They were halfway down when the thought struck her.
Why had Paxton not come to find the source of the scream? Why, at least, had he not called out? There was no question of him hearing the noise in the stillness of the waxworks. Where the hell was he?
Perhaps they had been his footsteps they’d heard above them earlier. But even so, why had he not come running to find out what was happening?
Donna licked her tongue across her dry lips and stopped at the bottom of the stairs. Julie joined her.
‘What now?’ Julie wanted to know.
Donna glanced across into the gallery on the ground floor then at another doorway ahead of them marked PRIVATE.
She crossed to the door and found that it was unlocked. It opened out onto a narrow flight of stone steps. There was a cloying fusty smell rising from below, like drying clothes. It was cold in the narrow stairwell; the metal banister was freezing when she touched it.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘This must lead to the basement.’ She began to descend, and Julie followed. They trod carefully on the bare stone until, finally, Donna pushed open the door at the bottom and stepped out.
The smell here was even stronger. The odour of decay as well as damp was strong in her nostrils. She looked round.
The door from which they had emerged was also marked PRIVATE.
To the left was a light, well-illuminated area that contained various electronic games and fruit machines.
To the right, a set of steps led down into what looked like seething blackness. The darkness was so total that she wondered if they would even be able to proceed without the aid of a torch. There was a sign on the wall beside this entrance:
ALL THOSE WISHING TO LEAVE THE WAXWORKS HERE, KINDLY USE THE APPROPRIATE EXIT. IT IS RECOMMENDED THAT YOUNG CHILDREN OR THOSE OF A NERVOUS DISPOSITION LEAVE NOW.
Donna took a step closer to the top of the steps and peered down.
There were five stone stairs leading down to a wooden floor and a narrow stone corridor.
The smell of damp and rot seemed to waft from the doorway as if expelled from putrid lungs. There was a sign just inside the doorway, suspended from the ceiling by two rusty chains. Donna read it aloud.
‘Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.’ She smiled. ‘It would have been just like Chris to hide the Grimoire down there,’ Donna said, pointing towards the abyss beyond the steps. ‘It would have appealed to his sense of humour.’
‘What is it?’ Julie wanted to know, wrinkling her nose at the smell.
Donna raised her eyebrows.
‘The Chamber of Horrors.’
It was like stepping into empty space.
Donna, who couldn’t see her feet beneath her, moved cautiously for fear of slipping on the stone steps. Julie followed behind, steadying herself against the wall, recoiling slightly as she felt the moistness of the stone.
Paxton must have had the place treated with something, Donna thought. She was sure the basement that housed the waxworks’ grisliest exhibits was not naturally damp and decaying. Part of the process of making the viewing experience all the more real and eerie was the smell which went with the darkness and unbearable silence. There were companies in the film business who made fake blood; why not someone to recreate the smell of damp and neglect? Perhaps that odour could indeed be bottled and sold. Paxton must have bought a crateful.
Fake cobwebs had been sprayed over the walls, too, although how much of the gossamer-like material was real and how much was fake she wasn’t sure. There would be no need to clean this part of the waxworks. Grime and the odd spider could only serve to enhance its appearance.
The figures of the murderers themselves were arranged behind what looked like rusty prison bars. These too were covered by cobwebs both fake and genuine.
Dependent on their stature or the nature of their crimes, figures were enshrined within their own individual displays. Others were grouped together, usually with a newspaper of the day framed beside them proclaiming their arrest or, in the case of those before 1969, of their execution.
How perverse, Donna thought, that there should even be a hierachy amongst killers. Men like Denis Nilsen, Peter Sutcliffe and John George Haigh were presented in tableaux of their own, while those who had killed only once or twice, or who were there more for their notoriety than their savagery, merited a smaller setting where they were crowded together. Ruth Ellis, Lee Harvey Oswald and the Kray Twins stood together.
Christie was displayed surrounded by his nine victims, portions of them visible from gaps in the walls and floor of the mock-up of his front room at Ten Rillington Place. Behind him stood Timothy Evans, the man wrongly hanged for a murder Christie committed.
If the atmosphere in the rest of the waxworks had been unsettling, in this odorous basement it was close to oppressive. These glass eyes stared out with a venom and hatred that matched those of their inspirations. Julie felt her skin crawl.
Nilsen stood at the cooker where he’d boiled down the remains of his victims.
Sutcliffe gripped a claw hammer and a screwdriver, his face twisted into a half-smile.
Haigh, dressed in a leather apron, was in the process of dissolving one of his victims in an acid bath.
Julie tried to swallow but felt as if someone had blocked her throat.
Beneath the model of Eichmann were newspaper cuttings about Auschwitz; yellowed with age like some of the other clippings, they were still as abhorrent, even after all these years.
Dr Crippen was standing by a desk on which lay a pile of books.
Donna looked for a way in to the exhibit. The only door was in the side of the cage-like display, at the end near the exit. In order to reach the figure of Crippen she would have to pass the other figures, too. She turned and headed for the door immediately, relieved that it was open when she pushed. She stepped inside.
Julie gripped the bars, wincing as she felt how cold and wet they were, watching as her sister drew closer, pausing to look at the tableau of Christie. There were many cupboards in the display; Ward could have hidden the Grimoire in any one of them.
Donna opened them but found that they were empty. She glanced at the figure of Christie and walked on. Past Haigh. Past Nilsen.
The figure of Peter Sutcliffe was standing over the body of a woman, old newspapers beneath his feet. Donna paused to lift the newspapers and look beneath them.
Julie sucked in an anxious breath, her eyes fixed on the model of Sutcliffe.
The head moved a fraction.
She opened her mouth to shout but no sound would come.
Donna was still at his feet.
Julie blinked hard and looked at the waxwork again.
This time she saw no movement. A trick of the light? A trick of her mind? A little of both, she fancied.
‘Come on, Donna,’ she said, her breath coming in gasps.
Her sister nodded, got to her feet and finally reached the Crippen figure. She looked at the books on the desk: a medical book and a book on anatomy.
The third had a picture of a bird on it.
Was this the Grimoire?
Her hands were shaking as she lifted it.
A
Could it be ...
She opened it.
Blank pages.
‘Shit,’ she muttered angrily and replaced the book. She hurried out of the cage and rejoined Julie. Ahead of
