EG02 - The Lost Gardens (25 page)

The meeting with Jamie was shorter than he’d anticipated. By eleven thirty, eight of the thirty lime trees were planted. Even with only four trees, equally spaced on each side of the walk, the visual effect was striking. Kingston left the crew to finish the planting when Ferguson arrived at noon sharp. After a brief exchange of pleasantries with Jamie, Kingston whisked him off to view the chapel.

Ferguson’s reaction was more or less exactly what Kingston had anticipated: a mixture of awe and curiosity. For the first five minutes there was little talk as the archivist went to work silently studying every inch of the chapel and the well. It wasn’t long before Ferguson asked the question that Kingston had been expecting.

‘I take it you haven’t made any progress regarding the old priory basement?’ Ferguson asked, taking a tiny silver camera from his jacket pocket.

The word ‘basement’ struck Kingston as amusing. Surely an academic could come up with a more fitting noun? ‘Unfortunately, no,’ he replied. ‘You’d have been the first to know if I had, Roger. Without some kind of documented or physical evidence to tell us the exact location of the priory, it’s going to be impossible to find the underground rooms—if they still exist, that is.’

‘You’ve gone over the chapel pretty thoroughly then?’

‘At least half a dozen times.’

‘It would have been the perfect location for a secret entrance but I can see the problem. There aren’t many places to hide it in here, that’s for sure,’ Ferguson said, gazing up and around the chapel.

‘That’s what’s so baffling. I was so damned sure that the entrance to the priory cellars, catacombs or whatever you want to call them was hidden in this chapel that I could
smell
it. But now I think it’s most likely somewhere in the house.’

Ferguson nodded. ‘I suppose it’s still the most logical site. I don’t think, somehow, it would be anywhere else.’

‘I guess so,’ Kingston sighed. ‘But there’s no saying
where
those damned monks built their priory. It could have been anywhere on the entire bloody estate.’

‘What does Jamie think about all this?’

‘At first, she was—well, ambivalent I suppose is the right word. I think, in the beginning, she thought I was some kind of English Don Quixote. But lately she’s come round to the idea that there may be something to it after all. Although, I must say, she’s not one for digging into the past.’

‘She’s an exception, then. Most of the Americans I’ve met lap up anything that’s historical. English history must be on the curriculum of every college in the country. Sometimes I think they know more about us than we do ourselves.’

Kingston waited patiently while Ferguson spent the next ten minutes snapping digital photos of every inch of the chapel. It seemed a trifle excessive to Kingston but Ferguson was an archivist after all, and by the miniature size of the camera, it was reasonable to assume that it was a new toy. After a few minutes spent viewing the results on the LCD monitor, they left the chapel and went back to the house, to join Jamie for lunch. By the time Ferguson left, it was close to three.

Kingston decided to take a walk to the walled garden where the peach house was nearing completion. When discovered, it was little more than a grey skeleton of rotted wood and broken panes of filthy glass supported only by the ivy and a strangle of vines that had almost sealed its fate. Kingston was all for taking it down but was persuaded by one of the master joiners on the team that it could be refurbished. What followed in the ensuing weeks was a singular achievement of extraordinary skill, patience and love. Despite the severe rot in the wooden sections, two joiners were able to make accurate templates to rebuild the framework. Behind them two glaziers went to work installing glass that was saved from the original framework and matching panes cut from old ones found in a salvage yard. Finally, the paint crew had given it a primer coat and two top coats of white paint. The brick flooring was now being installed and soon the handsome structure, butted against the high garden wall, with its steep sloping, south-facing roof would be home to peaches, nectarines, guavas, passion fruit and pineapples as it was in its glory days.

At four thirty, Kingston left the gardens and made his way back to the cottage where his bag of tools was ready waiting. The canvas bag contained a hammer, set of screwdrivers, chisel, pliers, electronic stud finder, several types of brush, can of air spray, a heavy Mag-lite flashlight and other miscellaneous items. Recalling the maxim that flashlights are tubular metal containers often kept in a briefcase to store dead batteries, he wasn’t going to trust his memory as to when the batteries were last changed, so he threw in four new spares.

It was drizzling steadily as he made his way to the chapel. Somehow the weather seemed appropriate for the Gothic encounter to come. This could be his last trip to the chapel. If he didn’t find the secret entrance to the catacombs this time, he would give up.

Closing the door to the chapel behind him, he switched on the flashlight and walked down the aisle to the first row of pews. There, he placed the toolkit on the bench, turned on the floodlights and sat down next to the aisle. He shivered. The place was like a tomb. Unlike his previous visits, where he’d spent many hours examining the limestone walls and timbers up close, and scrutinizing the floor on his hands and knees, he decided, this time, to simply sit and study the interior as an integral unit. He wasn’t quite sure what this might accomplish but he’d tried just about everything else and his instincts told him that perhaps he was looking too hard: that the answer was staring him in the face. Maybe not ‘staring’ but it was here
somewhere
. He felt it in his bones.

Sitting on the hard pew, he looked around the interior. It was now so familiar that he could visualize it with eyes closed. After a minute or so he gave up. With one elbow resting on his knee, he lowered his head, closed his eyes and massaged his brow. ‘Damn,’ he muttered under his breath. He sighed deeply, opened his eyes and stared blankly at the wooden rail of the pew front barely inches from him. It was the colour of dark chocolate with a lighter grain. He was sure it was oak. The eighteenth-century Welsh dresser in his flat had similar graining and patina. He leaned back, stretching an arm along the back of the pew, looking across the aisle to the row on the other side.

Perhaps he should forget the whole thing. It was taking up far too much of his time and if he hadn’t found anything by now, chances were he never would. Just how important was it anyway? Important to him but not necessarily to Jamie. Since their talk in the car on the way back from the hospital, she had not mentioned the attempt on her life. It was clear that she was making an heroic effort to put it behind her—trying to behave normally. And now, right on top of it, Dot’s death. It was remarkable how well Jamie was holding up.

Right after the accident, Kingston had suggested that she get away for a while, even go back to the States and perhaps stay there until such time that credible explanations were found for the deaths and bizarre happenings that had taken place at Wickersham. He could keep things going in her absence; hire a new full-time housekeeper, keep working on the gardens and maintain the house.

But she would hear none of it. As much as she tried to behave as if nothing had happened, the stress was clearly getting the better of her. The laughter was gone between them and the smiles were fewer.

He had purposely avoided bringing up the matter of hiring a contractor to go through the chapel, as she had recently suggested. He saw no point in it right now but knew if this last search of his were abortive, that would be the next step. He would insist on it.

With the thoughts of Jamie swirling in his mind, Kingston had forgotten all about what he was supposed to be doing. He stood for a moment to stretch his legs. The pew was hard and unforgiving. He felt sorry for the devout worshippers, required to sit interminably through droning sermons in those bygone years.

Why was he looking so hard at the pew on the other side of the aisle? It was identical to the others but … somehow different. It took him several seconds before he realized why. He crossed the aisle and looked closely at the wood surface, then cast his eyes down the row. He turned around and looked at the row behind, then the one behind that. He went back to where he’d been sitting and studied the surface of the wood again.

With his knowledge of the cellular origins of graining, he knew that the wood was tangential cut: a longitudinal section cut parallel to the long axis of the trunk. In this respect, all the pews were the same. But the wood of the pew where he was sitting was slightly, very slightly lighter in colour than the others in the chapel. Perhaps it was the angle of the floodlights? Was that creating the illusion? He went over to the heavy tripod that Jack had rigged up and dragged it closer to the front row of pews. He rotated it ninety degrees, then back a few degrees until the two lights shone equally on both sides of the aisle. There was no question, his pew was fractionally lighter in colour.

He took out the flashlight, bent down and shone it on the base of the pew where it met the flagstones. He saw what looked like a tiny crevice. How was the pew joined to the flagstones, he wondered? He leaned his hip up against the pew and shoved. Nothing moved. It was rock solid. Pulling out the can of air spray, he whiffed it along the crevice. The jet of air propelled a puff of dust and dirt in front of it as he moved along the pew. He stopped to examine the result. Between the base of the pew and the stone floor was a gap, little more than one eighth of an inch. It continued along both sides.

He stood, gripped the front rail of the pew with both hands and shook it hard. Again, nothing budged. He tried lifting it—same result. Whatever method had been used to affix the pew to the floor was both rigid and cleverly concealed. He scratched his head and stood looking down the length of the bench. How was the damned pew anchored to the ground?

He couldn’t come up with the answer. Instead he came up with an intriguing hypothesis. The footprint of the pew was roughly three feet wide by about six or seven feet long, at the most. If the pew were removed, it would leave an opening in the floor sufficiently wide and long enough for a person to comfortably pass through. In his mind’s eye he visualized the primitive mechanics: the pew being hinged by a transverse rod at one end, and when lifted from the opposite end, tilting it to vertical, revealing a flight of steps down into the underground chambers. The more he thought about the idea the more it made sense. Problem was—how to raise the pew? How would the monks of those medieval times have designed and constructed it?

Logically, he figured that there had to be a concealed release mechanism somewhere not too far from the pew. He started with the presupposition that the device would be primitive. More likely a cord or cable of some kind attached to a spring that released and activated a locking device, the same principle as a conventional door latch. The obvious hiding place was the pulpit. Only a few feet from the front pew, it would have been relatively easy for the monks, or those who had conceived the system, to fabricate. Problem was that the pulpit was so simply constructed. It was no more than a panelled box with turned balusters on the corners, topped with a slanted panel to hold the scriptures or sermons. There was nowhere, inside or out, to hide a secret panel, lever or toggle. He’d already gone over it before, top to bottom.

The next possibility was the baptismal font. That was immediately behind the pulpit, off to the right. It was made entirely of stone and resembled a crude birdbath, certainly nowhere to hide anything there. Likewise, the well. Once again, it looked like a stalemate.

Kingston stood next to the pulpit thinking back to the meeting with Chadwick. Perhaps not telling Chadwick and Jamie about the chapel and the underground rooms might have been a mistake on his part. He knew damned well why he hadn’t. First and foremost, he wanted to impress and surprise Jamie with the discovery—if it happened, that is. And second, he didn’t want Chadwick to step in just yet and shove him aside, which he knew was exactly what would happen. Regardless of what took place from now on, he would tell Jamie everything that he’d been up to. Then she could decide what she wanted to do about it, which, ironically, would probably be to involve the police.

Forgetting all this, calmed by the solemn quiet, he let his eyes wander round the chapel. The all too familiar unadorned plaster walls, the stern pews, the ancient well that had surrendered its grisly contents. How many sermons had been voiced from the simple pulpit, he wondered? Was it just the family and staff at Wickersham who filled the pews? Or were the local parishioners included? How many generations had shuffled through these dark oaken doors to celebrate the joyous moments of their lives or salve their guilt?

He inhaled deeply, rubbed his brow and sighed. That was it, then. The monks of Wickersham Priory had won. Either that or he’d been wrong all along. He took one last look around the chapel, then hoisted up the tool bag from the floor by the pulpit. As he turned to leave, the back of the bag banged against the front of the pulpit. It was no more than a light knock—caused by one of the heavier tools, the hammer or the flashlight—but it was enough to give him pause and stop. There was something about it that hadn’t sounded right. Lowering the bag to the ground, he stooped and knocked three times with his knuckle on the same spot. It was a hollow sound. Not unexpected because the pulpit itself was nothing more than a vertical box enclosed on three sides. But it didn’t sound right. It was what? Too hollow a sound?

He let go of the bag and stood for a moment examining the front of the pulpit. Then he went round to the back and positioned himself where the vicar or priest would have stood to address his small flock. With his hands resting on either side of the pulpit, like a prisoner in a dock pleading his innocence, he stared out to the empty pews. Then he looked down to the place where the bible or scriptures would be. Then he got it.