Up in her bedroom, she held the two little dolls side by side. Her doll and Letty’s doll. They were battered and worm-eaten. Her doll had only a few strands of hair on its head, and Letty’s doll had no hair at all. Their dresses were mouldy and faded and torn. But they had once been identical. Like twins.
Stella opened the musical box, took out the photograph and looked at the two babies in the perambulator. She remembered playing on the floor of the nursery with Letty, listening to the whispering, tinkling tune. Tiny specks of dust had danced and shimmered in the air.
She thought about what Mrs Burdock had said: Dead and gone.
A tear trickled down her cheek. It had been very comforting to have a sister, even an imaginary one. Letty had been encouraging and brave and she had made Stella feel braver too. Everything was easier when there were two of you.
But Letty had been dead for ten years, and Stella did not even know her real name. She might never discover what happened to her.
She wiped her eyes. It was foolish to cry about something that had happened so long ago. Stella put the photograph back into the musical box and laid the two little dolls on top of it. She stroked them with the tip of her finger and looked at them for a moment. Then she closed the lid with a snap and pushed the box into the pocket of her dress.
She took a deep breath and stared at her reflection in the mirror.
Right now, she should not be thinking about Letty. She should be thinking about Jem. He was real, and he was in terrible danger. Lost in Boggart Wood where the monster, the salamander, was lurking, biting things and turning them into stone. What if Jem was already a statue, just like the goldfish and the sheep? It was a dreadful thought.
She had to help him, if she could. Perhaps she could learn something more about the monster. Where it was hiding. How to catch it. Maybe there was something useful in Wilberforce Montgomery’s journal. She snatched it up and hurried down to the kitchen.
Strideforth and Hortense were making cocoa and sandwiches. Henry and Anya were squabbling over a tin of sardines.
‘I should be helping to find Jem,’ Strideforth said, as he spread jam on the ragged slices of bread. ‘I could have shown them where we found the tallybag and the footprint and the sheep. I could have found more clues. That is certain.’
‘I hope he is safe,’ said Stella. ‘I hope they find him soon.’ She helped make the cocoa, and then carried her cup and a sandwich to the table, sat down and opened the journal. She found the drawing of the salamander again and ran her finger along from its wide black head to its tapering tail. She tilted the page towards the light, trying to make out more of the words, but the writing was too faint. I witnessed the Transformation and I was Astounded …
Stella took a bite of her sandwich and turned the pages of the journal, looking at the pictures and skimming through the words, searching for any information that might be useful. Wilberforce Montgomery was in Russia, chasing a will-o’-the-wisp through a bog. I fell and was unexpectedly immersed in evil-smelling Mud. Later, he attended a ball in St Petersburg (Alas, the Scent of the bog lingered about my Person, giving rise to several Unflattering Remarks), and then travelled north to the Arctic Circle to view the Northern Lights, in a sled pulled by a team of shaggy reindeer.
It was warm in the kitchen. Hortense sat cross-legged on the floor, feeding crumbs to Teasel and a family of mice, as Anya watched jealously from the top of her head. On the mantelpiece, Henry was shrieking happily and tearing Strideforth’s Latin preparation to shreds. Strideforth frowned and kicked the leg of the table.
Stella turned another page. Wilberforce Montgomery was in the South Seas, attempting to wrestle an enormous tropical octopus into a huge tank. I am determined to add it to my Secret Collection, but the Creature is reluctant to be Confined. I suffered a number of painful Stings. She read on, turning page after page. She followed Wilberforce Montgomery as he sailed through the tropical seas in an outrigger canoe. He climbed mountains, and crossed glaciers and deserts and jungles and oceans, but he wrote nothing more about the monster. She reached the end of the journal at last and closed it with a snap. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I’m going to look in his study. There might be a book about salamanders.’
‘There might be,’ agreed Strideforth. ‘You should take the lantern. It will be getting dark soon.’ He rocked his chair back and stared up at the heating pipes. ‘Did you hear that?’
‘What?’ asked Stella.
‘Banging. Can’t you hear it?’ said Strideforth. ‘Where is it coming from?’ He shoved the chair across the room, climbed onto it and put his ear to one of the pipes. He tapped it with his finger. ‘I’m going to look at the furnace.’
Stella picked up the lantern and set off for the library. On the way, she stopped to look at the painting of Wilberforce Montgomery again. He still sat in the little Egyptian summerhouse beside the lake, smiling. His black eyes seemed to twinkle with mischief. Stella frowned at him. He had no reason to look so cheerful. He had caused so much trouble, collecting dangerous, foreign creatures and bringing them here.
She went on, her footsteps echoing in the dusty passages and empty rooms, past the billiard room, the Turkish smoking room, the gun room and the Japanese drawing room to the library. She climbed the iron staircase, slipped through the secret door behind the bookcase and went along the passageway and up the stairs to the tower.
Stella looked around. She could imagine Wilberforce Montgomery sitting at his desk here, all those years ago, reading his journal, dreaming about his adventures. The study was warm. The heating pipes clanked and hissed. The giant crab and the stuffed crocodile and the dead seedpods and tendrils of the strangler vine dangled overhead, making strange shadows on the ceiling. Outside, an owl hooted as it flew past the tower. Stella could see a faint light glimmering in the window of the gatehouse at the top of the drive, where Mrs Burdock and Miss Araminter were sitting in the little parlour, waiting for news about Jem.
She put the lantern down on the desk and ran her finger along a row of books, searching for one that might contain information about salamanders. Wanderings in Wyoming. Adventures in the Azores. To Damascus by Dirigible. She reached the end of the shelf and started on the next one, reading each title carefully. Seashells of the Seychelles. Giant Land Snails of Malacca. At the end of the shelf was a small green volume, A Treasury of Amphibians. It was full of little coloured pictures and anecdotes about all kinds of frogs and toads. She leafed through the pages and found a picture of a small, lizard-like creature.
The Salamander or Newt is a distant cousin of the frog and inhabits ponds, ditches and caves. It hibernates in the cold and ventures out only when the weather is warm and agreeable. It is nocturnal, has poor eyesight and no external ears. It hunts prey, such as tadpoles, slugs and earthworms, by sensing vibrations of movement.
Stella read the passage through twice and looked at the picture closely. The little creature did not look much like the monster; it was only a few inches long and was decorated with cheerful spots. She searched through the book, but there was nothing more about salamanders, so she pushed it back into place and turned to the desk. The drawers were full of papers. They were mainly letters and accounts. (Supplied to Wilberforce Montgomery, Esq.: 14 slabs of portable soup, 30 yards of hempen rope, 6 pairs of long woollen underwear, tropical weight. Prompt payment would be appreciated.) She inspected a diagram of an enormous bathtub with curling lion’s feet (A Heated Tank for Larger Specimens) and read a letter from a fellow collector offering to exchange a pair of snow goggles and several tins of pemmican for a stuffed polecat and an engraving of a jellyfish. At the bottom of one drawer was a clutter of pen nibs and pieces of India rubber, and seashells, feathers and little bones. Stella sifted through them, but found nothing that seemed useful. She was jamming all the papers back into the drawers when she heard footsteps on the stairs.
‘Stella!’ Strideforth and Hortense climbed up into the study. Henry was riding on Hortense’s head. He flapped his wings a
nd shrieked. ‘Stella, come and see what I found,’ said Strideforth.
‘What?’
He beckoned, turned and clambered back down the stairs. ‘Come on. Come quickly,’ he said.
She picked up the lantern and followed them down the passageway and through the library. She caught up with them in the entrance hall. Strideforth turned around and walked backwards, almost tripping over his feet in his hurry. ‘I heard something banging in the pipes,’ he said. ‘And I found out where it’s coming from. Come and see.’ He rushed on, leading the way through the house to the servants’ wing, and then down into the cellar, where the huge furnace was clanking and moaning and emitting bursts of steam.
‘Look.’ Strideforth was out of breath. ‘See these pipes here?’ He waved at the iron pipes that snaked out of the furnace and disappeared into the ceiling. ‘They go up into the main bedrooms, the ballroom and everywhere.’ He looked at Stella to see that she was paying attention. She nodded. ‘Those ones go up to the study in the tower. And these ones,’ he pointed, ‘these ones go to the kitchen and the servants’ bedrooms. They go everywhere, all around the house. I’ve followed them all. I know where they all go.’
Stella nodded again.
‘Now, come and look at this.’ Strideforth squeezed behind the furnace. Stella and Hortense followed him, ducking underneath a row of shiny brass dials and levers. Strideforth edged his way along the wall, crouched down and pointed to a large pipe that emerged from the back of the furnace and disappeared into the wall behind. He touched it gingerly. ‘It’s very hot. There is a lot of heat going somewhere.’ He wrapped a piece of rag around the pipe and put his ear against it. He beckoned Stella closer. ‘Listen,’ he said.
She knelt down. Even through the rag, the pipe was hot against her ear. She could hear a dull, muffled roar. A hiss. Distant clanging and thumping sounds.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘Listen,’ Strideforth insisted.
Stella put her ear back against the pipe. Then she heard it echoing along the pipe. It was cheerful and piercing, but very faint. Someone was whistling.
‘Jem!’ she gasped.
Strideforth nodded vigorously. ‘Yes. I don’t think he can hear us, though. I shouted as loudly as I could, and he did not answer. But listen to this.’ He picked up a piece of rusty metal and banged it against the pipe. Clang, clang.
After a few seconds, from somewhere far away, came an answer. Clang, clang.
Strideforth hit the pipe again. Clang, clang, clang.
The answer came back quickly. Clang, clang, clang.
Clang went Strideforth’s piece of metal.
Clang came the reply immediately. Then a whole series of frantic clangs and bangs echoed in the pipe.
Henry shrieked and flapped his wings, making them all duck. Anya squeaked and chittered and danced up and down, twisting her body like a snake.
Strideforth said, ‘So then I followed the pipe.’ He pushed open a low door, ducked through it and led them into another cellar, full of old barrels, broken furniture and cobwebs. ‘I thought it might lead outside to the stables. Wilberforce Montgomery might have heated them because of the zebras and other animals he had here. To keep them warm at night. But it does not. Look.’ He pointed.
In a dark corner of the cellar, the pipe made a turn and disappeared straight down into the floor.
‘It goes down. Underground. Jem is trapped down there somewhere. We have to find the way down.’
Twenty-One
They searched all the cellars, looking for forgotten doors or staircases. They heaved the broken furniture aside and examined the floor for trapdoors. Stella rapped on the flagstones, listening for hollow sounds. Strideforth jammed his pocketknife into gaps in the walls, to find loose bricks. Hortense ventured into dark corners, looking for cavities.
‘Nothing,’ said Strideforth.
They climbed the stairs and searched the larder and the shoe room and the knife room and the stillroom and the butler’s pantry and the water closet and the scullery and the kitchen.
Strideforth rubbed a grimy hand through his hair. He was covered with dust and cobwebs and looked discouraged. He sat down with a thump into a chair at the kitchen table, taking a bite of a leftover jam sandwich. ‘We need to think,’ he said with his mouth full. ‘That pipe leads underground. If there is a room below the cellar, there must be a way down to it.’
Stella and Hortense sat down opposite him. Stella said, ‘Perhaps there is a secret door, like the one in the library.’
Strideforth asked, ‘But where is it?’
Stella considered for a moment. ‘Well, if Wilberforce Montgomery built a secret door leading to a secret underground room, he wouldn’t have made it here in the servants’ wing. Jem said he had lots of servants. They would have noticed if he came down here.’
‘That’s true.’ Strideforth nodded. ‘Mrs Burdock said he was always in the library. Perhaps it is there? A trapdoor, leading down into the ground.’
Stella thought about the portrait of Wilberforce Montgomery sitting in his summerhouse, his beady black eyes twinkling with laughter. Suddenly, she remembered that night, all those years ago, hurrying through the garden in the dark, clutching her mother’s hand. She had dropped her doll. Her mother had pulled her past. And then they had gone down. Down into darkness.
She said, ‘No, not the library. The summerhouse.’
‘What? Why?’
She stood up. ‘That’s what I remember. When I was little. We went into the summerhouse, and then, somehow, we went down. I remember. It must be there. Come on.’
Strideforth pushed the remains of his sandwich into his pocket and jumped to his feet.
They pulled on their coats. Henry shrieked and flapped across the kitchen, landing on Hortense’s head with a thump. Strideforth picked up the lantern and they went out into the dusk. They hurried across the yard, around the stables, through the orchard, and scrambled down the slippery, wet steps towards the lake. The garden was full of spiky shapes and shadows. Tendrils of mist drifted across the surface of the water. A frog croaked. A peacock gave a mournful cry. In the undergrowth, a lightning beetle sparked and flashed. They followed the path around the lake towards the summerhouse, past the waterfall and across the bridge.
Strideforth stopped suddenly. ‘What’s that?’
‘What?’
He watched the lake for a moment, and then shrugged. ‘I thought something moved. Just a fish, perhaps.’
They went on, ducking under dripping leaves, splashing through puddles. They reached the summerhouse. Stella stood in the middle of the damp, shadowy little room and looked around, trying to remember exactly what had happened, all those years ago.
‘It was dark,’ she said. ‘We were hurrying, and we had to be very quiet. I dropped my doll. I couldn’t find it, but my mother would not stop. Someone was crying, I think. And then we went down. Right here. Down and down, into the dark.’ She looked at the floor of the summerhouse. ‘Right here,’ she repeated doubtfully. The floor was covered with mud and dead leaves and moss, and little curling ferns and clusters of toadstools. It looked extremely solid.
Strideforth kicked a few of the leaves aside. Underneath were tiny coloured tiles. They knelt down and cleared away the debris with their hands, uncovering an intricate mosaic, a pattern of beetles and birds and strange Egyptian symbols, made from hundreds of coloured tiles and shells and pebbles and sparkling pieces of mirror. In the middle was a two-headed snake, coiled in a circle. Its scales glinted like the wings of beetles.
Stella frowned at the mosaic pattern. It reminded her of something.
Strideforth squinted sideways along the floor. He rapped it with his knuckles. He fished out his pocketknife, opened a blade and poked it between the tiles. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘There is no hidden door. There is nothing here.’
Stella remembered something from Wilberforce Montgomery’s journal. He had been exploring inside a pyramid in Egypt and found the way into a
secret tomb. (The doorway was hidden in a marvellously ingenious manner.) He had made a careful drawing of the mechanism that unlocked the door. It had opened when he had pressed the eyes of a carving of a two-headed serpent.
She touched the mosaic snake’s eyes. They were made from glossy black stones, as round and smooth as marbles. She held her breath and pressed them both, as hard as she could. There was a click.
Something creaked under the floor. Henry shrieked and flapped his wings. They all jumped to their feet and backed away. A section of the floor lifted up, and then, with an ear-splitting scraping, grinding sound, it slowly swivelled aside, revealing a hole and a flight of rusty iron stairs, spiralling down into darkness.
They gaped in astonishment.
‘How did you know to do that?’ asked Strideforth.
‘I read about it in Wilberforce Montgomery’s journal,’ Stella said. ‘There was a tomb in Egypt. He must have copied it.’
Strideforth knelt and peered down into the hole. ‘It’s very interesting. Look. There is a hidden catch. When you pressed the eyes, it moved these levers here, and the counterweight fell, and that made it slide across.’ He poked at the rusty mechanism.
Stella crouched beside him. The air in the hole was warm and smelled of drains and mildew. ‘Jem?’ she called. ‘Jem? Are you down there?’
Her voice echoed back up to them.
They looked at each other nervously.
Stella remembered a story from A Garden of Lilies. Victoria, Wilfreda and Xavier went into a tunnel of some kind, and then they were eaten by a crocodile or fell into an abyss or something else dreadful happened to them. Stella refused to think about it. This was not the time for horrible, discouraging stories.
She picked up the lantern and stepped onto the iron staircase. It creaked under her weight. She took a determined breath. ‘Come on,’ she said, and climbed down into the hole.
Strideforth and Hortense followed her. The stairs spiralled down and down. At the bottom was an arched brick tunnel. They ventured along it, keeping close together. Their footsteps echoed. Water dripped. The lantern light glistened on the puddles that stretched across the muddy floor.
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