by Paul Finch
At which the country gent suddenly seem to wake up to the reality of the situation. He snatched at the hilt of his sword. “I’ll take no advice from you … you bog-dwelling Irish ruffian! Leave me alone!”
“This villain seeks to murder us all,” O’Calligan said calmly. “We should stay together.”
“Did you not hear me, sirrah? Get out of here!”
O’Calligan did as he was bidden. There seemed little point in exacerbating an already difficult situation. In the drawing room, he found Lady Foxworth assisting Cedric as he removed the remnants of their afternoon repast, and Judge Prendergast standing beside the window, stuffing his pipe with more Brazilian tobacco.
“This is a confounded mystery,” the judge said.
“I don’t understand it,” O’Calligan confessed. “We were all of us together when we heard the alarm.”
“All of us except the manservant chap.”
O’Calligan shook his head. “Cedric was only in the passage. You said that, yourself … how could he have attacked Lady Lightbourne, dragged her away from the bell, finished her off, locked the room, then come all the way downstairs and gathered a tray of sweetmeats in time to meet us outside that door? It’s not feasible.”
“Little about this business is.”
“There has to be someone else on these premises,” O’Calligan said.
Prendergast blew out a stream of fragrant smoke. “We’ve looked. There’s no trace.”
“If only we could get to Minehead.”
“One of us may need to try.”
But O’Calligan was less sure about that. Outside, night had now fallen on the snow-deep tundra. Flakes swirled on a newly-risen wind, which would cut anyone stranded in it to the very bones. Even in the unlikely event that one of them decided he and his horse were strong enough to risk such a venture, the chances were that he’d be lucky to find his way off the moor, let alone to the coast and the nearest town.
Despite this, someone did test the elements that night, and managed just before the stroke of twelve to arrive grunting and puffing at the doors of Silvercombe Hall.
*
With the exception of Lord Lightbourne, who hadn’t yet come down from his bed-chamber, the remainder of the household were together in the drawing room, dozing under quilts, when they heard the banging at the front door.
There was initial astonishment, then O’Calligan, Cedric and Judge Prendergast went to answer it, all three armed. Only after demanding identification through the door, did they admit the callers: two men, both in cloaks and tricornes thickly caked with snow. Lady Foxworth arrived in the hall as the newcomers stripped off their outer garments. Her face broke into a relieved smile when she saw that one of them – a youthful fellow, with long fair curls, wearing the buff uniform of the Dutch Royal Navy – was her younger brother, Rupert. The second also wore Dutch naval garb, though he was larger, burlier, and had a brown, scarred face.
“I expected you over a week ago,” she said, clasping arms around her sibling.
“We only left Windsor a couple of days back,” he laughed. “We’d have come sooner, but there was a bit of skirmishing with James’s Irish militia before an armistice could be reached. I wasn’t sure we’d even get here today. This blizzard is the worst I’ve seen. Edouard here didn’t know we got such snow in England. Oh, by the way, may I introduce First Lieutenant Edouard Van Brooner, my most capable officer.”
The Dutchman bowed. “Madame.”
“You’re most welcome, Edouard.”
“It’s my pleasure to attend you.” His English, though accented, was fluent.
“Well, this is a quiet house for Christmas Day,” the younger Foxworth said. “Late though the hour is, for which I heartily apologise.” He turned to his compatriot. “I told you I’d come home again, didn’t I, Edouard? By damn, no bunch of Papists were keeping me from the family nest.”
“Rupert,” Lady Foxworth said, now more solemnly. “Come into the drawing room. There’s something I should tell you.”
Five minutes later, the entire tragedy had been explained to the new-arrivals, who greeted the news at first with slow bewilderment, finally with outrage and anger.
“We must search the premises!” Rupert shouted at the top of his voice.
“We’ve already searched,” his sister replied, seated by the fire. “Several times. There’s no-one here but ourselves.”
“What about him?” Lieutenant Van Brooner asked, with a glowering nod towards O’Calligan. “Isn’t it likely that he’s responsible?”
“How so?” Lady Foxworth enquired.
“Well for one thing, he’s James’s man,” Rupert said. “In fact, we came here specifically to free you from his clutches. His world has ended. He’s nothing but a powerless, penniless immigrant. He has plenty reason to strike out.”
“That’s scarcely proof, gentlemen,” Judge Prendergast put in.
“Can he prove he didn’t do it?” Lieutenant Van Brooner wondered.
“Can you prove you didn’t?” O’Calligan replied. “You say you’ve ridden all the way from Windsor. A hundred miles or more, in this weather. Personally I find that doubtful.”
“What exactly are you suggesting?” Rupert demanded.
O’Calligan remained calm. “Surmising rather than suggesting, but it’s not beyond the realms of credibility that two felons might secrete themselves somewhere nearby to carry out hit-and-run raids on the house. And perhaps tonight the cold simply became too much for them.”
Before either Rupert or Van Brooner could reply, there came a series of shrieks from the outer passage. A moment later, the maid Martha had stumbled in and collapsed. For a second there was complete confusion, then the girl jabbered out that she’d been upstairs, making up a new pair of rooms, as ordered by her mistress, when she’d heard the sounds “of chokes” from Lord Lightbourne’s room.
“Fearful chokes, ma-am. The sound o’ murder, and no mistake!”
*
The scene was now a familiar one, though in this case there were several differences.
To begin with, Lightbourne had put up a fight. Slash marks on the drapery around his bed revealed that he’d struck out with his sword. In addition, his throat, though again rent from ear to ear, was not the only wound on him. His shirt had been torn open, and there were gashes on his chest and shoulder, and, higher up, on one of his cheeks.
“This is demonic!” Rupert bellowed.
“This, gentlemen, is the horror that has afflicted us all through the Yuletide feast,” Judge Prendergast remarked soberly.
“Does anyone know who’s responsible?” Lieutenant Van Brooner asked.
O’Calligan glanced around. “Do you think we’d be standing here like cherries waiting to be plucked, if we did?”
The big Dutchman scowled at him. “You may have been downstairs with us at the time, but I still haven’t discounted you from this business.”
“Nor I you,” O’Calligan replied.
Van Brooner’s scowl became a cruel sneer. “I killed some of your countrymen at Reading. What do you think about that?”
“If I was you, Dutchie, I’d watch my bloody lip,” came the Irishman’s taut reply.
“Enough of this!” Rupert interrupted. “We must search the upper floor. All of us!” And he raced from the room, pushing his lieutenant in front of him.
Judge Prendergast followed, and Cedric was about to leave too when O’Calligan stopped him: “Is there something different in here?” the Irishman wondered.
Cedric glanced around, blank-faced. “I don’t see it.”
“The fire is lit. It wasn’t earlier.”
The servant shrugged. “Lord Lightbourne must’ve got cold. There’s coal, a tinder-box. He could easily have lit it himself.”
“Yes, but the window is still open. If he’d got cold, wouldn’t he have closed the window as well?”
“I don’t follow.”
O’Calligan shook his head. “There must be a reason why he
lit that fire.”
Cedric crossed the room, took a poker and thrust it around amid the glowing coals. Aside from a few scraps of kindling, the only other thing in there was an edging of paper, gold-trimmed. Cedric scraped it out onto the floor. It was all that remained of a burnt sheet of notepaper; the gold trim revealed that it was household notepaper, of the sought used by Lady Foxworth in her regular correspondence.
“This doesn’t really tell us anything,” Cedric observed.
“No,” O’Calligan agreed. “It could be perfectly innocent.” He turned to Lady Lightbourne’s body, now a grisly sight: sickly-white and visibly stiffening. The blood, a black congealed blanket of it, lay down her entire front. “There’s something different about her ladyship too,” he said. “I thought so earlier, but couldn’t place it. Is something missing, Cedric?”
Cedric looked the body over. The rings still glittered on the dead woman’s fingers; the string of pearls hung intact across her ravaged throat. However, before they could speak on it further, Judge Prendergast reappeared at the bedroom door. “O’Calligan,” he said urgently. “Master Rupert and his shipmate are dead-set against you as it is. You must help us search, or they’ll be doubly suspicious.”
The Irishman nodded, and left the room, leaving Cedric to dignify this latest corpse.
*
Feeling more confident with the two naval men present, the search party this time split up into smaller groups and scoured every inch of the property, even the attics and the crawlspaces under the roof. However, Lady Foxworth was too distraught to partake, and repaired to her own quarters, supplied by her brother with a fully-charged pistol.
It was now past one o’clock, and that ‘graveyard’ hour of the night when one feels most marooned from the rest of human society. Outside, the wintry wind moaned around the ancient walls; there were creaks and bangs, windows rattled in their frames. But it was in the west wing, on a stretch of corridor attached only to empty rooms, that O’Calligan, who was alone at the time, heard something distinctly different. He paused and listened, fancying there were voices behind the wainscoting: muffled voices, engaged in some heated debate. He approached the wall in question and put his ear to the woodwork, finding it aged and worm-eaten.
“My God,” a man was mumbling. “How could you do this to us? And when everything was looking so fine?”
A woman replied: “I needed to secure what at the time looked a perilous future.”
“Good God, woman!” The man’s voice rose. “And the Irishman? I suppose you took him to your bed as well? Or was that just his master?”
O’Calligan would have listened to more, but the voices faded as though the persons having the dispute had moved away. He considered. Without any doubt, it had been Lady Foxworth and her brother Rupert, and though, from that brief snatch of conversation, it was difficult to ascertain what they’d been talking about, the fact that they were in collusion about something – a collusion which had now turned acrimonious – put a different complexion on events. More mysterious still, where had they actually just been? As far as he knew, the west wing of the house was not used; he’d already searched it several times, and had found nothing. This suggested there were regions of this building still known only to the Foxworth family, even in the light of recent events.
Bewildered, but strangely content – as though he was finally making some ground – O’Calligan rejoined the others a few minutes later, and said nothing of his discovery. He wasn’t exactly sure who he could trust here anyway, and it was his intention to return to that disused stretch of passage when everyone was asleep, and force his way through the wainscoting.
The men held a further moot in the drawing room, where it was decided that, as Lady Foxworth had now withdrawn to her own chamber, they might as well each do the same. Rupert – who seemed a little flustered, O’Calligan thought – insisted that anyone discovering an intruder should fire a shot immediately: even if they missed their intended target, they would certainly alert the rest of the house. There was general agreement at this. A series of final checks were made: the cook and her two maids had barricaded themselves into the scullery, while Cedric had his own small room off the kitchen, which he could easily defend. After this, they said their goodnights.
O’Calligan returned to his own quarters and allowed an hour to pass. Then, taking his pistol and sabre, he made his way stealthily back into the west wing. The house was now in darkness, so he took a candle as well, which he fixed on a shelf opposite the place where he’d eavesdropped. It was difficult to locate the exact point. The entirety of that wall felt flimsy to his touch. Suddenly he stiffened.
He’d sensed a presence come up behind him.
He turned slowly, and found the hulking form of the Dutchman, Van Brooner, blocking the passageway. Van Brooner was fully dressed, though he’d loosened his long brown hair, which hung in unruly hanks to either side of his truculent face.
“Your constant mischief,” he said, “is making the household, what remains of it, nervous.”
“You too, I assume,” O’Calligan replied, “judging by the way your knees are knocking.”
The Dutchman smiled grimly and then, without warning, launched a big fist. O’Calligan had been expecting it. He stepped nimbly aside and launched a fist of his own, catching Van Brooner squarely in the gut. The breath wheezed out of the Dutchman, before an uppercut took him beneath the chin. He staggered backwards, but remained conscious. With a snarl, he went for the hilt of his sword, but no sooner had he grasped it than O’Calligan had kicked him in the shin, and slashed down flat-handed, chopping him on the bridge of his nose. Three more swift but telling punches followed, which fractured at least one of Van Brooner’s ribs, causing him to squawk in agony. The duo clamped together and began to wrestle, but O’Calligan was still getting the better of it. Another brutal gut-thump doubled his opponent over, and, as a coup-de-grace, he looped an arm around the Dutchman’s head, barrelling him across the corridor and slamming the crown of his skull into the wall – the hollow, rotten portion as it happened.
Instantly, the wainscoting was broken through.
O’Calligan dropped the insensible Dutchman, grabbed his candle and poked it into the hole. On the other side there was no room, as he’d been expecting, but a junction between two low passages. They were at floor-level and no more than three feet high. O’Calligan crouched. Though he could see little more than horizontal brick shafts leading off into darkness, he had no doubt that these were the priests’ holes with which Silvercombe Hall was reputedly riddled. While their exterior entrances might have been obliterated by the refurbishments of thirty years ago, the inner structure of the house was likely still networked with them. Such cavities doubtless conducted sound well, and this meant the conversation he’d overheard might have come from some distant region of the house. Even so, he had no option but to investigate. He tore away the remnants of the wainscoting, and crawled forward, opting to take the left passage first.
The going was tough and unsavoury. The tunnel system might once have been intended for concealing frightened clerics, but now it smelled as if it had been used by animals. It was matted with rancid straw and here and there great dollops of droppings. In addition, the roof was low, necessitating that he keep his head bowed, which was not easy considering that he also had to hold the candle in front of him. Maintaining a light, however, paid dividends. After he’d been crawling for several minutes, O’Calligan reached a point on his left where a wooden panel was fixed to a hinge. When he pushed it, it swung open into a darkened room. He thrust his candle through, and was not surprised to see familiar blood-patterns on a rug, and arterial spray on the oaken walls. To his immediate right, Lord and Lady Lightbourne lay in quiet repose on their silent, gore-stained bed.
This, then, was how the assailant had twice entered their locked room: a secret hatch concealed in the skirting-boards. Not that O’Calligan, for one, would have been able to get through it. His shoulders alone were too wide.
Feeling vindicated but increasingly nervous, he proceeded along the tunnel, now passing other junctions. It began to tilt steeply downwards until he was certain he’d reached the ground-floor level, at which point it opened into a cubby-hole of a room that he hadn’t seen before despite his frequent searches of the house. Several things struck him about this room. Firstly, it was tight, compact – so much so that it surely couldn’t serve any purpose other than for storage. Secondly, it was slope-roofed; a curious design-feature by any standards. Thirdly, a series of pull-ropes hung into it through holes bored in its slanted ceiling. O’Calligan, who was at last able to stand, gazed up at them. Slowly, a frightful picture of what might be happening here was forming in his mind. He turned: there were two doors, facing each other from opposite corners of the room, but both were locked when he tried them. However, the low passage by which he’d entered continued on the other side. He worked the cramp from his limbs, crouched and proceeded.
There were more twists, more turns, more ups and downs.
And then there was light. Just ahead.
He scrabbled forward and found access to another previously unseen chamber, though the purpose of this one was more evident. He was now looking down through a wire grille into an ornate bathroom. A huge, cast-iron tub sat on a Romanesque-tiled floorway. Beside it, a pump and faucet were fashioned from glinting brass. Velvet drapes clad every wall, while flaming candelabra created a scented, rose-red luminescence.
My lady’s bathhouse, O’Calligan thought to himself. This, no doubt, was where the conversation he’d overheard had taken place. He could easily imagine someone as brazen as Lady Foxworth sitting naked in her tub while engaged in a heated debate with her brother. It was perhaps understandable that no guest had been allowed into this particular section of the hall – the hostess’s private apartments would ordinarily be her personal domain – and yet while searching for the murderer, he and Judge Prendergast had specifically requested that they be allowed to inspect every portion of the building. Lady Foxworth had not been honest with them.