‘Don’t you remember? Oh, of course not, you weren’t with me. There’s a white marble sarcophagus down there, and someone has just left a white marble urn in my room. There’s nothing inside it but what you would expect to find in an urn, so it must be the clue. Where’s Tom? We need the cellar keys.’
‘He’s at the stables. Apparently the Major went riding this morning and has not returned.’
‘Did he? I hope he hasn’t met with an accident,’ said Phryne concernedly. ‘The horse might have been injured.’
‘Phryne, what a wicked thing to say,’ said Lin Chung, largely as a matter of form.
‘Absolutely. Jack really is a good player, isn’t he? I have to agree with Gerald’s comment.’
The spotted white ball struck the green baize side of the table, flew across the surface, and the fated red ball dropped into a pocket again.
‘Billiards is a game for gentlemen – a very Chinese game, really, positional. Of course, one cannot play snooker in a refined house like this,’ commented Lin, and Phryne scanned his smooth face for irony. It was just not possible to guess what he was thinking from his expression. He exhibited all the blank solemnity of a stuffed fish, especially when delivering the most devastating barbs. It was an irritating trait. Equally, he was the object of Phryne’s profound desire and the touch of his hand as he laid his fingertips gently on her shoulder made her shiver.
‘Coming?’ she asked, and he followed her from the room.
Hinchcliff surrendered the keys to Miss Fisher, detaching them from his watchchain. ‘Mr Reynolds told me to render you all the assistance in my power, Miss Fisher.’
‘Hinchcliff, are there other keys to the cellar?’ asked Phryne.
‘I believe there was another bunch, Miss, but they were lost years ago. Mr Reynolds left them in the garden somewhere.’
‘I see. I’ll be careful of the stairs,’ she promised, as the warning rose to his lips.
The cellar was as dark as the inside of a whale. Phryne groped for and found the light-cord and pulled. They winced away from the glare of the naked bulb.
‘There,’ she said, pointing back into the dim recesses.
The floor of the cellar was slick and slippery, though someone had pumped out the standing water and re- capped the well. The marble object – surely it could not really be a sarcophagus, even in Cave House – stood solidly under a pile of tea-chests and crates.
‘This looks as though it hasn’t been touched for years,’ said Lin Chung, observing a bloom of green slime along the white marble.
‘I know, but I haven’t got a lot to go on and that urn was left there by someone who wanted to tell me something. Wait a bit.’ She lifted a crate of empty bottles and lay them aside on a stack of mildewing trunks. ‘Look, Lin. The lid’s been shifted. See that nice growth of algae? It follows the line of the lid. How do you feel about dead bodies?’
‘I am not enamoured, but carry on.’
They cleared away the last of the impedimenta. Phryne picked up a case-opener, which bore a distinct resemblance to a jemmy, and inserted it under the lip of the tomb.
‘I’ll lever, you slide,’ she said, holding her breath.
The lid resisted for a moment, glued fast with mould. Then Phryne managed to lift it enough for Lin to grasp the edge and pull it towards himself. It screeched as the worked edges scraped across each other.
Phryne and Lin bent to look inside.
At that moment, the light went out and cellar door clanged shut with a hollow boom.
Dark hair said to gold hair, ‘It’s happening.’
‘What’s happening?’
‘The train of events that will bring us together – my love, my dear love.’
‘What have you done?’ said gold hair to dark hair, both hands on a serge-clad chest, resisting the embrace.
‘I have done what I had to do.’
‘For us?’ asked gold hair.
‘For us,’ said dark hair tenderly and this time gold hair accepted the kiss.
‘Phryne?’ Lin asked. He let go of the stone lid, which balanced on the edge of the coffin. Phryne stretched out a hand, touched his hair, and slid down to grasp his wrist.
‘Well, here we are,’ she said excitedly. ‘Someone doesn’t want us to find out what is in this box. I must be getting somewhere. It’s most gratifying.’
‘Gratifying?’ asked Lin Chung.
‘Absolutely. Now, if you can come towards me, around the coffin, we should be about three paces from the stairs.’ She moved slowly, sliding her feet across the slippery floor, anxious not to collide with anything. Her groping touch found a wall.
‘Good. I’ve got a reference point.’ Lin came to stand beside her. ‘Now all we need to do is walk along this wall until we reach the stairs.’
‘The door is locked,’ Lin pointed out. ‘Do you have the key?’
‘Yes, of course. Or rather, no. I left it in the door, on the other side. Dammit. We’re locked in. But at least we can have some light and there must be a way out of this cellar.’
‘We will need to find it,’ said Lin imperturbably out of the darkness.
‘Oh, why?’
‘Because the floor, dry enough when we came in, is now an inch deep in water. That well, as youre call, floods the cellar. If the water rises high enough . . .’
‘It won’t. Tom would never let his precious wines get wet. There, there are the stairs. Follow me up,’ she said, as he placed his hand on her waist. They splashed through the cellar and up the castle stairs. Phryne counted. Five steps and a turn. Five more and another turn. Then she stood up with one hand on her guiding wall and flailed for the light cord. She caught at spider webs, but otherwise there was just empty air.
‘Lin, I can’t find the string for the light.’
‘He could have brought it along the ceiling and jammed it in the door.’
‘So he could. Further up. Here’s the door. You take that side, I’ll take this.’
They groped around the edges of the cellar door. It was a thick, solid wooden door, studded with iron nails with large heads. Phryne did not like their chances of chopping through it, even if they had a battleaxe. Though there might even be a battleaxe in the cellar of Cave House, probably along with a full set of fourteenth-century plate armour and the knight who wore it.
Lin said, ‘There’s no cord. He must have cut it.’
‘Never mind. There’s a little light; my eyes have got used to it now. Hinchcliff knows where we are. Someone will come and rescue us.’
‘However, since it might take them a while to miss us, we might make some arrangements for our comfort,’ he suggested.
He felt his way down the stairs again and Phryne heard him floundering in the dark, swearing in Cantonese, and splashing in what was evidently rising water.
He came up again and she felt him sit beside her on the broad top step.
‘A bottle of wine,’ he said, setting it down. ‘Champagne, by the cork. I’ve also got the case-opener, which we might try on the door, and the cellarman’s cushion for his port, when it was brought here in the dray. I fancy that it is an old bedcover. Are you cold?’
‘Yes.’ Phryne accepted half of the quilt, which stank of mould, and snuggled closer to Lin who was always warm. He bent to kiss her and she felt him shudder.
‘Are you cold, too?’
‘No. It’s not the cold. I . . . I don’t like this place.’
‘Neither do I,’ she agreed.
‘I mean,’ he said with exquisite embarrassment, ‘I do not like confined spaces and I especially do not like confined dark spaces.’
‘I see. Well, no point in sitting here, then. Come on. Let’s heave at that door.’
Lin found the lock and tried to force the claws of the case-opener into them. After a few minutes, he grunted,
