“No, it won’t come. I can get ‘place’ out of it.”
“Well, that’s good, isn’t it? We’re looking for a place, aren’t we?”
“Yes, but then the rest of the letters…it doesn’t leap out at me.”
“Well, maybe there are too many letters? Maybe you shouldn’t be using all of them?”
“That’s not how anagrams work, Jude. You’ve got to use all the letters, otherwise…Oh, my God…” Carole’s jaw dropped as she moved forward to the paper. “You’re right. Forget the ‘Gate’. Just concentrate on ‘Face- Peril’…which is an anagram of…‘fireplace’!”
They both turned to look at the shadowed space, blackened by centuries of cooking and heating. Jude moved excitedly forward, saying, “And Mopsa had a streak of soot on her hand! There must be something here!”
Close to, there were definitely vertical lines either side to the grate, lines that could be the outline of a door. And the soot had been worn thin along the lines, as though the edge had been moved quite recently.
“It’s here! It’s here! This is the Face-Peril Gate. But how on earth do we open it?”
“Is there a keyhole?”
Jude, oblivious to the soot that was smearing her hands and clothes, scrabbled away at the back of the fireplace. Her fingers found a narrow slot. “Yes, yes, there is! But what do we use to open it?”
“Presumably,” said Carole, “we use the Key of Clove’s Halo.”
“And what the hell is that?”
This one came easily. “Forget the ‘Key’. And the ‘of’. Is there a ‘Coal Shovel’ anywhere, Jude?”
There was. An ancient implement, rather too narrow to be practical for lifting much coal. The scoop was curved and thin, more like a garden tool for cutting plant-holes than a coal shovel. It was black, except where, abraded by familiar grooves, the dull original metal shone through.
“I’ll see if it fits,” said Jude. “I’m so filthy already, a little more soot’s not going to make any difference.”
The end of the coal shovel slipped into its predestined slot with the ease of long practice. Tentatively, anticipating resistance, Jude turned the handle to the right. But no resistance came. The smugglers of the nineteenth century had known their craft. The key turned.
Cunningly counter-weighted so as to move as lightly as a cupboard door in a designer kitchen, the great plate of soot-covered steel gave way, moving almost soundlessly on rollers, to reveal a set of stone steps leading down into the void.
? Death under the Dryer ?
Twenty-Seven
Both knew they should have made some kind of plan, but they hadn’t. After all, if their surmise was correct, they were about to confront a young man who might well be a murderer. Having guarded his privacy so fiercely for three weeks, how was he likely to react to the discovery of his hideaway? If he had already killed Kyra Bartos, would he be worried about the killing of two inquisitive middle-aged women, so long as it kept him safe from the attentions of the police?
The opening of the door at the back of the fireplace, though quiet, had not been entirely silent. It was a sound their quarry would know well. Mopsa had quite possibly told him that she was going out, so he would know they were intruders. The welcome he was preparing for them could be ugly.
And yet still neither of them said anything. Instinctively, Jude drew back and let Carole lead the way. They didn’t even look around for a torch. From whatever was at the bottom of the steps a thin light flowed.
They had not defined in their minds what they were expecting to see, but neither had anticipated the bright airy space they stepped into. The light was natural, sunlight streaming in individual, focused beams through narrow fissures in the natural rock of the walls. These openings, created by the erosion of the exterior cliff face, were too high up the walls to offer any hope of escape. But the chamber their light illuminated was not the primitive cave Carole and Jude’s imaginations had suggested. It appeared to be a section of a circular vertical mineshaft, some twenty feet across, which would have reached the surface right next door to the Lockes’ cottage. But, many years before, the space had been separated off by a wooden floor and ceiling to form the hidden room. The carpentry had not been professional, there was a rough-hewn quality to everything. But it looked sturdy and secure. The smugglers of Treboddick had known what they were doing when they constructed the Wheal Chamber.
These were the peripheral impressions of a nanosecond, because what arrested the attention of both women was the figure sitting at a table facing the sea. They had seen the family photographs and had no doubt that it was Nathan Locke.
The shock they both felt, though, arose from their assumption that he had hidden away of his own accord. They hadn’t expected the chain from an iron ring on the wall which was attached to the boy’s ankle.
? Death under the Dryer ?
Twenty-Eight
Whoever Nathan Locke had expected to come down the stairs into his lair, it wasn’t a pair of middle-aged women. He looked at them in frank amazement. But rather than reacting with violence, he remained seated and asked politely, “I’m sorry, but who are you…?”
No time for aliases now. “My name’s Carole Seddon. This is my friend Jude.”
The blankness on the boy’s face told that he had never heard of either of them.
“And what are you doing here? Are you from the police?” His natural good manners couldn’t completely exclude a note of disbelief from the question. He looked scruffy, a wispy three-week growth of beard around his chin, but not as though he had been maltreated.
“No, we’re nothing to do with the police. You don’t need to be frightened. You’re quite safe with us.”
He let out a bitter laugh. “I think I might be safer with the police than I am here.” He gestured to the chain on his ankle. It gave them a moment to take in the space in which he was incarcerated. There were loaded bookshelves, a cassette player, even an ancient-looking television. Jutting out from one wall was a shed-like structure with two doors, possibly leading to a kitchen and bathroom. The area had more qualities of a furnished flat than a prison.
Jude moved forward alongside Carole. “Listen, Nathan, we know who you are and we know why you’re here.”
“Oh, do you? I sometimes wish I did.”
“It’s in connection with the death of Kyra Bartos.”
The name hit him like a slap. His lip trembled and tears glinted in his eyes. At that moment he looked less than his sixteen years. “Kyra? What do you know about Kyra?”
“That she’s dead.”
“And that I killed her? Do you know that? Just like everyone else who seems to be so sure of it?”
“We don’t know that. But we’d like to talk to you about it.”
“Would you? Well, there’s a novelty.” The bitterness was back in his voice. He still wasn’t being overtly rude to them, but there was in his voice a deep weary negativity, an acceptance that he had entered a world in which normal logic did not operate.
“A novelty, why? Because nobody else wants to talk to you?”
“Nobody else wants to talk except to give me orders. No one wants to listen to what I have to say.”
“We’d very much like to hear what you have to say.”
He was tempted by the sincerity in Jude’s voice, but his scepticism remained. “Oh yes?”
Carole decided it was her turn. Jude had been trying the good cop approach, without marked success. Maybe something harder might be more effective.
“Listen, Nathan, you know you’re in a lot of trouble. Circumstances dictate that you’re the major suspect for Kyra Bartos’s murder. And the fact that you’ve run away only exacerbates the problem.”
“Excuse me.” The boy looked affronted. “What’s all this ‘running away’ business?” He indicated the chain round his ankle. “Does it really look as though I’m stuck down here voluntarily?”
“Are you saying you were kidnapped?”
