"The Stranger House" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hill Reginald)

10. Knock knock, who’s there?

Once again, as on Stanebank that morning, it didn’t take Sam long to catch up with the Spaniard. As she drew alongside he gave her a not very welcoming glance. Up yours too, she thought, thrusting the Illthwaite Guide at him.

“You might as well have this,” she said. “I’m out of here soon as I get paid up and packed.”

She would have accelerated by him, if he hadn’t snapped out of miserable mode, flashing that rejuvenating smile as he said, “No chocolate on offer this time?”

“I’m right out. Thought you didn’t like it anyway.”

“I feel I could do with an injection of energy from any source. But that’s life. We never want what’s on offer till the offer is no longer there.”

“That from the Bible?” she inquired.

“Oh no. The Bible says Ask and it shall be given you.”

“Handy. So why’s it not raining chocolate?”

“I think the offer predates the product.”

“Pity. Your mob could have done themselves a bit of good if you’d been able to break squares off a choc bar instead of handing out those tasteless little wafer things.”

“You have a problem with religion, I think,” he said gravely.

“Why should I? You don’t have a problem with me, do you?”

He thought about this and then smiled again and said, “No, I don’t think I do. You seem to have made a friend of the famous forger back there.”

“Sorry?” said Sam, puzzled by the shift.

“Mr. Winander. From the Forge. Hence, forger.”

A joke. But a hit too. She had the impression that Winander would get as much pleasure from fooling you with a forged masterpiece as from producing a real one. Maybe the Spaniard felt this too. More probable, she thought, he’s taken against Winander because he’s had Miss Icicle as a model. In which case, he should thank his anti-choc god he didn’t get to see the wood carving!

They walked the rest of the way to the pub in a silence which, surprisingly, was more companionable than combative. In fact, with the sun shining bright and Madero by her side, the distance seemed only half of what it had been the day before.

When they reached the Stranger, they found it locked, and several loud bangs at the door failed to rouse Mrs. Appledore.

“Not to worry,” said Sam. “I’ve got a key.”

She unlocked the door and they stepped inside.

On the landing, Madero said, “I hope you find what you’re looking for, Miss Flood.”

“You too,” she said.

He offered his hand which she took. Rather gingerly, but he didn’t hold on half as long as the Woollass woman.

In her room Sam found an envelope on the pillow. In it were her bill and a note.

Dear Miss Flood

Dead quiet this lunchtime so I thought I’d shut up early and head off to do some shopping. If you’ve decided to move on, please leave money or check on kitchen table. No credit cards. Sorry. Hope you enjoy the rest of your visit to England.

Best wishes

Edie Appledore

Sam felt some regret that she might not see Edie Appledore again before she went. There was something very likeable about the woman. But there was no reason to hang around. While it seemed a large coincidence that there’d been a bloke here called Sam Flood who’d topped himself, her study of probability theory had taught her to be unimpressed with coincidence. Flood was a common enough name, the dates didn’t fit, and the curate’s sad end explained why the locals wanted to draw a decent veil over the event. So best to ship out. The fact that her appointment in Newcastle wasn’t till the following afternoon gave her the chance to drive at her leisure and enjoy the scenery.

She checked her bill which was fine except that Mrs. Appledore clearly had a problem with VAT at 17.5 percent and had settled for something like 12.3 recurring. Sam adjusted it, wrote a check and put it in the envelope. Then she went down to the kitchen. She pushed the door open, stepped inside and did a little jump as she saw a dark figure standing at the end of the huge table.

It was Madero.

“Jesus!” she exclaimed, annoyed at showing her shock. “How the hell do you get down those stairs without them creaking? That something you learned at the seminary?”

She regretted her rudeness instantly but Madero didn’t show any sign of reacting. Indeed he hardly seemed to have noticed her entrance. He was leaning forward with both hands on the table, his head bowed, like a man about to say grace before dinner.

“You OK, Mr. Madero?” she said, moving toward him.

Now he raised his head slowly. The pupils of his eyes seemed huge, as though expanded in a desperate search for light.

He said, “I felt something in here last night… It was what I expected to feel up at the Hall… but something more… yes, something stronger…”

He started moving down the side of the table, running his fingers along its edge.

Sam went to prop her bill up against the telephone. She noticed the phone was unplugged. The reason for Madero’s presence was made clear by the sight of a laptop connected to the point. Her gaze drifted to the screen. There was an e-mail displayed plus the Download Complete box. She didn’t mean to read it, but even a brief accidental glance was enough to print words and images on her mind.

Hi! Just to say my tec wiz unearthed the old Molloy website. Nothing on it but a self-promoting CV plus a selection of articles he’d written, presumably the best – if so, God help us! But interestingly one of the pieces (which I attach) demonstrates that he’d actually been to Jolley Castle and dug into the archive there. Tim Lilleywhite’s been back on this morning. He’s 99% sure he’s trawled up all the Tyrwhitt stuff now and definitely nothing more on Simeon. Sorry, but this Simeon thing is really a bit of a red herring, isn’t it? The main thing is your recusancy research. Hope that’s going well. Try not to fall into any priest-holes!

Cheers

Max

As she turned away, she found herself thinking, with slightly malicious amusement, old Max isn’t going to be pleased when he hears how his Holiness has cocked things up!

She set off toward the door. Madero was now sitting at the bottom end of the table, his face still rapt. As she passed him his hand snaked out, seized her wrist and forced her hand between his legs.

“Feel this,” he said. “What do you think this is?”

She bunched her other fist preparatory to punching him in the throat, then realized he was pushing her fingers along the table’s under-edge.

About nine inches from the corner there was a groove about two inches long, ending in a deep hollow. When her no longer resisting hand was moved along, she found another one the same distance from the other corner.

“They mean something,” he said. “I feel it as strongly as I didn’t feel it at the Hall.”

“Feel what?” she demanded.

“There was this so-called priest-hole,” he said impatiently, as if expecting her to understand him without explanation. “But I got nothing there. Whereas here…”

So Max, the e-mailer, hadn’t been joking. He really was looking for priest-holes! Which, he might be surprised to discover, she knew a great deal about. Well, a little deal.

One of her teachers used to read her class books she’d enjoyed in her own English childhood. OK, they’d been a bit old-fashioned, but Sam had loved these tales of tomboy girls in remote manor houses and boarding schools who were forever stumbling on secret passages and hidden chambers. Priest-holes were ten a penny in the UK, it seemed to the young Sam, and the land must be so honeycombed with subterranean passages that it was a wonder it didn’t just crumble underfoot.

Madero, like a good failed priest, was looking upward in search of inspiration. Sam looked up in search of clues. Right above her were the cured hams dangling from the hooks beneath the crossbeam. She recalled her reaction when she first noticed the pulley system the previous day.

She said, “What’s a ham weigh? Ten kilos? Wouldn’t have thought you needed such a high-geared ratchet for that.”

Madero’s gaze came slowly back into focus.

“Maybe they had bigger hams back then,” he said.

“Maybe.”

She went to the spindle on the left-hand wall and examined it closely. After a moment she pulled out the brake chock and began to lower the ham.

“Come on!” she said impatiently, looking across at Madero.

He took her meaning instantly and went to the other wall. For a few moments the only sound was the clacking of the ratchets as the hams descended. Hers landed first and, as she started to unhook it, she glanced his way again but this time did not need to speak. Funny how well their thought processes seemed to slot in together when they got beyond their instinctive antagonism. Together they bent down to fit the free hooks into the grooves and hollows beneath the table, then returned to the winding gear and in unison began to turn the handles.

Even with the gearing cogs, it took a good effort to lift the solid table, but slowly the massive legs rose. The hams began to slide down the slope and Sam paused, but Madero kept winding, so she resumed, wincing as the hams crashed to the floor.

When the table reached an angle of about forty degrees, Madero commanded, “Enough,” which was just like a guy. You have the idea, he’s not happy till he’s taken over. Now he dropped to his knees to examine the granite slabs of the floor, in particular the two which bore the circular print left by five centuries of pressure from the table legs. They were both a couple of feet square.

“There is some movement here, I think,” said Madero excitedly.

“So what?” said Sam. “Even if it does lift out, unless all your priests were my build, you’d never get one of them through a hole that size.”

“But it must signify something,” he insisted.

“Maybe. Look, if these old monks were clever enough to devise that lifting gear, they’d probably have something a bit more complicated than a simple trap.”

“Like what?”

“Well, like a counterweight system. Yeah, that could be it. How about if these two small flags are counterweights and when the table legs are resting on them the trap entrance is completely locked. Let’s see…”

She looked around, and finally her gaze came to rest on the greenish rectangular slab with the carving on it.

“This looks a possible. What the hell does this stuff say?”

“It’s from the Bible. Matthew 7:7. Curiously, I quoted part of it as we walked along the road. Ask, and it shall be given you. Seek, and ye shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”

“Knock, and it shall be opened,” she echoed. “OK, let’s try.”

She knelt down and gently tapped the end of the slab.

Nothing happened.

She tapped again, harder.

Still nothing.

He said with a patience worse than mockery, “I think unless there is somebody down there to answer, your knocking theory is a non-starter.”

“Don’t be a smart-ass,” she retorted. “If these guys were as bright as I think, they’d know to the last gram just how much pressure you needed to move the counterweights, and it wouldn’t be much, else what’s the point? You’d want something like this to be swift and smooth and pretty quiet. Know what I think?”

“Not yet,” he said.

“I think it’s got gunged up. Jeez, could be centuries since it’s been used.”

She stood up, reached one foot forward and drove it down on the slab.

Nothing moved.

She did it again.

“Think I felt something there,” she said.

“Sam, be careful,” said Madero.

It was the first time he’d used her given name but it didn’t feel like a step to intimacy, more like a parent admonishing a naughty child.

So her natural adult reaction was to act like one.

She fixed him with her slatey gaze and said, “Knock, knock; who’s there?”

Then, jumping as high as she could into the air, she came down with all her slight weight on the end of the slab.

It was enough. It was more than enough.

With a smooth swiftness which gave her no time at all to react, the slab pivoted away beneath her feet to reveal a black hole into which she vanished like an insect picked out of the air by the tongue of a lizard.