Chapter Twenty-Three #2
“I spoke to Gladys and Sam. She claims that her previous employers moved to America, so it would be difficult to check up on her—and she has a brother. He seems even more suspicious. Sam had a brother who died. And when I called him ‘Joe,’ he turned around as if by instinct.”
“Or,” the doctor pointed out, “he may have turned to correct you for misremembering his name.”
“Either way, I’m not backing down now,” Selena insisted fiercely.
“Neither am I. Mrs. Hillman has given us a new lead. Have you ever been to the catacombs?”
“No. Are you game for a visit?”
“Yes!” His blue eyes flashed with anticipation. “The sooner, the better.”
“Let’s do it. But I need to check in with our guests first.”
They entered the library to find Miss Thompson, Miss Goodwin, and Mr. Davis searching the shelves. Miss Thompson’s brow creased as she approached Selena and Dr. Scott. “The chambermaid told me that Colonel Blackwood fell ill during the night. Is he all right?”
Dr. Scott nodded. “Yes. We believe it was indigestion. I gave him a tonic to soothe his symptoms and help him sleep. Hopefully, he will feel better this evening.”
“Thank goodness he’s all right,” Miss Thompson said.
Selena wondered if the young woman’s concern was genuine or manufactured.
Selena glanced aside at Miss Goodwin and Mr. Davis to gauge their reaction to this news.
If one or both of them had poisoned the colonel, surely, they would have hoped to hear of his death—and Selena ought to be able to glimpse guilt or disappointment on their faces.
But the pair seemed to be intent on their search for a book and neither batted an eye.
“Give me two minutes. I’m going to choose a book,” Dr. Scott said, slipping off.
Miss Thompson turned to Selena with a sigh. “I’m reading Miss Austen’s Persuasion and think it delightful. But I’m at my wit’s end about tonight’s dramatic reading. What do you recommend?”
Selena suggested a scene from Persuasion, for which Miss Thompson was grateful.
Miss Goodwin and Mr. Davis came up to her next.
Judging by their tight-lipped expressions, Selena sensed that the pair were still upset about the accusation she had made the evening before.
But perhaps they had forgiven her, for they also requested help locating appropriate novels from the library’s vast collection.
“How about something from Mr. Dickens’s A Christmas Carol?” Selena suggested.
“I’ve never read it,” Mr. Davis said.
“Neither have I, but I’ve heard of it,” Miss Goodwin put in.
“It’s about a curmudgeon who is visited by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future and discovers the true meaning of Christmas. It’s the perfect tale, given the time of year. You could read aloud from the same scene or chapter together, taking turns and voicing the different characters.”
“It sounds like an excellent suggestion,” said Miss Goodwin. “Thank you.”
As Selena located Mr. Dickens’s novel and indicated a passage that might be appropriate, an army of servants, including Sam, George, Wells, Mrs. Middleton, Beryl, and Gladys, entered with the silver coffee and tea service, the chocolate pot, cups and saucers, dishes, and trays of biscuits.
Selena took advantage of the diversion to give Dr. Scott a meaningful glance and they started for the door.
Just as they were about to slip from the room, Wells headed them off, declaring, “I beg your pardon, Miss Taylor? If you and the doctor plan to visit the catacombs to research that school activity of yours, I wanted to mention—the door is hidden behind a bookcase by the chapel altar. It’s not readily apparent unless you know what to look for.
The spring hinge works both ways. Press hard and it will open. ”
“Thank you, Wells,” Selena replied. A rush of uneasiness washed over her. The message in the notes that she and Dr. Scott had just received echoed in her mind.
“Stay out of this or die.”
Who had sent them? It was impossible to know, but the threat was deadly.
She glanced back at the other occupants of the room.
Everyone seemed to be staring in their direction.
Had they all overheard the butler’s remarks?
If so, they would know where she and Dr. Scott were headed and how to follow.
She blinked, and now all the heads were turned away.
Had she just imagined those stares? Was she just letting her paranoia get the best of her?
Selena’s stomach clenched with anxiety as she and Dr. Scott hurried from the room.
I refuse to be intimidated, she reminded herself.
Besides, hadn’t the butler made it clear that she wanted to visit the catacombs as research for a school activity?
Whoever had written those notes couldn’t have a clue as to why she and Dr. Scott were really interested in the catacombs. Could they?
*
It was an ordinary-looking bookcase, painted white, with candlesticks and various religious paraphernalia on the shelves.
“Wells said to press hard,” Selena remarked as she and Dr. Scott studied the set of shelves behind the chapel’s altar.
He pushed on the bookcase’s frame in several places until with a soft creak, the bookcase swung outward.
A musty smell emanated from the dark space beyond where a narrow stone staircase descended.
Dr. Scott lit the lantern they’d brought and carried it as he and Selena slowly made their way down the steps.
The farther they went, the colder it got, and the more the musty aroma increased.
As she and the doctor moved down the stairs, Selena was suddenly reminded of another time and place, when she and Athena had been obliged to flee by a secret staircase—and she shivered at the thought.
But, she reminded herself, that had been a very different circumstance.
She and her sister had been running for their lives.
This time, Selena and Dr. Scott were running to something exciting. They were scouting for hidden treasure.
The stairs ended at a dirt floor. In the lantern’s beam, Selena could make out the beginning of a long, subterranean passage, also lined in ancient stone and just wide enough for two people to walk side by side.
“This must lead to the catacombs,” Selena said, her heart thumping with excitement. “Come on.”
They had been walking in silence for a couple of minutes when a faint, distant creak broke the stillness. Selena started in surprise. “What was that?” The noise seemed to come from behind and above them.
“It sounded like the door at the top of the stairs.”
Dr. Scott held the lantern aloft as they both stared down the corridor in the direction from which they had come. An eerie silence reigned.
Selena let go a nervous laugh. “I thought someone might be following us.”
“As did I.” He chuckled quietly in return. “Let’s go.”
The dark passage seemed to go on endlessly, but at last, they passed through an age-old, arched, stone-and-brick entryway into a wider space about eight or nine feet across.
Dim light filtered in from a small, round opening in the ceiling, which Selena judged to be a tunnel to the surface above.
The lantern provided further illumination.
They were standing in a room with a dirt floor.
It was partially enclosed by lofty walls of brick and stone.
On both sides, vertical shelves held ancient, dusty, cobweb-laden wooden coffins that had been slid in end to end.
It was both fascinating and nerve-wracking to be so far beneath the ground, in an area accessible by only one long tunnel. “It’s strange to think that people have been buried down here for many hundreds of years.”
“These are, according to Mrs. Hillman, the less important people. Servants and lesser family members and going back further, no doubt members of the monastic order,” Dr. Scott remarked, studying the coffins.
“We’re looking for a tomb,” Selena pointed out.
They moved on through the archways of brick and stone that opened from one room into the next.
Selena heard water dripping. Was it melting snow from above?
The tiny apertures in the ceiling that let in fragments of natural light were few and far between, leaving large sections of the catacombs shrouded in darkness.
The stale air was a mix of aromas including dusty earth, stone, decaying wood, damp, and mold.
The aspect of the chambers changed slightly from room to room.
In some, the coffins on the shelves were open to view, while in others, they were partially concealed behind rusted metal grates or stacked up on the floor.
In one room, the walls were made up entirely of engraved stone plaques in tribute to the deceased, behind which coffins no doubt rested.
Some of the rooms also included an ancient, wooden door.
A few doors were closed, while others stood open and led into small, private crypts where a stone sarcophagus stood in state.
None of tombs, however, had a dragon motif over the doorway or on the coffin itself.
As they marched on, surrounded by so much evidence of death, Selena was keenly aware of the passage of time.
She contemplated all the people who had once lived at Darkmoor Park from the time it had been an abbey.
One day, she might be buried here. Would she be in a coffin slid onto an open shelf?
Or would she be worthy enough to merit a private tomb? The idea made her shudder.
A slight shuffling sound made her heart skip a beat. “Are those footsteps?”
Once again, they halted in place and stared behind them. The long pathway was shrouded in blackness. Suddenly, two rats dashed into view, freezing with blazing eyes when they came in contact with the lantern’s beam. A second later, they scampered off and disappeared into a crevice in a wall.
“Rats.” Dr. Scott shook his head. “This is a creepy place, but we mustn’t allow ourselves to get spooked.”
They continued into the next chamber, where the only light was provided by their lantern.
Coffins were stacked up willy-nilly in piles across the floor.
Selena spied an open doorway that led to a tomb.
On pedestals on either side of the door, stood stone statues about three feet high that depicted women in Renaissance-era dress.
The stone pediment above the door was adorned with a mythical creature with the body of a lion and the head, wings, and talons of an eagle. “Look!” Selena cried.
“A griffin,” Dr. Scott noted.
“An unschooled person might mistake it for a dragon.”
His eyes widened. “Let’s take a look.”
They entered the tomb. A stone sarcophagus within was topped by the figure of a gentlewoman lying on her back, her arms folded in prayer. Selena ran her fingers along the finely carved stone lid. “I wonder who she was?”
Dr. Scott squatted and studied the plaque on the side of the sarcophagus. “Lady Georgina Mason, Born May 9, 1532, Died March 18, 1584. A good and honest woman.”
“A nice tribute,” Selena remarked, “to focus on the woman’s honesty.”
A frown took over Dr. Scott’s face. His cheeks reddened, and his mouth opened and closed, as if he were deliberating how to reply.
Suddenly, his head snapped up, he stood abruptly, and whirled away, taking the lantern with him.
Selena, surprised by his sudden departure, wondered what was wrong. Had he heard a suspicious sound?
Selena felt her way out of the tomb by the dim remaining light. “Dr. Scott?” She didn’t see him. She heard a rapid scuffling sound from behind a stack of nearby coffins. Was it rats again? She shrank away with a terrible sense of foreboding.
All at once, something hard and heavy struck Selena’s back and shoulders. A bolt of pain shot through her as she cried out and tumbled to the ground.
And everything went black.