“It is about Sellwood’s house, I suppose...”
Dick was astonished. “And you didn’t think it was relevant! Sometimes, I’m astonished by your lack of perspicacity!”
Violet looked incipiently upset at his tone, and Dick wondered if he wasn’t going too far. He needed her in the Agency, but she could be maddening at times. Like a real girl.
“Out with it, Vile,” he barked.
Violet crossed her arms and kept quiet.
“I apologise for my tactlessness,” said Dick. “But this is vitally important. We might be able to put that ammonite-abuser out of business, with immeasurable benefit to science.”
Violet melted. “Very well. I heard this from Alderman Hooke’s father...”
Before her palaeontology craze, Violet fancied herself a collector of folklore. She had gone around asking old people to tell stories or sing songs or remember why things were called what they were called. She was going to write them all up in a book of local legends and had wanted Uncle Davey to draw the pictures. She was still working on her book, but it was about Dinosaurs in Dorset now.
“I didn’t make much of it, because it wasn’t much of a legend. Just a scrap of history.”
“With a spy,” prompted Ernest. “A spy who came out of the sea!”
Violet nodded. “That’s more or less it. When England was at war with France, everyone thought Napoleon...”
“Boney!” put in Ernest, making fang-fingers at the corners of his mouth.
“Yes, Boney... everyone thought he was going to invade, like William the Conqueror. Along the coast people watched the seas. Signal-fires were prepared, like with the Spanish Armada. Most thought it likely the French would strike at Dover, but round here they tapped the sides of their noses...”
Violet imitated an old person tapping her long nose.
“.. .and said the last army to invade Britain had landed at Lyme, and the next would too. The last army was Monmouth’s, during his rebellion. He landed at the Cobb and marched up to Sedgmoor, where he was defeated. There are lots of legends about the Duke of Monmouth...”
Dick made a get-to-the-point gesture.
“Any rate, near the end of the 18th Century, a man named Jacob Orris formed a vigilance patrol to keep watch on the beaches. Orris’s daughter married a sea-captain called Lud Sellwood; they begat drowned George and old Devil’s Belly-Button. Come to think, Orris’s patrol was like Sellwood’s Church Militant—an excuse to shout at folk and break things. Orris started a campaign to get ‘French beans’ renamed ‘Free-from-Tyranny beans,’ and had his men attack grocer’s stalls when no one agreed with him. Orris was expecting a fleet to heave to in Lyme Bay and land an army, but knew spies would be put ashore first to scout around. One night, during a terrible storm, Orris caught a spy flung up on the shingle.”
“And...?”
“That’s it, really. I expect they hit him with hammers and killed him, but if anyone really knows, they aren’t saying.”
Dick was disappointed.
“Tell him how it was a special spy,” said Ernest.
Dick was intrigued again. Especially since Violet obviously didn’t want to say more.
“He was a sea-ghost,” announced Ernest.
“Old Hooke said the spy hadwalked across the channel,” admitted Violet. “On the bottom of the sea, in a special diving suit. He was a Frenchman, but—and you have to remember stories get twisted over the years—he had gills sewn into his neck so he could breathe underwater. As far as anyone knew round here, all Corsicans were like that. They said it was probably Boney’s cousin.”
“And they killed him?”
Violet shrugged. “I expect so.”
“And kept him pickled,” said Ernest.
“Now that isn’t true. One version of this story is that Orris had the dead spy stuffed, then hidden away. But the family would have found the thing and thrown it out by now. And we’d know whether it was a man or, as Granny Ball says, a trained seal. Stories are like limpets on rocks. They stick on and get thicker until you can’t see what was there in the first place.”
Dick whistled.
“I don’t see how this can have anything to do with what Sellwood is about now,” said Violet. “This may not have happened, and if it did, it was a hundred years ago. Sellwood wasn’t even born then. His parents were still children.”
“My dear Vile, a century-old mystery is still a mystery. And crime can seep into a family like water in the foundations, passed down from father to son...”
“Father to daughter to son, in this case.”
“I haven’t forgotten that. This mystery goes deep. It’s all about the past. And haven’t you said that a century is just a heartbeat in the long life of the planet?”
She was coming round, he saw.
“We have to get into Orris Priory,” said Dick.
* * * *
III: “Ba bq wdp sdpy qj abho, bq wjtfoh’q is rboosh?”
“Why are we on the shingle?” asked Ernest. “The Priory is up there, on top of the Cleeve.”
Dick had been waiting for the question. Deductions impressed more if he didn’t just come out with cleverness, but waited for a prompt.
“Remember yesterday? Sellwood seemed to turn up suddenly, with Fose and Fessel. If they’d been walking on the beach, we’d have seen them ages before they arrived. But we didn’t. Therefore, there must be a secret way. A smugglers’ tunnel.”
Violet found some pieces of the fossil. She looked towards the cliff.
“We were facing out to sea, and they came from behind,” she said.
She tossed her ammonite shard, which rebounded off the soft rock-face.
The cliff was too crumbly for caves that might conceal a tunnel. The children began looking closely, hoping for a hidden door.
After a half hour, Ernest complained that he was hungry.
After an hour, Violet complained that she was fed up with rocks.
Dick stuck to it. “If it was easy to find, it wouldn’t be hidden,” he kept saying.
Ernest began to make helpful suggestions which didn’t help but needed to be argued with.
“Maybee they came up under the sea and swam ashore?”
“They weren’t wet and we would have seen them,” countered Dick.
“Maybee they’ve got invisible diving suits that don’t show wetness?”
“Those haven’t been invented yet.”
“Maybee they’ve invented them but kept it quiet?”
“It’s not likely...”
“But not impossible, and you always say that ‘when you’ve eliminated the impossible...’“
“Actually, Ernest, it is impossible!”
“Prove it.”
“The only way to prove something impossible is to devote your entire life to trying to achieve it, and the lives of everyone to infinity throughout eternity, then not succeed...”
“Well, get started...”
“...and that’s impractical!”
Dick knew he was shouting, but when Ernest got into one of these maybee moods—which he called his “clever spells”—everyone got a headache, and usually wound up giving in and agreeing with something they knew to be absurd just to make Ernest shut up. After that, he would be hard to live with for the rest of the day, puffed up like a toad with a smugness that Violet labelled “very unattractive,” which prompted him to snipe that he didn’t want to attract anyone like her, and her to counter that he would change his mind in a few years, and him to... well, it was a cycle Dick had lived through too often.
Then Violet found a hinge. Two, in fact.
Dick got out his magnifying glass and examined the hinges. Recently oiled, he noted. Where there were hinges, there must be a door. Hidden.
“Where’s the handle?” asked Ernest.
“Inside,” said Violet.
“What’s the use of a door it only opens from one side?”
“It’d keep out detectives, like us,” suggested Violet.
“There was no open door when Sellwood was here. It closed behind him. He’d want to open it again, rather than go home the long way.”
“He had two big strong men with hammers,” said Violet, “and we’ve got you and Ernest.”
Dick tried to be patient.
He stuck his fingers into a crack in the rock, and worked down, hoping to get purchase enough to pull the probable door open.
“Careful,” said Violet.
“Maybee...”
“Shut up, Ernest,” said Dick.
He found his hand stuck, but pulled free, scraping his knuckles.
There was an outcrop by the sticking point, at about the height where you’d put a door-handle.
“Ah-hah,” said Dick, seizing and turning the rock.
A click, and a section of the cliff pulled open. It was surprisingly light, a thin layer of stone fixed to a wooden frame.
A section of rock fell off the door.
“You’ve broken it now,” said Ernest.
It was dark inside. From his coat-of-many-hidden-pockets, Dick produced three candlestubs with metal holders and a box of matches. For his next birthday, he hoped to get one of the new battery-powered electrical lanterns—until then, these would remain R.R.D.A. standard issue.
Getting the candles lit was a performance. The draught kept puffing out match-flames before the wicks caught. Violet took over and mumsily arranged everything, then handed out the candles, showing Ernest how to hold his so wax didn’t drip on his fingers.
“Metal’s hot,” said Ernest.
“Perhaps we should leave you here as lookout,” said Dick. “You can warn us in case any dogs come along.”
The metal apparently wasn’ttoo hot, since Ernest now wanted to continue. He insisted on being first into the dark, in case there were monsters.
Once they were inside, the door swung shut.
They were in a space carved out of the rock and shored up with timber. Empty barrels piled nearby. A row of fossil-smashing hammers arranged where Violet could spit at them. Smooth steps led upwards, with the rusted remains of rings set into the walls either side.
‘“Brandy for the parson, ‘baccy for the clerk,’“ said Violet.
“Indubitably,” responded Dick. “This is clear evidence of smuggling.”
“What do people smuggle these days?” asked Violet. “Brandy and tobacco might have been expensive when we were at war with France and ships were slow, but that was ages ago.”
Dick was caught out. He knew there was still contraband, but hadn’t looked into its nature.
“Jewels, probably,” he guessed. “And there’s always spying.”
Ernest considered the rings in the wall.
“I bet prisoners were chained here,” he said, “until they turned to skellytones!”
“More likely people hold the rings while climbing the slippery stairs,” suggested Violet, “especially if they’re carrying heavy cases of... jewels and spy-letters.”
Ernest was disappointed.
“But they could be used for prisoners.”
Ernest cheered up.
“If I was a prisoner, I could ‘scape,” he said. He put his hand in a ring, which was much too big for him and for any grown-up too. Then he pulled and the ring came out of the wall.
Ernest tried to put it back.
Dick was tense, expecting tons of rock to fall on them.
No collapse happened.
“Be careful touching things,” he warned his friends. “We were lucky that time, but there might be deadly traps.”
He led the way up.
* * * *
IV: “dhjtifbsqqs”
The steps weren’t steep, but went up a long way. The tunnel had been hewn out of rock. New timbers, already bowed and near cracking, showed where the passage had been shored after falls.
“We must be under the Priory,” Dick said.
They came to the top of the stairs, and a basement-looking room. Wooden crates were stacked.
“Cover your light,” said Dick.
Ernest yelped as he burned his hand.
“Carefully,” Dick added.
Ernest whimpered a bit.
“What do you suppose is in these?” asked Violet. “Contraband?”
“Instruments of evil?” prompted Ernest.
Dick held his candle close to a crate. The slats were spaced an inch or so apart. Inside were copies ofOmphalos Diabolicus.
“Isn’t the point of smuggling to bring in things people want?” asked Violet. “I can’t imagine an illicit market for unreadable tracts.”
“There could be coded spy messages in the books,” Dick suggested hopefully.
“Even spies trained to resist torture in the dungeons of the Tsar wouldn’t be able to read through these to get any message,” said Violet. “My deduction is that these are here because Sellwood can’t get anybody to buy his boring old book.”
“Maybee he should change his name to Sellwords.”
Dick had the tiniest spasm of impatience. Here they were, in the lair of an undoubted villain, having penetrated secret defences, and all they could do was make dubiously sarky remarks about his name.
“We should scout further,” he said. “Come on.”
He opened a door and found a gloomy passageway. The lack of windows suggested they were still underground. The walls were panelled, wood warped and stained by persistent damp.
The next room along had no door and was full of rubble. Dick thought the ceiling had fallen in, but Violet saw at once that the detritus was broken-up fossils.
“Ammonites,” she said, “also brachiopods, nautiloids, crinoids, plagiostoma, coroniceras, gryphaea and calcirhynchia.”
She held up what looked like an ordinary stone.
“This could be the knee-bone of ascelidosaurus. One was discovered in Charmouth, in Liassic cliffs just like these. The first near-complete dinosaur fossil to come to light. This might have been another find as important. Sellwood is a vandal and a wrecker. He should be hit on the head with his own hammers.”
Dick patted Violet on the back, hoping she would cheer up.
“It’s only a knee,” said Ernest. “Nothing interesting about knees.”
“Some dinosaurs had brains in their knees. Extra brains to do the thinking for their legs. Imagine if you had brains in your knees.”
Ernest was impressed.
“If I’d found this, I wouldn’t have broken it,” said Violet. “I would have named it.Biolettosaurus, Violet’s Lizard.”
“Let’s try the next room,” said Dick. “There might still be useful fragments.”
Reluctantly, Violet left the room of broken stone bones.
Next was a thick wooden door, with iron bands across it, and three heavy bolts. Though the bolts were oiled, it was a strain to pull them— Dick and Violet both struggled. The top and bottom bolts shifted, but the middle one wouldn’t move.
“Let me try,” said Ernest. “Please.”
They did, and he didn’t get anywhere.
Violet dipped back into the fossil room and came back with a chunk they used as a hammer. The third bolt shot open.
The banging and clanging sounded fearfully loud in the enclosed space.
They listened, but no one came.Maybee, Dick thought—recognising the Ernestism—Sellwood was up in his Tower, scanning the horizon for spy-signals, and his Brethren were taking afternoon naps.
The children stepped through the doorway, and the door swung slowly and heavily shut behind them.
This room was different again.
The floor and walls were solid slabs which looked as if they’d been in place a long time. The atmosphere was dank, slightly mouldy. A stone trough, like you see in stables, ran along one wall, fed by an old-fashioned pump. Dick cupped water in his hand and tasted it. There was a nasty, coppery sting, and he spat.
“It’s a dungeon,” said Ernest.
Violet held up her candle.
A winch-apparatus, with
handles like a threshing machine, was fixed to the floor at the far side of the room, thick chain wrapped around the drum.
“Careful,” said Violet, gripping Dick’s arm.
Dick looked at his feet. He stood on the edge of a circular hole, like a well. It was a dozen feet across, and uncovered.
The Secret Files of the Diogenes Club - [Diogenes Club 02] Page 14