by Jean Barrett
“This is no good,” he said, backing off.
“Maybe if I—”
“No! Whatever you tried would involve movement, and I don’t want you risking it. That joist could give way at any time. I need a line, something I can throw to you.”
“You’ll have to go back and find one of the brothers. They should be able to provide a line.”
“That would take too long.”
“But—”
“I’m not leaving you, Jenny,” he insisted. “Not unless it becomes absolutely necessary.”
Leo scrambled to his feet. She watched him as he swiftly scanned every corner of the hall. But there was nothing that would serve his purpose. Even the broken timbers from the fallen staircase were too short, and not dependable anyway in their decayed condition. The best of them had probably plunged into the hole.
Stretching his head back, he gazed into the shadows above them. “There!”
Jennifer lifted her gaze and saw a rusted iron chandelier whose sockets had once held thick candles. The fixture was suspended by a heavy chain from the rafters overhead.
Her eyes followed the chain. At its highest point it passed through a ring, where it became a stout rope that was stretched over to a side wall. From here the rope descended through several other iron rings embedded in the wall, ending at a cleat around which it was tightly secured. Once unwound from the cleat, the rope would have permitted the chandelier to be lowered to the floor in order to light its long vanished candles.
“Just hold on,” Leo encouraged her. “I’ll be as fast as I can.”
Not daring to stir, muscles tense, her whole body was burning now in her effort to go on clinging to that joist. She didn’t trust herself to imagine the consequences if the weakened beam collapsed before Leo could rescue her.
All she permitted herself to do was to watch him as he sped to the wall, rapidly unwound the rope and, once free from the cleat to which it was anchored, allowed the fixture to drop to the floor where it landed with a clatter.
Working with haste, Leo dragged the chain and rope down from its rings until it was coiled at his feet. The rope was long enough that it could remain attached to the chain. She just prayed it wasn’t as rotten as everything else in the hall.
Leo already had a large noose prepared in the free end of the line when he strode back to the joist where she was pinned.
“Don’t try to reach for it,” he said, crouching down on the edge of the gap. “Just stay put and let me get it to you. Ready?”
“Understood. Just get me off this thing.”
It took him several tries with the makeshift lasso until one of his tosses finally settled in front of her nose.
“Okay, now ease it over your head and under your arms.”
Jennifer felt like a human thread trying to squeeze its way through the eye of a needle without overturning the sewing basket. But somehow she managed to work her way inside the loop. Once it was in place, Leo tugged on his end of the line until the noose closed snugly around her body.
“I’ve got you now. If that joist goes under, you’re not going with it.”
The rope tightened as he drew her slowly toward him. The ancient wood groaned with the strain, the joist beginning to cave beneath her. Jennifer felt herself sinking with it. Would the old rope hold or snap in two along with the beam?
The old rope did hold. The beam didn’t. It suddenly gave way under her and went crashing to the depths below. But Leo’s grasp on the rope that held her enabled him to pull her to safety. Once he had her on solid flooring, he reached for her, gathering her up into his arms.
Jennifer thought that no rescue could have been sweeter. She was clasped fiercely to his chest and held there firmly, as if he’d come within a breath of losing his most precious possession and feared now to let it go. She submitted to his embrace, clinging to him in relief.
It wasn’t enough. She wanted more than just his arms around her. Yearned for it. But it didn’t happen. Another weakened joist failed in that second with a sharp crack that jolted them back to reality. Leo released her.
“Let’s get this thing off you,” he said, his fingers working to free her of the rope. “And then we’d better get out of here before the rest of the floor decides to collapse on us.”
Jennifer knew he was right, that she couldn’t afford to be disappointed. That to linger here was an invitation for further disaster. But she was disappointed. She didn’t express it, how ever. Didn’t utter a sound until, after casting the rope aside, he scrambled to his feet, lifting her up with him.
It was only then, with her weight on it, that she felt a stinging in her left leg. And reacted to it with a muttered, “Oooh.”
“What?” he demanded sharply. “What’s wrong?”
She looked down, noticing what she had been oblivious to until now. There was a long tear in the leg of her slacks, exposing her calf and a smear of blood.
“Damn. One of my favorite pairs, too.”
“You’re worrying about the pants?” Leo was already crouched down and examining her calf.
“They were expensive.”
“Right. And that’s important. How about the leg? In case you’re interested, you’ve got a gash here with blood seeping out of it.”
“Oh. Well, it can’t be much. It’s just a little sore.”
“Jenny, it needs attention. You’re going to the infirmary.”
He surged to his feet. Before she could stop him, he had scooped her up into his arms and was carrying her swiftly out of the hall.
“Leo, this is crazy. I can walk there. It’s not much more than a scratch.”
His only reply was to tighten his hold on her.
“THAT’S A RARE TREAT, that is,” Brother Timothy observed as he cleaned the blood away from her wound.
“How bad is it?” Leo hovered over Jennifer anxiously.
“I’m thinking amputation,” the monk said solemnly.
Leo stared at him.
Brother Timothy chuckled. “Easy, laddie. It’s little more than a scrape needing a bit of a plaster. After what happened, lucky not to be something much worse, I’d say.”
“Leo, do you have a dog back home?” Jennifer asked him.
“No. What are you talking about?”
“I’ve got this tough, older brother. He hates people fussing. But one time the family dog broke a leg, and guess who went all to pieces. I just think that’s interesting.”
“You’re delirious from your injury,” he said gruffly.
Brother Timothy had just finished patching up her leg when a worried Father Stephen, summoned by Brother Michael, arrived on the scene.
“Is she all right, Timothy?”
“As right as rain,” the monk told him cheerfully.
Reassured, the abbot directed his attention to Jennifer and Leo. His concern turned into a rigid disapproval that bordered on anger. He had obviously been told what had happened in the great hall and wasn’t pleased about it.
“Why in the name of all that’s holy would the two of you risk going into the hall when the notice pinned on the barriers clearly marked the room as unsafe, not to mention the other notice at the bottom of the gallery stairway.”
Jennifer and Leo traded startled looks.
“What barriers would those be, padre?” Leo asked him.
“The trestles, of course, that were placed both at the foot of the stairway and across the entrance to the hall. You call them sawhorses, I believe. With the badly leaking roof in there having caused so much decay, the trestles were a temporary measure until we could afford repairs. But apparently they weren’t sufficient since you chose to ignore them.”
“Father,” Jennifer informed him quietly, “there were no sawhorses or posted warnings anywhere in sight.”
The abbot’s expression registered his alarm. “You are telling me they were removed? Deliberately removed? All of them?”
“All of them,” Leo said. “Looks like someone didn’t want us to know how d
angerous the place was.”
Father Stephen was silent for a minute as he dealt with the shock of the latest violation in his well-ordered monastery. Then, collecting himself, he said decisively, “This evil can’t go on. It must be stopped.”
“Believe me, padre, we’re doing our best to discover who’s responsible for it.”
“Yes, before another tragedy occurs. But I implore you to be very careful. You must both promise me this.”
The abbot departed after receiving their pledges. A moment later Brother Timothy released Jennifer from the infirmary, telling her there was no reason she couldn’t resume normal use of the leg but recommending that she rest it first for a few hours.
To Jennifer’s exasperation, Leo insisted on obeying the monk’s instruction. Although this time he refrained from carrying her, he escorted her directly back to his room where he ordered her to stretch out on the bed. Touched though she was by his concern, she stubbornly resisted it.
“I’m not climbing onto that bed until I have a bath and change my clothes.” She eyed him critically. “And you need to do the same. Look at us. We look like a couple of refugees from a landfill.”
Although he grumbled about it, Leo complied with her decree.
After a visit to the bathroom, and wearing fresh outfits, they returned to his room. Jennifer settled on the bed, propping herself up with a mound of pillows while Leo mended the fire before sprawling in a chair facing the bed.
She tried not to be distracted by the sight of those long legs stretched out in front of him, by the way his faded jeans clung to his muscular thighs and narrow hips, how those same tight jeans displayed—
Well, never mind what they so blatantly displayed.
Lifting her gaze, she made an effort to concentrate on his face. But even here she ran into trouble, unable to stop herself from being fascinated by that crescent-shaped scar on his cheek. By the way those whiskey-colored eyes of his gazed at her so intimately, firing a memory of how his arms had wrapped around her in the great hall, of that brief but urgent closeness they had shared.
“I think we should talk,” she said with a briskness meant to defuse the moment.
“Talk is good,” he agreed, although she wasn’t sure she liked the way he said it, his voice slow and thick with what sounded like something other than business.
“It’s also necessary.” And safer, she figured.
“Okay,” he relented, “what did you have in mind?”
“About the accident that wasn’t an accident. Someone had to have realized the power outage last night wouldn’t stop us from trying to learn where Geoffrey went and why. They removed those barriers and the notices for a reason.”
Leo nodded. “Sure. And we both know what that reason was.”
“To entice us into the great hall. They wanted us to climb that stairway. They were watching from the squint hoping we would.”
“A lure.”
“Exactly. And it worked. We went up the stairway because we wanted to know who was on the other side of the squint. They were counting on that, and they got what they wanted. The stairway collapsed. What they didn’t get was our broken necks.”
“Must have been a big disappointment.”
“But who and why?”
“The why is easy, Jenny. We’re snooping, and someone doesn’t like it.”
“Which means there is something to find, and they’re worried about that. The thing that Geoffrey could have been looking for last night. Only what is it and where is it?”
“Well, not in the great hall, at least not this morning or we wouldn’t have been lured there. As for the who—” He shrugged.
“So what comes next?”
“Geoffrey,” he said without hesitation. “It’s time for the kid to answer some questions.”
“Maybe he doesn’t know the answers. Not if he has no memory of where he was sleepwalking and why.”
“We’ll see what he has to say over lunch.”
BUT THE NOVICE WASN’T in the dining parlor when all of them gathered for lunch. Patrick explained his absence to Jennifer and Leo.
“I’m on my own today,” the young man said. “Geoffrey is with the brothers in the workshops. They’re teaching him how to illuminate Psalters.”
Leo looked bewildered.
Jennifer, remembering how Brother Michael had earlier called the abbot back to the workshops because of a problem with the illuminations, enlightened him. “It’s the ancient art of illustrating books of devotion. The medieval monks were masters of it. But that it’s still being practiced today…”
“There’s a market for reproductions of the old, holy manuscripts using the original methods,” Patrick informed them with an uncharacteristic enthusiasm. “It’s how the monastery supports itself, that and woolen products from the local sheep.”
“How long has Geoffrey been in the workshops?” Leo wanted to know.
“They called for him right after breakfast,” Patrick said. “I imagine he’ll be there for the rest of the day. I’d love to learn illuminating myself,” he added wistfully.
Which means it wasn’t Geoffrey who’d spied on them from the squint, Jennifer thought. Not when he had an alibi that could be easily checked. That left one of the others.
Which one of them? she asked herself, gazing around the table after she and Leo joined the company with their plates from the buffet where they had spoken to Patrick. Who cut the power last night, lured us into the great hall this morning, watched us from the squint in this very room?
Leo had to be thinking the same thing. But instead of just speculating, he made an effort to identify the culprit.
“What have you all been doing to pass the time this morning?” he asked them amiably. “Wasn’t there some mention of getting up a bridge game here in the parlor?”
Roger Harding answered him soberly. “I’m afraid none of us has been in any mood for cards. I believe we all went our separate ways after breakfast.”
But someone returned to the dining parlor and that squint, Jennifer thought.
“Don’t have to wonder what you and Ms. Rowan were up to, old man,” Harry Ireland said. “Bad scene down in the great hall, what?”
Leo fixed a steely gaze on the salesman. “You heard about the accident then?”
“Word gets around.”
“It’s another bad omen,” the superstitious Fiona Brasher mumbled.
“You don’t want to go messing around in dangerous places,” Harry warned them cheerfully. “Pass me the shaker there, would you, Mrs. Harding? Eggs need a bit of salt.”
Jennifer noticed that Sybil’s hand trembled when she handed him the salt. She looked unwell. Nor had she contributed any word to the conversation, which was unlike her. It was rather apparent that she was suffering a bad hangover and that her husband was concerned about her. Roger kept glancing at her with expressions of sympathy. Jennifer didn’t know who to feel more sorry for, Roger or Sybil.
The others, too, were silent after that. It was no use. She and Leo weren’t going to learn anything here. The group had closed ranks against them since hearing about their investigation. They were wary now.
And clearly worried about the evil that had Warley Castle in its grip. Worried also about the confinement forced on them by a storm that made it impossible to escape from that evil. Jennifer could almost smell their tension.
She was feeling the same stress, the same sense of helpless ness when she and Leo returned to his room. Depressed by their efforts that had yet to produce any answers, she went to the window and looked out at the blizzard. This was the second day of it, and it showed no sign of slackening.
But it couldn’t go on forever. It would quit, if not later on today, then perhaps sometime tomorrow. And when the castle was no longer cut off by the weather, there would be nothing to keep its reluctant guests from leaving. She would lose her chance to prove her innocence.
Turning her head, she saw that Leo had seated himself on the chair. He had a penci
l in his hand and was bent over a notebook.
“What are you doing?” she asked him.
“What I always do sooner or later on a case. I’m listing the suspects along with the sequence of events. Getting it down on paper helps me to get a clearer picture of the whole thing, even come up with a fresh lead.”
“Does it work?”
“Sometimes, if I’m lucky. Shouldn’t you be on the bed resting that leg?”
“The leg is fine. Well, actually it isn’t. It wants action.”
One of his eyebrows lifted. “Such as?”
“I don’t know. I just feel we should be doing something.” Anything, she thought, but hiding away here in this room waiting for inspiration.
He closed the notebook. “I’m open to suggestions.”
“How about looking again for whatever it is our culprit is hiding?”
“That’s a plan. Where do you think we should start? Down in the dungeons? Gotta be dungeons in a place like this. Or how about the chapel? Or maybe all those rooms that aren’t being used? Couldn’t be more than, say, a few dozen of them.”
He had made his point. Warley Castle was a huge, sprawling structure. This vital thing could be concealed anywhere within its labyrinth, much of it off limits to them anyway. They could search forever and not find it, particularly when they didn’t know what they were searching for. That is, if it existed at all. They were only surmising there was something because the evidence seemed to indicate it.
And anyway, she thought dismally, even if they could locate whatever it was that was being so carefully protected, there was no solid reason to believe it was connected with either Brother Anthony’s death or Guy’s, in which case all their blind chasing after it wouldn’t help her to prove her innocence.
Still…
In the end, it was her desperation, her sense of time running out and the need to save herself before it was too late, that did give birth to an inspiration.
“The cars!”
He thought about it for a moment and then nodded. “I think I see where you’re headed. But go on and tell me.”