The car stoppedand the engine was cut. Morton took a deep breath as the lights wereswitched off and his prison was plunged into total darkness.
His heart beganto race when he heard Guy’s heavy footfall on the stones.
Getting closerand closer.
A key turned inthe boot lock and the lid was tugged open, sending in a waft of clean cold airbut no extra light.
Goodold-fashioned fear and paranoia pinned Morton inside the boot. He closedhis eyes and regressed back to the childlike mentality that if he keptperfectly still and didn’t look out, then he couldn’t be seen.
A torch beamfell on his face. ‘What’re you doing, you weirdo?’ Guy asked. ‘Crap, are you dead?’
Morton openedhis eyes and almost blinded himself. He raised a hand to shield himselffrom the brain-frazzling glare.
‘Sorry, mate,’Guy said, switching the torch off. ‘Come on, we need to get a move on.’
Guy extended ahand to Morton and helped him out of the boot, his eyes graduallyadjusting. The car was parked on a rectangle of shingle surrounded onthree sides by an overabundance of dense foliage - cherry laurel, if his memoryof the lectures on fauna and flora with Dr Baumgartner was correct. Onthe fourth side, the direction in which they were now facing, was the unmistakablegrey stone façade of Charingsby, resembling a sinister country house from aBronte novel. It might have been the cold night air seeping through hisclothing, chilling his core but he had deep misgivings about the place and whathad occurred here all those years ago.
‘Ready?’ Guyasked.
‘Let’s do it,’Morton answered and he followed Guy across the car park area to a Gothicarchway in which was set a heavy black-studded, oak door protected by keypadentry. Guy tapped in a six-digit code which Morton did his best tomemorise. Then Morton watched as he pressed his thumb onto a scanningpad. Christ, they really didn’t want intruders getting inside,Morton thought.
A small greenLED illuminated and a heavy clunk sounded from the door’s internal mechanisms. Guy pushed it open and they stepped into a dim narrow passageway that smackedof a servants’ rat-run. Upstairs Downstairs and all that.
Morton’s heartbegan to pound even faster, which he hadn’t thought possible without rigorousexercise. They had rehearsed the plan over and again into the earlyhours; Guy had even drawn a map of the internal layout of Charingsby and, intrue Mission Impossible style, fed the paper into Morton’s father’sshredding machine. He suspected that Guy was disappointed not to have ahearty fire to dramatically toss it onto. They hadn’t managed to resolvethe question of what would actually happen if they were discovered. Better not to dwell on that.
They movedsilently down the passageway until it terminated at a perpendicular, slightlywider corridor. From his memory of Guy’s improvised map, Morton knew thatleft would lead them to the servants’ quarters – the direction in which Guyshould be heading if he were going to his room. Silently, the pair turnedright and followed the corridor until it reached a tightly-closed chunky oakdoor. Guy stopped and placed his ear at the keyhole. This was themoment when things could go dangerously wrong. Beyond the door was themain downstairs lobby, the heart of the house and the place at which they wouldmost likely be caught. Several armed security guards patrolled the houseday and night, and numerous CCTV cameras kept a twenty-four-seven vigil onunpatrolled areas.
Guy wasevidently satisfied that the coast was clear. It was the kind of settingwhere the door should creak loudly, announcing to all and sundry theirarrival. But it didn’t, it just opened gently to reveal what Morton couldonly think of as a magnificent entrance hall that put Mote Ridge to shame. An ornate multi-branched chandelier cast a diffused yellow glow over theroom. There was just enough light to see the massive gold-framedportraits of long-deceased Windsor-Sackvilles, glaring down at him, as if theywere aware of his potential to destroy everything that they stood for. Agrand staircase wound its way up before splitting into two and curving out ofsight. An intricate woven rug formed the centrepiece of the immaculatelypolished mahogany flooring.
‘Impressive,huh?’ Guy whispered, breaking a self-imposed rule that there should be notalking unless absolutely necessary. It hardly seemed necessary to Mortonto ask if he found it impressive. A nodded response sufficed.
Guy closed thedoor behind them and they began the long journey to the door beside the foot ofthe staircase. If it was going to go wrong anywhere, then it washere. To avoid the CCTV cameras, they had to creep around the room’sextremities, which would take them a whole lot longer than simply walkingdirectly across the floor.
Guy strangelyacted like he’d done this before, ducking carefully this way and that,circumventing protruding furniture like a professional dancer. Maybe he haddone this before. Morton’s paranoia resurfaced; could this all be atrap? Guy did seem to have a very in-depth knowledge of the internalworkings and security of a house in which he was simply a – what was hisjob? Footman? Butler? Did this sort of a place still havethose roles? Whatever, now wasn’t the time to start asking questions;they’d finally reached the door – the door behind which all of thedarkest Windsor-Sackville secrets were kept. This was the doorinto the walled garden to which Peter Coldrick wanted access. Where othergenealogists had failed to conquer, Morton was here, on the verge of discovery.
All thingsconsidered, the door to the archives of Charingsby offered little in the way ofresistance. It was protected by nothing more than an outlandishly largelock, for which Guy had the outlandishly large key.
Five secondslater, they were inside. Guy tapped in another six digit code to preventthe alarm from sounding.
Morton quietlyclosed the door and took stock of the room. It was huge, effortlesslydwarfing East Sussex Archives. There were no windows and no other exitpoints other than that through which they had just entered. The wallswere lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves
