A Killer Ball at Honeychurch Hall (30 page)

Mrs. Cropper had told me that they'd run off together on the night of the ball.

“You left Pandora in the double-hide,” I said.

“I thought she'd find a way out,” said Joan with a shrug. “We were only away for a few days but when I went back to check that Pandora had got out, she was dead.”

“You knew she was dead?” I was appalled. “Why didn't you tell someone?”

“It wasn't my fault.” Joan stuck out her jaw. “I mean, people can stay alive for days without food and water…”

“You think someone else killed her?” I didn't believe this for a minute but I was running out of ways to keep her talking and it was quite obvious that no one was coming to my rescue. I really was going to have to make a run for it.

“Oh, yes. Definitely.”

“Well—it looks like the police have arrested the right person.”

Joan's jaw dropped. “Who has been arrested?”

“Iris Bushman has been arrested.”

Joan broke into a huge grin. “Good.”

“Yes. Apparently Iris left a book in the first hide then forged a thank you letter from Pandora to throw people off the scent. Iris wanted people to believe that Pandora had gone to the Orient. But of course, she's denying it. I mean—no one can prove the book was hers.”

“Yes, they can!” Joan exclaimed. “The book has her name written inside.”

I knew that Joan couldn't have known that unless she wrote Mum's name herself.

“I just don't know where Iris would have gotten that kind of book from.” I pretended to be baffled. “What was it called again? Something about the lady of the manor having an affair with the gamekeeper?”

“Lady Chatterley's Lover,”
said Joan.

“Really?” I feigned surprise. “That makes
Fifty Shades of Grey
look like a children's story these days, doesn't it?”

Joan was beginning to relax. I could see her fingers loosening their grip on the shotgun.

“I wonder if Iris found the book in the hayloft when she was up there with Bryan?” I mused.

Joan stiffened but didn't comment.

“And of course, the police are certain it was Iris who abducted the young reporter.” I tried to make my voice sound as casual as I could.

“Yeah. Well, she did,” said Joan.

“I think that Ginny knew too much and Iris was scared that it was going to come out in the
Daily Post
.”

“Yeah. That Iris, she's ruthless,” said Joan. “Always been good at covering her tracks.”

“I think she's going to get a big shock when she knows that Ginny Riley survived to tell her stories.”

“She survived?” Joan went very still. “But she can't have done.”

I could see from Joan's face that she still had no idea who I really was but suddenly, she sprang into action. In two quick strides, Joan tripped the mechanism behind the Dobson painting. The linenfold paneling popped open.

“You really think I'm that stupid?” Joan shouted. “I know who you are. You're Iris's daughter.”

My stomach turned right over. “No, I'm not.”

“Peggy told me.” Joan laughed. “But I enjoyed talking to you.” She released the safety catch on the shotgun and gestured for me to get into the hide. Now I knew how Joan had forced Ginny to get into her own car.

I realized that no one would know where I was. I would face the same sentence as Pandora had all those years ago. Joan had been playing me along all the time. How could I have been such an idiot!

“Joan, you're making a mistake by doing this,” I said. “I know you didn't mean for Pandora to die—”

“Yeah well, accidents will happen.”

“And Bryan—I can understand how upset you must have been—”

“I guess I just snapped.” She smiled again.

Mrs. Cropper was right. Joan was evil. No wonder Eric had kept Vera away from her.

“Give me your phone,” said Joan. “And your car keys. It's the red MINI, right?”

Shaking, I did as I was told. “Joan—seriously—”

“Off you go.” She pushed me to the entrance to the first priest hole. “I can push you if you'd prefer.”

“Is this what you did to Pandora?” I said.

“Oh, no. She was very happy to climb in,” Joan declared. “Good-bye Rapunzel.”

 

Chapter Thirty-two

With no phone and no light it took me a while for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. I heard a groan.

Someone else was down here.

Hunched in the corner was the outline of a figure.

I heard another groan.

“Katherine?” came a whisper.

“Mrs.
Cropper
?” I couldn't believe it. I felt my way to her side.

“Oh, Katherine,” she whimpered.

“Are you alright?”

“My ankle. I think it's broken,” she said. “I'm sorry. Joan made me call. She wanted to see Iris.”

“It's okay,” I said. “I'm glad it's me and not my mother. Don't worry. Someone will know we are here. Did you tell your husband?”

“Seth has his rotary meeting tonight,” said Mrs. Cropper.

“What about the rest of the family?” I said. “Edith? Lavinia? Rupert?”

“They don't know we're here, either. What about Iris?” Mrs. Cropper said hopefully. “Did you tell her where you were going?”

“My mother has been arrested,” I said. “She's at Newton Abbot police station. She could be held all night.”

“What about Alfred? You must have told him?”

Of course I couldn't have done but I didn't want to alarm Mrs. Cropper so I lied and said I'd left him a note.

I was struggling to come to terms with the fact that we were in serious trouble.

“Joan did everything, didn't she?” whispered Mrs. Cropper. “Pandora, Bryan—Ginny.”

“Yes.”

“And to think I thought it was my Seth. Poor Seth.”

I had to find a way out. “Is there anything you remember about the double-hide?” I said. “Something—no matter how small—when you were growing up?”

“Seth is the one who was into all that type of thing,” said Mrs. Cropper. She shivered. It was cold down here and I could tell she was in pain.

“Poor Pandora,” she went on softly. “What a horrible way to die. Stuck in here. Knowing that people were around you but they couldn't hear your cry for help.”

We fell silent again. I put my arm around Mrs. Cropper's shoulders to try and comfort her but was really doing it for myself. I was absolutely terrified.

“Did you crawl over here?” I said to Mrs. Cropper.

“Yes.”

How could Pandora have gotten to the back of the hide with a broken neck?

I got to my feet. “I've just thought of something.”

Tentatively, I felt my way to the chimney breast and touched the coarse brickwork. My hands found cold iron. I had discovered a rung. Reaching up, I found another.

Perhaps, just
perhaps,
this was the beginning of a crude ladder that would take me up and out. It then occurred to me that when the tools had been left during the English Civil War, Joan's and Bryan's ancestors had actually hidden down here. Maybe there was another way out? It seemed a long shot but it was all I had and worth a try.

I made my way back to Mrs. Cropper to share my theory. “What do you know about the fireplaces here?”

“Each chimney on each floor has a damper that opens into the flue,” she said. “I was just a girl when the chimney sweep used to come and of course, it was before this wing was sealed off—”

“Tell me about the damper.”

“It's an iron door. It controls the draft,” said Mrs. Cropper. “You open it by pulling on a chain that lifts the latch. Every flue has one or two but in this house, because of the hearth tax, there are more flues than chimneys—that's what the builders used to do—use the flues to link new chimneys to old.”

“Do you think I can open the damper from outside the flue?” I said. “And then crawl inside?”

“Yes. Most of the dampers have a smoke shelf,” Mrs. Cropper said. “I only know there are handholds inside the flue. If you could get inside, then you can climb down and get out through one of the fireplaces.”

It was just as well I wasn't afraid of heights.

“Okay. I'll see what I can do,” I said. “I'm going to have to leave you here.”

“Just don't forget me,” she said, attempting a weak joke.

Slowly, I began the climb, fighting down my claustrophobia every step of the way. I was in a narrow shaft between the outside wall of the house and the chimney stack.

It was completely and utterly dark. I was doing everything by touch, one rung at a time—reaching up with my hands and then placing one foot—and then the other before heaving myself up; making sure each rung held. With every step I stopped to brush my fingertips across the brickwork, hoping to feel the edges of a damper.

I felt nothing.

But there
had
to be something. Why else would the iron rungs be fixed to the outside of the flue?

I'd counted nineteen steps until, to my horror, one rung swung away from the wall. With a cry, I hung on desperately as my feet scrabbled to find the rung below.

And then I knew what had happened to Pandora.

She, too, must have tried to climb out this way but had probably been hampered by her Egyptian costume.

Pandora had fallen and broken her neck and that was why her body was found so far away from the entrance to the double-hide in such a grotesque position.

What a truly awful way to die. Joan had claimed she'd not had anything to do with Pandora's death other than showing her how to get in. And maybe, in this she was telling the truth.

I daren't move. Praying that the entire rung wouldn't come away from the wall; conscious of the thick dust and cobwebs from decades of disuse going up my nose and getting into my hair. Clutching the end that was bolted to the brickwork, I made one last attempt at finding the damper.

And then my fingers felt the cool, gratifying touch of metal.

I dug my fingers under the lip.

The door wouldn't budge. The latch was probably jammed or rusted together.

I hung there, desperate.

Thinking.

Mrs. Cropper had mentioned a chain.

I reached over as far as I dared, sweeping my hand left and right until, to my utter relief, my fingers found the chain. I had to tug it several times until I heard a click, stuck my fingers under the lip again and opened the door. A murky light spilled into the shaft.

“I've found it, Mrs. C.,” I called down. “I'm going for help.”

The opening was only just large enough for me to haul myself into it. Mrs. Cropper was right, there was a smoke shelf. I sat there for a moment to catch my breath.

Looking up I saw a faint dab of sky and noticed more rungs continued up to the very top of the chimney.

I couldn't believe how enormous this flue was and what an extraordinary maze of blackened tunnels led off from this one chimney. “Coffins of black,” that's what William Blake's poem called them in his “Songs of Innocence—The Chimney Sweeper.” The thought of those poor orphan boys sweeping chimneys all day was too awful to think about.

I guessed I'd climbed to the second floor. Carefully, I crawled into one of the smaller flues. I didn't even know if any of the fireplaces had been boarded up. But I had to try to find a way out.

I didn't want to think that one tiny slip could send me plunging down to the cold stone hearth beneath—but where—into the King's Parlor or the Great Hall?

This time it was easier. I only had to climb a few feet up before I came to the damper. To my relief, I opened it without any problem at all and squeezed inside. Down below, I saw the fire basket. The room seemed bathed in a soft, yellow light. Carefully, I braced my back against one side and my hands and feet against the other and slowly shimmied my way down, scrambling the last few feet and landing on my bottom in the fire basket that was, thankfully, empty.

“Golly, Stanford,” I heard a familiar voice say. “I thought you were Father Christmas for a moment!”

Never had I been so happy to see Harry. He was sitting up in bed reading
Biggles and the Leopards of Zinn.

“Reporting for duty, sir,” I said, giving him a quick salute.

“I see you are wearing camouflage,” he said. “Was the mission to the bunker a success?”

“Yes, you could say it was.”

“Good. We'll debrief in the morning,” Harry said and settled back to his book as if my descending from his chimney was an everyday occurrence.

Fifteen minutes later and after many false starts down endless corridors, I was hurrying through the galleried reception and collided with Rupert.

He sprang back, horrified. “Good heavens! What on earth is going on? You're covered in black soot!”

Lavinia and Edith emerged from a side door from where I could hear the blare of a television set. There were more cries of dismay. I swiftly filled them in on everything that had happened.

“I'll call Shawn and an ambulance,” said Lavinia.

“I'll rescue Mrs. Cropper.” Rupert broke into a trot across the marble floor.

“We shall go after Joan,” said Edith coldly.

“She could be anywhere by now,” I said. “She had a head start and took my mother's MINI.”

“You go and get your car, pick up Alfred at the stables—I just saw him checking the horses, thank God—and then come back for me.”

“Alfred is back?” I cried. “At the stables?”

“Yes, girl! What do you think I meant?” said Edith impatiently. “We need a bit of brawn and we certainly won't get that from my son.”

 

Chapter Thirty-three

Alfred acted completely normal when he picked us up. If anything, he looked remarkably cheerful, which led me to believe that he had successfully hidden the drawings.