Judith and Renie followed Mrs. Gibbs’s directions and found themselves in another narrow passageway where the only light came from a few orange bulbs that had been set in the ancient iron sconces. The three doors along the way had once led to the great hall, but, if Judith remembered correctly, that section was now the Gibbses’ lodgings.
At the end of the passageway they found two doors. Judith opened the one on the left. A carpeted hallway with abstract paintings on the walls indicated that this was part of the Fordyce suite. The door to their right was harder to budge. Judith had to put her shoulder against it before it opened with a harsh, scraping sound.
“Where are we?” Renie asked, looking around a large room with two narrow window slits far above the cousins’ heads.
Judith scanned the cartons, boxes, barrels, and chests that covered most of the floor and were stacked almost six feet high. The air felt dank and stale. “It must be the storage area.” She grimaced at the mounds of various containers, many covered in dust and cobwebs. The room was so crowded that Judith found it oppressive, even overwhelming. “What else could it be?”
“I don’t know,” Renie replied as thunder rumbled close by. “I can’t see anything.”
Judith glared at her cousin. “Not funny, coz. Here’s the trapdoor,” she added, pointing to an area near a pile of wooden crates that were marked with black letters spelling LINENS.
“I’m not kidding,” Renie asserted. “I can’t see. My chronic corneal dystrophy has come back.”
“Good grief!” She was familiar with Renie’s problem, involving blurred vision and drooping eyelids. Sure enough, Renie’s left eye was half closed. “What brought that on?” she asked in a shocked voice.
“All the gray,” Renie replied. “Not to mention the stress from flying, whether I’m drunk or sober. I’ve got my medication and eye patches with me. I never go anywhere without them. I’ll be fine,” she said, and walked straight into a large wooden crate marked china. “Ooof! What’s this?” she asked, bracing herself on the crate.
“You’re in China,” Judith replied. “Don’t move while I look at this so-called dungeon.” She used both hands to tug at the iron grip that was sunk into the trapdoor’s well-worn wood. Fortunately, it lifted easily.
Judith stared into the opening. “No cobwebs, no dust, no dirt. It’s clean, like it’s used often.”
“Chuckie?” Renie suggested, feeling her way toward Judith. “He goes into the dungeon to play with his imaginary rack.”
“Maybe. I see the rain barrel.” She paused. “Why would it be full of water? There shouldn’t be any leaks down there.”
“Seepage through the walls?”
“Not possible.” Judith sniffed. “Can you smell that?”
“Let me move closer,” Renie said. “Maybe my sense of smell is better now that I can’t see. They say that when you lose…Aaack! I just touched something horrible covered with hair!”
“That’s my head,” Judith snapped. “Don’t lean on me!”
“Sorry. Oops!”
“Now what?” Judith demanded, turning to look at Renie, who had stumbled and fallen on top of a carton cluttered with small objects.
“Don’t worry about me,” Renie snarled. “Now I’m blind andfeeble.” Awkwardly, she righted herself and dusted off her cashmere sweater. “Just carry on with—”
“Open the door.”
The cousins both jumped.
“The same voice,” Judith whispered.
“Almost the same message,” Renie whispered back.
Judith looked around the room but saw no hiding places. All of the storage containers were piled flush against the walls.
“Open the door.”
Renie shuddered. “Way too creepy. Let’s get out of…Aaaaah! I feel something cold and clammy and dead! Help!”
“That would be my hand,” Judith said through gritted teeth. “Stop touching me. Where’s that voice coming from? It can’t be in this hole.”
“Who cares? I’m going.” Renie tripped over Judith’s foot and barely managed to stay upright. “Which way’s the door?”
“You can’t go without me,” Judith retorted. “Shut up and listen.” But the voice had gone silent. “It must mean that we should open the trapdoor.”
“We already did. It’s a ghost,” Renie declared. “I don’t care if it’s giving hot racetrack tips.”
“You don’t believe in ghosts.”
“I changed my mind.”
“Bad timing for that.” Judith pointed to the trapdoor. “Now sniff.”
“Medicinal,” Renie said after a few seconds.
“Not quite…booze!” Judith exclaimed. “It smells like Scotch.”
“That figures,” Renie said. “Philip owns a distillery. Maybe he stores some of his private stash here and it leaked.”
“Into the dungeon? That’s where it’s coming from. Did I see a flashlight on top of one of those boxes by the door?”
“You might have,” Renie said. “I can’t see anything.”
Judith went to the carton where she’d noticed the flashlight. She clicked it on and focused its bright beam on the barrel some ten feet beneath the basement floor. “That’s odd,” she said in a curious voice. “It looks like there’s something floating in the water. Or the Scotch. In fact, it looks like a—” Lightning flashed through the narrow windows. Judith sucked in her breath as thunder rattled the casements. “Holy Mother!” she gasped, reeling backwards toward Renie. “It looks like a head!”
16
Chuckie?” Renie said under her breath.
“I don’t know.” Judith was shaking from the shock. “We’ve got to find the cops.” She steadied herself to recover the strength she needed to put one foot in front of the other. Five minutes later they were back in the kitchen, asking Mrs. Gibbs if she knew the whereabouts of the police.
“They went to your rooms,” she replied, sorting pippins as she peered at Judith. “Are ye ill? You’re verra pale.”
“Just…tired,” Judith fibbed. “Thanks.”
The cousins found the constables knocking on the Flynns’ door. Glen and Adamson both removed their regulation caps when they saw Judith and Renie. “We’re here about the theft,” the taller one said.
Judith recalled that he was Adamson. “Never mind that now.” She let the constables in as Renie excused herself to fetch her emergency eye medication. “Please,” Judith emphasized after she stood near the hearth and tried to sound rational, “don’t think I’m fantasizing. But a few minutes ago Mrs. Jones and I went into the storage room and opened the trapdoor to the dungeon.” She paused, taking in the constables’ stoic faces. “I used a flashlight to look at that barrel in the dungeon because it didn’t make sense to have it filled with water.”
Adamson’s cheeks turned slightly pink; Glen frowned, his eyes avoiding Judith. “A leak,” said Glen. “Something spilled from above.”
“That is possible,” she allowed, “but I saw a head in that barrel. You must look. It’s very strange.”
“A human head?” Glen said, looking skeptical.
“So it appears,” Judith replied. “It could be Chuckie.”
The constables exchanged quick, stupefied glances. “We’ll check it out,” Adamson said. “You’d better stay here.”
That was fine with Judith. She had no desire to watch a body being recovered after what must have been a gruesome way to die. “We’ll talk about the theft later,” she said, seeing the constables to the door.
As soon as they were gone, Judith went across the hall to Renie’s room. Her cousin was cussing and struggling with eye patch, gauze, and tape. “I’m out of practice,” she complained. “What did the cops do when you told them they had to go bobbing for heads in a barrel?”