‘God, you look terrible,’ he remarked. ‘Didn’t I tell you not to worry? I sat up most of the night, didn’t see a thing. Never need more than three, four hours sleep . . . What’s on your mind, Tony?’
‘You made me an offer yesterday. I’m ready to take you up on it.’
‘Now I wonder,’ said George thoughtfully, ‘why you changed your mind.’
‘Good God,’ Tony said querulously. ‘After last night, how can you wonder? It may be you or Vicky who gets the axe next time. Worst of all, it might be me again. We foreigners ought to form a protective alliance. I don’t intend to take you by the hand and lead you to the shrine. But I’m willing to share some of my brilliant deductions in exchange for some help.’
‘Great.’ George stood there beaming, all tanned and white-toothed. ‘You do the thinking, I do the dirty work. Is that it?’
‘Approximately.’
‘Then let’s get at it, whatever it is.’
‘After breakfast.’ Tony rose with a theatrical groan. He avoided my eye, and I wondered what low-down scheme he had in mind now.
During breakfast Tony was honoured by a personal call of condolence from the Gräfin. She pressed him back in his chair when he started to rise, and he sat back with a thud. Quite by accident, of course, she had her hand on his injured shoulder.
‘I am so sorry for your terrible experience,’ she said, smiling like a wolf. ‘I hope it has not made you decide to leave us.’
‘On the contrary. I wouldn’t leave a bunch of helpless women alone in this place. Unless, Gräfin, you intend to call the police?’
‘Do you honestly think, Professor, that the police can give the kind of help we need?’
She walked away, giving him no time to retort.
‘Get her,’ I said. ‘Now she’s a believer.’
‘Oh, she doesn’t believe in the supernatural,’ Tony said disgustedly. ‘Didn’t you watch her at the séance? She’s using the ghost theory for her own ends, and God knows what they are.’
‘I know I’m not supposed to be thinking,’ George said. ‘But I’ll throw in this little tidbit as my contribution to general goodwill. Irma is the heiress. This place and everything in it belongs to her.’
The only new thing about that tidbit was that George was aware of it. But until then I hadn’t considered the corollary.
‘What happens if Irma dies?’ I asked.
‘I didn’t think it would be smart to ask that. But I guess the old lady would inherit everything. Which isn’t much – just this old pile of stones and a lot of work. Every object of value has already been sold . . .’
He stopped. None of us finished the sentence aloud. We didn’t have to.
Except the shrine.
‘The old lady couldn’t possibly know,’ Tony began.
‘Wanna bet?’ I said.
‘No. Well, Nolan, let’s get going – if you’re still game. What I’m proposing to do is not only socially unacceptable, it is probably against several laws I can’t call precisely to mind at the moment.’
‘I’ve broken a number of laws in my time,’ said George – with perfect truth, I felt sure.
It was Sunday. The workmen who had been remodelling the south wing were gone for the day. Tony loaded George down with tools and led the way to the chapel. When we reached the stairs to the crypt, George stopped.
‘What are we going to do down there?’ he asked suspiciously.
‘Just a spot of tomb desecration,’ Tony answered.
George dropped a crowbar. He gave Tony a funny look, but bent to retrieve the tool without comment.
When we reached the tomb of Count Harald, Tony knelt down and shone his flashlight along the cracks between the tombstone, with its carved effigy, and the stone floor.
‘When I was here before I noticed something different about this tomb. Look. The stones on the other tombs are cemented into place.’ He opened a pocket knife and illustrated on the next tomb, that of Count Burckhardt. The knife blade ran along the crack without penetrating, leaving a trail of fine white powder. ‘But Harald’s stone . . .’ The blade of the knife disappeared, sinking deep into the black line between the tombstone and the next slab.
‘Looks as if someone has had it up, once upon a time,’ George agreed. His eyes glowed like a cat’s in the dim light. ‘I don’t envy them the job. That stone weighs hundreds of pounds.’
‘That’s why I enlisted you,’ Tony said affably. ‘With my bad arm I can’t lift a pillow.’
George glowered at him, and then burst out laughing.
‘All right, old boy. I asked for it.’
Tony did enjoy the next hour. Reclining comfortably, with his back up against the stone feet of Count Burckhardt, he watched George sweat. I didn’t help much. George had the necessary muscle, and he knew what he was doing – first the crowbar, then a series of wedges to prop the slowly rising stone. Finally he had it tilted back like the lid of a box, with about three feet between its lifted edge and the floor.
George sat down and lit a cigarette.
‘I don’t think we should risk raising it any more,’ he wheezed. ‘There’s nothing to brace it on the other side if the angle gets too steep. Now what?’
‘Now I take over.’
Tony crawled to the edge of the hole. I was already peering in. I couldn’t see anything, though; it was too dark down there.
Besides shoving in wedges, at George’s orders, I had spent the time kicking myself. I should have noticed that crack. Here we were looking for a hiding place, and this was one of the right size. This could be it. I was so excited I forgot to breathe. I even forgot George Nolan, big and brawny and thoroughly unscrupulous, standing over me.
Tony turned his flashlight down into the crypt. But no flash of refracted light from huge jewels dazzled our eyes. No gilded wings glimmered and shone. There seemed to be nothing in the vault but a wooden coffin bound with strips of rusted metal. It rested on the bottom of a hole that was faced and floored with stone. The top of the coffin was about two feet below floor level. It was pushed to one end of the vault, so that there was an empty space at the bottom. Tony turned his light in that direction.
A moment later I was backing hastily away on hands and knees like a puppy that has encountered a porcupine. George stared at me and bent down to look for himself.
‘Nolan, go get Blankenhagen,’ said Tony, in a funny croak.
George stepped back.
‘For that? Believe me, old man, he doesn’t need – ’
‘He doesn’t, but I do.’ Tony lay down on the floor and closed his eyes.
George peered into the hole again, shrugged, and went to the stairs. When he was out of sight Tony scrambled to his feet.
‘Better you than me,’ I muttered, as he slid into the pit and bent down, out of sight, below the lifted slab. For a while I could see only agitated but controlled movement as he worked. Then he poked his head out. He was in his shirt sleeves.
‘Don’t look if you’d rather not,’ he said, eyeing me.
‘Don’t be insulting,’ I said, breathing slowly through my nose. ‘It was just the air down there that got me – made me dizzy for a minute.’
Tony lifted a dark bundle out of the hole and deposited it gently on the chapel floor. It was his jacket, rolled around something that bulged in peculiar places. Tony climbed out beside the bundle and started to open it. I spoke without premeditation.
‘It isn’t – it isn’t the old count, is it?’
‘No, he’s still resting peacefully in his coffin. At least I hope he is. This is a little something extra.’
He folded his jacket back. I braced myself, but there was no need. Disconnected and jumbled, the bones suggested an anthropological exhibit rather than a human being who had died in agony. But I knew I would not easily forget my first sight of the huddled shape, with its fleshless face turned up as if gasping for the air that had been denied it.