It was very much like snaking through an iron catacomb, and I tried not to think about what Olive must have gone through, doing this after scaling down from a tower window. The Town Hall had to be close now—and if we just hung on, we’d be there soon.
Finally, after breathless and endless minutes, hours, or weeks, I heard LaRue’s sob of relief. She pushed her light forward, and I thought—I hoped—I Observed a faint widening of the glow.
“I see it!” she cried. “There’s an opening!” She scrambled to gain speed—no mean feat—and within moments her crawl had become a crouch, and she peeled herself half to standing in the mouth of a much larger tunnel. “I have to jump down,” she said, and did just that.
My own exit was not quite so graceful, and I landed on LaRue’s velvet train. She made no response. My light had gone out when I fell, but LaRue held hers aloft, and I could not see her face. I did not need to, to know it bore an expression of dismay.
We were not, by all evidence, at the Town Hall.
The iron tube had dropped us into a network of other tunnels, with corridors branching off in several directions.
“What happened?” LaRue said. “Where’s the rest of it?”
I stared at the orifice we’d come down from, a bare circle of metal hanging overhead, jutting out of the brickwork. “Your father said they never finished the system . . .” My words trailed off uselessly. Were we stranded down here?
LaRue took a sharp breath. “Which way do we go?” she whispered.
“West?” I said.
She turned to me. “Which way is that?”
I was trying not to let her anxiety infect me. I fumbled with my lantern while I fought for an idea. “I should have brought the map.”
“You have a map?” LaRue’s voice rang from the bricks.
“I’ve seen a map,” I admitted. “And it wasn’t very helpful.” If we couldn’t fix our position and navigate, we might wander for miles under the city. Think, Myrtle. There had to be some way to figure this out.
I had matches in my specimen kit, so I dug in my satchel, searching. LaRue hugged herself with her free arm. Her bare arms and neck and shoulders must’ve been half frozen. Above us, anything could be happening. Was Olive really at the Mansion House? Would Father and the police stop her in time? By the time we emerged at the Town Hall, our fathers would be there waiting for us, Olive arrested and everyone else safe and sound. And Miss Judson and Mr. Blakeney. And Cook. With blankets and cocoa.
The thought was cheering.
If only I believed it.
LaRue’s teeth were chattering, and I had an urge to doff my coat and drape her in it, chivalrously. But she’d locked me in a morgue, so I kept it to myself.
Then I heard Miss Judson’s phantom voice chiding me.
“Do you want my coat?” I mumbled—and her murderous expression was all the answer I needed.
“Now what?” she demanded. “You must have some idea.”
“Of course,” I lied. “Be quiet a minute while I think.”
We could not be that far underground—how thick was a street? I recalled that the pathways at the college had been clear of snow thanks to the heat from the steam tunnels below them. Perhaps that could help us now. Was one direction warmer? Where had we decided that the steam tunnels connected with the sewers? That must be nearby. A wisp of icy air zipping overhead suggested that one of the sewer grates was not far off.
“I think I hear something,” she whispered. “Above us? Traffic?”
I strained to listen, and she was correct—there was the faintest rumble overhead. “It’s the tram!” I cried. “Oh, brilliant, LaRue! The tram runs straight down High Street. We just need to follow the line, and it will take us somewhere we can get out. There’s a hatch at Leighton’s.”
She regarded me silently for a long moment. “The killer used that?”
I nodded.
She squared her shoulders. “Fair enough,” she said. “Which way?”
I got my light relit, and together we searched the tunnel ceiling for signs of the tram tracks above. “I don’t see anything.”
“Then listen.” We trained our ears to the faint rumble—which was getting louder.
“It’s coming closer!” My voice was eager. “There!” As the rumble reached its peak right above our heads, we could trace its route over the central corridor. “That way!” I nudged LaRue, and with a cry of relief, she stumbled forward.
It was not that easy, however. Trams ran infrequently at night, and we would not have another one to guide us. “We need to make sure we don’t get lost.”
“Do you have a spool of thread? Like Ariadne?”†
Did I look like I had thread? “I have chalk. We can mark the tunnel walls so we don’t accidentally backtrack.” If we survived this, I would make certain Miss Judson never learned that one of her dastardly sewing implements might have saved us sooner.
It was easier going than the pneumatic tube had been. The tunnel was large enough to stand in, for one thing. But a slick of ice ran down the center of the passage, and in places it had filled up with drifting snow. I tried to consider this a hopeful sign—there was an aperture to the surface, somewhere. We just had to find it. I shone my light against the wall, making marks with my chalk every thirty paces—nice big Ms and arrows pointing in the direction we’d headed. So some archæological team a hundred years from now could trace our path and find our bones.
I stumbled into LaRue, who squeaked with annoyance.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. “What’s wrong?”
“There’s another fork.” She held up her light, and again we were faced with the awful choice. The tunnel spread out in two branches, left and right. Wherever we’d been going, following the High Street tramline, we’d come to the end of that road.
This time, LaRue didn’t bother trying. She just flung herself to a seat at the junction—right in the patch of ice—and said, “That’s it. I give up. You go on, I’ll wait here.”
For a moment I didn’t argue with her. I’d been running about outside all day—first with Father, then with Mr. Blakeney, and now with LaRue. I’d never got my cocoa with Father, and I’d missed teatime, and Cook wasn’t even at home to make my supper. I wanted to sit down with LaRue and cry.
But professional Investigators do not give up, and they do not (generally) cry in the middle of Investigations. I had to forge onward—and hang it all, LaRue was relying on me. I didn’t particularly want to save her, but I had to.
“Not so fast.” I reached out a hand, which she took unwillingly, and hauled her to standing. “We’re safer together. And smarter,” I added grudgingly. She’d thought of marking our path, and she’d heard the traffic overhead. “Now, listen again. What can we hear?”
This time, there was nothing overhead. Had we gone lower underground? Or beneath buildings? I glanced about for signs that the temperature was increasing and we were nearing the college steam tunnels.
Instead, what we heard was a faint and distant whimper.
LaRue grabbed me with clawlike fingers. I was slow to shake her off. “What was that?” she gasped.
“Probably just rats,” I said—not realizing how LaRue would take this. Well, not immediately. I might have known by the time I actually said it out loud—but there is no way of proving that, Dear Reader.
“Rats!” She gripped me harder, and I tried to pry her hand from my coat sleeve.
“Calm down. They’re just hungry.”
I know what you’re thinking, Dear Reader, and I’ll admit it. I was enjoying myself, just a very little bit. Every condemned prisoner gets a last wish, after all.
“Maybe it’s Olive,” I said, in a spooky voice.
She released her grip. “You,” she said coldly, “are not funny.” Snatching up her lantern, she stalked off down one of the tunnels, totally at random.
Almost at once, it was plain that LaRue had chosen poorly. The wide, modern, bricked-in tunnels narrow
ed and aged; the path crumbled into awkward dips and turns. “What is this?” she said. “It’s not the sewer anymore, is it?”
“Maybe where they abandoned the pneumatic tube?” Mr. Blakeney could probably tell us.
“I don’t think this is the right way,” LaRue said doubtfully. She held up the lamp and took a few tentative steps forward, to where the tunnel abruptly curved into darkness. “Oh,” she said. “I think I see something.”
I was close on her heels. She had found another tight, twisty passage that could not have been on any map, and her light barely penetrated the gloom. A tangle of roots and ivy had grown through the masonry, evidence that we’d gone under a lawn or some wooded area. I tried to think where that might be, as LaRue continued forward, shoving roots away from her face. “It’s a door!” she cried—an aged wooden hatch set into a packed-earth wall. “Is this a root cellar?”
She pulled on the ancient wood, but it wouldn’t budge. “Help me!”
I reached in, and together we tugged and pried and wrenched, and eventually were rewarded with a faint groan. Gritting our teeth, we gave the door an almighty yank, and it cracked apart, spilling us backward.
And not just us.
LaRue gave an almighty shriek.
*At least, I think she said “bill.”
†the mythical Cretan princess who—along with her thread—helped Theseus find his way to the center of the Labyrinth to kill her half brother, the Minotaur, and escape safely once again
25
Solvitur Ambulando
Before considering a so-called gag gift, be absolutely certain the recipient shares your sense of humor. How unpleasant to be anticipating a box of chocolates or a lovely new storybook, only to open the box to find . . . something else indeed. —H. M. Hardcastle, A Modern Yuletide
Somehow we both managed to drop our lamps, which clattered out, leaving us in darkness. LaRue threw her arms around me, crushing my larynx.
“What is that? What is it?”
I’d caught scarcely a glimpse before the shock caused us to blind ourselves. I groped about in the darkness for the lanterns. “Let me find the—yech.” I recoiled. That wasn’t the warm smooth edge of brass I was hoping for. It was clammy and mossy and papery all at once, with a mouth-filling scent of age and dirt. And something else. I put a hand out again, this time with scientific curiosity. Yes, was that—could it possibly be what I thought it was?
I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to know.
LaRue had found one of the lights and fumbled it into my hands. We crouched in each other’s laps in the narrow passage, crumbs of earth and splinters of wood spilling around us. Together we managed to find my matches and get the lantern relit—and the bloom of light revealed that we were not alone. Not anymore.
Olive Blackwell was right here, too.
Or what was left of her.
She’d never made it out of the tunnels after all.
To her credit, LaRue just stared, fingers to her own lips. Of course her own lips, I thought a little wildly—Olive doesn’t have any anymore. I twisted the lamp from her fingers for a better look. Olive’s skeletal remains had tumbled partially through the wooden door when we’d broken it apart—her skull, part of her shoulder, a bit of arm and rib cage. Still recognizable, in tattered, mouse-eaten shreds, were the clothes she’d died in: what must have been a dark dress, and red-trimmed white wool. A toga.
“What—what happened to him?”
“Her,” I said softly. “It’s Olive Blackwell, the missing girl.”
“The murderer? The one who’s trying to kill my father?”
She had me there. “I guess not,” I said slowly.
“How did she die?”
I held the lamp closer to poor Olive’s lonely form, feeling a pang of sorrow. “What happened?” I asked her. “Did you get lost, like us?”
“Myrtle!”
These were no conditions for a proper autopsy, although the cold tunnels of Olive’s final resting place had preserved her remains somewhat. I glanced past the body into the chamber where she’d been hidden, all these years. An old lantern, a haversack, a reel of rope. She’d been so well prepared. I crept as close as I could, crawling over LaRue, hoping Olive might still be able to tell me how her story had ended. I hated to think she’d come this far, only to fail.
“Are you crying?” LaRue’s voice was unexpectedly gentle. She reached out and squeezed my fingers. “Merciful Savior, we give thanks that it hath pleased Thee to deliver this our sister out of the miseries of this world. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen.”
“Amen,” I echoed. It didn’t seem strange at all, LaRue Spence-Hastings saying a prayer over the skeleton of Olive Blackwell. “Can you light the other lamp? I want to see what happened to her, if I can.”
A moment later, the deed was accomplished, and the two of us gave Olive Blackwell our best post-mortem examination. LaRue was silent as I ran my fingers along the skull and mandible (taking care not to dislodge it), searching for injury. Had she hit her head? Broken her ankle? Starved? Suffocated? Died of boredom?
Something in the folds of her rotten toga caught the lamplight in a frail flicker. “What’s that?” I leaned in closer, gently shifting the cloth out of the way. Shreds of it disintegrated at my touch, dust to dust. But underneath I found the source of the sparkle. On Olive’s left arm, midway up her ulna and radius, she wore a gold bracelet.
“Is that a snake?”
“An asp,” I said, heart stuck in my throat. An ouroboros, the signature of a member of Hadrian’s Guard. I gave her a leaving token when last we met. Was it true? Gingerly, not at all certain what I was dealing with, I passed my fingers beneath the cold curve of the serpent’s neck and found a clasp. It fell open like it had been waiting for me. I lifted it into the light—a circle of gold formed a striking snake, fangs out to deliver the killing bite. I turned it over, where a tiny glass vial nestled inside the metal cavity. Empty now, thank goodness, or Nora Carmichael might have claimed yet another victim.
“I think this was it.” I showed it to LaRue, flexing the hinge on the bangle, demonstrating how the movement would cause the hollow fangs to retract and extend, drawing fluid from the vial.
“That’s diabolical.” I thought I heard appreciation in her voice. “I’ve heard of poison rings, but never a poison bracelet.”
I wondered how it had all come about. Had Nora followed Olive into the tunnels to strike her here, after she thought she was safe? Or had she given her the bracelet before, perhaps even in the Campanile, and all the time Olive thought she was heading to her new life, her old one was being sapped from her? Had she suffered much? Or had the passing been more gentle? Poisons were seldom as peaceful as most people supposed,* but some acted more quickly and less violently than others. Hemlock, for instance—which made me shudder. Would there still be traces in the vial to identify the poison?
And did it even matter anymore? Olive was dead—she’d been dead, all this time. And Nora was dead. David was dead. Mum was dead. I sank against the tunnel wall, dejected. After all that, I wanted to sit here and give up, too.
“Her family will finally know the truth,” LaRue said. I couldn’t tell if she’d read my mind or simply shared my thoughts. Or perhaps she was being Swinburne’s First Daughter, moved by civic duty.
She was peering past Olive into the chamber. “She sure had a lot of candles,” she Observed.
“What?” I jerked myself back to an Investigative posture and looked where LaRue was pointing. Olive’s recent little tumble had disturbed her resting place somewhat, but beyond the spot where her body must have sat, with her carefully set-down belongings, was a ring of fat pillar candles, the kind from church. They’d been lit, although how recently it was impossible to know.
“But if Olive lit them when she was dying, they’d have burned to the ground.” My hammering heartbeat almost tripped up my tongue, but I got the next thought out. “Somebody blew t
hese out.”
LaRue turned to me with a look of horror. “Someone knew she was here?”
Hastily, I wrapped the bracelet in my handkerchief and shoved it to the bottom of my satchel. We had to bring some evidence back, and the path we’d chalked along the tunnels would lead the police to Olive’s body.
“We have to go,” I said, tugging LaRue to her feet.
“Ow! What’s the hurry?”
“You said it,” I said. “Someone knows she’s here.” All at once, all the thoughts clamored together. Olive was dead. Olive wasn’t the killer. Someone else had been here before us—and decided to exact revenge on Hadrian’s Guard. Someone else knew about the tunnels. Someone obsessed with Olive Blackwell. Someone else, someone else, someone else . . . The words rang in my head as I scrambled from the narrow passage, dragging LaRue behind me. We shoved past the roots and ivy and back out into the space where the sewers forked.
Once again, we heard the muffled cry.
It wasn’t rats.
This time I grabbed LaRue to me. “Back the way we came,” I said, low in her ear.
“There’s no way out that way. And the killer—”
“Is not at your house.”
LaRue didn’t listen. Haughty as always, she twisted from my grasp and headed straight down the other corridor—the one whence emanated the sounds of life. I stood for a moment, mentally reciting every Inappropriate Word I knew. Everything in me yelled to run the opposite direction, but I flung myself after LaRue. The two of us could probably fend off a murderer with hemlock, surely? And chloroform?
Now I had a headache. I stumbled along the tunnel, a proper branch of the sewer network, broad and open, refuse pipes rattling overhead.
“I think I see something,” LaRue called back, rounding a corner.
I followed, and ran smack into her when she stopped short.
In a perplexed voice, she said, “It’s you.”
“So it would seem. Myrtle, it took you long enough!” In the darkness and gloom, I recognized the voice.
Genie Shelley was waiting for us.
Cold-Blooded Myrtle Page 23