couple, let alone two people brought together out of practicality or ambition. What the place needed was to be crammed as full of life as the hall and drawing room were currently full of furniture.
Having reached the bottom, we found ourselves in an empty cellar small enough to show itself reasonably clearly in the candlelight. No wine racks, filled or empty, no sprouting sacks of potatoes. The only thing to say for it was that it appeared dry-no lichen or mold on the walls. Indeed, the air smelled reasonably fresh. The faces of the other women seemed more clearly defined, more fleshed out than they had done in the dining room before the lights went out. I put that down to a reaction from the plunge into darkness, but then I felt the energy flowing from each of the contestants, with the exception of Mrs. Malloy, who suddenly looked all her sixty-some years.
Alice stood bundling her hair back up. “Georges and his crew have to be filming us through spy holes, otherwise where would be the fun for the viewing audience? May we all agree we’re showing the jokester that any one of us could deal with a crisis as Lady Belfrey?”
“Ellie found the way out of the dining room and she isn’t in the running,” Livonia reminded her.
Take that, Georges! You and your twisted hope of an uncontrollable passion arising between Lord Belfrey and a wedded woman!
“It’s not a bad cellar as such places go, but I’d love to get back out into the gardens.” Judy smiled ruefully. “Should we start prying apart the walls and floor?”
“Please don’t anyone think I’m pushing myself forward,” said Livonia at her most tentative, “but it seems to me that even without the candle we wouldn’t be in pitch dark, so there has to be a faint amount of light creeping in somehow, doesn’t there?”
“What if,” suggested Molly, who looked and sounded breezily confident, “those spy holes Alice mentioned are cracks between the stones in the wall? The ventilation they provide could explain why the cellar is dry.” Taking the candle from Judy, she paced left, then right-eyes shifting from walls to ceiling. “Maybe the cracks-even the widest of them-aren’t easy to see because they’re filmed over with cobwebs of the same gray as the stone. Except, of course, for the one being used to spy on us; that would likely be high up, even in the ceiling.”
“Knowing Georges, he would prefer looking down on us,” I said. “Also, he won’t want to be caught on the spot when we do manage to break out of here.”
“Okay, but even if there are cracks big enough to get our fingers into,” Mrs. Malloy stood a shade wobbly on her high heels and looking as though she’d have dearly liked to sit down and melt into the flagged floor, “how do they help us? Even if we could get a grip, stone’s not what you could call lightweight.” She and I share a gift for pointing out the obvious. “Unless,” she reenergized sufficiently to purse her lips and raise a black painted-on eyebrow, “a section of wall has been replaced with something made up to look just like the rest. You know, Mrs. H, one of them faux finishes you’re always going on about, now everyone’s wanting the insides of their semidetached to look like a Tuscan villa these days.”
“Work done in this case courtesy of Georges’s minions.” I nodded. “That secret panel in the dining room must have been mentioned to Georges as one of Mucklesfeld’s manifold charms, and he went from there. I remember now his mentioning to me, in his usual conceited way, earlier in the week, before the crew came on board, he ordered some stage work done.”
“What’s the betting we’re closing in on what he was boasting about?” Alice gave a comradely hug to Judy, who said that if she were Georges she would have camouflaged the removable section of wall with a thicker layer of cobwebs.
“Shall we start scouting?” Livonia turned to Molly, at which point we heard the faintest sound of organ music, so thready it was almost like someone humming, which reminded me of the dean’s butler in
We all looked at each other, before gathering closer together.
“It’s all right,” said Molly without a quaver. “All part of the fun.”
“I’m getting meself worked up to chuckle me head off!” said Mrs. Malloy.
“Perverted sense of fun,” amended Alice rather jerkily. “I’ve… never cared much for that tune. It’s so bouncily jolly… it’s creepy.”
What tune? The music swelled to fill the cellar, making it impossible for any one of us not to recognize “Here Comes the Bride.” Silly not to have instantly known from the organ. The tempo picked up to skipping speed, then slowed… deepened… scraped the bottom of a misery a dirge could not have found. I could picture it-St. Mary’s in the Dell so welcoming when I was there that morning, the veiled bride being dragged, clutching and moaning, toward the now sacrificial altar.
“I told you it’s a horrible tune.” Most of Alice’s voluminous hair had tumbled down and she made no move to pile it back up.
“Any music can be twisted around.” Molly moved up close to her.
“Georges is a pain in the neck,” said Judy in her mild voice, “but seeing he must want us to get out of here sometime today, I wouldn’t be surprised if he gave us a hint, by having the music come in loudest near the removable stone, if there is such a piece.”
“’Course the trouble is,” I could hear the effort Mrs. Malloy made not to sound irritably contradictory, “this isn’t no great big space. So the music’s bloomin’ loud everywhere.”
At that moment the music gentled down to the point of sleepiness… or death. There followed a rush over to various walls, a pressing of ears to stone, a narrowed riveting of the eyes. Within moments, Livonia, the formerly timid and repressed, let out a whoop of joy.
“I’ve found it-the section of wall that shifts! The tune was piping directly into my ear. Oh, these cobwebs on my hands! But it doesn’t matter… the gap’s big enough for me to get a good grip. Some of you come and help me. I don’t want to be knocked backward, even if it is only Styrofoam coming down on me.”
I wasn’t among the first to rush forward. To be honest, I was glued to the floor, stunned that what had been posed as a farfetched theory appeared to be on the money. Mrs. Malloy wasn’t speedy, either. In her case the problem seemed be aching feet, although I pretended not to notice because even though she had behaved so badly to Judy at lunch, she was my pal and, as she often says, if you don’t have your pride and an egg in the fridge, what do you have?
As she and I discovered on making up the rear, the fake portion of wall came out in easily controllable portions, leaving us facing a door-sized opening, beyond which according to Alice-the first to go through-was a passageway. Ubiquitous at Mucklesfeld. This turned out to be similar in size and length to the one leading from the dining room’s secret exit, though less shadowy, due to a good-sized window above a door to our right. Of recording devices or human activity there was no sign, suggesting that immediately before the wall came down there had been rapid flight. But there was no budging the door when Judy tried the handle.
“It has to open to the outdoors,” I said, “or there would be no sense to the passage, just as there has to be a way up to our left. Did anyone notice when the music stopped? Or were we all too focused on the wall?”
With hardly another word said, we headed in hope of the staircase which, unless it had been blocked up for the pure enjoyment of doing so by Belfreys past or Georges present, had to be there. It was, and even Mrs. Malloy was renewed sufficiently that she ceased to hobble. Indeed, as we mounted the steps-wooden ones this time, which somehow seemed encouraging-her high heels tapped out a beat that I suddenly realized made an accompaniment to a renewal of organ music. That same oh so merrily macabre tune I would never again hear without thinking of death and decay, which was what we came upon as we headed around a turn of the stairs. In the corner of the dusk-filled landing, in a sitting sprawl, was a hideously grinning skeleton, gowned as for a debutante’s ball in diaphanous chiffon.
“Well,” exclaimed Mrs. Malloy over the now insanely pounding “Here Comes the Bride,” “don’t anyone tell me that isn’t Eleanor Belfrey-murdered by the husband just like I said. Wonder what closet Georges found her in?”
13
