The Lost Treasure Map Series (25 page)

“
We don
’t
want to spend too long
here,
”
Mortimer confessed.
“
There are other things to
do!
”

“
Do you think that
they
’ll
catch that guy with the gun?
”
Merton asked, after reading
something.

Mortimer and Bryson shrugged at each
other.

“
They should put serial numbers on
bullets,
”
Merton muttered.
“
So that they can directly trace the
bullet.
”

“
They can trace them to the
manufacturer,
”
Bryson replied.
“
And maybe to the shop selling them. But would
someone give their name to buy them, and use them to shoot someone?
I reckon that they would not give them their proper identification,
or buy illegal bullets.
”

He wondered if there had been two killers in
the wood, and one with a gun. He also wondered why the reporter had
been in the vault. Had he been actually looking for the money? And
had he been onto something? But had his killer been looking for it
or him?

They knew what the
killer
’s
shoes were like. They could check the others in the castle,
by checking their shoes. But he saw that he was making a mistake,
and that it would not be any of them or James
’s
friends. It seemed absurd,
as they would easily have followed the person
’s
prints to the person, to
where they had been in the wood, or have noticed that they had the
same shoes.

Bryson read a passage from the diary,
mentioning sounds from the woods, with the woman and
father
’s
obsessive beliefs about it. It puzzled him! How could people
have so many different views about such things (when there were no
real facts)?

They had kept an ancient mentality at that
era, but they had carried appropriate ways of handling things.

Their main way had been to pass on
warnings to the next generation
–
influencing them into avoiding things, and
doing things in specific ways.

It had lasted for centuries. In fact,
he believed that Sir Richard
’s
uncle had been the weak link, who had
stopped it, and he had held different views. He recalled some
things about him, which he had found out when he had once
questioned Robert. He had been the owner who had the castle
modernized, into the way that it was now.

Merton pushed away his book, and looked at
the diary with little enthusiasm.

Bryson casually pushed it in his
bag.
“
After
I
’ve
something to eat, I
’m
going take a look about the upper castle. I
may come up with something with all the extra knowledge that I have
accumulated!
”

They nodded their heads in agreement, with a
lack of interest in helping with the idea.

Bryson left, and went out into the
corridor.

At the end of it, he spotted some of the
police leaving to go to the murder scene.

How could they not have found
anything? They had rigorously searched everything. But when he
thought of how careful and accurate the killer had been, he could
not imagine him making a mistake. And they would be lucky to find
genetic evidence outside
–
in the snow, and harsh breezes. It was far
from being the place that they normally did their work.

What was strange and annoyed him was that he
had been starting to learn things about the reporter when someone
had killed him. But it showed that his killer was also capable of
making mistakes. Why had he not kept himself unknown about, and
kept him alive? He could easily have carried out the crime
somewhere else!

Chapter 46

Rearranging
Abnormalities

As Bryson went around the end of
corridor, he saw Robert in the dining room
–
sitting on his own
–
frantically
chewing at a piece of beef, slightly startled, thinking over
events, and what was occurring.

It surprised Bryson how fit he and some of
the others now looked. They even had persuaded Sarah and Helen into
walking about intensely, and out into the wood, looking for it.

“
Sit down!
”
Robert announced, with a slight
smile, with some inner amusement, as he caught sight of him
entering. Perhaps disappointed in his lack of help!

A servant appeared with another plate full
of food.

“
Can you please fetch
another!
”
he moaned, pushing it over to Bryson.

The servants were cordial; they speedily
obeyed their few wishes, sometimes before they spoke.

They looked as if they had been chosen owing
to them having worked in busy places. He was sure that Sir Richard
had kept a system, and that he had regularly replaced them.

Bryson ended up eating as fast as Robert was
eating, instinctively coping him, even though he was not as
hungry.

“
Where are you now
looking?
”
he asked, casually, smiling.

“
We had been over there before
...
”
he
replied, between swallowing pieces of potato.

“
What happened over
there?
”

“
We found the body of the reporter
that they had caught watching here.
”

Robert considered it for a few seconds, and
just ignored it.

“
Good luck!
”
Bryson said finishing his food,
standing, deciding he was full now
–
moving for the door.

Robert continued eating, nodding his head
towards him, still considering something and smiling.

Bryson listened to the creaks from the
floorboards, as he went up the stairs, and he remembered the first
time that they had gone up them.

He had fulfilled his wish of returning to
the castle!

He walked along the second floor to his
room, but as he passed the room that had the disturbances, he saw
that the others had been working there.

He went in, approached the window, and
observed some of the police, gathered about the front, beside many
police vehicles. And he saw another group of policemen taking the
body there, from the wood.

He watched their faces, trying to see any
signs that they had found anything, but there was nothing.

Bryson looked at the wall behind the bed,
after discarding anything being under the floorboards. It was too
obvious. The hunt that they had conducted had been nothing more
than what school kids could have done. It was ridiculous: they had
achieved nothing!

The wall grabbed his attention. Yet every
wall, in every room, could have the money. They were thick enough.
Some of them even had chimneys running through them.

If he only had some of equipment that
archaeologists used, it would give him a vague view of their
interiors, as well as of the floors.

Bryson repeatedly thumped his hand hard
against the wall, intensely listening for anything, while he slowly
moved over the bed. Then he suddenly halted, and jumped back, as a
chunk of stone crumbled and shifted out, from behind the
wallpaper.

Chapter 47

Odd Ventilation
System

The destruction to the historical castle gave
him no real feelings of guilt, but he carefully shifted the awkward
mass of stone out, in stages, from the wall.

He was obsessed, and his clambering
resumed until he finally had to stop
–
feeling a sudden loss of energy,
with his legs starting to collapse under him, with a mild
discomfort to his hands and arms, cut and bruised, at where he had
been tugging.

His eyes fell on the mess under him, with
little interest. The thick layer of stone and dust fragments
scattered across the bed could be cleaned.

With one sudden heave, he incredibly yanked
the boulder out, and allowed it to fall to his side. A loud bang
instantly came from the bed, and it collapsed downwards with the
weight.

In the black gap, where Bryson had removed
the stone block, there was nothing, and he waited for his eyes to
adjust. But it stayed dim! And he poked his head in, but only saw
that there was no stone behind where it had been.

He then stuck his body further inward, with
his arms out in front. And further in, he felt that it was a sort
of chamber between the walls, but as his sight adjusted to it, he
saw that it was not, and that it must be a chimney.

He realized it was a stupid idea anyway. Why
would anything be there: in a room in the middle of nowhere?

Yet it seemed too large to be a chimney, and
there was no trace of soot or anything that would surely be there,
even if they had it cleaned. Although there was a dim chance that
nobody had really used it, and that any marks, if any, were in the
darkness below. But, again, it was not in the right position to be
one! And there were no chimneys below.

He knew where there was a torch, to check
it, so he pulled himself away.

In a room along the corridor, he found the
torch, and he speedily returned. And he climbed back in, and
instantly saw its true size, and that it went further down than the
room below, deep beneath the castle.

He thought of other castles, as he tried to
work out why the builders would have logically added it to the
castle. And he concluded that it had to be for ventilation! The
people at that time did not have tightly confined buildings: they
could easily have believed that they could suffocate in such
places.

But what about the chimneys, why would they
not have done? And why was it so large? And where was the opening
that allowed the air to flow in?

His breathing echoed down into its abyss,
and its coldness made him imagine clouds of steam pouring out of
his mouth, into its darkness at the edge of him, out of the range
of the torch beam.

His mind could not imagine anything.

He shone the torch upwards, and saw the end
of the shaft, near the roof.

At the end of the corridor, behind him, he
heard voices coming towards him, and he pulled himself out.

In the corridor, he saw Merton and Mortimer
strolling towards him, probably wondering where he was. He had not
arrived back, when they had expected him to.

“
What
’s
happened?
”
Merton asked, shifting awkwardly,
looking at the dust covering him.

“
It
’s
not a chimney,
”
he quickly remarked, moving back to
the room.

“
We can
’t
leave you on your own
...
”
Merton
joked, astonished, entering the room, wondering what he had been
doing.

Bryson handed Mortimer the torch, and he
climbed onto the bed.

Merton went over to the window to observe
the police.

Mortimer reached in, ignoring the dirt.

“
It could be for
ventilation,
”
he confirmed.

Bryson nodded once, showing that he
agreed.

Merton looked at it.
“
It could be
something like one of those small lifts that they use in hotels to
hoist things up.
”

Mortimer pulled himself out, while
Merton shuffled his way to it.
“
Or it could have been used in the
construction of the castle. That would explain why they hid
it.
”

After a few minutes, Merton seemed to see
something in it.

“
What is it?
”

Merton pushed himself further in,
moving the torch about inside it.
“
Did you see those holes down
there?
”

“
I never saw them!
”

“
There are small holes going into
other places. They
’re
all the way through it! It has to be for
something like ventilation.
”

He carefully considered something else, and
he ignored it.

As he removed himself from it, Bryson moved
back into it.

He instantly saw the holes at the places
that Merton had looked. They were like the outlets of drainpipes,
going into a sewer pipe. Perhaps it, in fact, had been an old sewer
shaft, which led outside.

They obviously had built the castle toilets
much later. Its strange design could have been an early invention,
perhaps made by the builders. The relics of some Roman structures
had them! Yet it did look more like a ventilation shaft! He could
recall seeing something like it in the wall of another castle,
which workmen were repairing.

“
It would be interesting to find out
where it leads,
”
he spoke, clambering out of it.
“
Did you have anything to
eat?
”

“
I could do with
something,
”
Merton replied, delighted, and Mortimer agreed.