At an open area ahead, he spotted an unusual shape, which he watched Mortimer glaring at, astonished. And he felt a strange feeling that there was something there that he did not want to see.
Suddenly, there were marks across the ground, across their path, from where the reporter had obviously fallen over. Yet there was no sign of anything on the ground that could have caused him to fall in such a way.
Then, as they went further, Mortimer rushed ahead, and crouched on a mound of snow. And Bryson observed the reporter at it, and his blood covering his fingers.
Chapter 44
The Hit Man
Bryson had trouble accepting that the situation had been confusing before, because now he could not even imagine solving what had happened.
The thought of departing from the cold confines of the castle gave him shivers of extreme pleasure.
He could return home, and stay in reality – not on the brink of catastrophe! – and he could solve normal problems, with the effortlessness that he had done.
He studied the crumpled body of the reporter, trying to ignore how hideous it was, trying to look upon it as an artist would observe a crazy exhibit at an art exhibition. But it was no use!
The complexion of the body, drained of blood, and frozen over the snow, made the place too dangerous, even though it had been there from the previous day.
He attempted to work out the exact time that it could have occurred, and where he had been. He could not understand why he had not heard a gun.
Mortimer still seemed slightly shocked – since the discovery of the body, besides the bushes, where the reporter had crawled to in his last seconds of life.
“Who would want to shoot him?” Mortimer muttered, not being able to stay silent any longer, breaking the deep silence.
“What worries me more than anything,” Bryson replied, with confusion, “is that I don’t have any clues!”
“They’ll find something!”
“This is ridiculous! We should have gone back to the castle.”
“There was no need for us to go back ...”
“But, on the other hand, we could have gone back to the warm library – instead of staying with this corpse!”
“You’ve a point, but we may find out something, which we should know – about who did it. His prints will be found – once they find out where he was hiding.”
“It has to be in those bushes over there ...”
“You’re correct,” he muttered, glaring about the wood with interest, perhaps wondering how much he would ruin it if he took a look.
They had to stay where they were, and not touch anything!
“How did his killer know that he would be here?” Bryson muttered, startled by the thought that there had been someone watching the reporter, and perhaps them, with a gun.
“Perhaps he was lurking about, and saw him on his own – and then followed him to this spot.”
“Why would he want to kill the reporter? At first, he was a lunatic who was strangling people! Now he is using a gun, with a silencer.”
“Why would he have had a silencer? He might have noticed that sounds were not carrying that well – owing to the atmospheric conditions ...”
“However, yesterday sounds were reasonably loud from throughout the wood, and deep within it. I heard an airplane away over there! And I’ve heard farmers using guns and shotguns ... And I’m fairly sure that we should have heard it. He must have used a silencer ...”
“Shotguns and normal shooting guns produce much more of an explosion, than a normal handgun. But you could be correct ...”
Mortimer eyed up the wound on the corpse, almost trying to measure it in millimeters, to compare it to a small handgun bullet.
Then, he jerked, when Inspector Bailey’s heavy breathing emerged in the distance.
His persistent moans followed, and gave Bryson the impression that Merton had not entirely explained what had happened, and that he could be thinking that he had dragged him out for nothing.
Although he could not imagine what he had said, as the occurrences on this occasion were far from normal. Yet, perhaps, he just did not fully believe him or something.
He watched him appear, with mild curiosity, considering what he intended to persuade Merton to explain to him.
Or did he suspect them of carrying out the ghastly crimes?
His eyes hardly moved from them, and he suddenly stopped, placed his hands at his hips, and tried to see the body.
When Bryson looked again, he was rushing towards them, not caring how tired he became.
“Are you sure that he was shot?” he moaned loudly.
“We ought to be able to recognize a bullet wound,” Merton moaned, not really thinking about what he was saying any longer.
“How do you know the person never stabbed him with something? Or perhaps after he could not strangle him!”
Merton shrugged, and vaguely thought it over.
“There are not any other footprints near him though. And he collapsed over there, across the snow.”
Inspector Bailey moved his head, and carefully studied the ground that he was going over.
“So while you were searching ... This fellow was being shot ...”
Bryson slightly moved his position, to see beneath the shoes of the reporter, and one of his nearby prints – and that they were as he had expected them to be.
As Inspector Bailey approached him, Bryson decided to grasp the opportunity to show them that he was right.
“You said that he didn’t kill the servant!”
“What ...?” Inspector Bailey uttered, tiredly walking closer to the corpse.
“Is that the same tread mark that we followed from the castle, over to that road?”
“It does seem to be the same,” he murmured, studying it, with surprise, and slight amusement that they could have allowed such a detail to go amiss.
“If you want a better look at a proper print, look over there.”
Inspector Bailey walked over to the prints, where the reporter had fallen to the ground, and he examined the footprints.
“Let’s find out where the killer’s prints are,” he called over, looking at Merton.
Inspector Bailey approached them, glanced at the corpse, from where he was, homed into a position, and he marched straight over to the position that Bryson had carefully worked out.
The place, behind bushes, was hard to see, and the killer had chosen it well. The reporter surely would not have looked there, and it had concealed the person’s footprints.
Bryson studied the shoe marks, as he arrived there, with them, and was surprised to see that they were the same. As if the gunman had deliberately chosen the same shoes. Yet they looked in better condition!
He believed that the person had carried out a revenge attack, for what the reporter had done.
There had been many people about – with reasons. But where had the person obtained a gun? And how had he managed to do it without anyone seeing or hearing him?
Bryson carefully thought it over. But they had been in groups, except for one of two of James’s associates. But they had not been on their own for a long time. And when it had taken place, they had been away over there.
Nobody would have had the slightest inkling that he had been the reporter, or that he had done anything – especially after the police had released him. How could any of them have even known about the reporter? It was too far-fetched!
Bryson left with Merton and Mortimer, when more policemen started coming towards them through the wood. He knew that the prints of the gunman would lead to a road, and that he was too professional to do anything stupid like revealing where he was staying. Yet there was a chance that he could have left something behind!
He now thought of him like a hit man. But what if he was mistaken, and that he had killed the reporter just because he had been on his own.
What if the reporter, if that is what he had been, had been watching from the wood, and the killer had been in
the castle, killing the servant. Both had reacted to them leaving the castle! The reporter had not properly seen the person hiding the body outside the kitchen, and had been checking what the killer had been doing, when he had entered the castle.
Nevertheless, why had he returned, and why had he been watching the castle?
Chapter 45
Ancient Treasure
Adrenalin exploded through Bryson, as he interpreted the text of the ancient diary again.
There was no doubt about it, every time he had read the ancient text, he had acknowledged the same thing.
They had left the diary, forgetting it, leaving it for another time, when they had enough time to look for the treasure mentioned in it. They had not the time to look for both. And it could have been discovered anyway! But, when he had examined it again, at where he had left it in his room, he had believed that it could still be buried there, somewhere.
He had then realized that he had actually seen the missing page from it – an old crumpled piece of paper, which nobody had bothered about – at the place he had found the diary. And he had found it there – unnoticed by the others.
He had sat reading it repeatedly, in amazement, and had decided not to tell anyone until he had time to put the information that he had learned together – and perhaps discover something.
It was defiantly an authentic diary of one of his ancestors, who had stayed in the castle during the Victorian era, and who had been the daughter of the owner! And it gave a good deal of facts about the owner.
When Merton and Mortimer entered the library, he insisted in only suggesting it to Merton.
Mortimer had other things to think of, and seemed to have little concern about looking through the books. He surely was still thinking of the crime that had occurred, and perhaps who had done it.
Bryson returned to what he had been doing.
“We don’t want to spend too long here,” Mortimer confessed. “There are other things to do!”
“Do you think that they’ll catch that guy with the gun?” Merton asked, after reading something.
Mortimer and Bryson shrugged at each other.
“They should put serial numbers on bullets,” Merton muttered. “So that they can directly trace the bullet.”
“They can trace them to the manufacturer,” Bryson replied. “And maybe to the shop selling them. But would someone give their name to buy them, and use them to shoot someone? I reckon that they would not give them their proper identification, or buy illegal bullets.”
He wondered if there had been two killers in the wood, and one with a gun. He also wondered why the reporter had been in the vault. Had he been actually looking for the money? And had he been onto something? But had his killer been looking for it or him?
They knew what the killer’s shoes were like. They could check the others in the castle, by checking their shoes. But he saw that he was making a mistake, and that it would not be any of them or James’s friends. It seemed absurd, as they would easily have followed the person’s prints to the person, to where they had been in the wood, or have noticed that they had the same shoes.
Bryson read a passage from the diary, mentioning sounds from the woods, with the woman and father’s obsessive beliefs about it. It puzzled him! How could people have so many different views about such things (when there were no real facts)?
They had kept an ancient mentality at that era, but they had carried appropriate ways of handling things.
Their main way had been to pass on warnings to the next generation – influencing them into avoiding things, and doing things in specific ways.
It had lasted for centuries. In fact, he believed that Sir Richard’s uncle had been the weak link, who had stopped it, and he had held different views. He recalled some things about him, which he had found out when he had once questioned Robert. He had been the owner who had the castle modernized, into the way that it was now.
Merton pushed away his book, and looked at the diary with little enthusiasm.
Bryson casually pushed it in his bag. “After I’ve something to eat, I’m going take a look about the upper castle. I may come up with something with all the extra knowledge that I have accumulated!”
They nodded their heads in agreement, with a lack of interest in helping with the idea.
Bryson left, and went out into the corridor.
At the end of it, he spotted some of the police leaving to go to the murder scene.
How could they not have found anything? They had rigorously searched everything. But when he thought of how careful and accurate the killer had been, he could not imagine him making a mistake. And they would be lucky to find genetic evidence outside – in the snow, and harsh breezes. It was far from being the place that they normally did their work.
What was strange and annoyed him was that he had been starting to learn things about the reporter when someone had killed him. But it showed that his killer was also capable of making mistakes. Why had he not kept himself unknown about, and kept him alive? He could easily have carried out the crime somewhere else!
Chapter 46
Rearranging Abnormalities
As Bryson went around the end of corridor, he saw Robert in the dining room – sitting on his own – frantically chewing at a piece of beef, slightly startled, thinking over events, and what was occurring.
It surprised Bryson how fit he and some of the others now looked. They even had persuaded Sarah and Helen into walking about intensely, and out into the wood, looking for it.
“Sit down!” Robert announced, with a slight smile, with some inner amusement, as he caught sight of him entering. Perhaps disappointed in his lack of help!
A servant appeared with another plate full of food.
“Can you please fetch another!” he moaned, pushing it over to Bryson.
The servants were cordial; they speedily obeyed their few wishes, sometimes before they spoke.
They looked as if they had been chosen owing to them having worked in busy places. He was sure that Sir Richard had kept a system, and that he had regularly replaced them.
Bryson ended up eating as fast as Robert was eating, instinctively coping him, even though he was not as hungry.
“Where are you now looking?” he asked, casually, smiling.
“We had been over there before ...” he replied, between swallowing pieces of potato.
“What happened over there?”
“We found the body of the reporter that they had caught watching here.”
Robert considered it for a few seconds, and just ignored it.
“Good luck!” Bryson said finishing his food, standing, deciding he was full now – moving for the door.
Robert continued eating, nodding his head towards him, still considering something and smiling.
Bryson listened to the creaks from the floorboards, as he went up the stairs, and he remembered the first time that they had gone up them.
He had fulfilled his wish of returning to the castle!
He walked along the second floor to his room, but as he passed the room that had the disturbances, he saw that the others had been working there.
He went in, approached the window, and observed some of the police, gathered about the front, beside many police vehicles. And he saw another group of policemen taking the body there, from the wood.
He watched their faces, trying to see any signs that they had found anything, but there was nothing.
Bryson looked at the wall behind the bed, after discarding anything being under the floorboards. It was too obvious. The hunt that they had conducted had been nothing more than what school kids could have done. It was ridiculous: they had achieved nothing!
The wall grabbed his attention. Yet every wall, in every room, could have the money. They were thick enough. Some of them even had chimneys running through them.
If he only had some of equipment that archaeologists used, it would give him a vague view of their interiors, as well as of the floors.
Chapter 47
Odd Ventilation System
The destruction to the historical castle gave him no real feelings of guilt, but he carefully shifted the awkward mass of stone out, in stages, from the wall.
He was obsessed, and his clambering resumed until he finally had to stop – feeling a sudden loss of energy, with his legs starting to collapse under him, with a mild discomfort to his hands and arms, cut and bruised, at where he had been tugging.
His eyes fell on the mess under him, with little interest. The thick layer of stone and dust fragments scattered across the bed could be cleaned.
With one sudden heave, he incredibly yanked the boulder out, and allowed it to fall to his side. A loud bang instantly came from the bed, and it collapsed downwards with the weight.
In the black gap, where Bryson had removed the stone block, there was nothing, and he waited for his eyes to adjust. But it stayed dim! And he poked his head in, but only saw that there was no stone behind where it had been.
He then stuck his body further inward, with his arms out in front. And further in, he felt that it was a sort of chamber between the walls, but as his sight adjusted to it, he saw that it was not, and that it must be a chimney.
He realized it was a stupid idea anyway. Why would anything be there: in a room in the middle of nowhere?
Yet it seemed too large to be a chimney, and there was no trace of soot or anything that would surely be there, even if they had it cleaned. Although there was a dim chance that nobody had really used it, and that any marks, if any, were in the darkness below. But, again, it was not in the right position to be one! And there were no chimneys below.
The Lost Treasure Map Series Page 16