by Alan Hunter
‘Ah . . . aha!’
He reached into the cavity and struggled with something at the back. After a deal of grunting one heard a sharp click, and he lifted out a section of the match-board lining.
‘There. I was sure there’d be one.’
Attached to the lining was a flat box or compartment. But all it contained was old Peachment’s army papers and some yellowing snapshots, presumably of his wife.
Brassingham stared at these relics glumly.
‘That’s the trouble with secret drawers. Nobody keeps anything worthwhile in them – it’s been a life-time’s disappointment.’
‘Still, that compartment wouldn’t have held many coins.’
‘I’d settle for it, stuffed with Pope Innocent medals.’
He gave the interior of the bookcase another scrutiny, but the one secret compartment was all it possessed. Then he turned to the books and, surprisingly, brightened again. He stood gazing fondly, hands clasped behind his back.
‘Look – horsy stuff. I can always sell it. The old boy’s got all the classics here. And that’s Armstrong’s History of Northshire – it fetches twelve or fifteen these days.’
Gently puffed indulgently, giving Bressingham his head. He was beginning to understand his man. And, strangely, he noticed, in the dealer’s hands, the most unlikely junk seemed to take on value. Was it Bressingham’s enthusiasm, so naive and infectious, or just the reverent way he handled things? Difficult to say – but he had the touch: he could discover beauty among the ashes.
‘A decent bit of calf . . . and it has the map.’
Already you were seeing those histories in a connoisseur’s library.
‘I’ll bet young Peachment’ll take fifty bob for them.’ When they came in, Gently wouldn’t have offered five.
Bressingham asked few questions and Gently gave him no directions. The chubby man seemed to work on a rationale of his own. He rarely explored the whole of a room or went on tapping expeditions; often, he would simply stand somewhere in the centre and let his twinkling eyes rove about.
When they moved to the drawing-room he was soon on the scent.
‘It’s older here . . . a lot older! Look at the ceiling – they’ve raised the floor-level. Under here there’ll be quite a cavity.’
But he ignored the floorboards and went straight to the corner where the alcove cupboard concealed the priest-hole. Gently watched. Bressingham opened the door, ran his hands down the shelves, pulled out the drawers.
‘Aha! Ha, ha! You knew about this one?’
‘We knew about it,’ Gently said.
‘But have you been down there?’
‘Not yet. I got the impression it was fairly recent.’
‘Oh, my Aunt Matilda!’ Bressingham exclaimed. His fingers rippled over the door. ‘Look at those hinges. Look at that panelling. They can’t be later than seventeenth century.’
‘And the drawers and the alcove?’
‘Same date. Some naughty Papist put this lot in. And who’d be more likely to have Papal medals – and a reason for hiding them under the mat?’
Gently shrugged, staring into the hole. It looked so dank and inaccessible. If old Peachment had found his way in there it was long odds that he couldn’t have got out again. You could see the damp-slime on the lower walls and on the floor, four feet below ground level.
‘It’s too obvious. You couldn’t be in this house a day without finding that hole. No doubt it was useful to duck into temporarily, but any organized search would find it.’
‘No, not so easily as that,’ Bressingham objected. ‘You wouldn’t spot it so soon if the place was dressed right – lots of furniture, curtains, tapestries, and the shelves packed with china and knickknacks. Then the lining behind the drawers would be back in place – you need to be in the hole to do that – so even if some old Roundhead pulled a drawer out he’d find nothing suspicious behind it. Give these boys a little credit. They were brought up on Inigo Jones sets.’
Gently grinned. ‘Notwithstanding Inigo! I was thinking of the property’s subsequent owners. Even if the vendor didn’t show off his priest-hole, the new occupier would soon find it.’
‘What then?’
‘He’d find what was in it.’
Bressingham touched the side of his buttony nose. ‘He might, my friend, and he might not. Especially if he didn’t know that something was there. Give me a hand down, will you?’
In spite of his rotund build Bressingham was active enough when it counted, and he quickly stripped off his coat and muffler, knelt, and inserted his feet in the drawer-well. Gently, also kneeling, grasped Bressingham’s wrists, and the dealer energetically wriggled into the hole. He stayed a moment, scuffling with his feet, then nodded to Gently to let go.
‘Oops! It’s solid, but it’s like a butter-slide.’
Gently handed him down a torch. Bressingham flashed it summarily about the floor then, more carefully, over the walls.
‘It’s undercut a bit here behind the chimney. Is there anything at this level on the other side?’
‘Yes – a half-cellar.’
‘Hmn . . . that fits. It would’ve been the dairy or something before they raised the floor level.’
But this obviously was not what Bressingham was seeking. He turned his attention to the nearer wall. Here he was hidden from Gently by the alcove cupboard, and only grunts and gasps marked his progress. At last he moved back into the field of vision.
‘Blast.’
‘Haven’t you found whatever it is?’
‘Yes, I’ve found it, but it’s no go. Want to come down and have a look?’
With slight enthusiasm Gently squirmed through the gap and landed in the slime beside Bressingham. Bressingham flashed his torch on the inner wall, which was constructed of weeping bricks.
‘So what am I looking at?’
‘Look – here, and here. Half-bricks put in for no reason.’ He jabbed a dirty finger in the slime and sketched out a vertical line. ‘Then . . . two feet away . . . exactly the same thing. The original doorway. Only the so-and-so has been bricked up since Will was a Shakespeare.’
‘What else would you expect?’
‘My dear chap!’ Bressingham drummed on the bricks with his knuckles. ‘Just behind these is the floor cavity. You could hide gold by the sackful in there.’
‘But if there’s no way in . . . ?’
‘Not so fast. Remember that half-cellar you mentioned. And then there’s always the drawing-room floor, though I shall be disappointed if it comes to that.’
Gently gave him a leg-up, then hauled himself after. He was growing a little tired of the priest-hole angle. If Peachment had found gold, it must have come to hand easily, and not involved the old man in gymnastics or hard labour. But Bressingham wasn’t so soon discouraged. He insisted on rolling back the dusty carpet; board by board, he checked the drawing-room floor, crouching to his task like a plump Sherlock Holmes.
‘Too many new boards,’ he sighed at last. ‘It was probably repaired in the last century. That means other people have been down in the floor cavity – though of course, they needn’t have found what we think was there.’
‘Also, no loose boards,’ Gently said drily.
‘There’s still the half-cellar,’ Bressingham said. ‘I don’t know . . . I could have sworn I was on to something. That priest-hole is wasted if it doesn’t have a secret.’
They visited the half-cellar. It was a dangerous trap that simply opened off the end of the scullery. You went down half a dozen slippery stone steps and began skating about in a noisome gloom. Because the ceiling consisted of oversize oak boards Gently knew they were beneath the strange little storeroom, and he flashed his torch along the seams in the faint hope that they had trapped something significant. But they hadn’t, and Bressingham was equally disappointed in his quest.
‘Oh dear. I’m getting the feeling that I’m flogging a dead dickey.’
Gently shrugged. ‘We’re not through yet.
Let’s take a turn upstairs.’
Bressingham shook his head. ‘Upstairs isn’t so good. That’s where you’re more likely to have had structural changes. And the lofts, they’re worst of all – people are always repairing the roofs.’
Once again, Gently gave no directions, leaving Bressingham to follow his nose. They passed the stairs to the storeroom. Bressingham glanced at them. He continued along the hall to the main staircase.
‘Shall I predict something?’
‘Fire away.’
‘The principal bedroom will have a high ceiling. It’ll be over the drawing-room, on the original level, and they can’t have dropped the floor of the loft.’
‘Does that mean something?’
Bressingham stopped to twinkle at him. ‘Just giving my ego a boost,’ he said. ‘That business with the priest-hole knocked my confidence. I’m no bloody good when I’ve lost my bounce.’
Gently chuckled, and they moved on. Bressingham was right about the bedroom. A lofty chamber, it had far more presence than the beetle-browed room below.
‘Of course, the drawing-room was once like this . . . there was a bit of style about Tudor. Still harking back to the old halls with a fire in the middle and a hole for the smoke. Then timber-framing came in and it wasn’t conducive to shapely rooms . . . and here we’ve got the two together. It’s the rummest place I’ve ever poked round.’
Gently drew on his pipe. ‘Tell me how it happened.’
Bressingham looked aslant. ‘How do you mean?’
‘Well . . . a Tudor wing, built, left unfinished, then completed in a later style.’
Bressingham stared silently for a moment.
‘We’re back with the monks again, aren’t we?’ he said.
‘Both the coin and the medal are pre-Reformation.’
‘Yes – only it needn’t mean a thing.’
‘Let’s follow it through.’
Bressingham took out some Manikins, lit one, breathed pungent smoke in the icy air.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘But it’s pure theory. There isn’t a trace of this in the record. We had a Benedictine cell – that’s fact, and they were probably just as corrupt as their neighbours. So they were getting rich through flogging indulgences and defrauding heirs and other rackets. They’ve been living since the year dot in some old hovel by the Mere, but now they’re getting delusions of grandeur and they’ve lost their taste for coarse fish anyway. Is that your idea?’
Gently nodded. Bressingham nosed a little smoke.
‘They get their hands on a suitable plot – not by buying it, if I know them – and put some spiritual pressure on the local contractor to run them up a snazzy monastery. But when only one wing is finished Henry VIII cracks down on the priestcraft, and our holy friends get booted out, leaving their crock of gold behind them. Then . . .’ Bressingham paused. ‘Then I think there’d have been a lawsuit, perhaps between the contractor and the original copyholder. Result, delay; and so the reason why the rest of the house is in a later style.’
‘Would that be plausible?’
‘Oh, quite. Except perhaps for the crock of gold.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’
Bressingham winked slyly. ‘I imagine the contractor would know where to look for it. But there’s another reason – that scrap of blue paper. It fits too well with what we saw downstairs. There’s a pong of seventeenth century round here. All the time I keep getting it.’
He flicked the ash from his Manikin and set off determinedly for the other bedrooms, but his rather cursory examination of them suggested that he wasn’t finding the pong there. It was the same in the lofts, though they seemed to excite him by their size and odd perspectives; he spent some minutes squinting through gaps that revealed the whole run of the under-roofs. Finally, he gave his mock Jewish shrug.
‘Well . . . let’s get down to the pièce de resistance.’
‘What would that be?’
Bressingham chuckled. ‘I think we both know that, don’t we? I noticed you watching me as we passed those stairs – and stairs were much mentioned at the inquest. Come on, stop foxing. We’re two old pros. If we’re going to crack this, we’ll crack it together.’
Gently grinned broadly round his pipe.
‘You, you old dealer,’ Bressingham said.
They returned to the stairs. Following his usual procedure, Bressingham began by standing still and looking. Also, you felt, he was attuning himself, like a medium beaming in on some new vibrations. He flashed his torch up the stairs, letting it play on the walls, the landing. The storeroom door had been left ajar and the table and chair were partly visible.
‘They found him at the foot here?’
‘Where you’re standing.’
Bressingham didn’t bother to move. You could see his blue eyes calculating: the open door, the drop from the landing. ‘What was he doing here?’
Gently hesitated. ‘You’d better treat this as confidential. We think he came back from a short errand to find an intruder up in that room.’
‘And he went up and tackled him?’
‘That’s the theory.’
‘He was a braver man than I’d have been.’
‘Unless,’ Gently said, ‘he knew the intruder, wasn’t expecting any trouble.’
Bressingham looked at him, shrugged slowly.
‘I don’t like this place,’ he said. ‘The rest of the house feels pretty all right. Here it doesn’t. You feel you’re not wanted.’
‘You mean there’s a ghost?’
Bressingham didn’t laugh. ‘I see a lot of old places in my trade,’ he said. ‘Mostly they’re friendly, sometimes not. This just strikes me as one of those places.’
He flicked the torch about again.
‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘we’re back on the trail. That door up there is the right century – probably coeval with the door of the cupboard.’
They mounted the stairs, and Bressingham’s fingers were soon roaming over the door. The lock, the hinges, the bolt, the panelling all came in for a loving caress.
‘I’ll stick my neck out. I’m pretty certain that the same man was responsible for both these doors. There’s a style about them. You can feel it in the bevelling. And the hinges came from the same blacksmith.’
‘What about the aperture?’
‘Ah. That’s a puzzle.’ Bressingham’s fingers went lightly round it. ‘It had a shutter, of course . . . a metal plate . . . with the missing piece of moulding attached to it. When it was in place you wouldn’t know it was a shutter; it would look like a plate let into the door.’
‘Any guesses?’
‘Well . . . a Judas window?’
‘Judas windows are usually higher up.’
‘They are today,’ Bressingham admitted. ‘It might have been different when this was made.’
‘But a Judas window . . . in a storeroom?’
Bressingham shook his head. ‘I shall have to cogitate. They were rum old boys in the seventeenth century. Often you can’t figure what made them tick.’
He turned his attention to the room, going first to the shelves in the extension of the L. In the course of handling them, Gently noticed, he tested each one for looseness. Then he rapped the plain scrubbed panels which lined the walls in way of the shelves. Once he paused and repeated his raps, only to shrug faintly and continue.
‘Was that anything?’
‘I doubt it. Perhaps a crack in the wall or a missing brick. You can rip the place apart, of course, but nobody has ripped it apart lately.’
‘Just . . . shelves.’
Bressingham nodded. ‘A linen-store, to be precise. That’s the reason why it’s lined, to prevent the walls soiling the linen.’
‘Is it the same date as the door?’
‘Yes . . . which is rather puzzling. I’ve come across other stores like this, but never one guarded by such a door. I suppose . . .’ He stepped over to the window. ‘Yes, here we are – a barred window. So either Johnny had sh
eets of gold, or he amused himself by locking up the servants.’
‘Have you noticed the bolt is inside the door?’
‘Please,’ Bressingham said. ‘Don’t confuse me. I’m beginning to get the ghost of a theory. Be a good fellow and let me think.’
Gently shrugged and relit his pipe. In his own mind he was sure they were drawing a blank. If there was a secret hiding-place somewhere in Harrisons it was not one which old Peachment could have stumbled on by accident. Nor were there signs that he had made a search, no jemmied floorboards or loose bricks; just undisturbed neglect on every side. Many rooms he probably hadn’t entered for years.
But Bressingham probed on, with little grunts and buzzings, now playing his torch along a wall, now squatting down to inspect the floor. Eventually he returned to the door and checked if the key would work the lock from inside. Then he stood very still for some moments, the key held in his hand.
‘I think I’ve got it.’
His eyes were sharp with excitement behind the thick pince-nez.
‘There’s only one thing all this adds up to – and that’s a seventeenth-century orgy-room.’
‘An orgy-room!’
‘Yes – I’m certain. It would explain the door, and the bolt being inside. And the secret peep-hole at just that level – so that Johnny could spy on his pals from the landing.’
‘But – why the shelves?’
‘Camouflage. To make it look like an innocent store-room. Also, if the place is littered with bed-linen, who’s going to notice the odd bed?’
Gently puffed hard. ‘I suppose it’s possible . . .’
‘My dear sir, it’s the only credible answer.’
‘So then that Latin tag’ – Gently nodded to the door – ‘would you say it was something spicy from Petronius?’
Bressingham stared at the door. In the course of his checking he had pulled it wide open into the room, and now the outer side was lit by a pale snow-light from the window. The light had revealed lettering. In each of two upper panels were lines of small, embossed capitals. They were probably metal, but blackened by age, and one or two half worn away.