Silent as the Grave (23 page)

‘I can't be sure. If I had to guess I'd say fifteen or twenty minutes. Is all this important?'

Eve's voice sounded drowsy and her speech had become a trifle slurred.

‘It could be very important, Evie; how are you feeling? Are you all right?' I was concerned by her detached almost dreamy tone.

‘My head aches awfully and I feel ever so sleepy,' Eve confirmed.

That didn't sound at all good to me and the last thing we needed in our cell was more bad news. ‘I want you to keep talking to me. It's very, very important, do you understand? Evie you must try and keep from falling asleep. You've had a nasty bang on the head and the worst thing would be to fall asleep.'

‘OK, Adam, I'll try my best but it's very hard.'

‘I'll kick you or pinch you to make sure you stay awake,' I threatened.

‘Try that and you could get a boot in the balls.'

I grinned. ‘Right I'm going to leave you now. I want to have a look around.'

‘A look around?' she echoed. ‘Adam, you may not have noticed but we're in total darkness, what's there to see?'

I was delighted, the sarcastic tone was more the old Eve. ‘OK, wise guy,' I conceded. ‘I mean a feel around. I'm going to see if I can find a way out of this place.'

I began the slow and painful process of crawling across the floor, my right leg dragging behind me until I reached the wall where we had leant when we were going through the process of freeing ourselves. I inched my way along it and headed to my left; towards where I'd seen the impression of a lighter patch above our heads. I knew I had a long slow crawl ahead of me as I needed to reach the opposite corner of the chamber or at least that was where I judged it to be. The darkness was disorientating which didn't help.

I glanced at the luminous dial on my wrist watch. It showed 3.15 p.m. If there was to be any light above us, it would not last much longer on a short winter day – and my crawl across the floor of the chamber seemed to be taking an age.

I was not making spectacular progress when I was slowed by something I hadn't reckoned on. That was the chance of meeting unwelcome obstacles in my path. I had been crawling for some time when I felt something move under my hand. I felt about. It was narrow and hard. At first it felt like a stick. As I moved my hand further I felt another; then more and more. I almost cried out aloud with horror when I realized what it was that I was touching.

It was without doubt the bones of a human skeleton.

Chapter Twenty

I sat for a long moment; shivering with revulsion at the grisly reminder of the dungeon's terrible past. As I struggled to retain my composure some measure of my distress must have communicated itself to Eve. Although I had managed to check my impulse to cry out aloud at the abhorrent manifestation she asked me almost immediately if I was all right. The tone of her voices mirrored the depth of her anxiety. ‘Yes, I'm OK,' I told her, although this was far from being the truth.

I may have been able to avoid any audible expression of dismay; I hadn't been able to stop myself from recoiling from the awful thing before me. The unstoppable reflex action had communicated itself throughout my body and the involuntary movement set up a fresh howl of protest from the nerves in my injured leg.

I gritted my teeth and tried to concentrate on the task I'd set myself. This was in part down to a wish to be out of this abomination of a chamber, and in some measure to free my thoughts from the recent encounter and the pain it had generated. The attempt wasn't an unqualified success but with the passage of time the discomfort eased. ‘How are you doing?' I asked with as much cheerfulness as I could manage. From my tone of voice it didn't sound much.

‘Adam, I'm cold. So cold that I can hardly feel my fingers and toes.'

So was I, but I hadn't wanted to admit the fact. The penetrating cold was only part of the problem, and not the worst part by any means. The other concern that was uppermost in my mind, despite my determination not to dwell on it, was certainly something I wasn't prepared to tell Eve unless I absolutely had to. By now I had realized that the dungeon was sealed off to the outside world and that meant sooner or later the oxygen within that small chamber would run out as we consumed it.

The question was whether it would be better to wait in the hope of being rescued and thus remain inactive to conserve our precious dwindling supply of oxygen, or whether to risk using up what we had in trying to find a way to escape. No contest. After only the briefest of time spent thinking it over, the solution was obvious. The only people who knew we were trapped within the dungeon were certainly not about to raise the alarm and head up a rescue party. Even if our absence had been noticed, they would be far more likely to distract anyone searching for us by sending them in the wrong direction. An additional worry was that anyone commenting on our absence might jump to completely the wrong conclusion as to why Eve and I were not with the main party. To onlookers, it must have appeared as if we had grown extremely, intimately close over the previous days. What more natural than to assume we were locked in each other's arms, locked in either my bedroom or Eve's rather than being locked in this chamber of death.

It was all very well me facing up to these unpalatable facts, but my dilemma was whether I should share them with Eve, or spare her the worst of the danger we were in. After agonizing over the problem for several minutes I decided I had to be up front with her. If we did manage to escape from this place, I knew that any hope I had of furthering our relationship could only be built on total honesty. Having come to this decision, I braced myself for the task of how to tell her. I turned back to where I had left her.

‘Call out to me, Evie,' I encouraged her. There was no reply. Panic set in. ‘Evie, Evie darling. Are you awake?'

Her voice was low, husky with the tears she had obviously been shedding. ‘Adam, I thought you had gone. What did you call me?'

She was close, close enough for me to reach out to her. I found her hand. It was as cold as ice. I pulled her to me. She came, unresisting, and I could tell she was shivering even before I embraced her. A fresh worry assailed me. Hypothermia. I wrapped her in a tight embrace, and after a few moments felt her hand creep round the back of my neck, pulling my head forward, my lips close to her cheek. ‘I won't hit you this time,' she whispered.

The kiss was no passionate encounter, rather an acknowledgment of what might be, or given our perilous situation, what might have been. We would have to be lucky for that not to become true. ‘You called me “darling”,' Eve whispered after a few moments.

‘I did, and I meant it.'

‘Are you serious?'

‘Never more so.'

‘I can't believe you called me that. Not here. Not in this awful place.'

‘It's this awful place that convinced me I had to let you know how I feel. If we're ever going to get out of here, I need something to try for. I can't think of a better reason for wanting to escape than having you to look forward to. I just don't want our time together to end too soon, but if it has to, I want you to know there is no one I would rather have with me at the end than you.'

There was a long silence in that perennially silent room, before eventually Eve said, ‘In that case, I don't mind.'

‘You don't?' I pulled her closer and kissed her passionately. This time the response was all I could have hoped for and more. I felt her tongue moving against mine as she murmured my name over and over again, the sound like a caress that stoked the fires of my need for her. I made no attempt to disguise my arousal and Eve noticed it with a sound I could best describe as a purr of satisfaction. She moved against me, and her leg collided with my knee. The injured knee.

I gave a sort of strangled yelp of pain, but although I'd tried to, I could no longer hide the fact that I was injured. Eve had nursed me over too many hours to be fooled by my lame explanations, so I offered none, simply told her the truth. ‘I don't know what's wrong with it. I don't think the leg's broken, but my knee hurts like hell when I move it.'

‘Then don't try to move it. Just hold onto me and we'll wait together.'

Eve's calm, level tone worried me. It was as if she had accepted the inevitable. Not good news. If so, she would be tempted to give up, to give in. That was the last thing I needed. I searched around in my mind for something to tell her, the slightest scrap of positive thought to set against all the horrors she had learned over the past few hours. Then I remembered. I glanced at the luminous dial on my wrist watch before I spoke. ‘We can't tell at the moment, because it's dark outside, but earlier on, I thought I saw a gleam of light overhead, almost as if there was a gap in the roof of this place. Maybe there's a way out of here after all. A way they don't know about.'

‘How long will it be before daylight? How long before we know one way or another?'

‘A few hours.' I didn't tell her exactly how long. I was trying to encourage her, not depress her.

‘What shall we do whilst we're waiting? Any ideas?'

‘I had one, but I don't think my knee would stand up to it.'

‘Men! All you think about is sex.'

‘That's not true. Sometimes we think about cricket, or football.'

‘Very funny. Getting back to my point, how are we to spend the time until daylight?'

‘I suppose I could tell you why we're here, and who did this to us, if you want to hear it.'

‘You know?'

‘Yes, I do, although proving it might be difficult.'

‘Go on then, tell me.'

The explanation didn't take as long as I'd hoped, even though I dragged it out. At the end, Eve thought for a moment, before turning her head towards me. We were lying in each other's arms, and I could feel myself becoming drowsy. ‘That can't be right,' Eve said after a while.

‘Why not?'

‘I took everyone's statements, if you remember. When Rathbone was killed, both of them had alibis. Cast-iron ones at that.'

‘We don't know when Rathbone was murdered. Not precisely. There could be a gap in those alibis.'

‘I don't think so. We know the approximate time to within an hour or two.'

‘I know, but I still think I'm right. It has to be them. It's the only explanation that fits the facts.'

Eve yawned, and a second or two later I followed suit. It acted as a danger signal. My alarm translated into movement and I sat upright, ignoring the protest from my knee. ‘What's matter, Adam?'

‘We can't wait for daylight. We have to try and find that way out before then.'

‘Can't I just have a nap first. I'm so tired.'

‘That's precisely why you can't take a nap. That weariness means the oxygen in here is running short. If we go to sleep we might never wake up. Come on, Evie. We have to do something – now.'

It is strange that sometimes the actions of people or animals have the opposite effect to that they intend or desire. Our urgency to escape might have come to nothing had it not been for what happened next. I was still trying to persuade Eve to stay awake when she screamed. The sound was ear-piercing in the confines of the small dungeon. As the last echoes died away, I pleaded with her to tell me what was wrong.

‘Something touched my hand. Something warm and furry. Then I heard it. There's something alive in here. Something moving.'

Rats! That was all it could be. Made bold by our lack of movement they had approached, no doubt thinking that this was their Christmas dinner. Over my dead body, I thought; which would more than likely be true. But not if we could help it. I'd seen the aftermath of them feasting on the corpse of a mountain goat in the Ethiopian hills. The idea of that obscenity happening to my lovely Eve was too much to bear. ‘Come on then, Evie. Let's foil their plan. Let's get out of here.'

That was all very well, but first we needed a plan of our own unless we were going to become rat meat. My brain started to work. Desperation, rather than necessity, being the mother of invention. I took hold of her hand, using it to point a direction in the dark. ‘It was over there that I saw what I thought was a little light. If there is an entrance there, in the roof, there has to be a way of getting to it; a ladder, for instance. What I want you to do is stand up, very slowly and carefully, then help me up. You're going to have to support my weight, I'm afraid.'

‘I don't care what I have to do as long as it gets us out of here.'

I heard her move, and seconds later she reached down to me. In the darkness her aim was somewhat awry. I began to laugh. ‘That's not my hand,' I told her.

‘No, I can tell that, now.' She released her hold on the crotch of my trousers and began feeling my upper body. I grasped her hand, noticing how cold her fingers were. ‘If we do find a way out, you'll need to warm your hands before you try to escape, otherwise you won't be able to grip.'

‘And how do you suggest I do that?' her voice was full of suspicion.

‘You could do worse than putting them back where they were a few seconds ago.'

The slap was no more than a caress. Knowing how hard Eve could hit, I took this as a compliment. Next minute she had hold of my arms under the shoulders. ‘Come on, lover boy, up you get.'

The pain when I got to my feet made me dizzy. I clutched at Eve for support. My aim was no better than hers. ‘No time for that,' she whispered. ‘If you behave yourself I might let you play with them later. Much later.' Another good reason to escape.

Slowly, painfully, and fumbling our way in the darkness, we made our way, step by cautious step across the room until we came to a wall. As we did so, Eve's foot collided with something. We heard it roll away. ‘What was that?' she asked.

‘I think it belongs to one of the other inhabitants,' I said, as tactfully as I could.

Tact didn't work. ‘You think that was a skull?'

‘I certainly don't think it was a football. At least we've found the wall. I need to rest against it for a minute.'

Chance, once again. We could have searched for hours without locating anything. As I leaned back against the cold, damp stonework, I tilted my head back. My neck came in contact with something cold and hard. Cold and hard and oblong. Cold, hard, oblong and horizontal. Something like a block of stone set at right angles to the wall. Or like a stone step. ‘Evie, give me your hand.'

She obeyed, and I guided it to the object. ‘It's a step,' she said. ‘Hang on a second.'

I heard a shuffling, scraping sound as she moved her hand to and fro along the wall. ‘Yes, there's another one above it and a bit further along. That means you were right. There must be a way out, and it has to be above our heads.'

The discovery was significant, not least as a morale boost. However, we still had no way of telling how to get out of the cell. And that might have to wait for several hours more. The only good thing was that our burst of activity seemed to have discouraged the hopeful diners.

I stared upwards towards the roof above me; or at least into the darkness where I imagined the roof to be. The vague impression of light I'd seen; or rather thought I'd seen from the far side of our cell had been no trick of my imagination. As I looked up, I could definitely make out a lighter shape in the ceiling above me. I waited as it took my eyes a few seconds to focus on the change. I wanted to be certain that what I could see wasn't a trick, that I wasn't hallucinating or fooling myself into believing what I wanted to be there was actual.

When my eyesight had adjusted to the altered light value, I was able to determine that I was looking at a large rectangular patch of light. The edges of the rectangle were sharper than the middle. I guessed the size of the patch to be about eight feet by four feet. My first impression was that it was similar to looking at the underside of a trapdoor such as might lead to an attic. I was about to point it out to Eve when she spoke. ‘Adam, can you see what I can? Is that really a line of light?'

‘I think it must be, darling, because I was about to mention it to you, so we can't both be imagining it, can we?'

It took a while before realization of the significance of the dimensions of the shape of light came to me. If Eve's memory of being carried for a long time down a passage had been correct, the cell in which we were being held captive was beneath the family chapel. We were quite literally in a crypt. There was nothing hallowed about this chamber, however. I considered the motives behind the building of the chapel. Charlie had told Eve and me about the evil career of the twins William and Roland Rowe. He had told us of their being barred by the church establishment from worship and that had been their supposed reason for building the chapel.