Chapter 20
Amelia
Amelia woke from a nightmare in which the countess’s ghost was chasing her through the subway, to find a hand over her mouth.
She kicked out, just as she registered Tom leaning over her, concern creasing his face, a finger to his mouth.
He removed his hand and placed it on her shoulder, anchoring her.
He pointed toward the panel that led to the yellow room.
She let her lungs quietly expand, willing the hot panic to pass.
The pounding in her ears gave way to the sound of shuffling.
Tom squeezed her shoulder and crept to the panel, peeking through a slit.
A weak daylight had spread into their little cave, somehow making it gloomier.
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Tom said in a regular voice. He swiftly removed the plank and slid out.
Amelia shuffled to the gap and peered through. In the middle of the room, aiming a rifle at Tom, was … Duncan! His hair was messy, poking out from under a red beanie, his eyes wild.
“Duncan, it’s okay,” Tom said placatingly as he rose to his feet. “It’s just me. Where are they? Are they in the house?”
Duncan took a step back, blinking. “What? Who?” He looked twenty years older than he had yesterday, a confused old man rather than the sturdy gardener who’d been in calm control of his corner of the world. Amelia could relate.
“The Pritchards. They’ve been breaking in, stealing things, shooting up the place. They took down the phone and internet. I thought they’d…” Tom let his head fall backward, staring at the ceiling for a second. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”
Duncan warily lowered the gun. So, if he wasn’t the one in the rug, who was? Or was no one in the rug, after all?
“I thought they’d done away with you, mate,” Tom continued. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
Duncan’s bushy gray eyebrows drew together. “I was … out at the western fields, fixing the walls. Been looking high and low for you.”
“I guess we both hid so well that we’ve successfully hidden from each other.” Amelia could almost feel Tom’s relief. “It’s a long story, but we thought someone was killed here last night. We thought it was you.”
“Me? You thought I was dead?”
Tom ran his hands through his hair. “They were searching your study for something. Any idea what?”
“My study? In the cottage? Why d’you think that?”
“We heard one of them leave—well, we assume it was them. They were searching the abbey in the last couple of days, too.”
“That so? The Pritchard boys, you say?” Duncan rubbed the white stubble coating his jaw. “Well. I have been hearing their dogs a lot, close by, too. Why would they be interested in my study? When was this?”
“Yesterday,” Tom said.
Duncan stared blankly into a corner of the room. It was never nice to imagine an intruder in your home, whether you were there or not. “Where’s the lass you were with?” he said, straightening. “She still here?”
“You can come out, Amelia,” Tom called quietly. “It’s safe.”
Duncan stared at Amelia as she slid through the gap, and then bent to look into it. “Well, I’ll be. That one of them priest hides? Even after all these years, this place still surprises you.”
“Do you have the keys to your pickup?” Tom asked him, while helping Amelia to her feet. She felt like she was coming around after a general anesthetic. She was also crazy thirsty again.
“Aye,” Duncan said warily, patting a pocket.
The cold began to sink in through Amelia’s clothes—she’d slept in all of them, even her sneakers. She must have slept soundly, until the nightmare. Had she screamed? Was that how Duncan found them? What if the Pritchards had also heard? She glanced at the door.
“We need to go to the police,” Tom said to Duncan. “You can drive while I cover us. Do you have enough rounds?”
Duncan looked down at his rifle, evidently doing mental calculations. A hunting rifle, Amelia guessed. “I’m almost out,” he said finally.
“So you haven’t seen the Pritchards today—they’re not in the house?” Tom asked, getting down on hands and knees and reaching into the priest hole. He pulled out the shotgun and then his boots, which he began pulling on.
Duncan shook his head. “No sign of anyone. Think you could nip down to the safe and get us more ammo, lad? You’d be quicker on your feet than me.”
Tom nodded, scratching his stubble, which sent a rasping noise around the room. “I can grab another rifle while I’m there—I’m nearly out of shotgun shells. What’s the code for the safe?”
After a moment’s hesitation, Duncan recited it. Amelia got the sense his brain wasn’t working too quickly. He looked like he hadn’t slept at all.
“I’ll come with you,” Amelia said, stepping to the door, just as Tom said, “Be back in a few minutes.” He turned to her. “Less chance of being spotted if it’s just one of us. That okay?”
“You’ll be all right up here with me, lass,” Duncan said, patting his gun.
Amelia weighed up Duncan’s disheveled state against what Tom had said about his military skills. If Tom trusted him, so could she. She nodded.
Tom squeezed her shoulder. “Sorry I woke you the way I did. It only occurred to me afterwards that—”
“I’m fine,” she said, crossing her arms and tucking her hands into her armpits.
“Okay, back soon. Then we’ll make a solid plan to get out.
With three of us, and proper weapons, we’ll be sweet.
” He glanced at Duncan and exhaled heavily, his breath creating a puff of fog.
Tom had deep bags under his eyes, and his hair was more swashbuckling pirate than foppish Regency hero, but a weight seemed to have lifted off him.
He left, and Amelia crossed to the window and peeked around the curtain, only vaguely noting its fine crewel embroidery.
Outside, the grass was veiled in gray mist, and a fog river shrouded the real one, tracing its path.
She shivered. She could just see the incinerator’s chimney, its smoke dissolving into the mist. It was going again?
Had the Pritchards stuffed the rug back in?
Why would they burn it if there were no body? Her instinct was tugging at her, as if an answer sat right in front of her that she was failing to decipher. Like when she’d stared at that damn tapestry.
“Anyone know you’re here, love?” Duncan said, concerned. “Would anyone be coming looking for you?”
“Not a soul, sorry. My mom knows generally where I am, but I haven’t been talking to her every day, so she’s not going to worry yet.
I don’t think I mentioned going to the abbey.
I’ve been avoiding social media and stuff.
And I checked out of the village inn yesterday morning. So no, no American cavalry.”
A clunk sounded from a floor below. Duncan tilted his head, listening. Surely not Tom—he’d be taking care to make no noise.
“There’s someone else here,” Duncan said quietly. “We ought to move.”
“Tom said we should stay here and wait for him to get back. We could hide in the priest hole.”
“He can meet us at the cottage.” Duncan nodded fast, like he was convincing himself. “I’m not much for standing about, waiting. We made a bit of noise just now.”
He did look jumpy. Amelia remembered what Tom had said about Duncan rarely entering the house. Claustrophobia? He certainly wouldn’t like the priest hole.
“Come on.” Duncan tipped his head toward the door.
“We can head out through the secret passage.” He looked out the doorway, swiftly checking to the left and then the right, his eyes aligned with the barrel of the rifle.
Once a soldier, always a soldier, she guessed.
He met her gaze and jerked his head to indicate she should go first. “Unless you’d rather stay up here alone? ”
She absolutely would not. “I honestly think we should wait here. He’ll think they’ve got us.”
“He’ll know we wouldn’t have gone quietly. He’s smart. He knows me. He’ll figure it out.”
That was what Tom had said about Duncan—he wasn’t the type to go quietly. And Tom had mentioned taking Duncan’s pickup. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to wait a few minutes. She felt secure enough with Duncan and his rifle, but with Tom there too, she’d feel almost bulletproof.
Another clunk, louder and closer, followed by the whine of a door opening.
“Okay, we’re going,” she said, taking a step. They could well be the house’s regular noises, but she was way too jumpy to give them the benefit of the doubt. Better to run than be ambushed. There was nothing at all worse than an ambush. “But you first, please?”
“Stay right behind me, love. Don’t go wandering off.”
“Oh, I have no intention of that.”
They took a route that joined up the jigsaw of the house a little more for Amelia, via a mixture of family entrances and servants’ doors, through rooms that looked vaguely familiar from her stoned wanderings with Tom.
They came to a closed door, and Duncan checked their surroundings before opening it.
Amelia followed him into a darkened room and yelped.
There, on the floor, was a severed head.
A fake severed head.
Duncan looked at her sharply, and she mouthed an apology. How loudly had she cried out?
They were in a bedroom draped with black velvet wallcoverings—not original—and a metal bed straight out of an old-school asylum. Fake candles in red holders glowed from a mantelpiece. The dark curtains were drawn.
The haunted house tour.
Duncan opened a large wooden armoire inset into a wall, and beckoned her.
“The tunnel,” he whispered, parting a dark curtain at the back of it.
She could just make out a narrow brick-walled passage.
Tom’s Narnia. “Goes right out to the grounds. It’s set up to be all spooky-like, but it’s fake—for the visitors—so don’t be fooled.
Nothing to fret about.” He stepped through.
“Close the wardrobe behind you and stay quiet.”
“It’s very dark,” she whispered as she followed, unable to keep the fear from her tone. An icy dampness hung in the air, and a smell of wet brick. She had that feeling again that a hand was about to clamp on her shoulder. She’d left the flashlight Tom had given her in the priest hole.
“There’s a torch on my phone, I think,” Duncan said. She heard a swish, like he was pulling it from a pocket. The screen dimly lit his face as he hunched over it, his narrowed eyes almost disappearing into his eyebrows. “I forget how the blasted thing turns on.”
“Here, let me.” She grabbed it, aware she was being rude, but her fear instinct was ping-ponging off the walls like sonar.
He held the phone for a second before releasing it.
She found the flashlight icon and switched it on.
The light did little to dispel the gloom, though she could see the cobwebs were taped to the ceiling.
Long, thin papery strips also hung down.
Flypaper? Designed to stick to your face as you walk through? Ugh. People paid to do this?
Duncan took a step, and a fat dripping noise started. Something scratched at the wall, and she swung the light around, finding a small speaker. A cat’s strangled meow cried from it.
“Don’t worry, love,” Duncan said. “Silly old sound effects, nothing more.”
“I just don’t get why people…”
She turned back, accidentally shining the flashlight into Duncan’s eyes. Shivers crawled down her arms. The way the light snagged on his face… It reminded her of something. Something she couldn’t place but didn’t want to be reminded of.
The stern expression, the harsh beam throwing contours onto his features—she’d seen that look before, on that very face.
Under a miner’s headlamp.