by Marc Secchia
“I know what you’re thinking!” Brian belched a suffocating wave of garlic. “Ah, good lunch!”
Kevin frowned. Now he could smell garlic? He thought his sense of smell had been ruined by his medication.
“Don’t think you can fool me,” said his brother. “Father will be back tomorrow–and you well know the virtues of obedience, don’t you, little brother?”
A mute nod constituted the only safe reply.
“I hope you have a nice time.” His tone was as warm as an invitation to the gallows. Kevin shivered at his brother’s departure, as if suddenly taken with an immedicable chill that centred on his frail heart. Brian used to be nasty. These days he was downright evil.
Funny, he thought, that business about New York. He was no idiot. Brian was going nowhere near New York. Why the lie? That said–he tut-tutted under his breath–there were undoubtedly many Jenkins secrets he was not party to. And his day was now ruined. Kevin stumped over to the bed in a right old sulk. Best get on with it.
* * * *
Three days and half a night later, that feeling of haleness was the last thing on Kevin’s mind. He had not forgotten. But there were more pressing matters afoot.
Tonight was the night.
“Relax,” he instructed himself, as sternly as a headmaster castigating a recalcitrant student. “It’s nothing but a little stroll downstairs. I’ll mosey on down to the Blue Room …”
He froze as something creaked out in the hallway. Old houses like this were full of such noises. Kevin might have retched, but there was nothing left to expel after a wretched hour earlier spent hanging over the toilet bowl. His attempted chuckle was more a dull wheeze–shockingly loud against midnight’s silence–and he clutched his pillow for comfort. His imagination turned the shadows beneath the drapes into the scaly paws of hidden ogres. Was the utter stillness out there comforting, or merely terrifying? Too many nights he had lain thus, awaiting the dreaded creak of Father’s tread in the hallway.
With a convulsive surge, he thrust the bedclothes aside, murmuring, “Trumpet sounds the charge, Jenkins.”
Once he had forced himself into motion, donning his slippers and belting his favourite bathrobe, of a dark colour he imagined was suitable for sneaking about at night, he found the fear easier to cope with. There was a kind of momentum. If you did not stop to think about it, you might find yourself at the head of the stairs. Then you might scurry on–losing several years to a creaky stair three quarters of the way down–and duck behind the armour exhibit on the landing. The apparel of several burly knights was on display there, behind which he easily concealed himself. Pant and wheeze for a minute. Before the fear of discovery spread like snake venom into the cardiovascular system, you might just lurch forward and try the handle to the smoking room, where the men used to gather for cigars and port after dinner. Round the overstuffed armchairs and a squat leather sofa, ease open the oak-carved double doors and stop to catch your breath before the patch of moonlight that illuminated the gigantic dining table and its many straight-backed chairs where, on the rare occasions he was invited, he had dined from silver platters. Such were Father’s pretensions.
In the luminous half-light, his momentum vanished. Kevin curled in towards himself, hugging his thin body as the tremors started in his calves and rocketed into his gut with familiar, sickly glee. For several interminable minutes he stood swaying in his frayed old bathrobe, all his inner resources concentrated upon the awful, impending explosion brewing in his bowels. No, he must hold on, he must deny it. He broke into a cold sweat. He must dam up the evidence. There was no toilet nearby. Failure was unthinkable.
Just when the sensation had become unbearable, when he had already given up the battle and was about to succumb to the unclenching of vital muscles, something altogether unexpected happened. For a fraction of a second, he thought he saw the Unicorn in the moonbeam–which was impossible, or the moonlight was playing tricks with his imagination–but certainly he thought … that jutting horn … Kevin rubbed his eyes and blinked a couple of times, startled and perturbed to discover that there was no sodden warmth spreading down his leg, that the tremors had stopped, and that his conviction–never firm to begin with–had returned in full flood. Before he knew it, he had passed through the light and into the shadows obscuring the far end of the room. The shutters were always closed here, for this was Father’s place and he detested direct sunlight when he was eating. A backward glance showed there was nothing in the moonbeam.
Kevin scratched the pitiful stubble on his chin. His fear was as real as its abrupt departure. Why would he think of the Unicorn now? Why a Unicorn at all? It made no sense. Perhaps the Unicorn was a construct of his imagination, a powerful, capable alter ego? He recalled reading something about those who had a history of abuse developing alternate manifestations of their personality. Maybe he was a crackpot after all! A Unicorn? Ah, no, he might be more resourceful than he thought!
Congratulating himself upon the discovery of a hitherto unidentified strength of character, Kevin moved to the wood-panelled back wall and examined it from close range.
He raised his hand.
What if he were wrong? What if that flash of inspiration had been … tap, tap … wide of the mark? Tap. What if the mildewed old plans were inaccurate by modern standards? Tap, tap. He had examined so many drawings and schematics of Pitterdown Manor, that the different floors and rooms had begun to blur in his mind. A secret tunnel was improbable … tap, tock! Kevin stared at the mahogany panel as though it had transmogrified into a viper. It was hollow–no mistaking that sound. Vindication!
The spring, when he finally found it, was ingeniously worked into a stylised leaf alongside the wood-carved panel. At a simple touch, a section five feet tall and one wide slid silently aside to reveal a gloomy recess behind.
“Great,” he groaned, surveying the cobwebbed interior. “I hate spiders!”
Kevin was terrified of all insects and creeping creatures, and harboured a strong dislike for dark, enclosed spaces. As with all his weaknesses, he hated himself the more for admitting to them. Shame tinged the frustrated rebukes tripping off his tongue, surrounding him with mocking echoes as stepped up into the gap to clear the way with his hands. He wiped the cobwebs on his gown with a shudder. Ah, he could dimly make out a narrow staircase leading upwards into the wall. There might be rats, or worse, cockroaches! It had crossed his mind that he should bring a candle–Pitterdown Manor had no torches–but the light might be detected through a gap in the secret passageway. Keeping one hand against the wall and the other before him, he proceeded a-quiver up the stairs and turned the corner.
What infectious madness in Great-Grandmother’s letter had driven him to such extremity? Those dreams … those dismal dreams of the little girl! The wretchedly eloquent pleading of her eyes, the perplexing compulsion of her tears! She and the beautiful Unicorn … the thought stalled as he crowed in delight. Light! There was a pale sliver of light ahead. Providence followed the Unicorn, he decided–capitalising the word unconsciously in his mind–and barked his shin sharply on a protruding beam.
A dance of silent agony followed until the pain subsided.
He put his eye to the crack. The Blue Room! He was there!
His initial thrill faded swiftly into annoyance at the passage of time as the means of ingress proved elusive. But eventually he snagged his sleeve on a protruding handle, which led him to a catch, and a moment later he stepped from behind a hinged bookcase into the musty study. A quick glance about showed him a room as untouched as the day she must have last seen it, a thick and undisturbed layer of dust covering all surfaces like a perfectly-contoured wrapping. Should Father enter here and see his footprints, it would all be over.
Kevin’s knees buckled at the notion and he caught himself against the edge of the desk to keep his balance.
“Almost there,” he grunted aloud, for the comfort of hearing his own voice. He spoke to himself far too much. “Don’t be such a nincomp
oop, Jenkins!”
He tottered over to the mantelpiece.
‘Firstly, the Key-Ring, which is hidden under the mantelpiece in the Blue Room’, the letter averred. The question was, where and how was it hidden? It must be secret, for there was no way Great-Grandmother would have hidden some special treasure right where a casual visitor might chance upon it–if only Father had not snatched the letter! His fingertips scouted the edges above the fireplace, hunting for any imperfections or clues, but it was firmly affixed to the stone and in no way mobile. Next he pored over the brickwork surrounding the fireplace, without finding anything unusual there either. He reached up the chimney as far as he could–no luck. Eventually, Kevin stood back and reconsidered the whole endeavour, scratching his chin absently. Perhaps there was another Blue Room? No, he had must have been over the plans a dozen times. This was her private study, a logical place–no, perhaps it was the least logical place for him to be looking. He glared silently at the mantelpiece before going over every inch of it a second time, and the brickwork, and the sooty chimney–but apart from blackened fingers and face, he achieved precisely as much as before, which was to say, nothing at all.
“Where would one hide a key-ring?” Kevin glared at an oil painting of some obscure relative hanging above the fireplace, which actually depicted a rather attractive young woman in Victorian dress seated primly on a straight-backed chair, hands folded in her lap over a leather bound book. She and Aunt Beatrice–Kevin’s favourite Aunt–might have been sisters. He should ask her next time … ah, the picture! Kevin reached up to explore the picture frame. He was woefully short, but this inadequacy hardly mattered, for he happened upon it within seconds–a tiny rough edge, a curling of paper beneath his fingernails. With shaking hands, he extracted and unrolled the slip.
He squinted and read, ‘I wonder what Colette is thinking?’
“Jiminy Cricket!” Was this a joke? Some unsuspected sense of humour on the part of Great-Grandmother, who had always struck him as rather distant, stern, and disapproving of snotty little boys? Colette’s portrait received the full brunt of his displeasure and annoyance. “Now,” he said, peering closer, “what are you hiding, my dear?”
Her portrait was rather plain and lacking in interesting details, although some peculiar force of gravity caused his gaze to dally for some moments on the journey between her smiling face and the book in her lap–in purely aesthetic study, naturally, though the room seemed at once ten degrees warmer in result. That he could discern nothing of what she was thinking was partly due to her simple, happy expression, and partly due to the sudden lapse in concentration on his part. Kevin’s eyes jumped guiltily to the book, cradled protectively between her slim, pale hands. It had miniscule gold lettering on the spine.
“Needs a magnifying-glass,” he said to himself, casting about the room. “Can’t read a darned thing in this dreary moonlight!” A swift search turned up a fine glass in the top desk drawer, whence he returned to Colette and focussed on the book. “Well I say, what perfectly strange book for a young lady to be reading. ‘Locks Through the Ages: A Complete History?’ A tad offbeat.” Struck by sudden inspiration, he whirled. “It couldn’t be …!”
Two minutes’ perusal of Great-Grandmother’s bookshelves had that exact volume in his trembling hands–but that was where the inspiration faded, for no further clues offered themselves immediately to Kevin’s questing mind. He already understood that ‘beneath the mantelpiece’ was a purposeful misdirection. Colette appeared from her picture to be gazing at the shelf from which he had carefully removed Locks Through the Ages, which made sense, but he was no closer to ‘what she was thinking’ than before.
All this mystery was beginning to excite him, to exert some allure on his feverish imagination, for he reasoned that if someone had taken such great pains to hide a Key-Ring, then it must be of great significance. Great-Grandmother had never struck him as one given to frivolity. No, her purpose would become clear in time, he was sure. Until then, Kevin thought, reluctantly leaving the study with the book tucked firmly under his arm.
It had been a fine adventure.
Chapter 3: Through the Veil
Kevin was dozing in the Library when Aunt Beatrice woke him.
“Rise and shine, sleepyhead,” she cooed, shaking his shoulder gently, but with a certain implacable air common to retired schoolteachers everywhere. “Fancy nodding off at two o’clock! Why, you are missing a beautiful day. And how is my favourite nephew?”
“Hmm?”
“I must advise, my dear boy, that you should not snore with your mouth open so. A bird might build its nest in there and that would be frightfully amusing.”
Kevin closed his mouth with a snap and sat up, pulling his bathrobe straight. What time was it? What day? He had asked Albert to call Aunt B first thing. Had he found the Blue Room only last night? Leaping lizards!
“Aunt B! Did you fly here?”
“All the better to see you, my dear.” She tittered at her joke, patting an imaginary stray hair back into its rightful position. Aunt Beatrice was very proper and formal at all times, and always impeccably turned out. She reminded Kevin of a wren, for she had a tiresome habit of pecking at fluff wherever she could find it–as she did now, plucking a thread off his bathrobe. “Faithful Albert delivered your message this morning. He has been a Jenkins family servant all his life, did you know? And his dear mother before him, who was my nurse when I was young.”
“Is that so?” He could not imagine Aunt B as a girl, for she was a contemporary of his grandmother’s–she was his great-aunt, strictly speaking, but insisted on just ‘Aunt’ rather than ‘Great-Aunt’. ‘We’d rather not give my age away, dear!’ she had once explained. Aunt B she had been ever since.
“I owe you an apology,” said Aunt B, who had not even removed her coat. “You caught me on my way to London–a dreadful business, that’s what it is. Perfectly horrid. Ivy, one of my oldest and dearest friends, has had a bad fall and is in hospital as we speak with a broken hip. At her age, too, she should not be climbing on chairs to reach into cupboards. It was fortunate that one of the neighbours heard the crash and came to investigate, for Victoria has lived all on her own since her Harry died of the pneumonia in sixty-four, and has nobody to look after her, the poor dear. I shall be her only friend and comforter.”
Kevin smiled at her martial attitude. She had served during the war, a most enthusiastic supporter of the cause. As it was, she had enough projects and good works on the boil at any one time to make one’s head spin.
“I must confess,” she continued, “that your note proved a trifle cryptic, even by your obtuse standards. I was quite unable to decipher it. Hence my flying visit, for which I must offer my most profuse apologies. You do understand?”
“I understand,” he said dutifully. “I must not delay you. I’m sure that this matter can wait upon your return.”
“James has the Jaguar purring outside this very moment,” she said, referring to her driver. Father had dismissed James soon after they took over the Jenkins estate, Kevin recalled; even then he had been a silver-haired grandfather figure. “He’s a real old devil sometimes–overly fond of breaking the speed limit, you know. He shall fly me to London as on a magic carpet.”
Kevin, who from his bedroom window had on occasion marvelled at the familiar green Jaguar’s velocity as it raced up the long driveway to Pitterdown Manor, gave a dry little chuckle. “Even so, Aunt B, I don’t want to bother–”
She patted his arm. “On the contrary, my dear boy, I do wish you would think of your own needs more often. It’s unhealthy here in this house, what with Harold lording it up and your brother–what a nasty piece of work he’s turned out to be! Victoria must be turning in her grave. I don’t know how you put up with those two louts, truly I don’t.”
“Aunt B, you are a perfect brick.”
“You are too kind, Kevin. And how is the old chest bearing up?”
“Well enough, thank you.”
“Now, before I rush off, Kevin, you absolutely have to tell me what your note was about, or I shall worry about it all the way to London.”
“Briefly, Aunt B, I was reading a book from the Library and discovered a letter within it from Great-Grandmother, addressed to me.”
She adjusted her spectacles, frowning. “Addressed to you, did you say?”
“To one Kevin Albert Jenkins–I know no other.”
“Indeed! How queer.”
“It’s a fine mystery,” Kevin said. “In it she asked me to look beneath the mantelpiece in the Blue Room–but before I could read further, Father caught me reading the letter and … got angry.” Aunt B huffed, but before she could launch into a tirade, he added quickly, “The letter mentioned a Key-Ring that I should find. Do you know anything about it? It was not where the letter intimated it should be found.”
A curious fire lit his Aunt’s eyes. “How did you ever get into the Blue Room, Kevin? Your Father keeps it under lock and key.”
“There’s a secret passage from the dining room,” he said, shrinking back into the armchair. “Last Tuesday, in the dead of night, I snuck in and nosed about.”
“Why, you brave fellow!” she exclaimed, then lowered her voice quickly, hearing footsteps in the hallway outside. “Kevin, this is very important–I cannot stress it enough. Listen closely.”
“I am.”
Her manner was so fierce, he shrank back into the armchair. “We need to talk when I get back from London. In the meantime, it is imperative that you do not tell anybody what you have seen or done.”
Both sets of eyes flickered to the doorway as one of the servants entered. Kevin stared at his Aunt. What had he stumbled upon? How did Aunt B know about the Key-Ring? And why the need for secrecy? A thousand questions jostled in his mind.
“Swear it!”
His heart lurched in his chest. “I swear.”
* * * *
Kevin had hidden Locks Through the Ages directly after returning from the Blue Room, but now he brought it out and devoured the weighty tome. 857 pages on the subject did little to enthuse him, although it did contrive to give him a backache and a numb posterior. It was late evening by the time he finished the last few pages, reading by the light of the full moon streaming in through the Library windows. That was when the penny dropped.