Chapter Twenty-five
Isee more of the compound with Ben than I have with anyone else.
He shows me the ballroom and how the mirrored panels on the back wall all swing open, linking it to the banquet hall via discreet little switches hidden in the pillars dividing each panel.
He turns on the chandeliers and explains the way the mirrors would have enhanced the candlelight in both rooms back before they made the light electric.
The result is a golden glow that shimmers over everything. Pure opulence.
He points out the recessed shelving on the first-floor corridor and shows me that if you twist the statue of Eros, on the fifth shelf, ninety degrees clockwise, the entire thing swings open to reveal yet another staircase.
One that leads to Sylvie’s room. It’s no wonder she manages to sneak out so easily.
“The key,” he explains, hopping ahead of me and walking backwards.
“Is to look for geometric designs. Especially ones that have a sense of balance. The old man was obsessed with either balance or opposites. Yin and yang kind of stuff. Light and dark. Black and white; they both appear throughout the house. Normally marking a puzzle.”
“Like the two halves of the maze?”
He points at me and grins. “Exactly. As above, so below. The cottage comes out of the ground on one side, and the pond was dug into it on the other.”
“What happened for them to fill it in?”
Ben falters a step. Stopping in the middle of the corridor with his back to me. “It’s not really common knowledge.”
“You don’t have to say. I’m just being nosy.”
He turns around and rolls his lips as he watches me. “It’s probably better you hear it from me than ask Sylvie or Dax,” Ben reasons to himself, before asking, “You’ve heard of Sylvie’s mother, Beatrice?”
“Yeah?”
“She drowned there.”
“What? In the maze pond? That’s…how?”
Ben shoves his hands in his pockets, takes a breath, and lets the word out on a hiss of air. “Suicide. Which is why it’s best not to go around asking about it.”
Don’t ask. Don’t pry. If Ben’s warning me, it’s advice worth heeding.
“Understood.” The questions come regardless though. Why would she do that? Was she ill? Depressed? She must have felt such desperation. Ben clears his throat as if sensing my thoughts.
“This room is widely accepted to have been Ephraim’s office,” he says, continuing the tour.
He swings open the ornate double doors to reveal a dark room.
Despite the three floor-to-ceiling windows, the place is shrouded in dust and red velvet.
Bookshelves bracket the doorway. Windows overlook the lawn on the left.
There’s a traditional captain’s desk and chair on the right.
On the wall opposite looms a majestic stone fireplace guarded by a gilt-framed portrait of a severe man.
His expression is unyielding, eyes glaring into the heart of anyone venturing through the door.
“Meet Ephraim,” Ben introduces, waving his hand before him. I notice him duck his head in respect to the portrait before he tours the room, eyes falling over everything, and then sits on the leather sofa by the windows.
I watch Ben keenly. The spots where his eyes drag are clues to the purpose of our visit, but I can’t stop myself from staring at the old man in the portrait. There is something familiar in his ice-blue gaze that unnerves me. Something in his thin nose and sharp brow tells me I know him somehow.
“How many?” I ask Ben.
“Hmm?”
“Puzzles. How many are in here?”
“I honestly can’t tell you. I’ve found five, solved only two, but chances are there are way more than even I’ve noticed.
” His normal reservation is nowhere to be found.
Ben is at home here in the compound. It lights him up.
Like an archaeologist on the hunt for treasure, he is alive, and alert, and excited.
“Are you testing me?”
“Mostly, I’m trying not to influence you. I’m hoping you might find something I haven’t.”
I walk the room, lingering in spots that drew Ben’s attention; the third shelf left of the door, the desk, the fireplace, the middle window, and the rug.
I start with the shelf, checking the depth of the anterior wall, measuring the depth of the doorway, and comparing it to the shelving using my arm.
There doesn’t seem to be any hidden space, so this isn’t a secret tunnel puzzle.
Which means there is something of interest on the shelf.
There are six books and a box. The books are unremarkable and pull out of the shelf without issue, so it’s the box. A cube with no apparent opening or use.
“Puzzle,” I state, though I’m not sure how to open it.
“Yes.”
I turn and twist it in my hand. It’s smooth. No markings, doesn’t twist or pressure release. Ben watches me until I look up at him. “Have you opened it?”
“Yes.”
“Not going to lie. I want to ask how you did it.” I shake it next to my ear. Theres a soft thump but the box doesn’t shift or open.
“But part of you wants to figure it out?”
“God, yes.”
Ben chuckles. “Take it with you. It’s worth it. You can bring it back here when you’ve solved it.”
“You sure?”
“Ephraim’s the only one who’d mind, and he’s not here to argue.” I laugh at that. As true as it might be, the portrait breathing down my neck says otherwise. I put it back where I found it and move to the window behind Ben.
He seems to notice my steps mirror his. “I gave them away, didn’t I?”
“Maybe,” I tease, but I’m already hunting for whatever is hidden here. The window itself is perfectly normal and the same as the two on either side. It takes me ten minutes of silent comparisons before Ben speaks up.
“I’ve not figured this one out, but I know there’s something there.”
“Why?”
“The pattern,” he admits.
I look again. Pattern…pattern…there! In the window casement are patterns that run up each side of the window.
The other two windows share the same pattern, but the one in the middle is subtly different.
Where the others have vine leaves trailing up, the middle window has grapes amid the vines.
I run my hand over them and realise that on each bunch there is one grape more pronounced than the others. Four on either side of the frame.
I press firmly. Nothing.
“What have you found?” Ben shoots out of his seat and joins me at the window. I grab his hand and run his palm over a grape cluster.
“Feel how it’s slightly bigger? More three dimensional than the rest.”
“Yeah. There’s one in every bunch like that, but they don’t do anything. I think it’s just years of accumulated paint.”
“Fine, but then it would be random, not one on each cluster.” Ben runs his hands over each of the grapes, climbing onto the windowsill to reach the upper ones. A thought occurs. The wood wouldn’t have been painted in Ephraim’s day.
“When were the windows painted?”
Ben doesn’t even need to answer; he understands my real question and pulls out a switchblade from his pocket. Knife clicking wide, he scrapes carefully at the lowest pronounced grape, cleaving the paint from the wood.
It’s hard to see, but there’s a clear line where the grape separates from the frame. He digs his knife in and pulls; the grape popping off and hitting the frame opposite before rolling onto the sill. Where the grape had been was now a hole ringed in metal.
“What the hell—?” Ben grumbles.
It’s all too familiar to me. “It’s a keyhole. We have locks like that on our windows in the Tower. You’ll need an Allen key.”
“Hex wrench key,” Ben clarifies. He moves to the next grape and removes it. “Another keyhole. This one looks bigger.”
“Assuming all the holes are different sizes, you’re looking for eight different keys,” I suggest. “Four, if the holes sizes are mirrored either side.
“How didn’t I notice this before?”
“You did,” I remind him.
“But the paint.”
It not hard to see he’s beating himself up over this. “I only guessed because of what you said. Teamwork.”
Where I thought he was angry with me for being the one to solve it, I’m quickly disabused of that notion when he grabs me and spins me around in a tight hug. “Thank you!”
My tummy flutters when he presses his lips to my cheek before putting me down.
“No problem,” I mumble. “Uh. You said there were more?”
That sparks off a flurry of movement. “There are. The rug has a map.”
“A map?” I take a look at the rug. I don’t see a…
wait…is that...? The maroon-coloured rug is dark and well-worn, so it’s hard to see at first glance, but there is a secondary thread in a lighter shade of red that is almost indiscernible.
This second colour zigzags through the tapestry and wouldn’t be special at all, if not for the thicker line that curls in a way that all residents of Harrison know.
The unmistakable ‘Y’ of the Harris and Esk rivers. The two rivers that feed our city.
“Do you see it?” Ben asks, coming to stand beside me.
I nod. “I see the Esk and the Harris.”
“Yeah. The rest is an old map. Older than the city we currently know. I need survey maps to figure it out. There are stars over certain sections, see?” He points them out. What he calls stars are just blobs to me. “I think they’re significant.”
“Like a treasure map? Blob marks the spot?”
“Perhaps.” He nods, but he doesn’t sound convinced. “It’s something.”
“And the desk puzzle?” I ask.
“Another I haven’t figured out yet. The desk is deeper than the drawers within it, but I haven’t found the lock or mechanism to open the hidden portion.” He circles back to the window frame. Dancing his fingers over each indentation left by the missing grapes,
“What about the fireplace?” I ask, sensing he’s no longer here with me, but surmising where he might find the keys to open the locks.
“That one I figured out, though it seems a bit pointless as pay-offs go.”