Mmph.”
“Alan, do wake up. Really, I mean. I want to talk to you.”
“I’m awake.”
He wasn’t, though. He’s mastered the art of talking in his sleep on such occasions. So I got up, made coffee, and fed the cats, all in a fever of impatience. I made all the noise I possibly could, and it worked. He appeared in the kitchen just as I was about to take coffee up to him.
“There you are, finally.”
He looked pointedly at the kitchen clock, whose hands hadn’t quite made it to six-thirty.
“I know, but I have an idea, a really good idea, and I need you to call Derek and get things moving.”
He took the cup of coffee I thrust into his hand. “This is about Bill?” He sounded fully awake now.
“What else? Listen, something I heard yesterday started me thinking. Bill’s assistant at the museum was talking about Roman Britain, and the roads and sewers and things the Romans built, and it reminded me. Isn’t there a system of Roman sewer tunnels under Sherebury?”
“Yes. Well, they were Roman originally. They were enlarged considerably in medieval times, and then later—”
“Yes, okay, but the point is, where can you get into them?”
“There were once entrances from most of the important buildings in town, I believe, but they’ve been blocked off. The tunnels aren’t at all safe, you know. They haven’t been shored up for hundreds of years, some of them.”
“Was there an entrance from the Town Hall?”
“Certainly there used to be at one time.” Alan put down his coffee cup. “Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?”
“Why not? If there was once an entrance, even if it was boarded up, it could have been opened again. After all, Bill saw to a lot of renovations when the museum opened. He could have found plans and discovered the entrance.”
“Dorothy, even if the entrance exists, why would Bill have gone there on Monday?”
“How do I know? Maybe he wanted to get a better look at the tunnel, with an idea to using it for storage, or opening it up as a part of the museum. It’s part of Sherebury history, after all. I don’t know why he might have gone there. I just think it’s a possibility worth exploring. He hasn’t been found anywhere else, after all, and everyone’s just about run out of suggestions.”
Alan considered that. He began to nod slowly. “You’re right, love. It may be far-fetched, but we can’t neglect any possibility. I’ll ring Derek.”
I prepared a very quick breakfast while Alan made the call, but we would have had time to eat it twice over before the inspector was finally found. He’d been called out very early on an important drugs case and hadn’t returned to the office. The sergeant on night duty assured Alan she’d have Derek ring up as soon as he was able.
He did better than call. He turned up on our doorstep.
“I was nearby when they reached me on the mobile,” he said when I answered the doorbell, “so I thought I might as well pop in.”
“Come in, Derek. I’m really glad to see you! And you look awfully cold. Would you like some coffee, and have you had breakfast?”
“Yes, I would, and no, I haven’t.”
So I made more toast and boiled another couple o
f eggs while Alan told him my theory.
Derek, bless his heart, took it seriously. “You may have something there. I ought to have thought of it, but I didn’t. The planning office has a map of the old tunnels. Suppose I go and fetch it and meet you at the museum.”
We were very near the shortest, darkest day of the year. I shivered in the foggy predawn gloom as I waited for Alan to get the car out of our minute garage.
“Not propitious weather,” he commented when I got into the car.
“No.” I pulled my woolly orange hat down over my ears and wished I were in California, or Spain, or my own front parlor. Anywhere warm.
I was still shivering when we reached the museum. The car hadn’t had time to heat up. “I hope the place is open,” I said as I got out. “It’s so early. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Young Walter must be at work already,” said Alan, trying the front door. “It’s unlocked.”
There were no lights in the front hall, but of course the museum wasn’t officially open yet. Perhaps Walter had left them off on purpose, or a lightbulb had burned out. We felt our way up the half flight of stairs to the museum entrance.
There were no lights on there, either. A streetlight outside one of the windows did little to dispel the inky blackness of the room. “Alan,” I whispered, clutching his arm. I’d thought I’d overcome my childhood fear of the dark, but I didn’t like this.
Alan put his hand over my arm and moved cautiously forward. “I’ll find a light. Walter must be working upstairs. I think there’s a lamp on Bill’s desk—oh!”
“What? What is it? Alan?”
He took a step back, pulling me with him. “Stay there. Don’t move.”
“Alan, you’re scaring me! What is it?”
“I don’t know yet. We have to have light. I’m going to let go your hand, but don’t move.”
I stood as one petrified while Alan very cautiously moved away from me. I heard him patting what I thought was Bill’s desk, and then there was a click, and a dim lamp cast a circle of light around the desk.
I gasped.
Walter Tubbs lay slumped across Bill’s desk, and something was very wrong with the back of his head.
SEVEN
“DON’T TOUCH HIM. DON’T MOVE.” ALAN’S VOICE HAD OVERTONES I had never heard before. This was Chief Constable Nesbitt, not my husband. I stayed where I was and concentrated on keeping my breakfast where I had put it.
Alan, moving with a catlike lightness surprising in so large a man, stepped over to Walter and put two fingers on the side of his neck.
“He’s alive,” Alan said quietly. “Only just, I think. I’ll ring for help, but I’m afraid we’ll have to compromise the scene somewhat. The boy needs immediate attention.” Quickly he went through the ABCs of first aid—clear the airway, check for breathing and circulation—and then picked up the phone and dialed 999.
It seemed hours before the ambulance and Derek arrived, almost simultaneously. I didn’t wait to be asked to leave. Much as I wanted to help, I realized I would only be in the way. These people knew what they were doing, and would do everything they could for Walter. My business was to keep from destroying evidence, and I could do that best somewhere else.
But where? Back in the car? Alan had the keys, and he was busy helping.
My eyes lit on a table just inside the museum door. A small book lay on it, a dusty, tattered paperback with the words “Medieval Sherebury” on it. I looked more closely. Could this have been something Walter had found?
No, probably not. When I adjusted my bifocals, I saw that there was a stamped marking: “Sherebury Planning Commission.” And in small print under the title were the words “A Plan of the Roman and Medieval Tunnel System.”
This must be the book Derek had brought with him! Without an instant’s hesitation I picked it up and carried it out of the room.
Derek and his crew had turned on lights as they came in. I leaned against the stair rail in the foyer of the museum and squinted at the map. The light out here was dim and the print in the book was faded, but I persevered.
The book, or pamphlet really, was like a tiny atlas, dividing the city of Sherebury into eight sections, with a detailed, large-scale map of each. The tunnel system and its entrances were marked in what must once have been bright red ink. It had faded to a dirty yellow, but I could make out, barely, the tunnel that ran right under the Town Hall. At the bottom of the page was some tiny print. I fumbled in my purse for the small flashlight I always carry and turned it on the book.
Ah! There it was, the entry numbered 7: “Town Hall. Entrance in northwest corner of cellar. Covered by paneling, with latch.”
I made my creaky, arthritic way down to the cellar.
It was a real cellar, originally a wine cellar, probably. One story below the basement level of the building, it was accessible by a rather nasty, cobwebby enclosed staircase. I had been there once before on a tour of the building, and I didn’t relish the thought of going down again. I cannot bring myself to like spiders or any reminder of their presence.
This time, however, the cobwebs were less bothersome. Oh, a few were in evidence, but they didn’t brush my face in that disgusting, shivery manner. Either someone had been doing some housekeeping down here, or someone else had passed here very recently.
I quickened my pace.
I remembered that the cellar itself was rather splendid, more like the crypt of a cathedral. It was really cellars: several large though low-ceilinged rooms with Gothic-arched roof and stone walls and floors. The wine racks that had originally lined the walls had been removed, but the oak paneling behind them had not. The paneling covered the walls from floor almost to ceiling, and amazingly had not warped very much over the centuries, as I recalled. The cellar, unlike many of its kind, was remarkably dry.
I remembered a good many odds and ends had been stored here the last time I was down. Now, as I discovered when I found the switch to the single dim bulb hanging from the ceiling, the room was nearly bare except for dust.
Now to find the northwest corner.
Yes, but which northwest corner? In this room, or another? And for that matter, which way was northwest? I’ve never been wonderful about directions, even aboveground. In a place where there are no windows I’m lost. I cast my glance and the beam of my flashlight rather helplessly around the room I was in. It had five sides, rather than four, and every corner looked exactly like every other.
Wait, though. Were those footprints in the dust?
The dust had certainly been disturbed in what looked like a path from where I stood to one of the corners. It was hard to tell by the feeble light whether I was seeing footprints or not, but the hairs on the back of my neck twitched uncomfortably, and I felt my mouth going dry.
I hadn’t even told Alan where I was going.
I should have turned tail right then, I suppose. I almost did. The police were right upstairs, after all. Let them take it from here. I didn’t like this place. My claustrophobia was reaching out its clutching, suffocating tentacles, and my nerves were stretched taut.
But the police were dealing with a boy who was badly hurt and might die. If Bill was down here, hurt, and I delayed long enough to climb several steep flights of stairs, he might die, too. I could just take a look. I was on my guard, after all. And no one would be lurking down here, surely.
I wasn’t convinced, though. My feet moved most unwillingly toward the corner. If a mouse or, horrors, a rat had appeared I would have screamed the place down. The flashlight in my hand trembled as I played the light over the paneling, trying to see some sort of secret spring.
It turned out to be not very secret. The paneling was carved in rectangles, not anything fancy like linen-fold, and a bottom corner of one rectangle had a square cut out of it, about four by four inches. I put my hand into the recess, trying hard not to think about spiders, and found a metal ring that turned.
The section of paneling opened with a creak of rusty hinges tha
t sounded like every horror movie I’d ever seen. I gripped my flashlight until my knuckles were white, gulped once, and called into the black hole, “Bill?”
No sound came out. I cleared my throat and tried again, but I couldn’t hear any reply over the pounding of my heart.
This was ridiculous. I had either to muster the courage to go into that awful, black place, or hightail it upstairs and get help. Taking several long, deep breaths, and trying to hold my flashlight steady, I crept forward.
The cobwebs were very much in evidence here. I stuck my hand out as far in front of me as I could, moving the flashlight in circles to brush them from the ceiling, before I went very far. Then I shone the light on the floor, in case there were stairs in that blackness.
The first thing I saw was another flashlight, lying on the stone floor a few feet inside the doorway.
The next thing was a foot.
My breath came in shallow gasps. I wondered briefly what a heart attack felt like, but the thought passed out of my mind instantly. With the utmost reluctance I moved the beam of the flashlight to play on the face of the man on the floor.
On Bill’s face.
That broke my fear. Sorrow and pity washed over me in a rush, wiping out any other feeling. I knelt stiffly on the hard flagstones and put my hand to his face. “Bill?” I whispered.
But the touch had told me that Bill would not answer. The cellar was cold, but not that cold. Bill’s face held the chill, not of a cold room, but of the grave.
I knelt a moment longer and said a prayer for Bill, and for Jane, and then slowly got to my feet. I knew I must not disturb the scene any more than I already had, but I needed to try to make sense of this dreadful thing. I could see no visible injury to Bill. There was no blood on the floor, nothing except dust, scuffed by his feet and mine. If there were any other footprints, they were beyond my discerning. His hands—I looked more closely, shining my flashlight on them. They showed no signs of a struggle, no broken fingernails that I could see, no scratches. His right hand lay partly under his body and—yes! There was something in it! A piece of paper?
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