Squat and graceless, the cottage might have been rough-hewn from the rock of the valley wall, even remaining a part of it. Its window recesses were small and skewed, and seemed to brood like so many deep-set eyes from beneath the low slate roof. The chimney canted slightly, suggesting that the house itself had fallen victim to subsidence in the past.
"Not exactly a stately home, is it?" McLeod murmured.
"I certainly wouldn't want to live here," Davies said. "Evans has got his own electrical generator - it's housed in that shed you can see from here - but that would seem to be his sole concession to twentieth-century living. The phone company won't run a line all the way out here, and I'm not even sure he has indoor plumbing."
They parked the Land Rover at the edge of the clearing and got out.
"There's no smoke rising from the chimney," Harry observed, "and no noise coming from the generator. Call me a pessimist, but I don't think there's anybody home."
"Then nobody's going to mind if we take a look around," Davies said, blowing on gloved hands. "We'll announce ourselves first, for the sake of form."
The air seemed unnaturally still as they approached the cottage. Though the cold was bitter, and McLeod was three-quarters convinced that the place was unoccupied, he found himself unbuttoning his overcoat to allow access to the Browning Hi-Power he had clipped inside his waistband before alighting from the plane. Harry kept looking around suspiciously. Davies apparently was experiencing a similar case of nerves, for he gave McLeod a thumbs-up sign as he spotted the butt of the Browning, though he himself appeared to be unarmed.
"Mr. Evans, are you there?" he called, hammering a gloved fist on the door. "Mr. Evans, it's Inspector Davies and Inspector McLeod from the police. We'd like to have a word with you."
There was no response from inside. Davies raised his voice and shouted again, with no better results. Turning to McLeod, he cocked an eyebrow. "Well, what do you think?"
"I think," McLeod said pointedly, "that after coming all this way, I would hate to leave without at least checking to make sure Mr. Evans isn't lying dead of a heart attack on his own kitchen floor. Or he could have perished from the cold.
After all, as Harry pointed out, I don't see any sign of chimney smoke, do you?"
"How very right you are," Davies concurred with aplomb. "I wonder whether he might have left a spare key under the mat."
Chapter Twenty
THERE was no key - not that any of them expected to find one - but with the aid of a bit of wire and a lock-pick Davies produced from his wallet, they managed to get the door open without damaging the lock. Entering, they found themselves in a narrow vestibule flanked by doors to either side, with a cobwebby gasolier hanging from the ceiling. Directly ahead of them, a solidly built flight of stairs led to the floor above.
"Hello?" Davies called, sweeping the beam of a powerful torch around the room. "Police officers, Mr. Evans. Anyone home?''
Still receiving no response, Davies tried the door leading off to the left. The toilet and tiny sink beyond were antiquated, but functional.
"I guess that answers your question about the plumbing, anyway," McLeod said to Davies, producing a smaller torch from a side coat pocket. "Let's see what else we can find."
Davies elected to take a look around upstairs, leaving McLeod and Harry to finish surveying the ground floor. Still not quite convinced that the house was empty, McLeod drew his coat back from the butt of his Browning before cautiously opening the door to the right of the stairs.
The doorway gave access to a dim, musty sitting room, with two deeply recessed windows piercing the east wall. Through gaps in the threadbare curtains, enough light filtered into the room to make out a high-backed black oak settle opposite the grey stone fireplace and hearth, flanked by a pair of rush-bottomed chairs. The wall adjoining the windows was dominated by a ponderous oaken sideboard laden with dusty blue and white china and a few pewter serving pieces. At some point in the decades long past, the gaslight wall sconces to either end of the sideboard had been electrified, but the overall appearance of the room suggested that little else might have changed for a century or more.
Harry drew a deep breath and saw his exhalation turn into a plume of white steam.
"I think it's even colder in here than it is outside!" he muttered. "If the temperature's anything to go by, this room hasn't been used for quite some time."
"Probably not for the last fortnight, if not longer," McLeod hazarded, as he swept his torch around the room, thinking back to Callanish. "Wherever this Evans may have gone, I have an uncomfortable notion that he isn't planning to come back."
A secondary door in the west wall led along a short corridor to a large kitchen running the entire length of the back of the house. The plaster overlaying the stone walls had been given a coat of whitewash that now was dingy with age. Harry fished a mini-Maglite out of a pocket of his leather jacket as McLeod swept his light across a tarnished array of copper pans and outmoded cooking utensils displayed on hooks above an old-fashioned coal-burning cookstove.
"I've feel like I've stepped through a time portal," Harry murmured as he and McLeod examined the age-stained porcelain sinks and wooden countertops. "I shouldn't think this place has been refurbished since the reign of Queen Victoria."
"I've seen cheerier morgues in my day," McLeod said with unsparing candor. "Let's move on."
A large walk-in pantry lay at the far end of the kitchen. After probing it with his light, McLeod entered to find himself confronted by an array of shelves running from floor to ceiling on all three sides. The boards underfoot had been overlaid with a worn sheet of linoleum that stopped several inches short of the skirting boards all around. The air was thick with the smell of mildew and mouse-droppings. Coming in behind McLeod, Harry took a sniff and curled his lip.
"Whew, not up to even my bachelor standards of housekeeping. D'you suppose he really lives this way? It has to be a health hazard."
"It isn't physical health hazards I'm worried about," McLeod muttered.
Together the two men inspected the contents of the pantry. The storage space to the left of the doorway held a spartan range of food staples. All the sacks and tins were generically packaged.
"Flour… salt… sugar… lard," McLeod read aloud, moving along the shelves. "Whatever else he may be, this Evans stocks his kitchen like a survivalist."
"Maybe he still thinks there's a war on," Harry offered with a sardonic lift of one eyebrow.
"Candles… matches… kerosene lamps," McLeod continued, carrying on with his survey. "Either our man is expecting a siege, or he doesn't have much faith in privatized utilities."
He took a step backward, hoping to get a better view of the upper shelves. As he did so, he felt the floor give way slightly beneath one heel. His muttered exclamation of surprise alerted Harry, who had started to light one of the kerosene lamps.
"What is it?"
"I'm not sure," McLeod said, bending to look at the floor. "Bring that light down here. Yes, indeed." He shone his own light along the edge of the linoleum, now revealed as a crack that went right around the square.
"Right," McLeod murmured, running his fingers under the area where his heel had pressed. "I think we've found the way into the cellar. Help me lift this trapdoor."
Though the two of them braced themselves to tug, the trapdoor lifted with unexpected ease. A dark cavity yawned below, with a wooden ladder extending downwards into the shadows.