The Corpse with the Sapphire Eyes

by Cathy Ace

  “Flashlight?” I suggested. Bud clicked it on and immediately located the switch for a series of three light bulbs hanging from wires. I hadn’t known quite what to expect of a medieval dungeon that had been transformed into a Victorian coal cellar, but the sight that met our eyes was definitely underwhelming.

  Large stones had been mortared together, and were thick with decades of coal dust. The floor was uneven and strewn with the detritus of the thousands of tons of coal that had been delivered over the years, then carted out, presumably in buckets, to fill the fireplaces once used in every room of the castle.

  “I wonder how they got the coal into here?” My words echoed in the ancient chamber. It was a deeply unsettling sound.

  Bud turned the flashlight beam toward the ceiling of the room. “Doesn’t seem to be any sort of an opening up there,” he noted. “We must be under the great hall here. I can’t imagine they’d deliver the coal into the house to get it down here. Have you any knowledge about coal deliveries in that giant memory of yours?”

  I smiled sweetly as I replied, “I’m old enough to remember the coalman delivering coal to our very own home, you know.” Bud chuckled. “The coalman would come to the front door and you’d say how much you wanted—the bags weighed a hundredweight. That’s the imperial version, weighing one hundred and twelve pounds, not the one used in North America, which is one hundred pounds. So the coalman was always a strong man, because he’d carry the bag to the coalhouse. We didn’t have a cellar at our home, but a big cupboard thing outside the back of the house. In our case, it was next to the toilet.”

  “Whoa! You had a toilet outside your house?” Bud sounded incredulous. “But you had other ones inside, right?”

  I shook my head. “Not until I turned twenty, when Mum and Dad managed to get some money from the government to update the house and install a toilet indoors. It was upstairs, in the bathroom. I remember when I came home one Christmas to visit from university, how proud they were as they opened the door to the bathroom to show it off to me. It was a big surprise. Now maybe my telling you that it’s ridiculous that we have four bathrooms in our new house makes a little more sense?”

  Bud shrugged.

  I continued, “By the way, you’ve just covered your face with coal dust. But, as I was saying, when the coalman came, he had to walk right through our house to get to the coal shed, so Mum would put newspaper on the floor for him to walk on. As you can imagine, his boots were filthy, and he’d shed dust as he walked. One of our grandmothers lived in a semi-detached house, unlike ours, which was terraced, so the coalman didn’t have to walk through her home with his big, filthy sack, he’d just walk around the side path and to her coal house that way. Hers was her old air-raid shelter, dug up from the garden where it had been buried through the war, and repurposed.”

  Bud looked thoughtful as he said, “You’ve never really talked to me about all this family history of yours, Cait. And it’s so very different from my own. We should do this more often—but maybe not while standing in a filthy place like this.”

  “You’re right,” I replied. “I have to admit that I love the smell of coal—it makes me feel safe.” I took a deep breath, and Bud threw me a glance that suggested I was losing my mind. “But, no, coal wouldn’t be delivered into the great hall above us, it would make far too much mess. I do have a thought though. If the original Norman-style structure was built on top of the even older medieval structure that was here, then, of course, what is now the great hall didn’t exist at that time. The great hall floor and staircase were constructed between the two new wings, and that stained glass roof was stretched across it, creating the wonderful space that someone then decided to clutter up with all manner of ancient armor and stuffed beasts from around the world.”

  “And if it didn’t exist when the original Castell Llwyd was built,” said Bud proudly, but badly mangling the pronunciation, “then there might, indeed, have been a chute in the original driveway, or courtyard, or whatever they had there at that time, where they could bring the coal in a truck and dump it right in here. Good thinking, Cait. Then, when they built the great hall, they must have constructed some other way to get the coal down here. From the new driveway, I guess? A longer chute?”

  I nodded. “But the question remains, where’s that entry point?”

  We moved farther inside the room, being careful about where we put our feet, and examined each of the four walls and the ceiling. Bud continued into the cellar, moving his light about as he did so.

  “Stop!” I shouted, but it was too late, the beam of light had moved.

  “What is it?” asked Bud, sounding alarmed.

  “There—just when the light was there, on the far wall, I saw something that looked metallic. Can I take the flashlight?”

  Bud handed it over and I played the light on the spot I’d noticed.

  “I see it,” said Bud excitedly, and he moved forward, trying to not slip on the rubble of coal that covered the floor. I followed, trying to keep the beam steady.

  “It’s a hook,” he said as he raised his arm and grabbed at something. I saw him pull, then there was a clicking, grinding, and whirring sound and two whole sections of the wall opened like the shutters on a window. I shone the light into the blackness beyond them. About three feet off the ground was a square tunnel, the length of which exceeded the penetration of the flashlight. Bud and I looked at each other with wonderment on our faces.

  Our expressions quickly creased into smiles when I hissed, “It’s like a secret passage—how thrilling. Hey—what’s that?”

  I shone the light onto a large, dark, lumpy backpack that was wedged just inside the passageway. Bud reached in and pulled it out. It was filthy. He opened the flap on the top and pulled out two sets of coveralls, one smaller than the other, both made of bright green, heavy-weave nylon. The pack also contained a tub of baby wipes, several pairs of heavy-duty rubberized gloves, and two hardhats with flashlight attachments.

  I could tell we were both thinking the same thing when Bud took the flashlight from me and played its beam around the inside of the passage. He reached in again and pulled out two pairs of wellington boots, sizes 11 and 7.

  “These would pretty much fit us,” said Bud tellingly.

  “A man and a woman, covering themselves so they can get along that tunnel, no doubt about it,” I replied. “The boots explain David’s jeans being crumpled and turned up at the bottom—that’s how your jeans get when you stuff them into wellingtons. And the baby wipes explain the general cleanliness, with a hint of remaining grubbiness. So that explains the coal dust. And, of course, all of this explains why the bolt to the main door slid back so easily; someone’s been in and out of here frequently, and very recently. We should get in there ourselves.”

  Bud looked at me in a way he does sometimes and simply said, “No, Cait. Not right now, and probably not ever.”

  “You know I don’t care for small spaces very much, and I wouldn’t suggest it unless I thought it were important.” I used my “pretty please” voice as best I could.

  “It could be dangerous. I’ll do it on my own, but you’re not doing it with me.” Bud countered my cajoling with his commanding voice.

  It was an impasse with which we were both familiar, and I decided to use stealth tactics.

  “How about you just reach in with the light as far as you can, and tell me if you can see anything?” I suggested.

  “Fair enough.”

  I spread the larger of the two sets of coveralls across the lip of the opening and Bud lay forward and stretched out his arm. I could see the dancing light articulate the four sides of the passage, but nothing else.

  “Tell me what you can see,” I pressed.

  Bud stood up again and said, “It slopes upward. Not very much, but there’s a definite incline. I’d say it’s about four feet square. But I can’t see anything except blackness at the end of it.”

  I was disappointed.

  “The only other
point worth noting,” continued Bud, “is that people have definitely been moving through it. I spotted scuff marks on all four of the surfaces, but mostly on the floor. It’s lined with bricks, or more likely some sort of tiles, because I can see light reflecting where there are scuff marks.”

  “That explains the rubber boots,” I said. “They’d give better traction against fired tiles. And fired tiles would provide better long-term slippage of coal down a chute. We’ve obviously found the way they got the coal in here. If they built this at the same time they erected the new wings, when they knew there’d be a hall built above here, then it’s likely they constructed it to have an opening in what is now the main courtyard.”

  “It figures,” mused Bud. “But that doesn’t explain why David Davies, and whoever his sidekick might have been, would want to go climbing it. Not if it just leads to some sort of trap door arrangement out in the driveway. What would be the point?”

  “Exactly.”

  We both stood still for a moment, coal dust settling silently around us. We could almost hear the echoes of our own thoughts.

  “Well,” I said finally, “we’ll never know unless we follow in their footsteps, will we?”

  “And that’s where we came in, Cait. No way are you going in there.”

  I grinned. “How about we come back with a very long rope, I hold onto it here, and you go up into the chute and see what you can find? Would that be a good way to find out why this was so important to David Davies?”

  Bud shook his head and allowed his shoulders to fall. “You’re not going to take ‘no’ for an answer, are you?”

  Tri ar hugain

  BUD AND I USED THE baby wipes to clean up as best we could, then, having worked out how to open the hidden door to the coal chute, we shut it again.

  “It’s gone half past two, Bud, and we’re all due to be meeting up in the drawing room at three o’clock to discuss our findings. We can’t possibly go there looking like this, so come on, we’d better get back to our rooms and clean up pretty sharpish if we’re not going to arouse suspicion.”

  Bud caught my arm as I began to make a dash for the door to the cellar. “Hang on there you, just a minute. There’s no need to panic. We haven’t been hunting about in secret—it was one of our duties to check out this whole basement area, so being dirty isn’t going to be ‘suspicious’ at all.”

  I stopped in my tracks. “Of course, you’re right. Why didn’t I see that?”

  Bud glared at me. “You’re talking about something else now, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I’m talking about the stables. Come on, Bud—you’re right, no one will care if we’re dirty when we show up to meet them, but we don’t want to get clean until we’ve finished getting dirty. And we’ll probably get very dirty at the stables. Come on . . .” I scampered out of the cellar, shouting, “Don’t forget to turn off the lights when you follow me.”

  I made my way back along the side of the kitchen, which was now smelling even better than it had done earlier, and started up the stairs.

  “Those are the down stairs,” called Dilys from her all-seeing position in the kitchen. “I’ll thank you to use the up ones.”

  I felt like a naughty schoolgirl. “Sorry, Dilys,” I called back. “May I walk through your kitchen to get to the up stairs?”

  By this time Bud had caught up with me, and I saw Dilys’s demeanor change.

  “You’re very welcome to come through my kitchen, and thank you for being so kind as to respect our systems here,” she added politely.

  I rushed through as quickly as I could without running—I suspect that would be against her rules—and Bud followed with a cheery, “No, thank you very much, Dilys, we’ve really appreciated all your help.”

  I labored up the stone steps and, as I emerged into the great hall, was struck by the fact that, once again, the grandeur of the stained glass roof was beginning to disappear against an already almost dark sky.

  “It looks like it’ll be completely dark in a little while,” I said, huffing and puffing as I began to encase myself in the rainwear I’d need to survive in the lashing rain. “How depressing is that?”

  “It could be worse,” said Bud brightly, “it could still be blowing like it was yesterday.” He pulled on the waterproofs he’d worn earlier, which were still dripping onto the tile floor near the front doors.

  Finally ready to brave the elements, I triumphantly held up the flashlight. “I didn’t give it back to Dilys, so we still have it if we need it.”

  “You never know,” said Bud as he pulled open the front door, and the noise of the beating rain drowned out whatever he might have said next.

  We made sure the door was firmly closed behind us. I shouted into Bud’s ear, “Let’s see if we can find anything that looks like a hatch leading to that coal chute. It must be quite close to the building, and when I came out of the cellar I tried to run up the down stairs, so it must be on the side of the non-Gothic wing.” Bud nodded and we moved in that direction.

  I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I was pretty sure I’d know it when I saw it. We moved with our heads down, and I tried to make sure that my rain hat steered the river of water running off it straight onto the ground.

  “Here,” called Bud. I joined him. Bud pointed to a large, square metal plate set into the driveway. He’d cleared the pea gravel with his boot to reveal it. It wasn’t dissimilar to a manhole cover. We both stood and lined up what we believed to be the trajectory of the channel beneath it.

  “That’s quite a tunnel,” observed Bud close to my ear. “At least we know where it comes up now, though I still don’t understand why anyone would want to climb it.”

  I looked behind us and could see we were closer to the stone circle than I’d imagined. “Let’s discuss it when we’re out of the rain,” I replied.

  Bud nodded, and we headed off toward the stable block. We were both drenched by the time we got there. Luckily the door at the gable end of the block was unlocked, so we walked inside and had dumped our dripping outerwear in a matter of moments.

  We were in what was obviously a small office. A paper-strewn desk suggested that whoever used the office didn’t bother much with computers, and the wear on all the furnishings suggested they’d been there since long before the dawn of the digital age. Metal filing cabinets lined one wall, a giant clock, which would have been more at home in a Victorian railway waiting room, tocked ominously on another, and there was a door in the third. It was locked.

  “That’s the first locked door I’ve come across since we got here,” I noted.

  “In that case, we must go through it,” said Bud. “See any keys anywhere?”

  I looked around but didn’t see anything obvious. I shoved a few papers on the desk and something clattered onto the tiled floor. I bent to pick it up.

  “Look at this,” I said.

  Bud looked and took the object from my hand.

  I took the chance to have a good look at the little metal cylinder he held, but I couldn’t guess what it did. Its thickest section had a gouge cut out of it, then there was a narrower middle section then, finally, an even narrower section. It was blunt at both ends and looked dirty, and maybe even a little greasy.

  “What is it?” We didn’t really have time for a guessing game.

  “It’s a firing pin,” said Bud rather smugly.

  “A firing pin from a gun?”

  “Uh huh,” nodded Bud. “I’m going to suggest it’s from a shotgun, but I don’t know which one. You Brits have makes and models we just don’t get our hands on in Canada.”

  “So there are guns involved in all this now?” I heard the stress creep into my voice as I spoke.

  “Cait, even in the Welsh countryside people must have shotguns. Sure, it’s not the States, but there are legal ways for a farmer to have a gun or two.”

  “What farmers, Bud? This is a castle. A castle that hosts weddings and other events. It’s hardly overrun with livestock or the so
rt of creatures that would need to be shot. Maybe there’s the odd bunny or two hopping about, but that would probably be it.”

  “We did have rabbit pâté yesterday, Cait. Maybe it was a Cadwallader Estate rabbit yesterday, and a Dilys Jones ‘rabbit/rarebit’ today, eh?”

  “Oh right, culinary jokes now, Bud Anderson?” I pushed him playfully, and we each cracked a much-needed grin.

  Beyond the locked door we both heard the clattering of metal onto a stony floor, and we froze, but it was too late, because whoever was inside the stables had heard our laughter and began to bang on the door and rattle the handle.

  We heard a key being used and the next instant the door flew open.

  The first thing I saw was the gun. The next thing I saw was an unexpected face.

  Pedwar ar hugain

  “I DON’T THINK YOU NEED that gun, Idris,” said Bud evenly. “Why don’t you put it down?”

  There are few things more terrifying in this world than the realization that the person pointing a gun at you is more frightened than you are. Idris Cadwallader’s hand was slick with rain and shaking almost uncontrollably. The ancient-looking shotgun that he’d tried to wedge against his shoulder kept slipping on his soaked Barbour jacket. His face was a dreadful mask of fear.

  He closed his eyes tight, and for a split second I thought he was going to pull the trigger. Instead, he lowered the gun until it pointed at the floor.

  “Thanks heavens it’s you two,” he almost wept. “I was in the drawing room and I saw a light bobbing about out here in the dusk, and I thought it was the person we’ve all been looking for. I couldn’t find you two anywhere, so I pulled on some clothes and came up here. You didn’t have this place on your list of areas to search. When I heard someone clattering about in the office I pulled this out of the old gun cupboard.” He lay the gun on top of the piles of papers on the desk. He looked relieved to not be touching it any longer.

  Bud sounded concerned when he spoke to the still-shaking man. “Are you okay, Idris?”