The Mystery of Wickworth Manor (16 page)

‘Do you think we should look for a graveyard?’ she asked. ‘We need to find where Verity’s buried.’

‘If you commended something to God, you’d do it inside the chapel, I think. Let’s look around. I’ve got a torch on my phone.’ Curtis patted down his pocket and then pulled it out. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Two missed calls from Mum. Why’s she ringing so late?’

Paige sighed. ‘She cares about you, you know.’

‘You can’t possibly know that.’ Curtis’s voice was quiet. She had to strain to hear him against the wind. ‘You’re just guessing again.’

‘Am I? Listen, when we get out of this, promise me you’ll call your mum.’

‘Mrs Burton-Jones will be calling both our mums, most likely.’

‘Promise,’ Paige said, glaring at him.

Curtis looked down. ‘Fine. I’ll call her, I promise.’

‘Good. Now that that’s settled, let’s do this.’

Paige took the tub from Curtis and opened it. A small cloud of flour puffed from the top. ‘I’ve seen this in one of my mum’s books,’ she said. ‘I need to draw a circle on the ground with the flour. Then you say special words inside the circle. I’m pretty sure I remember what to say.’

Her hands were trembling as she looked around for the best place to do the ritual. She tried to ignore the fear eating away inside her.

Maybe over by the altar?

She stepped towards it, then Curtis cried out.

‘Hey,’ he said. His torch shone against one of the side walls. ‘Hey, look at this.’

‘This’ was a sandstone slab set into the wall. As Paige got closer, she saw that there were black letters cut into the grey stone.

‘“
In Memoriam. William Burton 1742–1805”,’
Curtis read, tracing the words with his fingertips.
‘“His beloved wife Catherine Burton 1763–1793 and their dear daughter Patience Burton 1792–1805”
. And this one, right next to it, says
“Verity Burton 1791–1866. Rest In Peace”
.’ He stepped back. ‘Here they are; the whole family alongside each other.’

‘How can those three all fit in there?’ Paige looked at the space, about the size of a flat-screen TV.

‘I guess they’re just all squished on top of each other,’ Curtis said.

‘Gross. Why are they buried inside the chapel anyway? Shouldn’t they be in a graveyard?’

Curtis shrugged. ‘People are sometimes. Especially if the chapel belongs to them.’

Paige looked at the inscription. This was the perfect spot. Verity, Patience and William were all here. It was only Christopher who was missing. She shook the flour from the tub turning in a circle as she did so. The flour looked bone-white against the dusty floor. She took the kitchen thermometer from her pocket. ‘It’s fourteen degrees,’ she said.

She looked at Curtis and took a deep breath. She was really going to do this. It was all up to her now.

Chapter 31

Curtis watched Paige step into the white circle she’d made on the floor. She began whispering to herself. He wasn’t certain whether this was a spell she had read somewhere, or something she’d made up herself. Either way the chances of it resulting in any useful information were somewhere between nil and absolute zero.

Their success or failure was up to him. He had an icy cold feeling in his stomach. He recognised it. Fear. The same feeling he’d had when he’d sat down in the huge exam hall at Northdene. The same feeling he’d had when he’d had to tell Mum and Dad that their dreams for him were over.

‘Curtis!’ Paige called. ‘The thermometer’s dropping. Twelve degrees. Now eleven. It’s getting colder.’

‘There’s a storm,’ he said. ‘The temperature is bound to drop.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s working. The spirits are close; I can feel them.’

Curtis shone his phone at the memorial. He ran his fingers along the carved lettering. The grains of sandstone were rough against his fingertips. Outside, the sound of the rain hitting the roof was louder. But there was something else too – shouts? Were there people outside?

He glanced back at Paige, who was concentrating on the thermometer in her hand. Had she heard the calls?

Curtis stepped away from the stone. If Mrs Burton-Jones or the police were close enough for him to hear them shouting, then they didn’t have much time. He was going to be sent down again, he just knew it. He was going to have to explain to Mum that he had messed up. It had been hard to tell her the first time. Well, not hard, impossible. He hadn’t been able to say the words aloud.
I failed.
He hadn’t said them to anyone, but he had thought them over and over again until it was like listening to his own breathing.

He couldn’t fail again.

Verity had been the last person to know the truth. She must have left them a clue.

‘Verity,’ Paige whispered. ‘Verity, come to us now and share your secrets.’

Verity had
wanted
someone to know. That’s why she had left the letter in the globe. She had been ashamed of her secret, but she hadn’t wanted it to die with her.

‘Are you there? Speak to us, Verity.’

Curtis swept his light along the walls; it reflected back off the dirty windows and seeped into the shadowy stone. Verity must have left a clue. She
must
.

And then he saw a glint of gold.

He swung the beam of light back.

Some six metres above the floor of the chapel was an alcove. Inside the alcove stood a statue decorated with gold fragments.

‘What is that?’ Curtis whispered.

Paige stopped whispering and looked up.

The statue was of a man, bent double, carrying a child on his back. The child held up a globe; slivers of gold leaf still shone from its circumference.

‘A gold globe. Like the buttons on Christopher’s red coat,’ Curtis said.

‘St Christopher,’ Paige said.

‘What?’

‘That’s St Christopher, the patron saint of travellers. Mum gave me a St Christopher medal when I started going to school on my own. He keeps you safe. That’s the baby Jesus he’s carrying.’

Curtis felt a tingling on the nape of his neck. St Christopher. Verity
had
left them a clue. ‘That’s it! Up there. We have to get up there,’ Curtis said.

‘No way.’

‘Look at St Christopher. Look at his face. It’s black.’

‘How can you tell in the dark? Maybe it’s just dusty.’

‘No, I’m right. Verity left a trail and we’re hot on it!’

Paige looked at the flour circle at her feet. Curtis could see the whites of her eyes, open in amazement. ‘Look! The flour, it’s moved!’ Part of the flour circle had been disturbed; a small section now fanned outwards. ‘It . . . worked,’ she said. ‘I asked Verity to come and tell us her secret and she did. She told you!’

‘No. She didn’t. I saw it for myself.’

‘But the flour!’

‘It was just the wind. Now, come on.’

Curtis ran his palm along the wall. The alcove was set high up and the stone below was smooth. ‘We need something to climb on.’

Paige looked up at the wall. ‘You want me to climb all the way up there? Forget it.’

‘Fine. I’ll go up and you can keep a lookout.’ Curtis scanned the chapel. Maybe a chair would do. He grabbed one and pulled it over; its legs rasped along the stone floor.

Paige leapt out of her circle and ran to the entrance. ‘Oh, yikes! There are lights on all over the house. And more moving around the lake. They’ll be here any minute.’

Curtis felt the cold feeling in his stomach spread. If he didn’t find something soon, he’d be sent home from a school he hadn’t even started at, and all for nothing.

He scrambled up on to the chair. It wobbled a bit, but didn’t topple over. His face was close to the stone wall; he could feel the cold and damp of the chapel on his skin, the air smelling dusty and peppery in his nose.

He stretched up. St Christopher was still out of reach. But his fingers brushed something: an indentation in the smoothness of the stone. His fingers slotted into it perfectly, as though it was there for that purpose. He reached up with his left hand. There was another indentation, slightly higher up. There were handholds! They started high up, so that no one would notice them from the ground, but they had been put there deliberately. He grinned, despite the fact that he was on tiptoe high above a stone floor.

Curtis jammed his fingers into the holes and heaved himself up. His feet scrabbled for purchase against the smooth stone. Friction held him in place – just. He reached up and found another groove. He was climbing now; creeping closer to the statue. Dust and small grains of stone fell to the ground as he climbed. His breathing grew ragged and his fingertips felt raw where they gripped the wall. But the statue was getting closer.

‘Quick!’ Paige yelled. ‘They’re nearly here!’

Curtis stretched his arm nearly out of its socket and grabbed St Christopher’s ankle, which held firm. He swung himself into the alcove, which was the size of a small cupboard. He had to hunch down, but there was just enough room for him to balance next to the statue.

He ran his hands around the space, searching for a shelf or a box, or a loose cover, or
something
.

There was nothing.

There
couldn’t
be nothing.

He had been so sure that there would be something here. He couldn’t fail now, not when he was so close. His fear swelled. He felt as though the space inside the alcove was shrinking, that he was being pinned down, crushed. They would be caught and that would be the end of it. He’d be sent home, like Northdene all over again.

No.

He wouldn’t give up, not this time; he wouldn’t just sit there and wait for the end. This time it would be different. He felt around the alcove again, worming his fingers into every crack and groove. But there was just the saint, the baby he carried and the globe.

The globe.

Curtis took out his phone and shone the light on to the statue. The gold decoration on the globe shone like sweet wrappers. But he could see now that the gold didn’t pick out the shapes of continents, and it wasn’t a random pattern either.

It was an arrow.

It pointed clockwise around the circumference of the sphere.

Curtis held the globe with both hands and twisted. It gave slightly, with a grating noise. Then it stopped. Jammed. He tried again, like trying to twist the top off a jam jar. But it wouldn’t move.

‘Paige!’ he said. ‘Paige, you have to get up here, I need help.’

Paige ran lightly over from the doorway. She stood below him, looking up. ‘I can’t get up there, I can’t.’

‘You have to. I can’t do this by myself, I’m not strong enough.’

‘Neither am I! I’d rather get caught.’

Curtis felt a surge of anger. It was all right for her, she had a mum who didn’t mind if she did something wrong. Paige’s mum would never be disappointed in her. ‘You have to, Paige. There’s no choice.’

‘Yes there is. We can both run and hide. It might be OK. It’s only our word against Liam’s.’

‘Yes and Mrs Burton-Jones doesn’t like us; she could easily believe Liam. Take a deep breath and get up here.’

Paige frowned, then reached for the back of the chair. She pulled herself up so that she was standing on the seat.

‘That’s it, you can do it.’

She reached up slowly.

Outside, the noise of shouts was much clearer now. Curtis was sure that he could make out Liam’s voice. Paige’s breath came in shallow gasps. Her fingers crawled across the wall searching for the handholds. She made a noise that was somewhere close to whimpering.

‘I can’t.’

She wasn’t going to do it. They would be caught like this, with nothing to show for it but a ton of trouble. Curtis could have screamed in frustration. All she needed to do was to move.

‘Paige. Listen to me. Those spirits you believe in, they need you to do this. They’re counting on you. I’m counting on you. All you have to do is put one hand up, then the other. But you have to do it and you have to do it now.’

Her hand moved. It found the first handhold, then the next. She was getting closer. Curtis reached down and grabbed the back of her shirt. He heaved. She scrambled into the alcove and sat, gasping, on the edge.