‘Perhaps the priest that was caught here had simply been hiding in a wardrobe or under one of the beds,’ Rob suggested. ‘I used to have nightmares about somebody hiding under my bed… maybe that was why.’
As they made their way back towards the landing, John looked up at the trapdoor in the ceiling.
‘Is it easy to get up into the attic?’
‘Reasonably,’ said Rob, opening the nearest bedroom door and showing him the old wooden stepladder that was leaning against the wall. ‘But Martin and I went up there yesterday and we couldn’t see anywhere that Timmy could have hidden. There’s nothing but the water tank and a whole pile of old suitcases.’
‘All the same,’ John told him. ‘And I’ll want to search that bedroom, too.’
Rob dragged the stepladder out into the corridor and opened it up. ‘Just be careful… I’ll hold on to it because the cord’s broken and we don’t want it doing the splits when you get to the top.’
John warily mounted the stepladder, which creaked ominously with every step that he took. He lifted the trapdoor, reached around and switched on the lights. Then he heaved himself right up into the attic, and disappeared.
Rob and Vicky waited in the corridor as they heard him walking from one side of the attic to the other.
‘Anything?’ called Rob, after a while.
‘No… nowhere to hide a priest. And no sign of your little lad… not unless he’s hiding under all these clothes.’
‘What clothes?’
‘All these clothes that are strewn all over the place. You said there were suitcases up here, didn’t you? They’re wide open, all of them. The whole attic looks like an H-bomb’s been dropped on a charity shop.’
‘You’re joking,’ said Rob. He beckoned to Vicky and said, ‘Can you hold the stepladder steady for me? I have to see this.’
He climbed up until he was high enough to see inside the attic. Carefully turning around, he saw John standing beside a knee-deep heap of sweaters, jackets, shirts, trousers and underwear, as well as washbags and books and several pairs of men’s brogues. All of the suitcases he had seen when he had climbed up here with Martin were lying around, and as John had said, all of them were gaping wide open. Somehow, somebody had managed to gain access to the attic without being seen or heard by any one of them, open up all the suitcases and tip out their contents onto the boarded floor.
‘I’m stunned,’ said Rob. ‘I’m totally baffled. I mean, this is seriously creepy. None of these cases was open when we saw them yesterday. I can’t understand how anybody could possibly have got up here to do this. Or why.’
‘Whoever it was, it could be that they were looking for something.’
‘That’s more than likely, although I still can’t work out how they got up here without us being aware of it. But we’ll never know what it was they were looking for, will we? If they found it they’ll have taken it away, and even if they couldn’t find it, because it wasn’t here, we still shan’t know what it was.’
John bent down and lifted up the label that was tied to one of the suitcase handles.
‘A. Mallett. HMP Dartmoor.’
‘Yes… they’re all prisoners’ suitcases, although I have no idea why my dad had them all stored up here in his attic.’
‘Now that somebody’s been rifling through them, I think we need to tell Sergeant Billings. Just like you say, we can’t guess what they were looking for and whether they found it or not. Could have been anything, couldn’t it? A gun? Drugs? Uncut diamonds? Some incriminating piece of evidence?’
He stood up straight again, taking a last look around the attic. ‘Whoever it was, they weren’t hiding in a priest hole up here, because there isn’t one.’
*
They climbed back down the stepladder.
‘What is it?’ asked Vicky. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘I think I’d feel better if I had seen a ghost,’ said Rob. ‘At least that would have been some explanation.’
He told her about the open suitcases, and how their contents had been scattered around the attic floor.
‘John thinks we ought to tell the police about it, and of course I will. I still can’t understand what all those prisoners’ belongings were doing up in the attic anyway.’
‘You don’t think your father could have—?’
‘Stolen them? No. Why would he? It’s not as though there’s anything valuable in them – not as far as we know, anyway. Only clothes and toiletries and shoes – the sort of things you pack when you’re going away for a holiday or a business trip.’
They walked back to the landing.
‘I’m going to call Sergeant Billings now,’ said Rob, but before he could start back downstairs, John caught hold of his sleeve and said, ‘Wait a moment, Mr Russell.’
‘What is it?’
John pointed to the small latticed window on the left side of the landing.
‘Look how far away that window is, compared to the stained-glass windows in the first two bedrooms. Hold on, let me measure it.’
He walked heel-to-toe towards the window and then turned around. ‘Twenty feet. More than seven feet longer than the distance from the doors to the windows in the bedrooms.’
‘I never noticed that before. But it doesn’t make any sense, does it? Those two bedrooms both have windows that look out over the garden. If you go down to the garden you can look up and you can see them. Both stained glass.’
‘Can you open them?’
‘No, but they both let daylight in.’
John knocked on the wall. He pressed his ear to the plaster and knocked again, harder this time.
‘I’m not sure, but I think there could be a cavity behind here.’
‘Okay… but how
