The Beast of Seabourne (11 page)

Oz shone his torch along the dingy passage, to where it petered out at an apparently solid wall.

“Let's have a look,” he said, and led the way.

“What time's food?” Ruff muttered. “I'm famished—”

“You and your stomach, honestly,” Ellie cut him off.

At the end of the passage, instead of the blank wall they'd expected, a hidden step at right angles took them up into another, even narrower gap and yet more rungs. The walls pressed in on them claustrophobically now. Flecks of dirt fell onto Oz's head, and he had to wipe ancient cobwebs from his eyelashes. He sensed the space before he saw it; a cold draft whistled in from the eaves above. Seconds later, he stepped out onto a narrow platform.

“Are we in the roof somewhere?” Ellie asked as she huddled next to him.

“Feels like it,” Oz said. On one side of the platform was rough stone, but the other was a lath-and-plaster dividing wall, which sounded hollow when Oz rapped it with his knuckles.

“Can't see a door,” Ruff said.

“Hang on, what's this?” Halfway down the plaster wall, they could make out a dark square mostly obscured by cobwebs. Oz brushed them away to reveal a wooden hatch. He knelt to inspect it and saw that a simple rotating latch secured it.

Outside, the wind moaned around the rafters. For a moment, Oz had the strangest feeling of displacement. On that dark platform, it was impossible to tell whether it was day or night, summer or winter, this century or last. It felt somehow separate from the world as he knew it. Judging by their silence, Oz guessed the others were feeling it, too. Ellie was the one who finally said, “Maybe there's another passage through there, or another room?”

“Really? Who cares? Let's go back,” Ruff said in a deadpan voice.

Ellie stared at him. “You want to go back?” There was a hanging silence before Ruff said through gritted teeth, “'Course I don't want to go back. Open the buzzard hatch. I didn't come all this way on an empty stomach just to talk about it.”

Grinning, Oz rotated the latch and pulled. The door creaked outwards to reveal a tiny space lit only by watery greenish light.

“Well?” Ruff snapped, jostling Ellie for a glimpse under Oz's elbow.

“Looks like a cubbyhole,” Oz said. He got to his hands and knees and lowered himself backwards into a small, tight room, no larger than a walk-in cupboard. What little light there was dribbled in through a narrow slit-like window, coated with mossy grime, high in one corner. Ellie and Ruff followed him in. All three of them had to stoop to avoid banging their heads.

“Blimey, was everyone severely vertically challenged in the seventeenth century?” Ruff asked.

“I don't think you were meant to walk about in here,” Oz said, shining his torch around. The walls were panelled, but not with the dark oak of the library. Like the ceiling in the orphanage dorm, these panels were wooden but elaborately decorated, separated by oak beams such that each was a framed canvas. Oz peered in wonder at the depictions of strange birds and plants and weird designs.

“What do you think this was?” Ellie asked in an awed whisper.

“Priest's hole,” Ruff said. “A place for the persecuted to hide. In
Witchfinder Inquisitor 3
, there's this old house and…”

Ellie shut him up with a piercing glance.

“I'm only saying,” Ruff mumbled.

“You're probably right,” Oz said. “But I also think it was a bit more than that. Somewhere people came to think, perhaps.”

“Why do you say that?” Ruff asked.

“Because it says so there.” Oz pointed to a panel next to the window. On it was an inscription burned into the wood. Ruff peered at it.

“‘The room of reflection,'” he read. “Buzzardo-weird.”

Oz was only half-listening. One panel had drawn his attention in particular. He stooped to stare at it in the stark light of his torch. In amongst the birds and the crescent moons and faces with elaborate headdresses were other shapes. He recognised a few as alchemical symbols, which he remembered from the library panels. How could he possibly forget the three-pronged fork shape for cinder and the crossed
Z
of tin, symbols that had helped them solve the cipher that led to opening the passage door? But some of the others were new to him. There was a bird with a long, upright tail, a wheeled cart belching smoke from a stack, and what looked like a hot-air balloon. They were incongruous and yet of the same style and colour as all the other designs.

“Must have been a great place to hide,” Ellie said as she used her sleeve to rub years of dirt off the window. “Ooh, you can see the whole street from here. Actually see who was coming. Bit like a spyhole.”

“But I've never seen this window from outside. It must be hidden,” Oz said, joining her. “I wonder if this was what Lucy Bishop was looking for,” he added.

“What do you mean?”

Lucy Bishop had been a lodger at Penwurt. As a member of Obex, she was meant to have been protecting Oz from the Puffers, but what she'd actually been doing was searching for a cure for her brother.

“She said something about places in the house where the artefacts were vulnerable. Where they could be damaged,”

Oz mused.

“Rollins,” said Ruff suddenly.

Oz and Ellie turned to look at him.

“When he was pretending to be Tim Perkins, he was always up ladders measuring stuff, remember? Maybe he was looking for hidden rooms like this, too.”

Ruff 's imagination frequently took off on long-haul flights of its own, but this time Oz found himself nodding in eager agreement. Ruff was right. It made perfect sense. Rollins had pretended to be a student lodger who had only been too keen to fix basement fuses and leaky guttering, but all the while, he'd been plotting and snooping.

“So, now that we've found it, can we go back and have something to eat? People can faint from lack of food, you know,” Ruff added plaintively.

“You sound just like Jenks' stupid recorder-pen on a loop.
I'm hungry, I'm hungry
,” Ellie mocked.

Oz knew there was no point protesting. A hungry Ruff would quickly become a sullen Ruff if they didn't get him some food.

“Okay, okay. Let's go and find my mum. She's probably got something on the go for supper.”

They retraced their steps through the passages and tracked Mrs Chambers down in the old servants' wing. In fact, it was the radio that gave her away, or rather her attempt at accompanying a chart hit's chorus of “Shake it, shake it, shake it.
”

“Hi, Mum,” Oz said, hailing her from the door of one of the bedrooms. But he didn't get any farther than the threshold, where he came to an abrupt halt, causing Ellie and Ruff to concertina into him from behind. The once pale yellow bedroom was now a riot of vivid colours. Mrs Chambers was obviously trying to match hues, and gaudy stripes of purple, magenta, green, and turquoise covered the wall.

“Wow,” Ruff said. “I didn't know your mum was an artist, Oz.”

A frazzled-looking Mrs Chambers bit her lip and turned to Ruff. “So, what do you think? The purple and turquoise or the magenta and pea green?”

“Ummm,” Ruff hedged.

“They're very…bright, aren't they,” Ellie said in a valiant attempt at finding something complimentary to say.

“Hope you're not going to expect anyone to sleep in here, Mum,” Oz said. “If they do, they'll have to wear sunglasses.”

Mrs Chambers frowned at him. “Rowena says that these are all full of spiritual tonality. Good for the soul.”

“Yeah, if your soul's an insomniac,” Oz said.

Mrs Chambers sighed. “It's so hard to find the right combination.”

“How about white walls and a white ceiling? That'll work.”

“Don't be so boring,” Mrs Chambers said, and turned to look at Ruff. “I expect you're hungry, Rufus?”

“I'd eat something,” Ruff said.

“I've been tied up here all day, so I was going to order in some pizza for later, but there's some cold ham in the fridge if you want a few sandwiches for now.”

“Thanks, Mum,” Oz said, and turned away from the garish bedroom to rest his retinas.

“I thought your mum was more a sort of pastel person,” Ellie said as they took the stairs to the second floor and the landing that crossed over into Oz's half of the house.

“She is,” Oz said. “That stuff on the walls is all Rowena Hilditch.”

They made sandwiches and took them, together with a big bowl of crisps, back up to Oz's bedroom, where Oz called up Soph and asked her to find out what she could about Bendle and Son. She tilted her head and glowed for a few seconds before speaking,

“Bendle and Son. Auctioneers and valuers of fine art. They have offices in Brighton and London, but there is one residential address in Bourneshire. Chivyon House, Bog Sturgess.”

“That's just out of town, isn't it?” Oz asked.

“Number 56 bus,” Ellie said.

Both Oz and Ruff stared at her. “Have you got the bus timetable tattooed on the inside of your skull or something?” Ruff said.

“Macy's friend Jemima lives out near there,” she explained with a haughty glance at Ruff before turning to Soph once more. “What else can you tell us, Soph?”

“I have downloaded several cuttings from local and national newspapers for you to consider. They are already on your laptop, Oz.”

Instantly, Oz's laptop fired up.

While Ruff concentrated on finishing the sandwiches and Oz sorted out some music on his ancient iPod speaker system, Ellie pored over the articles. It was she who, five minutes later, let out a little cry of surprise.

“Wow, this Bendle bloke sounds like a real gonk.”

“Why? What's he done?” Oz asked.

“This is from the
Times
last year.” Ellie began reading. “‘Bendle, a fifty-nine-year-old antique dealer from Seabourne, was today cleared of all charges of theft after his eighty-five-year-old accuser was deemed incapable of giving evidence. For two days, the jury listened to how Bendle had catalogued all of Ms Joan Timms' jewellery and then offered to buy some of the pieces for several hundred pounds. Subsequently, two of these pieces were sold at auction for £175,000 and £210,000, respectively. Bendle claimed to have been ‘completely astonished' by the sale and remained adamant that he'd had no idea of their true worth. Ms Timms was unable to give evidence on the last day of the trial after falling ill at her home the evening before and being admitted to hospital. The prosecution was unable to give any reason for her collapse but decided not to proceed with the case. However, this is not the first time Bendle has been the subject of investigation. In 2003, he was successfully sued for fraud after valuing an urn for £300 and buying it at that price before selling it at auction, where it raised £25,000.'”

“Reckon Ms Timms was nobbled?” Oz asked.

“What do you think?” Ellie said.

“Sounds like an ace bloke,” Ruff chipped in as he licked his fingers clean of crisp residue.

Oz looked thoughtful. “Soph, no connection between Bendle and Gerber, is there?”

Soph's grey eyes brightened. “None that I can find.”

“Well, that's cobblers for a start,” Ruff muttered. “They're both crooks by the sound of it.”

Ellie, who had not stopped scanning the cuttings, said, “We'll have to be really careful here. I mean, I can't believe for one minute that he'll be willing to talk to us the way Mr Eldred did.”

“Hmmm,” Oz said as the germ of an idea took root. “I wouldn't be so sure of that. Greedy gits like him are always on the lookout for the next scam. They can't help themselves.”

He earned a very odd look from the other two, but all he did was tap his temple and say, “Need a couple of days for the cogs to go around.”

They spent the rest of the day playing Xbox and discussing their prospects in Sunday's five-a-side tournament. After a takeaway pizza supper, all too soon it was eight o'clock, and Macy arrived in her mum's car to pick up Ellie and Ruff.