Robert crept back in, leading them over to a place at the side of the room, where they could observe, without disturbing anything.
At first, the medium, an elderly woman, seemed old-fashioned – dressed suggestively like a fortune-teller – using candles in a dark room – but it became apparent that she was creating an atmosphere.
She obviously was not doing it as an experiment, but like a game, customarily done on special occasions.
The people around the table, sat silently, waiting to see what was going to happen, before giving any hint of their opinions.
Even though James had begun giving an occasional shrug – perhaps explaining how stupid he felt.
The woman’s eyes went wide, and she touched the table with her fingertips, feeling for any forces. She showed no sign of knowing what she was dealing with, and he doubted if anyone had told her what could be there.
If they had arrived earlier, they would have been able to explain the situation. She surely must believe in something. What was at the castle might react to her taunts!
Yet it did seem safe: she was just carrying out her procedure. And she did not sense anything different there. Perhaps it would take time though, or it was too early, and that she would need to do it at night.
Her head vibrated, and she shuddered. Then she prepared to do something, which mildly amused James, who now made an absurd expression.
Merton and Mortimer were devoted to searching for anything out of the ordinary. They seemed to signal each other, as it went on, that they were not missing anything.
It did interest and excite most of them, which was what she was concerned with, and he was sure that she would start to act more as soon as they started to become interested in it. She was absorbing their interest – stretching things out, waiting to put in the climax.
Mortimer uttered something to Merton.
Some noises made her open her eyes wide. She looked in their direction, into the dimness.
Her attitude visibly altered. She became serious and cautious about what she was doing, as if realizing that there might be something wrong with what she was doing.
The shadows of the people at the table shifted about, as the candle flames reacted to breezes. The medium used it, as one of her tools, to achieve her goal, to show that there could be some form of presence giving a reaction, and she almost tried to force something into taking place.
Some of the others observed the awesome sight, created mainly by the atmosphere there, not budging in any way, determined to see it through to the end, perhaps to obtain a conclusion (and perhaps receive answers to everything that they had witnessed at the castle, and to where the money was).
Psychics were supposed to be able to solve crimes, but, as far as he was concerned, it was a crazy idea.
Yet the room was cold, colder than he had ever felt it – almost making them shiver.
However, he doubted if he would be able to detect any change in temperature, signifying a real presence, especially with the slight breeze that kept appearing.
A slight click rhythmically interrupted the outer silence, from a wooden clock at the fireplace.
The medium chanted like a witch doctor, provoking the spirits.
Then she looked as though she changed her mind, and she returned to what she had been originally doing. She ignored them, but occasionally checked them.
She seemed to have some beliefs in her powers. She was playing with them, with it as a party trick.
As she seemed to show that she had given up attempting to do it for real, her face tensed, and she reacted, showing she now felt the presence of someone.
Her acting then became worse than ever, and he guessed what she could not do it.
For a moment, it annoyed him: her trying to contact his dead uncle in such a fashion.
Even if they did it, would Sir Richard tell them?
How absurd! How could anyone believe it?
He examined them again, considering how much they believed it.
“Have you any further details to help us find the money?” Helen requested, making James temporary lose control, with an ecstatic snigger.
“You’ll find it,” the medium replied, with a smile, making faces as though something were manipulating her mind. “You should search where your heart takes you!”
Everyone at the table looked either confused or good-humored. It had been what they had been waiting to hear – even if it had turned to an absurd joke.
Bryson sniggered, seeing one of their expressions.
Mortimer pointed to the door, now looking satisfied. And Merton encouraged him to leave swiftly, and Bryson followed them.
Robert stayed behind – with a bemused smirk stuck on his face – with his eyes glued on the medium, waiting to see if she would still do anything. But the medium now was doing a comic act, bordering on the absurd – probably owing to her doing it for so long, and enjoying that more.
She even looked as though she had done it on stage. Parts of it resembled a stage act, which the public wanted for amusement – instead of the real thing. She surely considered herself as a form of fortune-teller.
Outside the room, Bryson listened to Merton and Mortimer talking, and he wondered if they did believe that she could do it.
“Well, that was close,” Bryson jokingly muttered, leading them to the library. “Think what could have happened there, if that had worked ...”
“She had trouble!” Merton explained, thinking deeply to himself.
“Do you believe that it works?” Bryson remarked, seeing the opportunity to acquire some more information.
“I did not know, when we went in there! What about you?”
“I hadn’t seen it before – except on television. So I could not fully believe or disbelieve it.”
“I have never fully checked it either.”
“Perhaps we should! We could carry out a proper regulated scientific experiment.”
“Doing what?”
“We could meet with her, after they finish.”
“To do what?”
“We can invite her to visit that room – later – tonight!”
“What will we do?”
“We can wait until the disturbance occurs. Then we can take her there to hear it – to find out her opinion. And we can carry out experiment, and have her contact what’s there.”
Mortimer glared at the floor, looking slightly shocked, and he realized what his real beliefs were.
“If she cannot do the task, it will only prove that she cannot contact anything there after all. But, on the other hand, you may have the chance to find out something, if it really works, which you may never get another chance to do.”
“I’ll ask her. However, I don’t really know what she’ll pick up!”
Chapter 36
Beyond Their Limitations
Bryson stood silently in the morning sun, beaming through the window of the top floor corridor.
Robert left what he had been doing in a room, and joined him.
They observed the people that James had brought in to help with the search.
Their heavy voices mingled and altered.
“They’re still sure that there’s another structure out there – somewhere!”
“And I gather you want to look about that wood!”
Bryson was more surprised that they were thinking along the same lines now.
It slightly alarmed him, and he tried not to reply, before he had considered it more.
Even if it did sound insane.
“We’re going out there ourselves, but we’re going to the tombs. They’ve set up some of their equipment out there.”
For a moment, Robert looked a little surprised. Perhaps at the scientists checking their ancestral graves.
Bryson thought of how insane it was: all of them looking through that wood with that killer about. But was he capable of killing them in groups?
“We don’t have much time left ... They’ll speed up the search anyway.”
Bryson spotted the spiritualist leaving the castle, crouched in the back edge of a car, looking guilty of something in particular.
He acknowledged that he should have guessed the medium’s reactions, instead of imagining her as what she had been portraying.
Merton had to persuade her to check the room with cash, which she had insisted he immediately pay her before she would go anywhere near it.
He had not believed that anyone could do anything there by the time she had left.
Even though when she had started trying to contact what had been there, it had deeply shaken him to see her fall back onto the bed, violently shuddering, making the bed loudly bounce, creak, and bang hard against the wall, as if something like an epileptic fit had seized her.
It had soon become apparent that it had not worked, and that she had decided just to act.
They had been too sleepy to explain anything to her.
He had been wondering if she would have believed it, if they had said what it had been. But he doubted it: she would never have accepted it.
He disregarded the radiating light, pulsating over his face from the sun.
He wondered what results other such experiments would do.
They could find someone else, who to do it correctly. Someone capable of giving them detailed accounts of it, of which they might be able to find some clue to what was taking place.
Perhaps they could find something that could pick up such things – without the aid of humans.
He could imagine vast machines like giant satellite discs receiving signals from the stars, monitoring supernatural disturbances all about the universe.
The corridor, with its silence, became noticeable, and he made slight reactions to it, thinking of what a spiritualist might experience.
The brightness outside sucked his sight away, vaguely blinding him, and he turned.
He pushed back the carpet with his shoe, and properly viewed the full length of the floor.
He instinctively shook a floorboard, to detect what condition it was in.
He decided not to check anything. He did not want to start searching the rooms, as the others were doing. He was sure that they were wasting their time. He would never have found the library if he had just done that.
They should look in all the key places first. And he would insist in trying to find it by other means, when it was possible.
Chapter 37
The Search Party
People began emerging, and rushing about, trying to search everywhere, like a club outing, organized for a treasure hunt. Their apparent intentions, so it seemed, was to go over the entire wood, in close formation.
Even though they had organized the event together, they were furiously competing to find the money – by searching through the wood in their groups – with some people surprisingly on their own.
The noise was strange, at an outstanding level. Some of the people helping them had even gone out of their way to find more people to help.
Bryson was sure that Robert, or most likely James, had put an offer of a bonus figure for finding anything leading to its discovery.
The emptiness was packed full of action – with shouting, laughing, haggling, and arguing.
It was almost a shame to him that the wood was full of such activity.
The scientists had rushed him away at a tremendous pace – going straight to the vault – making sure that they could not interfere with the delicate equipment.
The rooks sat bemused, listening and observing, overwhelmed, with a hint of amusement. Their strange chants and behavior echoed through the treetops, occasionally making them flutter, and go up into the blue sky, in the golden rays of the sun.
Two men emerged from the trees, closely staring at them, studying their faces. But they were just making sure that they were not any of the others, as they walked straight across their path.
Their agile movements and speed surprised Merton and Mortimer.
They would immediately carry out their checks on the equipment at the vault, and return to the castle with it.
But they also wished to search the wood.
Bryson’s hearing was now less sensitive in the wood, listening to the loudness.
He now wished to acquire some of the knack of the animals of the woods at surviving there, with a proper perception of his surroundings, without it being impaired. He thought of commandos, and survival specialists, handling jungle terrain ...
It was really a matter of becoming familiar with it – knowing where everything was and was like. South American jungle tribesmen could easily detect a person’s presence, deep within the undergrowth.
The rooks were almost useless to him now.
He recalled legends that South American tribes had about the spirits of the woods.
He heard faint familiar tones of Robert’s voice, over to the side of them.
The visit to the castle could turn to a disaster, and they might not be able to do anything about it. The killer could be anywhere, out there in that tangle.
Yet there surely were too many people in the wood.
It was risky, but there were advantages in what they were doing. Before he had believed that it had not been feasible to search the wood. Now he was sure that they were doing a good job of it. He could hear some of them running through the undergrowth, just behind them, and they were clearly covering everything.
But another drawback was that they would be leaving footprints everywhere – taking away one of their only detection methods.
At the vault, Mortimer ignored everything and rushed down to the tombs, imagining that he were within minutes of saving the equipment; while Merton and Bryson slowly went to where Merton had left the recorder, on the upper floor.
Nothing had moved, and there were no signs of anything.
Bryson allowed Mortimer time to study the stuff, while he observed Merton checking the machine. After he had played around with it, making sure that it had been working properly, he switched it on. But there had been nothing captured, except for things such as their arrival, at least showing that it had been functioning properly.
“You’d better remove it before they reach here,” he warned.
Merton started packing it away, and he went to check on Mortimer. At the top of the stairs, he tried to make out if he had anything, but he did not hear anything; he was doing something. He had expected him to be rapidly moving about.
Once at the bottom of the stairs, he instantly recognized that Mortimer was disappointed, and had surveyed everything the best that he could have, and he began helping him pack things.
It was easier to do than it had been setting up, with the precise work, placing it at key areas, while checking it had correctly been doing its job at the precise precision.
Bryson checked the thermometers – studying their lowest reading, and that they had the temperature that he had expected (at what the weather forecast could have told him had been the lowest temperature!).
He wondered if disturbances did lower the temperature, and the kinds of readings that they supposedly received – and if it perhaps dropped far beyond what it should.
He suggested to Mortimer to rush more, and they were soon heaving it up the stairs.
They then evenly distributed it between them more, to gain the highest attainable speed, and they headed back.
Bryson just left the camera that he had put up in the tree, as there was not enough time, and it was hidden away. He now doubted that there was anything on it, after seeing all the negative results. And another day would only allow the project to be conducted better. Perhaps if any of the others damaged anything, it would capture it.
Merton placed it on the snow, and moved it around to another position, to help him carry it better.
“It should be worth coming back,” Mortimer confirmed, struggling to balance the equipment evenly on him. “It’ll be worth it just to see what they do, and to find out if there’s anything else.”
A faint sho
ut came from deep in the wood, and another voice hollered out from near them, surprising them at the closeness of the person, without them hearing anything.
One of them started explaining where they were heading towards to the people in the other group. There was no suggestion from either group that they had heard them moving through the wood, and were listening to them.
A sudden whistle appeared behind them, and he recognized that someone thought that he had found something, which clear was the vault. And the person started communicating to them to come over.
Had James informed them of the vault? He wondered if there was any chance of them damaging the tombs, while opening them. They would if they dropped the lids or something! He doubted if anyone would or would be able to replace them or properly repair any damage.
It became apparent that they had entered the region in the middle of their groups – spread out – as they worked their way through the wood.
“We’ll have to be more carefully,” Mortimer replied, stopping to listen to the others behind him.
“If there’s anything dangerous here ...” Bryson moaned.
“Inspector Bailey said it would be safe, and even helped them out on where to search!”
“Why did he do that?”
Bryson could hardly believe it! The same indications continually emerged, implying that Inspector Bailey was playing an elaborate game here.
Chapter 38
Unanticipated Confrontation
They soon started to return, after they had reached the castle, and had put away the equipment.
Their idea that the last were spirits of the wood could mean that it was anywhere about the castle though. It could be even underground, where they were walking. But the point that they were accepting, which must be the case, was that it would not be anywhere such as that.
He had to have buried it at a specific place. He would not have just placed it at any old place – and expect anyone to find it.
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