“There’s a piece of paper under that egg,” said Mrs. Malloy.
“There is?” Betty stared down.
I removed the egg and set it in a saucer on a nearby table and, when Betty picked up the small folded square, did the same with the tablespoon.
“Go on, open it up. See what it’s got written on it.”
“There may not be anything.” Betty’s hand was shaking. “Maybe the child wanted something to hold the egg better in place.”
“Don’t be daft,” said Mrs. Malloy. “That’d be more hindrance than help. If there’s one thing I know about, it’s egg-and-spoon races. Like I’ve told Mrs. H, if they was ever to put them in the Olympic games, me sister, Melody, would get a gold medal.”
Betty unfolded the paper. After standing stock-still for the count of ten, she said she couldn’t show it to us. “It’s the message Nigel spoke about at the séance. He told me not to tell anyone.”
“That doesn’t mean us, we’re Johnnies on the spot,” retorted Mrs. Malloy. “Anyway, if that voice was from the spirit world, the man had his head in the clouds and can’t be counted on to talk sense.”
Betty held the paper as if afraid it would explode; then in a trembling voice read the words aloud: “You’ll find what you’re looking for in the priest hole, main room upper west wing, fifth panel on left, third rose on right, top carving. Turn clockwise.
“My goodness!” Mrs. Malloy’s taffeta bosom heaved. “Should we take that to mean that’s where we’ll find-”
“No,” I said, “because we won’t go looking. Mr. Gallagher’s grizzly remains can wait for the police.”
“I won’t!” Betty flared. “I gave Nigel my word and I intend to keep it.”
“Let’s at least find Tom,” I urged.
“And waste time while he tries to talk us out of it? He’s a wonderful man in many ways, but action has never been his forte. Besides, Nigel’s instructions were specific. I’m to go alone.”
“No, you’re not,” I said. “Like it or not, Mrs. Malloy and I are coming with you.”
“If you insist.” I glimpsed relief on Betty’s face before she turned on her heel, weaving between and around the clusters of people still capable of enjoying the afternoon.
“I hope this isn’t Ariel’s idea of a practical joke,” I said to Mrs. Malloy, as we followed closely behind. “Somehow I can’t believe she’d pull something this unkind. She seems to have been making strides in her relationship with Betty, but that girl is so unpredictable.”
“Only one way to find out, Mrs. H.”
“If not Ariel, why the roundabout way of passing the note to Betty?”
“Maybe Nanny had a premonition that something would happen to her and left instructions with someone to get the information to Betty without Lady Fiona’s knowledge, and whoever it was didn’t want to be involved any more than possible.” Mrs. Malloy marched ahead of me.
We caught up with Betty in the passageway between the two parts of the house and went up the back stairway and into the west wing through the heavy door. The unease I had experienced on my first visit returned in full force when we stepped into the wainscoted ballroom. Betty turned on all lights, but no amount of electricity could push back the crouching darkness. I glanced nervously at the wardrobe looming in the corner ahead of us. Was that where the menace hid? Were we being spied upon by some long-dead entity or something-someone-wickedly alive? The door appeared to be cracked open, and I braced myself to creep across the floorboards to take a look. Anything was better than this quivering uncertainty. But at that moment, Betty exclaimed that she had found it.
“This is the fifth panel, and here’s the third rose on the right. I’m turning it clockwise as instructed. Oh, my God! Look!” At her touch, a rectangle of wainscoting swung open to reveal a shadowy void within.
“Why didn’t we think to bring a torch?” I bemoaned.
“We’ll have to feel our way around.” Betty stepped heroically inside.
“Smells musty,” said Mrs. Malloy, teetering after her, “but not unbearable, the way you’d think if there was a body.”
“He could have mummified.” I brought up the rear. “This is like being in a lift. Ben would have the most awful claustrophobia even with the door open.” It was the wrong thing to have said. I had just finished squeezing my elbow into Mrs. M’s middle when, as if in response to “Close sesame,” we heard a creak, followed by a groan, and found ourselves swaddled in utter darkness.
“Nobody panic!” The words squeezed their way out of my throat. “It must have swung to, but it won’t have shut completely. No door could possibly be that wicked.”
Apparently this one was. No amount of pushing, shoving, frantic banging, or nasty name-calling would persuade it to relent.
13
Mrs. Malloy, Betty, and I took turns exhausting ourselves, despite knowing it was absolutely the worst thing we could do, given that air was severely rationed. A national shortage, I supposed. I forgot about Mr. Gallagher. Indeed, it seemed to me that all the memories of my life till this moment were seeping from me. I struggled to think about Ben and our children, but they were fading. I sagged against Betty, but she wasn’t there. She had crumpled to the floor. I could feel her grasping my calves, her hands clutching… then letting go. How sad for her, how anguishing for Tom that he was to lose another wife in an accident, how terrible for dear Ariel. Would she ever recover from this further devastation of her childhood? Would it be any comfort for her to know that there were now three more faces looking down at her from heaven? I tried to come up with a prayer, but all I could manage were some starts and stops of Mrs. Malloy’s poems. There was life left in her. I could feel her gyrations. A funny time to be doing her daily exercise routine, I thought with woolly affection. It was now, as the windows of my life were fogging up, that it came to me in a sort of vision why the man who handed Betty the egg and spoon had seemed familiar. He was the walker I had seen with the black-and-white sheepdog. I had a further revelation about his voice and his mismatched ears. A mosaic of scattered pieces of information floated together. I could be wrong, but I didn’t think so. How to prove it, though; that was as ever the question. And the difficulties would increase monumentally when I was dead.
“You’re not going to die.” The clouds parted as Mrs. Malloy’s voice boomed down on me from the sky. “None of us is. Now, move aside, there’s a good girl. I had a bit of a tussle getting that underwire out of me bra. But it’ll do the trick, see if it don’t. Ed the locksmith’s got nothing on me when the situation’s desperate.”
“That priest couldn’t get out, the one Lady Fiona told me suffocated in here,” I croaked, by way of encouragement.
“That’s a man for you; they don’t have our stamina. He’d probably never got locked out of the house after sneaking off at night as a teenager. Virtue isn’t its own reward; it’s a bloody handicap. Make yourself useful, Mrs. H.” She was barely panting. “See what Betty’s up to.”
“I can’t see, but I think she’s passed out on the floor.”
“I’m hurrying. There! I’m pushing the wire down a crack. It’s hit something; it must be the catch. Careful, I mustn’t lose me concentration.”