He was off guard when Ralph, with an indescribable howl of anguish, threw himself at him – I don’t know with what intent, but both staggered back against the stone balustrade and vanished over the edge. The scream, I am very sure, came from Mr Browne – and then there was silence.
42
Written in the Dust
Later, after we’d eaten a meal neither of us had much appetite for any more, we discussed the rather gruesome idea that Phillip Revell’s skeleton was most probably still mouldering in the secret cellar below the tower.
Then Carey suddenly exclaimed, ‘Just wait a minute! I’ve thought of something and I need to check it.’
Baffled, I followed him into the studio, where he turned the confession over and silently read the second side through again.
‘I thought as much,’ he said finally, looking up with a gleam of excitement in his eyes. ‘Lady Anne said he’d taken the bag of jewels and was holding them while he was talking to her – but then there’s no further mention of them. So, if Phillip Revell is still down there, the jewels presumably are, too. There’s been no family record of them since.’
I stared at him in astonishment. ‘You know, you’re quite right! But is it possible that no one has discovered the secret stair in all these years?’
‘If they had, I expect they would have passed the secret on within the family, like the priest-hole in the muniment room.’
‘And since they haven’t … he and the jewels could be still there.’
We gazed speculatively at each other.
‘There’s only one way to find out, Angel, but not tonight. I think we’d better go to bed. Come on,’ he said, pulling me to my feet.
‘Oh, Mr Revell, this is so sudden!’ I said and he stilled, looking down at me and frowning.
‘You know, that’s exactly what I’ve tried my best not to be,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want to rush you so soon after you’d lost Julian – but my feelings towards you have changed so much, it was impossible to stop myself kissing you earlier. I’m so sorry.’
I looked up at him, surprised. ‘But I’d already told you that I really lost the Julian I was in love with long before he actually died and had come to terms with that. It doesn’t mean I didn’t love him and I often miss him now, but I’ve already moved on. And,’ I added boldly, ‘if you remember, I kissed you back!’
‘So you did!’ he agreed, his wonderfully blinding smile lighting up his handsome face, and then kissed me all over again.
‘I’d like to sweep you up and carry you upstairs,’ he said, finally releasing me. ‘But I’m not sure I’m quite fit enough yet. I might have to work up to it over several nights, one or two steps at a time.’
‘The lift is working again – you can sweep me upstairs in that,’ I suggested demurely. ‘And after the hell of a day I’ve had, there’s no way I’m sleeping on my own tonight, especially after reading that horrible confession and knowing there’s probably a body in the cellar.’
‘It’ll only be bare bones by now: the family skeleton you thought we might find.’
‘I didn’t mean literally, though,’ I said.
‘Well, never mind, I’ll just be your comfort blanket tonight,’ he promised … but then, he always was.
Next morning I woke up in a strange room with a familiar man. I hadn’t spent the night in the same bed as Carey since we were about seven, which wasn’t at all the same thing …
My best friend … and now somehow about to be permanently transformed into my lover. It seemed strangely right, as though we’d met at the heart of a maze after several wrong turnings.
I slid out, trying not to wake him, which was difficult since there was more of Carey draped over me than duvet.
He opened one drowsy, violet-blue eye. ‘It’s early – come back?’ he suggested.
‘Today we’re treasure hunting, remember?’ I reminded him and he snapped awake.
‘You know, for a minute there, I’d forgotten. Something must have put it out of my mind …’
I threw the cushion from the chair at him on my way out to shower and dress: I’ve always had good aim.
We seemed to have simply slid seamlessly from one close relationship into another – or perhaps we’d just added an extra layer, for apart from a tendency to smile at each other a lot, on the surface nothing much appeared to have changed.
Carey was determined to eat breakfast before we did anything else, while I was almost too excited – or maybe that should be too nervous – to manage anything more than one slice of toast.
Luckily my headache had gone, though the bruise on my forehead was an interesting violet blue, spreading into the eye socket. I didn’t think it’d develop into a complete shiner, just look as if I was wearing weird eye shadow on one side.
I gave my crusts to Fang, informing him if he ate them he’d get curly hair, just like my granny used to tell me, then we began equipping ourselves with torches and one of those battery-powered storm lanterns.
We were just about ready when the phone rang, and I snatched it up impatiently, to find it was Vicky.
She told me that Ella was being moved from the emergency bed to a ward in a psychiatric hospital, and gave me the name of the ward, though considering I had a bump on my forehead the size of a hen’s egg, I was hardly in the mood to send flowers.
‘Dad’s visiting her there later and I’ll probably go with him,’ she added, before asking me to tell Carey she was very sorry, though not what for.
I relayed all that to him.
‘I like her much better now she’s showing she cares for someone other than herself,’ he commented.
‘You’d better not start liking her too much,’ I warned him, ‘because I know what you’re like with leggy blondes and from now on, I’m not having any of them coming within ten paces of you.’
‘Spoilsport!’
‘And now I come to think of it, I’d like to know why you were kissing Daisy at the party. I saw you, so you can’t wriggle out of it.’
‘I wasn’t kissing her, she was kissing me, and you obviously didn’t hang around long enough to see me push her away and tell her I wasn’t interested. Nelson told me I had lipstick on my face when I went back in the other room, but I thought you hadn’t noticed.’
‘With that hair, raspberry red is so not your colour,’ I told him.
‘On the other hand, jealous green suits you,’ he returned, then grabbed my hand. ‘Come on, we’d better get a shift on, because I’ve just remembered Nick and the gang are driving up today and I want to look in that secret chamber before they get here – if we can discover how to open it.’
‘The directions in the confession were clear enough: we find the top of the third linenfold panel to the right of the fireplace and then a carved boss above it.’
‘Nick’s going to love the story about finding the cavity behind the bed panel … suitably edited to protect the guilty party, of course,’ he said.
‘He’d like us to find a grisly skeleton and a bag of jewels even more,’ I pointed out, and with Fang firmly shut into the kitchen we hotfooted it to the haunted bedchamber.
It certainly haunted me more than ever now. The sounds I’d heard when I was locked in that cavity might have been the product of concussion and panic-induced imagination, but I’d never quite forget those muttering voices, the footsteps and the one, quickly cut-off scream …
After all Ella’s years of fruitless searching, it proved surprisingly easy to open the door to the staircase, though you had to press the correct side of the panel while at the same time pushing and turning one of the rose-carved bosses.
‘But it needs to be turned to the right only,’ Carey said, suiting his action to the words, and a whole section of panelling moved away, revealing the top of a stairway.
It was intact. I suppose when the panel was shut again, the top step slid back into its original position. I shuddered slightly, though that might have been the cold, dank air wafting up out of the darkness.
Carey went down first, and I gingerly followed him, loath to tread on that first step, even though he’d tested it before putting his weight on it.
But it held firm and the staircase wound tightly down through the thick walls of the old tower. The ceiling was low and Carey had to descend in a half-crouch, so that I ran into the back of him when he finally reached the bottom and immediately stopped to straighten up.
He held up the lantern and slowly turned, revealing a square room of the same size as the ones in the tower above … and the glimmer of white bones on the stone floor, some way from the wall.
I shone my torch on it with dread, and was horrified to see not the huddle of bones I expected, but a skeleton that appeared frozen in the act of trying to crawl away.
Carey stooped over it. ‘He’s quite a distance from the opening to the shaft he fell down, so it looks like the poor devil wasn’t killed outright in the fall, doesn’t it? He’s got shattered bones, but he’s tried to pull himself towards that door over there, which must lead to the tunnel.’
I shivered again, and not just from the cold. ‘And no one came back, so he died in the dark, alone and in agony.’
‘He certainly paid for his sins. But since he’s here, then the jewels should be scattered around him somewhere. We’ll go over the floor with our torches and—’
‘Carey, look!’ I exclaimed, for as I’d turned away from the gruesome sight, my torch had revealed an ancient, dust-furred table with a not-so-ancient tin box sitting on it. It was old and slightly rust-spotted, but a picture of a simpering little girl holding a kitten and the word ‘Bonbons’ were much more Victorian than seventeenth century.
‘What the hell …?’ began Carey, putting down the lantern next to it and then, with some difficulty, prising off the lid. Inside was a small leather-bound book wrapped in some waterproof fabric, and pasted inside on the marbled endpapers a letter written in a familiarly bold and spiky hand. The words at the end danced before my eyes:
Jessie Kaye Revell
Mossby
1914
‘My God, Jessie got here first!’ I gasped.
‘So she has – and perhaps we’ve been following in her footsteps all along. Remember the way the cover of the confession had been sewn up in two different threads?’
He turned and played the beam of his powerful torch across the floor. ‘She was probably on the same errand as us, too, because there’s no sign of any jewels.’
‘I’m sure you’re right, but I wonder what she did with them,’ I said, then sudden illumination struck. ‘Do you remember Mr Wilmslow telling us that after her husband’s accident there were a lot of debts and it looked like the house might have to be sold – until Jessie unexpectedly came into a large inheritance? I bet there wasn’t one: it was the money from the sale of the jewels!’
‘It does all hang together,’ Carey agreed. ‘And if you’re right, I suppose there wouldn’t still be a Revell at Mossby if she hadn’t found and sold them. Now it’s up to us to make sure it stays in the family for ever.’
‘Yes, but—’ I began, then broke off as he got down on one knee in the dust. I looked at him in astonishment. ‘What on earth are you doing?’
‘Proposing: let’s get married! Mossby should be a happy-ever-after family home, not a mausoleum.’
‘But, Carey, you know my views about marriage being an outdated institution … and anyway, you can’t possibly propose to me next to a skeleton!’ I protested, casting a nervous eye at our silent witness. He still looked as if he was about to crawl off. I was almost sure I’d seen him move out of the corner of my eye. ‘Can we get out of here, now?’
‘Only if you say yes.’
‘Yes!’ I snapped, but when he got to his feet he paused to stoop again over the collection of bones.
‘I think Jessie missed something – that’s a signet ring on his finger,’ he said interestedly.
‘I don’t care what it is, it can stay there for ever, as far as I’m concerned,’ I snapped, then tucked the bonbon tin under my arm and made for the stairs.
‘I must nail that top step down as soon as possible, so we don’t have any accidents,’ Carey said, as he emerged into the bedchamber after me and closed the door to the staircase. ‘But first, I think I should ring the police and notify them about the skeleton, even if we’re sure it’s been there for centuries.’
‘I suppose so – and what a lot of exciting revelations we’ve got for Nick and the gang when they get here,’ I said. ‘But I absolutely refuse to go back down there and pretend to find that ghastly skeleton again on camera.’
‘OK, if necessary I’ll pretend to find it on my own,’ he said equably.
‘You know, if Jessie Kaye went down there by herself, then she was quite a woman,’ I said thoughtfully.
‘So are you,’ he said, putting his arms around me. ‘And now you’re all mine!’
I was the object of much compassion when I gave my account of this tragic accident, especially when my child was born early, soon afterwards – a son, Joshua.
While I was recovering from this, I reread Lady Anne’s confession very carefully: how sadly, in some ways, our lives mirrored one another in misfortune, though her husband’s crimes were heinous, while I cannot find it in me to hate Ralph for what was in his nature, even though he was cruel in marrying me to attain his own ends.
Once I was well again, I sewed the confession back into its original wrappings and replaced it where I had found it. Then, since my husband’s death had encouraged rather than deterred his creditors from seeking payment, I summoned his man of business and revealed that I might be about to come into an inheritance …
Of course, there was no inheritance, but it had struck me that in Lady Anne’s confession there was no further mention of the bag of jewels her husband had been holding when he fell, so that they could very well still be in the secret room below the turret …
I may be small, but I am neither imaginative nor cowardly. I thought of my child’s future, and of Honoria’s, and then, taking a small lantern, opened the secret place in the bedchamber next to the tower, testing the first step gingerly despite knowing I had turned the boss only to the right. I descended the narrow winding stair that seemed to go on for ever, till I emerged into a square chamber below.
Next to where I stood was the opening through which Phillip Revell must have dropped … but there was no huddle of smashed bones at the bottom of it. Instead, the lantern showed his shattered skeleton, seemingly still trying to creep away towards the door that must lead to the passage and help. It was all too awfully apparent that he must have spent his last hours alone here in agony. Retribution for his sins, indeed!
Shuddering and averting my eyes from these broken relics, I began to cast my lantern around in ever increasing circles from the foot of the stairs – until, at last, the light caught and flickered on something that shone deep red. Despite my resolution, my heart beat faster for a moment, until I told myself that this was not blood, miraculously preserved over aeons, but that which I sought. The bag must have burst asunder and rotted, for the jewels lay scattered and dusty on the flagged floor. I began to pick them up and put them into my shawl: a monstrously formed pearl and jewelled ornament of the kind men wore in old paintings, on a heavy ruby necklace, the stones large and cold to the touch. There was also a sparkle of diamonds in a twisted brooch and the dull glow of dark emerald earrings.
When I was sure there were no more to be found, I knotted the shawl and carried my treasures back up to the bedchamber. You can imagine with what relief I closed the panel to that dread place behind me.
I wrote to Father and he brought Lily to stay with me for a few days, before returning to town with the precious cargo. He has acquaintances who can ensure a fair price, with no questions asked, though in truth the jewels belong to my son, so I do no wrong in using them to preserve his heritage.
43
Casting the Bones
Nick and the crew arrived ju
st after we’d got back to the kitchen and Carey gave them a condensed version of the events of the last twenty-four hours, including Ella’s assault on me, the breakdown and the cellar full of bones.
‘So now I’m about to ring the police and notify them of the skeleton,’ he finished.
They’d listened to him with eyes wide and stunned expressions, but now Nick said quickly, ‘You can’t ring them till we’ve filmed down there!’
‘Why not? You couldn’t use the footage anyway, because it would be too gruesome and horrible,’ I said, with a reminiscent shudder.
‘But maybe Nick’s right and we should have a record of it, Shrimp,’ Carey suggested. ‘Then perhaps later there could be an edited version for the series. And I might as well ring the police now, because they’re hardly going to race up here with their sirens on for an ancient skeleton, are they? It could be days before they turn up.’
‘When they do, they’re bound to notice that there’ve been loads of people down there,’ Sukes pointed out. ‘Perhaps we’d better say we all found it together, like the Famous Five.’
‘Six,’ I said, ‘and Fangy the dog.’
‘Good thinking, Sukes,’ said Jorge, and Carey picked up the phone.
I wasn’t going down those stairs ever again and anyway, Jessie’s little journal in the bonbon tin was calling to me. I wondered why she’d chosen to leave it down there.
Once the others had gone, I settled myself in Granny’s rocking chair by the stove with Fang snoring comfortably, if heavily, on my feet, and began to read.
I’d finished by the time they returned, slightly cobwebbed and over-excited, but it was just as well they were back, because the police turned up with amazing alacrity and Carey had to descend into the depths all over again.
The House of Hopes and Dreams Page 38