“Of course. He’s got all of that in hand.”
“In that case, I wish you the best of luck. You know where I am if you need me.”
***
Florence came running up to me as soon as I walked through the door; she was clearly bubbling over with excitement about something.
“Mummy, Daddy says we can go freaky on Sunday.”
“Huh? Did he? Let’s go and find him, and he can tell me all about it.” She took my hand and led me out into the back garden where Jack was trying desperately to get Buddy to run after the ball.
“He won’t fetch it for me,” Jack said. “He’ll do it for Florence, but not for me.”
The bargain I’d struck with Buddy was for him to play ball with Florence. If we wanted him to fetch the ball for us too, we’d no doubt have to renegotiate the terms of the deal.
“Florence has just told me that we’re going freaky on Sunday?”
“Oh yes.” He grinned. “She’s talking about Freaking Tweaking.”
Oh bum! I’d been hoping that we might escape the village on Sunday to avoid that.
“What is Freaking Tweaking?” I asked, all innocent-like.
“It’s the annual festival that takes place on Tweaking Meadows,” Jack said. “It sounds great.”
“Daddy says there’ll be lots of rides and games and toffee apples and candyfloss,” Florence said.
“Great! How did you happen to hear about it, anyway?”
“Kathy rang about an hour ago to see if we were going. She was surprised I didn’t already know about it. You would have thought there would have been posters or flyers, wouldn’t you?”
“You would, yeah.”
“I told her it sounded great and that we’d definitely be up for it, so she and Lizzie are coming over on Sunday.”
“What about Peter and Mikey?”
“Pete has persuaded Mikey to go go-karting.”
“Freaky sounds fun, doesn’t it, Mummy?” Florence said.
“It sounds absolutely brilliant.”
It was my turn to read Florence her bedtime story. I’d tried desperately to persuade her to let me read a different book, but she insisted on the same one again. Her favourite. A story about a worm who wanted to live in a tree. It’s hard to adequately describe just how much I hated that stupid book. If you were a worm, why ever would you want to live in a tree where all the birds live? The whole premise was beyond ridiculous.
What do you mean, I’m overthinking it?
Fortunately, Florence fell asleep halfway through the second reading, so I sneaked downstairs.
“Freaking Tweaking sounds brilliant, doesn’t it, Jill?” Jack was way too excited.
“Fantastic.”
“It’s lucky Kathy told us about it. We might have gone out and missed all the fun.”
“That is lucky.” I was going to kill that sister of mine the next time I saw her. “Jack, now that Florence is asleep, I have to go out.”
“Why?”
“I want to check on Caroline. I popped in there this morning and she didn’t look very well at all. Her brother’s staying with her and I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him. I’m worried something really bad might happen.”
“Will you be gone long?”
“I don’t know. Possibly.”
“Be careful, Jill.”
“I always am.” I gave him a kiss. “Don’t wait up for me.”
***
I drove to Tweaking Manor, but instead of pulling into the driveway, I parked some distance up the road and made my way back to the house on foot. There was no point in knocking on the door because even if Ransom did answer it, there was no way he’d allow me inside again. Instead, I made myself invisible, and then magicked myself inside the manor house.
Standing in the large hallway, I listened for any sounds of life, but the house was silent. I made my way upstairs to Caroline’s bedroom and slipped quietly inside. She looked just as bad as she had earlier, so I walked over to her bedside, to make sure she was still breathing. She was, but she didn’t stir. Where was Ransom? He was supposed to be looking after her.
Once I was out of the bedroom, I cast the ‘listen’ spell. I figured that if there was anyone in the house, it would help me to hear them. The spell did the trick because I could hear a voice in the distance. It sounded like Ransom, and it appeared to be coming from downstairs somewhere.
Still invisible, I made my way down the stairs and followed the voice to a corridor with doors on either side. I expected the sound to come from one of the rooms, but it didn’t. Instead, it appeared to be coming from the very end of the corridor, but that didn’t make sense because it was a dead-end. As I stood there, trying to work out what was going on, I heard footsteps on the other side of the wall. Moments later, the wall slid open, and Ransom stepped out. As he walked away, the wall began to slide slowly closed, so I quickly slipped inside.
This was clearly the ‘lost’ secret passageway; its bare stone walls were illuminated by a series of lanterns. My sense of direction is not the best, but it was obvious even to me that the passageway led outside, under the rear garden. I’d walked at least a hundred yards, and still seen nothing of interest. Where did it lead to, and who had Ransom been shouting at?
I was beginning to think this was a wild goose chase when I saw it: Embedded in the rock wall was a huge vault. So, the legend of the parchment was true after all. There was a vault, but it wasn’t in Tweaking Manor. It was beneath the grounds behind the manor house.
Next to the vault was a small wooden table and a single wooden chair.
