by Alan Lawton
She was hurrying from the store with the heavy net of carrots underneath her arm, when she rounded the corner of one of the conservatories and almost ran into the master who was admiring his collection of palms trees through the panes of translucent glass.
He steadied her with his hand.
“Those vegetables are far too heavy for you to carry, my woman!” He said, in a smooth and cultured voice. “Drop them on the path and tell Piggins to bear them to the kitchen for you. Now back to your other duties at once!”
Hetty bowed and did as she was bidden, quickly hurrying back to the refuge of the kitchen. Indeed, she was glad to do so, for her questing inner-eye had clearly defined a bottomless well of malevolence within the master’s being, and this had touched her deeply; she now knew the man to be extremely dangerous, and realized that she could expect no mercy from Oldshaw, should he suspect the true nature of her mission to Westdyke Grange.
Hetty penned a report for Inspector Smith that very same evening and early on the following morning she visited her ‘brother’ in the conservatories with the envelope hidden in the bodice of her dress. Piggins accepted the letter with considerable trepidation, the wisewoman noticed the gardener was much more nervous than usual, possibly due to the fact that the master was in residence. Even so, he promised to post the letter in Stalybridge that same evening.
Hetty returned to her round of kitchen duties and was physically tired out when she finally sought the comfort of her bed. Sleep came hard for the wisewoman, for her inner-eye constantly impinged upon her consciousness. As she dozed, she often found herself looking into the handsome face of Silas Oldshaw. Sometimes, the battered features of Bill Travis also drifted across her minds inner vision. In the end, she rose from her bed with the firm intention of taking a drug that would induce untroubled sleep, but as her feet touched the floor, she heard the distant rumble of a horse-drawn vehicle approaching from the direction of the gate-house.
The wisewoman looked out from her window and was surprised to see the master’s four-wheeled coach pulling into the moonlit courtyard. The vehicle slowed down to a walking pace, disappearing into the cul-de-sac leading to the main door of the old eastern wing of the house.
Hetty’s curiosity was aroused. She quickly donned a black working dress then slipped down the stairs and into the kitchen. She tip-toed over to the outside door, drew the bolts and stepped out into the darkened courtyard.
The wisewoman quietly flitted through the numerous shadows cast by the high walls of the house, until she reached the corner of the eastern wing; she then fell upon her knees and cautiously peered around the corner.
The cul-de-sac, that gave access to the eastern wing, was illuminated by a direct shaft of moonlight and Hetty had no difficulty in recognizing the coach that was now halted outside the open door of the building.
Two men stood alongside the coach as Travis climbed down from the driving seat and prepared to open the door of the vehicle. One of the men was Crowther; Hetty had no difficulty in identifying his gaunt features in the moonlight, but his powerfully built companion was a complete stranger to her.
Travis opened the door of the coach and a heavily veiled woman stepped lightly from the vehicle and accompanied the two men into the eastern wing.
The wisewoman would dearly have wished to continue her observation, but she was compelled to regain the shelter of the kitchen, with all haste, for the coachman suddenly took the head of the lead-horse and began manoeuvring the empty vehicle around in the cul-de-sac with the probable intention of parking it in the main portion of the open courtyard. Indeed, the wisewoman realized that she was extremely fortunate in avoiding detection.
Hetty returned to her bed, but sleep continued to evade her as she pondered upon the relevance of the scene that she had just witnessed.
The arrival of the veiled woman in the dead of night was a strange occurrence, but there might be a perfectly innocent explanation, she reasoned, yet her witch’s inner-eye strongly suggested that dark and malevolent forces were presently at work.
The wisewoman also knew that another person had witnessed the arrival of the veiled woman in the master’s coach; for she had noticed a slight movement in the doorway of the eastern wing as the unknown woman was alighting from the coach. From the corner of her eye, the witch had caught a fleeting glimpse of a young woman peering around the edge of the door jamb.
Hetty turned the situation over and over in her mind and, by dawn, she had arrived at the inescapable conclusion that she must find some means of entering the forbidden east wing, in order to discover its secrets. However she knew, from past experience, that the only doorway between the east wing and the main house lay at the foot of the stair-well, in close proximity to Crowther’s office. She realized that she must find some alternative means of entry, but how?
The task, she knew, would not be easy, for her previous nocturnal forays had confirmed that all of the other doorways leading to the east wing had been securely closed off by solid brickwork and were now quite impassable.
“There must be a way!” She muttered to herself, as she rose to begin another day of hard work. “There must be a way and may the unseen forces help me to find it!”
Exactly a week later, Silas Oldshaw boarded his coach for Manchester, to deal with some matters of business that had suddenly arisen and the household quickly settled down into its normally sedate working routine. It was during this period of relative calm that Hetty accidentally stumbled upon a discovery that eventually enabled her to penetrate the forbidden eastern wing of the house.
One morning, Piggins arrived at the door of the kitchen with a wheelbarrow loaded with autumn fruits, and Mrs O’Day announced that the time had now arrived to manufacture a stock of Jam for the coming winter. The cook took a bunch of keys from a hook on the wall and handed them to the wisewoman.
“Turn right at the foot of the stairs,” she ordered, “and you will find a small door leading down into a cellar. This is where we store kitchen utensils that we only use on odd occasions. There you’ll find the big copper pan that I use to make jam at this time of the year, fetch it up here and then we shall get to work on this confounded pile of ripe fruit.”
Hetty opened the cellar door, lit a candle and descended into the basement by means of a set of rickety stairs. The cellar proved to be quite large and had probably been used as a larder at sometime in the past, for the walls were lined with rotting wooden shelves. The floor was also littered with discarded kitchen equipment and it took Hetty a good ten minutes to discover the copper pan that was the object of her quest. She noticed that another door was set into the far wall of the basement and probably led into an adjoining cellar, but although one of the keys that she carried appeared to fit the lock, it was quite solid from lack of use and refused to open. However, the witch’s curiosity was now fully aroused and she resolved to return that very evening and explore the basement lying beneath the house.
Hetty waited until the small hours before entering the kitchen and she descended into the seldom used store-cellar. The wisewoman lit a candle and began soaking the rusty lock with melted lard that she has stolen from the kitchen pantry and allowed the lubricant plenty of time to penetrate the mechanism before attempting to turn the lock, but it refused to budge and it required a further two hours of patient work before it finally snapped open with a sharp click.
The door opened out into a short passageway giving access to a number of dark cellars. Dust lay everywhere and it was obvious that this portion of the basement had been disused for many years. The end of the passageway was closed off with a barrier of rough brickwork, and Hetty’s knowledge of the house suggested that Mr Oldshaw’s basement gaming-room lay on the far side of the obstruction. Another short side-passage led her in the direction of the forbidden east wing, and she was not surprised to find this passageway also blocked by another mass of brickwork.
The night was now well advanced and the witch knew that she must suspend her subterranean i
nvestigations without further delay. She therefore returned to the kitchen and washed the grime from her body, before returning to her room, in order to gain a little rest before the start of the next working day.
Hetty rested the following night, but she returned on two successive evenings armed with a powerful storm lantern, and she minutely searched the cellars lying closest to the forbidden eastern wing. Yet, despite her best efforts, she found no way of accessing the building that lay beyond the basement wall. She rested for the next three nights, then, encouraged by her witch’s intuition, she returned for one last effort.
Once again, she found nothing. But as she searched a small closet, she felt a slight breeze brushing against her cheek. The draught of air appeared to be rising from the floor and falling upon her knees, she began carefully examining the rough stone flagged floor-surface.
The flag-stones had been laid in mortar and the joints were often so tight that a knife could hardly have been inserted. However, the wisewoman discovered a single flag, about two feet square, with a number of rough-hewn slots cut through its surface and a light draught of air was blowing upwards from the apertures.
“An old stone grid!” The wisewoman muttered to herself. “And where there is a grid there has to be a drain. Perhaps it once cleansed the old east wing of the house and may now give me access to that damned place!”
Hetty returned the following night with a wooden hammer and a thin bladed chisel that she had found in the gardener’s tool store. By the light of the lantern, she began cutting away the mortar joints holding the grid-stone in position. An hour later, she had succeeded in clearing away the mortar from the joints and the grid was loose in the floor.
The wisewoman took a deep breath, inserted her fingers into the slots in the stone and heaved upwards with all her strength.
The grid moved a little and the witch redoubled her efforts. Gradually, it slid backwards until a black hole was revealed in the centre of the floor.
Hetty rested for a while, in order to regain her strength, and then she peered downwards into the hole with the aid of the light reflected from the powerful lantern. She immediately realized that she had discovered a very old sewer that had probably been built by the original owners of the old east wing. The sewer, she noted, was well constructed of rough hewn stone slabs and was approximately four foot square. It was also very shallow for the slabs of the existing basement floor now formed its roof. Fortunately, the sewer was dry and it smelt quite fresh and had obviously not been used for a great many years.
The first thing that Hetty noticed, was that a current of air was travelling down the sewer from a westerly direction and she surmised that the duct must have an outlet somewhere in the gardens on the far side of the main house, however, this was of little concern to her for the moment.
The wisewoman’s curiosity was now irresistibly aroused, and, after lighting a candle, she lowered herself into the duct and crawled eastwards along its length until it terminated in a small circular stone chamber, that must have been situated well below the floor of the forbidden wing. The chamber was about six feet in diameter and had probably once served as a collecting point for all the sewage from the original monastic building. The wisewoman looked upwards and she noticed that the top of the chamber was covered over by a line of rough-hewn wooden planks, which she could easily touch with her fingers if she stood upright and raised her arms above her head.
She gently pushed upwards and the timbers moved with ease and she knew that she would experience no difficulty in reaching the space that lay above. Even so, she realized that dawn must now be approaching fast, and that she must return upon another occasion to explore the forbidden east wing.
Hetty spent the following two days carefully making her preparations. She obtained a number of extra candles and a small lantern, which she added to the one that she already possessed. She also found a small wooden box that, if placed at the bottom of the circular space, would give her the extra lift that would enable her to climb out of the chamber.
On the third night, Hetty waited until the entire household was fast asleep and then she tip-toed her way down into the basement area. She made her way into the closet were the entrance to the duct lay, and there she paused for a moment and made her final preparations. She took the poisoned hat-pin from its wooden storage tube and inserted it into the lapel of her dress, then she lowered the two lanterns into the sewer, together with the wooden box and carefully climbed downwards into the duct itself. The wisewoman inched her way towards the circular chamber, carefully moving the lanterns and the wooden box before her as she advanced. Finally, after a great deal of effort, she entered the chamber and lay motionless in the darkness. She listened intently for any noise that might issue from the room above, but nothing disturbed the absolute silence surrounding her. The witch also consulted her inner-eye. Strangely, her highly tuned intuition told her nothing and she realized that she would have to be guided by her normal senses alone.
Hetty gently pushed upwards upon the underside of one of the planks that lay above her head. The timber moved with ease and she pushed it aside, followed by two of its neighbours. She listened for a while, then stood upon the wooden box and lifted her head and shoulders above the floor-level of the room above. Once again, she paused and listened for a good five minutes, before gathering up enough courage to light both of the lanterns.
After taking the precaution of leaving the smaller of the two lanterns burning in the base of the chamber, she quickly swung herself out of the pit and onto the floor above, and then she held the remaining lantern above her head, in order to gain a view of her immediate surroundings.
The cellar, into which she had emerged, was small and cluttered with long abandonedjunk of every description. Empty wooden boxes and old wine-casks lay on every side, together with broken furniture and numerous decaying hangings that may once have graced the walls of some Georgian banqueting hall. Over everything there lay a coating of grime that must have taken long generations to collect.
‘Where does this abandoned cellar lead too?’ Hetty wondered, and she immediately began searching for an exit. The light from the lantern revealed a large door at the far end of the cellar and she moved towards it and began examining it closely. The door was constructed from planks of solid oak, which the passage of time and generations of wood-lice had failed to destroy, but the hinges and the lock mechanism were completely rigid with corrosion and would never move again.
The wisewoman’s spirits fell and she began to wonder if her painful efforts to enter the east wing would finally prove to be a failure. Then her gaze fell upon the base of the door and she noticed that a swinging trapdoor was let into the ancient timbers.
A useful facility, she surmised, that had probably been intended to allow vermin hunting animals, to gain easy access to the storage cellars where preserved food had probably been stored.
The trapdoor had once swung from leather straps, but these had long since perished and Hetty easily lifted the door aside, thus revealing a narrow exit through which she could squeeze with some difficulty. The wisewoman removed her working dress and most of her underclothing and then wriggled her way through the mouth of the trapdoor. Once through, she clambered to her feet and found herself standing in a corridor that was illuminated by a small gas-jet mounted on the wall of the passage. She quickly donned her discarded clothing and checked that the poisoned hat-pin was still secure in the lapel of her garment, before continuing her search.
The corridor terminated at the bottom of a flight of stairs that appeared to lead upwards to the ground floor of the east wing. She crept upwards, a step at a time, until she was confronted by a wooden door of modern design. Again, the wisewoman attempted to employ her witch’s inner-eye, in order to gain a foreknowledge of any danger awaiting her beyond the threshold, but her gift appeared to be strangely inoperative and she had no choice but to proceed without the valuable aid of her second-sight.
Biting her lip, she pressed th
e latch and allowed the door to gently swing open.
Agas-lit main hallway lay beyond and this gave access to a pair of well appointed day-rooms that appeared to occupy much of the ground floor of the wing. To the rear lay three smaller rooms that were completely filled with stout workbenches, their surfaces littered with hanks of yarn, bolts of cloth and various pieces of complicated scientific equipment. In addition, the walls were lined with shelves that supported numerous bottles of variously coloured liquids, boxes of powdered chemicals and other types of scientific paraphernalia; the wisewoman immediately realized that she had entered the research laboratories where the rich industrialist developed and tested his newest discoveries.
The east wing was obviously much smaller than the main portion of the house and only one other ground floor room now remained to be explored. The room lay on the far side of the main hallway and the only access to it appeared to be through a large door that had been entirely constructed from wrought iron plates. Two keyholes were let into its smooth metal surface and a large brass knob appeared to operate a latch on the far side of the door.
Hetty placed both of her hands upon the knob and she had just begun turning it in a clockwise direction, when she heard a muffled footfall on the floor immediately behind her. Instinctively, the wisewoman’s hand flew to the poisoned hat-pin in the lapel of her dress, but, the same instant, she felt the sharp prick of a knife at her throat.