Lamb then left the search of the kitchen in the hands of Wallace and the others, while he and Rivers went down the hall to search the alcove that contained the mysterious staircase. They found the door locked, but, taking turns, kicked it down with relative ease. They stepped into the narrow alcove and began to examine it with electric torches.
Rivers peered up the stairs to where they abruptly ended at the wall. “It must have been used as a direct way out of the cellar to the stables and was sealed off once the stables became redundant,” he said.
“Yes,” Lamb said. “I think there might be something beneath the stairs, a space of some kind. The nurse who answered the door said that Joseph Lee had tried to lure her here with the promise of showing her proof that the ghost of Lord Elton haunted the place. He had a key to the house and he might have rigged something up in here that he thought he could use to impress the young nurses.”
“There had to have been a door up there at the top,” Rivers said. “But if you’re going to close off the place and wall up the door to the outside, why keep the bloody steps? Why not seal it off at the hallway and be done with it?”
“Unless you had a use for the steps,” Lamb said. He began to ascend them, stomping hard on each one as he reached it.
“They don’t sound solid,” Rivers said.
Lamb carefully descended the steps back to their base, where he squatted and began moving the beam of his torch over each board, looking for a finger hole or some other way in which one of the boards could be removed. He saw what appeared to be a narrow opening at the place where the second step met its supporting board. He asked Rivers to shine his light upon the space as he tried to work his fingers into it. He felt the board give as he managed to get his fingers partly beneath it.
“This has been pried up before,” Lamb said. He withdrew his fingers from the opening and said, “I need something else; something with more leverage.”
“Wait here,” Rivers said. He left the alcove and returned a few minutes later with a large metal soup spoon.
“This is all I could find,” he said.
“It might do.”
Lamb wedged the end of the spoon into the opening and began to work it like a lever. Gradually, the board began to come loose. After a few seconds the step popped free of the supporting board and Lamb found himself staring into a dark, open space beneath it. He shined his torch into this space and saw that it was deep enough to accommodate a standing man, though it was only as wide as the steps. He noticed the stubs of several candles lying on the stone floor.
Lamb began to work on the step above the one he removed and soon lifted it free. He tugged at the supporting board between the two, but could not move it. Then he realized that he might be trying to free it the wrong way and instead tried yanking it upward, which did the trick.
Lamb played his torch into the space again, expecting to see some sort of ladder or other method of climbing down into the pit but saw nothing.
“Let’s get one of the chairs from the kitchen,” he said to Rivers, who returned a minute later with one of the stout wooden chairs. Lamb began to undo his necktie and asked Rivers to do the same. Lamb knotted the ties together and then knotted one end of the makeshift rope to one of the chair’s rear slats. He then carefully lowered the chair into the hole so that it came to rest upright on the stone floor, with its seat about four feet below the rim.
“We should be able to lower ourselves onto the chair without breaking our necks,” Lamb said. He went first, turning so that he faced the rear wall of the hole, after which he easily lowered himself to the chair. He stepped off the chair onto the stone floor and waited for Rivers, who also made the descent without incident.
They shined their torches into the chill, dark space that lay before them—seemingly a tunnel that went on for some distance. Lamb led the way forward, away from the chair. Neither spoke, as they listened for some telltale sound that might give them a clue as to what lay ahead.
They moved forward roughly the length of the staircase, which ran above their heads, before they found themselves facing another wall—though this one, unlike the one above, was not made of stone, but of brick that appeared to be very new indeed. Lamb reckoned that they had come to a point that put them at a place just beneath the rear wall of the house. He shined his light on the wall and ran his hand over it.
“Still smooth,” he said. “It can’t be more than a few years old.”
“So the tunnel goes on—or it did?” Rivers said.
“It must.”
The two became silent again as they tried to picture in their minds where the tunnel led—beneath the rear courtyard and then under the carriage house . . .
“Bloody hell,” Lamb said aloud.
“What is it?”
“The lorry.”
“Which lorry?”
Lamb turned and began to move back to the chair.
“We’re in the wrong damned place,” he said.
THIRTY-THREE
AS LAMB AND RIVERS WERE EXITING THE HOLE, LARKIN APPEARED at the door to the alcove, holding several items that he and Sergeant Cashen had found in Matilda Stevens’s room. The two detectives followed Larkin into the hall, where the forensics man showed them three .38 caliber bullets.
“These were in the top drawer of her dresser,” he said. “Just lying there, scattered about. It’s possible she had a box of them and these three fell out as she removed it. We’ve found no pistol, though.”
He then produced a half-dozen nine-inch-long white candles he’d found stored in a box beneath the nurse’s bed. “They look to be identical to the stubs we found by the lake and in Lee’s cottage and those you found at Lord Elton’s gravesite,” he said.
Finally, the forensics man handed Lamb a paper lily.
“We found several of these as well,” he said. “They were in the same box as the candles, under the bed, along with a box of matches.
She also has a small typewriter in her room, along with several sheaves of writing paper.”
“Excellent work, Mr. Larkin,” Lamb said.
But he hadn’t the time to stop for more. “Let’s go, Harry,” he said to Rivers, and the two hustled down the hall to the kitchen, where Lamb grabbed Wallace and searched for a heavier tool than the soup spoon. He found a meat cleaver he thought would suffice. The three detectives then left the kitchen and moved across the courtyard to the door of the carriage house.
Lamb brought the meat cleaver down on the old padlock and chain that ensnared the doors—once, then twice, then a third time, before the lock cracked open. Lamb removed it and opened the double doors, moving right to the small delivery van.
“Hornby claimed he hadn’t known this lorry was in the carriage house,” Lamb said. “And yet it had fresh mud on its tires when I checked it yesterday, meaning that it has to have been moved recently. The problem is, though, that the mud is only on the front tires. The rear tires are clean. But at the time I couldn’t see why that was.”
He pointed at the house.
“The tunnel would have come out of the house over there and led here if you follow a straight line.” He looked at Rivers and Wallace. “What if Lord Elton’s ancestors made their fortune two centuries ago by smuggling—cotton, rum, whatever it might have been, and all of it to avoid paying the steep tariffs the government levied to pay for its wars with the French? Smuggling was common round here then. Even the clergy took their cut from time to time. They built these tunnels to hide the contraband until they could sell it, and I think whoever employed Hornby is using the cellars for the same purpose now, only the contraband is lend-lease goods stolen off the American ships coming into Southampton and Portsmouth. But they first had to disconnect the tunnels from the house, in case someone working in the sanatorium stumbled upon one of the entrances. So they walled them and up and created other entrances, apart from the house. They’ve kept the stables and carriage house locked, just as they’ve been for twenty-five years or more.”
> He turned toward the small lorry. “That’s why the front tires are muddy, but the rear ones aren’t,” he said. “They have to push its nose into the courtyard to uncover the access hole. I should have seen it before but was too bloody dense.”
Lamb climbed into the vehicle and made certain it was out of gear. Then he went to the back and began to push the vehicle forward; Wallace and Rivers moved to assist him. A few seconds later they had pushed the van’s nose through the door and into the courtyard. “Stop here,” Lamb said.
He looked at the floor that had been hidden beneath the lorry and saw what he expected to see—a wooden trap door. It was about two feet square with a pair of black iron hinges at one end and a U-shaped iron handle at the other. Next to the handle was a metal flap and eye fastened with a new padlock.
“This one is going to take more muscle to get loose,” Lamb said. He looked at Wallace and said, “Have at it, please, David.”
Wallace went at the lock with the meat cleaver as if he were Jack the Ripper, and a minute later had cracked it open and removed it.
Lamb pulled up the door to reveal another darkened pit like the one beneath the stairwell in the cellar, though this one had a newly built wooden stair leading into it.
“It’s here,” Lamb said. “This is the rest of the tunnel.”
“Shall I go first, sir?” Wallace asked.
Lamb nodded. “Look for a light switch. They won’t have been working in the dark.”
Wallace eased himself through the opening and down the steps and had a look round with his torch. “It leads both ways,” he said. “Back toward the house and in the opposite direction as well.”
He scanned the wall for a light switch and found one less than a foot from the opening. A line of bare lightbulbs strung along the tunnel’s ceiling flashed on, illuminating the tunnel in both directions.
Lamb moved down the stairs next, followed by Rivers. The tunnel was just wide enough for the three of them to stand shoulder to shoulder within it, while the ceiling was high enough that they could move without stooping. Lamb pointed his torch down the corridor that led in the opposite direction, toward the unknown. He withdrew the pistol from the holster beneath his jacket; Rivers and Wallace followed suit.
“If she’s down here, we have to assume she’s armed,” Lamb said, repeating his earlier warning. He looked at Wallace. “Don’t fire unless I give the command.”
Wallace nodded.
“All right, then. Let’s see what’s down the other end of this bloody hole.”
Lamb led the way, with Rivers behind him and Wallace following. The dim, close-in walls reminded Lamb of those of the trenches on the Somme and he wondered if the tunnel was dredging up similar memories for Rivers. Lamb slowed, looked back over his shoulder, and whispered, “Are you all right, Harry?”
“I’ll let you know if the bullets start flying,” Rivers said drily.
They moved forward another fifteen or so yards when Lamb’s beam suddenly fell upon several wooden crates stacked upon each other in what looked to be a place where the tunnel widened, forming a kind of small room. They moved into this space, which was about six feet or so wider than the tunnel and went on for about twenty feet before narrowing again. Here, they found the walls on either side of them stacked with the wooden crates, each of which was about four feet long by perhaps three feet high and three wide, and marked in black lettering that read: PROPERTY OF THE UNITED STATES ARMY.
“I’d say we hit the jackpot,” Wallace whispered.
“This has to let out at a place somewhere down the hill from the house,” Lamb said. “They can’t have left it with only one way in and one out.”
“Lee’s cottage, maybe?” Rivers said. “It would be down the slope as the crow flies and if the gang employed him to watch over this lot then it would make sense that he had access. Though when I searched I saw nothing that looked like a trap door.”
“Or that decrepit little bloody ice house,” Lamb said.
He spoke to Wallace. “Go back and tell Cashen what we’ve found. Suspend the rest of the search and get three or four men down here to secure this place. Then I want you to take no less than two men with you to Lee’s cottage and the old ice house to see if you can find the other end of this hole. Harry and I will go forward from here.”
Wallace nodded, turned, and disappeared down the tunnel.
Lamb and Rivers readied to move again—but Rivers halted suddenly when he thought he heard a sound coming from the unexplored end of the tunnel.
“Did you hear that?” he whispered.
“No.”
Rivers peered forward, and moved a bit ahead of Lamb. “It sounded like a muffled voice, a kind of muttering.”
From just up the tunnel, they heard a woman yell, “Help!”
Lamb recognized Janet Lockhart’s voice.
In the next instant the lights strung along the ceiling went out. Lamb heard a shot and saw a muzzle flash ahead; he heard Rivers grunt, “Jesus,” and saw Rivers’s torch fall to the ground and rattle against the stone floor. Instinctively, Lamb pressed his back against the boxes. Rivers seemed to have fallen, though he could not tell for certain in the darkness, which was blindingly complete. Another muzzle flash lit up the blackness as a second shot fired. Lamb heard the bullet whiz past him, inches from his chest. He went to his belly. His immediate instinct was to return fire, but he did not want to risk shooting Rivers in the confusion. Neither did he want to give away their position by calling to Rivers. He briefly played the beam of his torch along the stone floor up the corridor and caught sight of Rivers crawling toward him. He doused his torch and crawled forward until he collided with Rivers.
He grabbed the rear collar of Rivers’s jacket and dragged him back along the floor to a place about two yards distant, where they sheltered against the wall behind some of the stacked crates. Lamb expected another shot, though none came.
Lamb whispered. “Where are you hit?”
“Right shoulder. Just a nick; hurts like bleeding hell, though.”
Lamb briefly shone his light on Rivers. He removed a folding knife from his pocket and cut open the sleeve of Rivers’s jacket and shirt, exposing the wound.
“Okay,” he whispered. “You’re not going to bloody die at any rate.”
“Stevens, then?” Rivers said. “And she has Lockhart?”
“Yes.”
Wallace had just reached the steps when the shot that hit Rivers was fired. He was about to head back into the tunnel when the second shot struck the stone wall just to his left. He went immediately to his stomach and scrunched himself as closely as possible against the right tunnel wall, by the steps.
Sergeant Cashen was in the carriage house now, with Larkin. He heard the shot and looked down the hole, but could see nothing.
Lamb guessed that Stevens was heading for the other exit to avoid being trapped. He wanted to follow, but had to get Rivers help as soon as possible. He helped Rivers to his feet and wrapped his arm around the inspector.
“Can you walk?” Lamb asked.
“Yes.”
“Off we go, then.”
Lamb hustled Rivers back the way they had come, shielding his friend with his body and praying to God that a third bullet didn’t strike him in the back.
As they reached the stairs, Wallace rose from the ground and helped Lamb hoist Rivers up to the waiting Cashen, who eased Rivers onto the floor of the carriage house, where he sat holding his wounded shoulder.
Lamb drew in a deep breath and steadied himself. “I think she’s gone out the other way,” he said. “We must get someone down the hill and find out where the tunnel lets out. I’m going to go back in from this way. We might be able to trap her. But we have to move now.”
“I’ll see to Rivers,” Cashen said.
“I’ll be all right,” Rivers said crankily. “I just need a bandage.”
Lamb asked Wallace, “Have you still got your pistol?”
Wallace patted the holster bene
ath his jacket. “Right here.”
“All right,” Lamb said, then he turned and descended the steps into the tunnel.
THIRTY-FOUR
NURSE STEVENS KNEW WHAT LAMB HAD GUESSED: THE TUNNEL’S other secret entrance lay concealed within the old ice house. The escape hatch consisted of nothing more than a small square opening covered by a pair of floorboards that were hammered into stringers that contained small finger holes that could be used to lift them free.
A drunken Joseph Lee had shown Nurse Stevens the hole late one night as she ascended the path from Marbury after having lit a candle at Lord Elton’s grave. Lee understood the nurse’s importance to Dr. Hornby and had wanted to impress upon her the importance of his own station. And so he had stopped her—startling her at first—by the pond, in the dark of the wee hours, with the promise of revealing to her a secret of Elton house “that even Dr. Hornby himself does not know.” He had then shown her the exit and demonstrated for her how to lift the floorboards. And he had told her where the tunnel led and what its purpose once had been, and what its purpose had become. He’d added that his “employers” had renovated and improved the tunnel so that it even boasted electric light.
“I’ve been down and had a look round myself a few times,” Lee had boasted. “A person could hide down there for weeks and no one would know.”
On the previous night, as she had retreated to her room to think after Lamb and Dr. Hornby had hustled James Travers to the hospital, Nurse Stevens remembered the tunnel and decided she would use it if necessary. She had shown the patience of a saint in bringing her plan to fruition and now it seemed that all was falling apart. Her only hope of not being found out was that James should never regain consciousness; if he did then the truth would be obvious to him.
When Hornby had called that morning to say that James had never awakened and had died in the night, she had first felt relieved. But almost immediately something—a suspicion—took hold of her and would not relent: What if Hornby were lying and Lamb had put him up to it? The eagerness with which the doctor had cooperated with Lamb on the previous night in transporting James to the hospital had given her pause. In the end, she had decided that she could not risk waiting to find out if Lamb had concocted a ruse designed to put her off her guard and that she must act to ensure her escape. On the other hand, she could not yet immediately run, as she had no motorcar. Then, too, she couldn’t have predicted that Lamb would show up just as James was falling off to sleep and threaten everything. Neither had she counted on Janet Lockhart’s interference and Lockhart’s efforts to influence James and turn him against her.
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