Days Without Number (13 page)

Not that Nick or any of the others had ever shown signs of connoisseurship for him to encourage. Nick and Basil had even succeeded in being banned from the cellar during their childhood following an incident when a bottle had been dislodged from one of the racks and broken. 'A 'sixty-one St Emilion sacrificed to the stupidity of two small boys,' as their father had raged at the time, subsequently became an oft swapped catch-phrase between them.

At this recollection too, Nick smiled. The breakage had happened because of his attempt to conceal himself in the narrow gap between the far wall and the last rack, which was 107

single-sided, during a game of hide-and-seek. He walked along to the rack to remind himself just how narrow the gap really was.

But it was not there. The rack was hard against the wall. Nothing larger than a mouse could squeeze between them. Nick was puzzled. Even his father was not normally that cautious. Then he noticed several white patches near the base of the rack. Glancing down, he saw that some of the paint had been scraped from the floor. There were curved grooves in the surface, as if the rack had been pulled away from the wall at one end.

Nick crouched down for a closer look. Yes, that was indeed the only possible explanation. It had been done recently, too. Flakes of the dislodged paint were still lying around. But who had moved the rack? Surely it could only be his father. Was that why he had come down there on the night of his death? It would at least explain why he had left without a bottle. Yet it would leave much else unexplained.

'Nick?'

Nick started violently at the sound of Andrew's voice behind and above him. He stood and turned to see his brother descending the steps, a frown mingling with a smile on his face.

'Not planning to drink our inheritance, are you?'

'God, you nearly gave me a heart attack,' Nick complained, aware of the thumping in his chest. 'Couldn't you have rung the doorbell?'

'I did, but I got no answer, so I let myself in. You can't hear the bell down here.'

'Obviously not.'

'I thought I'd see if you were all right. First night alone in the old place and all that. Something in the kitchen smells good.'

'One of Pru's casseroles.'

'Which you're planning to wash down with a Ch�teau Lafite before we can auction the lot off and share the proceeds?'

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'That's right. You've caught me in the act.'

'Never mind. Break out one for me and we'll say no more about it.' Andrew walked up to where Nick was standing. 'Actually, though, I think it's all whites down this end.'

'What do you make of this?' Nick pointed to the marks on the floor.

Andrew looked down, then back up at Nick. 'What do you make of it?'

'Somebody's moved the rack.'

'Yeah. I reckon they have.'

'Dad?'

'Who else?'

'Alone?'

'Two people could have lifted it without scratching the floor.'

'Why would Dad want to move it at all?'

'Search me.'

'It didn't use to be hard up against the wall.'

'No?'

'Definitely not.'

'Double mystery, then.' Andrew glanced around, turning the matter over in his mind. 'Shall we just forget about it?'

'I don't think I can.'

Andrew smiled. The neither.'

They transferred the bottles to spare slots, of which there were plenty, in the next rack. The empty rack was no great weight, though cumbersome. They lifted it clear of the wall without much difficulty. Nothing sinister revealed itself amidst the dust and cobwebs in the corner of the cellar, as far as they could make out in the shadow cast by the rack. Andrew fetched the torch from the scullery to check if the shadow was concealing anything significant. The answer appeared at first glance to be no.

Then Nick noticed something: an unevenness in the otherwise smooth surface of the floor. Peering closer, he saw two lines of roughness, like flattened ridges, leading out at right 109

angles from the wall, and a third linking them, running along close to the foot of the wall. Neither he nor Andrew could be sure if they had always been there. They suspected not, although their suspicion did not amount to much. They moved the rack as far across as they could for a clearer view.

This revealed a fourth line, further out and parallel to the wall, completing a rectangle about six feet by three. The suspicion strengthened. Nick stepped into the gap they had opened up between rack and wall and walked along to the rectangular patch of floor. Something felt different as he trod on it. He could not have said what it was. But it was certainly different.

'Is there a hammer over there?' Nick pointed to the shelf running most of the length of the wall behind Andrew. Various tools were stored on it, along with empty bottles, spare light bulbs and forgotten boxes of who knew what.

'Yeah.' Andrew held up a wooden-handled ball-pein of indeterminate age.

'Pass it to me, would you?' Andrew handed it over. Nick crouched down and gave the floor several taps either side of the line around the suspicious patch. 'This part of the floor sounds . . . less solid.'

'Less solid? You mean hollow?'

'Maybe.'

'It can't be. There's never been anything below here.'

'Well, it sounds like there is now. And this line round here? What's that about?'

'You tell me.'

'Well, at a guess, I'd say somebody's dug a hole, laid a slab across it, cemented it in and painted it over.'

'Then pushed the rack over the top to hide it.'

'Certainly looks that way.'

Andrew tried hammering for himself. He nodded. 'You could be right.'

'It has to be Dad who did this.'

'Suppose so. When, do you think?'

'When was the rack moved?'

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'I don't know. It's not the sort of thing you keep tabs on, is it? Could be any time in the last twenty years.'

'You don't remember Dad doing any . . . digging?'

'Nope.'

'But he must have done. Or got someone in to do it.'

'The answer's the same, Nick. I don't remember. Anyway, why would Dad want to dig a hole down here?'

'To . . . hide something.'

'Yeah. Exactly. To hide something.'

But what? That was the question they had no hope of reasoning out an answer to. They went back upstairs and helped themselves to some of the old man's Scotch. Nick turned off the oven, his appetite suddenly gone. Then he and Andrew sat down by the fire.

'Bloody odd,' said Andrew, after they had brooded in silence for a while. 'I don't know what to make of it.'

'Perhaps one of the others knows what it's all about.'

'Doubt it. Painted over and covered with the rack? Dad didn't want anyone to know.'

'Can we be certain he knew himself?'

'Of course we can. It hasn't always been there. He dug it or got someone else to dig it. Christ knows why, though. What's down there?'

'More than just a hole, I suspect.'

'You bet.' Andrew laughed. 'Maybe it's a tunnel. An emergency exit.'

'It's strange. Elspeth Hartley reckons something is hidden in this house. Now we find a hiding-place. Coincidence?'

'Has to be. I'm not even sure the cellar's original. Either way, nobody was stashing anything down there in the seventeenth century.'

'But there's something stashed there now.'

Andrew's eyes narrowed as he reflected on their father's famously devious thought processes. 'It couldn't be the window, could it, Nick? Dad couldn't have found it and hidden it down there?'

'Why would he do that?'

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'To spite us, maybe.'

'That hole wasn't dug last week. And it must be years since Dad was physically capable of the work involved.'

'He could have hired somebody to do it.'

Nick sighed. 'We're going in circles.'

'Not indefinitely we aren't. When Tantris gets his hands on this house, that hole will be opened up.'

'True enough. But I doubt he'll find the Doom Window of St Neot down there.'

The too.' Andrew smiled mischievously. 'But why wait to find out for certain?'

Andrew fetched from the barn the tools he reckoned he would need for the job: sledgehammer, chisel, crowbar, shovel. There was no stopping him at this stage, much as Nick would have liked to. Instinct told him they should think long and hard before doing anything. But Andrew was past thinking. Nor, Nick realized, was he taking this action purely to solve a riddle left behind by their father. It was about more than that. It was about several decades' worth of resentment and deception. Now, with the old man gone, Andrew was free to have done with both.

'He screwed us up good and proper, didn't he?' Andrew voiced his thoughts almost on cue as he and Nick lugged the tools down into the cellar. 'Well, maybe not Irene and Anna. But you, me and Basil? He had a way with his sons all right.'

'I stopped blaming Dad for my problems a long time ago,' said Nick.

'Good for you. But that doesn't mean he wasn't to blame for them.'

'Maybe not. I just don't see how it helps to load it all on him.'

'It feels as if it helps.' Andrew peeled off his sweater and rolled up his shirtsleeves. 'And this may help some more.' He crouched over the slab and tapped it with the chisel, flaking off some of the paint to reveal the surface of the 112

stone beneath. 'Looks like elvan. One good blow should do it.' With that he stood up, grasped the sledgehammer and let fly.

One good blow was not, in the event, enough. Debris sprayed up from the slab, pinging against the metalwork of the empty rack and bouncing away past Nick across the room. Only at the third blow was there a loud, cracking sound. Andrew stopped and, stepping closer with the torch, Nick saw a jagged line across the centre of the slab.

'That's got it,' said Andrew. He moved back and aimed at the crack.

This time the slab broke, a chunk falling into the space below, leaving another chunk sagging. Andrew pulled it up with one end of the sledgehammer. As it fell clear, a jagged hole about a foot across was revealed.

'Give me that torch.'

But, as Andrew turned to take it, Nick recoiled, amazed to see a swarm of tiny flies rising from the hole in the slab. A strong smell hit him in the same instant, not just of stale air, but of something much fouler.

'Bloody hell.' Andrew saw the flies as well and coughed at the smell. 'What in God's name

Nick moved reluctantly forward, batting his way through the flies as he might through a cloud of midges on a summer evening. He trained the torch on the hole in the slab and saw . . . the ribcage of a skeleton.

'Christ almighty,' murmured Andrew. 'Is that what it looks like?'

'I hope not.'

'Get out of the way.' Andrew cast the sledgehammer aside and fetched the crowbar. 'Let's see for sure what's there.'

He wedged the crowbar under the slab on the far side of the hole and levered it up. Cement cracked off at the margins as the slab rose. Nick craned round him and shone the torch into the space below.

And there, beyond the ribcage, was the skull, unquestionably human, staring back at them through empty eye-sockets,

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with flies crawling and hopping across the bone and the suety remnants of flesh.

But the flies were not what caused Nick to mutter 'My God!' under his breath. An inch or so above the left eye socket there was a large, splintered hole in the bone. There was no doubt in Nick's mind: they were not looking at the remains of someone who had met a natural death.

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CHAPTER NINE

The body had been buried carefully, almost respectfully. That was clear from the planking lining the trench in which it had been laid. Digging a crude hole in the earth would have been quicker and easier. But there was something meticulous about this covert interment that made it more mysterious still.

Nick and Andrew covered the broken slab with the tarpaulin their father had long kept in the garage and stood the empty rack back across it. Then they left the cellar, locking the door behind them.

'Dad only fitted that lock to the door to stop Basil and me going down there and wreaking havoc,' said Nick, breaking a long silence during which they had done what needed to be done through a fog of bewilderment. 'There was nothing to hide then.'

Andrew did not at first respond. He led the way back into the drawing room, flung another log on the fire and poured large Scotches for both of them. He sipped his while leaning against the mantelpiece, on which a gilt-framed photograph of their parents on their ruby-wedding anniversary in 1989 projected an entirely conventional image of a contented old couple posing proudly in the entrance porch of their charmingly rustic family home. 'Think that was down there then?'

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he asked, tapping the rim of his tumbler against the frame. 'Think Mum knew about it?'

'I doubt it.'

'Bloody difficult to overlook, though. Burying a corpse in the cellar. Not to mention turning some poor sod into a corpse in the first place.'

'We don't know what happened.'

'We know what killed him, though. A hole in the head. And I don't reckon he got it accidentally.'

'I'm no pathologist, Andrew. Nor are you. We can't even be sure it's a man.'

'Where did those flies come from? How did they get down there?'

'We're not entomologists either. There are human remains under the cellar. That's all we can be sure of.'

'Not quite. We can also be sure we're supposed to report a discovery like this to the police. Then they can call in the experts. Establish sex, age, cause of death, date of death - all that stuff.'

'You're right.'

Ts that what you think we should do, then?'

'I suppose so.'

'Really?' Andrew pushed himself away from the mantelpiece and flopped down into an armchair opposite Nick. 'Just let's talk it through. It won't only be this house the police start swarming all over, you know. It'll be Dad's past - our family's past. Whoever Joe Skeleton is, somebody did him in. Who are the police going to finger for that? I can't see any way round it. Dad's got to be the prime suspect. And the police will give us the third degree in his absence. They may even pencil us in as possible accessories.'