Chapter 15 The Mud Man, The Muniment Room, and A Locked Door
THE MUD MAN, THE MUNIMENT ROOM, AND A LOCKED DOOR
I FOLLOWED Percy Blythe down flights of stairs, along gloomy corridors, then down further still.
Deeper, surely, than the level from which we’d climbed initially?
Like all buildings that have evolved over time, Milderhurst was a patchwork.
Wings had been added and altered, had crumbled and been restored.
The effect was disorienting, particularly for someone with no natural compass whatsoever.
It seemed as if the castle folded inwards, like one of those drawings by Escher, where you might continue walking the stairs, round and round, for eternity, without ever reaching an end.
There were no windows—not since we’d left the attic—and it was exceedingly dark.
At one stage I could have sworn I heard a drifting melody skating along the stones—romantic, wistful, vaguely familiar—but when we turned another corner it was gone, and perhaps it had never been.
Something I certainly did not imagine was the pungent smell, which strengthened as we descended and was saved from being unpleasant by sheer virtue of its earthiness.
Even though Percy had pooh-poohed her father’s notion of the distant hours, I couldn’t help running my hand against the cool stones as we walked, wondering about the imprints Mum might have left when she was at Milderhurst. The little girl still walked beside me but she didn’t say much.
I considered asking Percy about her, but having gone this far without announcing my connection to the house, anything I thought to say carried the stench of duplicity.
In the end I opted for classic passive-aggressive subterfuge.
“Was the castle requisitioned during the war?”
“No. Dear God. I couldn’t have borne it.
The damage that was done to some of the nation’s finest houses—no.
” She shook her head vehemently. “Thank goodness. I’d have felt it as a pain to my own body.
We did our bit though. I was with the Ambulance Service for a time, over in Folkestone; Saffy stitched clothing and bandages, knitted a thousand scarves.
We took in an evacuee, too, in the early years. ”
“Oh?” My voice trilled slightly. Beside me the little girl skipped.
“At Juniper’s urging. A young girl from London. Goodness, I’ve forgotten her name. Isn’t that a pip? Apologies for the smell along here.”
Something inside me clenched in sympathy for that forgotten girl.
“It’s the mud,” Percy went on. “From where the moat used to be. The groundwater rises in summer, seeps through the cellars, and brings the smell of rotting fish with it. Thankfully there’s nothing down here of much value.
Nothing except the muniment room, and it’s watertight.
The walls and floor are lined with copper, the door is made from lead. Nothing gets in or out of there.”
“The muniment room.” A chill rippled fast up my neck.
“Just like in the Mud Man.” The special room, deep within the uncle’s house, the room where all the family’s documents were lodged, where he unearthed the moldy old diary that unraveled the Mud Man’s past. The chamber of secrets in the house’s heart.
Percy paused, leaned on her cane and turned her eyes on me. “You’ve read it then.”
It wasn’t a question exactly, but I answered anyway.
“I adored it growing up.” As the words left my lips I felt a stirring of old deflation, the inability to express adequately my love for the book.
“It was my favorite,” I added, and the phrase hung hopefully before disintegrating into specks, powder from a puff that drifted unseen into the shadows.
“It was very popular,” said Percy, starting again down the corridor. No doubt she’d heard it all before. “It still is. Seventy-five years in print next year.”
“Really?”
“Seventy-five years,” she said again, pulling open a door and issuing me up another flight of stairs. “I remember it like yesterday.”
“The publication must have been very exciting.”
“We were pleased to see Daddy happy.” Did I notice the tiny hesitation then, or am I letting things learned later color my earliest impressions?
A clock somewhere began its weary chime and I realized with a stab of regret that my hour was up.
It seemed impossible, I’d have sworn black and blue that I’d only just arrived, but time is an odd ungraspable thing.
The hour that sagged between breakfast and my setting out for Milderhurst had taken an age to pass, but the sixty brief minutes I’d been granted inside the castle walls had fled like a flock of frightened birds.
Percy Blythe checked her own wristwatch.
“I’ve dallied,” she said with mild surprise.
“I apologize. The grandfather is ten minutes fast, but we must get on nonetheless. Mrs. Bird will be here to collect you on the hour and it’s quite a walk back to the entrance hall.
There’ll be no time to see the tower, I’m afraid. ”
I made a gasping noise, a cross between “Oh!” and a sharp reaction to pain, and then I recovered myself: “I’m sure Mrs. Bird won’t mind if I’m a little late.”
“I was under the impression you had to be back in London?”
“Yes.” Though it seems unfathomable, for a moment I’d actually forgotten: Herbert, his car, the appointment he had to make in Windsor. “Yes, I do.”
“Never mind,” said Percy Blythe, striding after her cane.
“You’ll see it next time. When you visit us again.
” I noticed the assumption, but I didn’t think to query it, not at the time.
Indeed, I gave it little thought other than to pass it off as a rather fun and meaningless rejoinder, for as we emerged from the stairwell I was distracted by a rustling sound.
The rustling, like the caretakers, was only very faint and I wondered at first if I’d imagined it, all that talk of the distant hours, people trapped in the stones, but when Percy Blythe also glanced around, I knew that I had not.
From an adjoining corridor, the dog lumbered into view. “Bruno,” said Percy, surprised, “what are you doing all the way down here, fellow?”
He stopped right beside me and looked up from beneath his droopy lids.
Percy leaned forward to scratch him behind the ears.
“Do you know what the word ‘lurcher’ means? It’s from the Romany for thief.
Isn’t that right, boy? Terribly cruel name for such a good old boy as you.
” She straightened slowly, one hand in the small of her back.
“They were bred by the Gypsies originally, used for poaching: rabbits and hares, other small creatures. Pure breeds were forbidden to anyone who didn’t belong to the nobility and the penalties were severe; the challenge was to retain the hunting skills whilst breeding in sufficient variation that they didn’t look like a threat.
“He’s my sister’s, Juniper’s. Even as a small girl she loved animals specially; they seemed to love her too. We’ve always kept a dog for her, certainly since the trauma. They say everyone needs something to love.”
As if he knew and resented being made the topic of discussion, Bruno continued on his way. In his wake, the rustling came again faintly, only to be drowned out when a nearby phone began to ring.
Percy stood very still, listening the way people do when they’re awaiting confirmation that someone else has picked up.
The ringing continued until disconsolate silence closed around its final echo.
“Come along,” said Percy, a note of agitation clipping her voice. “There’s a shortcut through here.”
THE CORRIDOR was dim, but no more so than the others; indeed, now that we’d emerged from the basement, a few diffuse ribbons of light had appeared, threading their way through the castle knots to spill across the flagstones. We were two-thirds of the way along when the phone began again.
This time Percy didn’t wait. “I’m sorry,” she said, clearly flustered. “I can’t think where Saffy is. I’m expecting an important telephone call. Will you excuse me? I shan’t be a moment.”
“Of course.”
And with a nod she disappeared, turning at the end of the corridor and leaving me stranded.
I blame what happened next on the door. The one right across the hall from me, a mere three feet away.
I love doors. All of them, without exception.
Doors lead to things and I’ve never met one I haven’t wanted to open.
All the same, if that door hadn’t been so old and decorative, so decidedly closed, if a thread of light hadn’t positioned itself with such wretched temptation across its middle, highlighting the keyhole and its intriguing key, perhaps I might have stood a chance, remained, twiddling my thumbs, until Percy came to collect me.
But it was and I didn’t; I maintain that I simply couldn’t.
Sometimes you can tell just by looking at a door that there’s something interesting behind it.
The handle was black and smooth, shaped like a shin bone and cool beneath my palm. Indeed, a general coldness seemed to leach from the other side of the door; though how, I couldn’t tell.
My fingers tightened around the handle, I started to twist, then—
“We don’t go in there.”
My stomach, I don’t mind saying, just about shot through the roof of my mouth.
I spun on my heel, scanned the gloomy space behind.
I could see nothing, yet clearly I wasn’t alone.
Someone, the owner of the voice, was in the corridor with me.
Even if she hadn’t spoken I’d have known: I could feel another presence, something moving and hiding in the drawing shadows.
The rustling was back now, too: louder, closer, definitely not in my head, definitely not mice.
“I’m sorry,” I said to the cloaked passage. “I—”
“We don’t go in there.”
I smothered the panicky surge in my throat. “I didn’t know—”
“That’s the good parlor.”
I saw her then, Juniper Blythe, as she stepped from the chill darkness, and slowly crossed the corridor towards me.