This time the door at the other end opened without difficulty. My errand that afternoon had taken me to Schmidt’s room. His door was locked, but, as I had expected, my key opened it. Those locks were a joke. I assumed that the old ones had been ripped out and sold. If they were like the beautiful handmade antique locks I had seen in museums, they had been valuable. The Gräfin hadn’t missed much.
Naturally I couldn’t give the Burckhardt-Schmidt apartment the careful search it demanded during the day, with people wandering the halls and servants popping in and out. My aim was to clear the secret entrance so I could come and go in the small hours.
Since I knew where the passage ended, it didn’t take me long to locate the sliding panel and figure out how it worked. The mechanism was a variation of the carved rosette pattern in the Great Hall. It controlled a bolt instead of a handle; the door could be locked, but only from the inside.
I confess that bolt amused me. A tyrant, medieval or modern, needs all the locks and bolts he can get. But since one branch of the passageway ended in the bedchamber of the Countesses Drachenstein . . . Marriage was as perilous in those days as it is today.
In the still hours of the night the unoccupied chamber had an uneasy atmosphere. It didn’t feel abandoned. Too many Drachensteins had breathed their last in the carved, canopied bed. It may have been a trick of my imagination, but I almost fancied I could see a depression the size and shape of a human body in the smooth counterpane.
I wedged a chair under the door handle before I got to work. Schmidt was safely locked up in the local hospital, but that didn’t make me feel safe. He might be the villain who had engineered some of the supernatural games, but he couldn’t have played the star role of the Black Man. Some source of malice was still on the loose, and I didn’t want it interrupting me.
By this time I was becoming an expert on secret panels. It took me only a few minutes to find another carved rosette. The old craftsman hadn’t been very imaginative about that device, but maybe he had to select a design his dim-witted patrons could remember. The mechanisms controlled by the rosette were varied and ingenious; this one opened a panel rather than a door. It was only a couple of feet square, and its outlines were cleverly concealed by carved mouldings that were part of the design of the panelling.
The count’s wall safe was a single block of dressed stone that slid out of the wall like a drawer. I knew right away I hadn’t found the shrine; the stone was only half a metre high. I lowered it to the floor and thrust my hand into the cavity in its top.
I touched some small brittle objects that felt like twigs. I shone my light down into the stone drawer and jerked my hand back with a snort of disgust. The brittle twigs were rodent bones – the remnants of a battalion of long-dead rats.
The bottom of the drawer was covered with scraps of chewed parchment and paper. I cursed the rat bones and selected a few scraps which were big enough to offer some hope of decipherment. Then I removed the only other object the drawer contained: a small chest, made of wood and bound with silver.
It had been a beautiful object – a rich man’s prized possession. But the silver had turned black and the revolting rodents had ruined the box. One corner was completely gnawed away. I lifted the top with a quick twist that ripped out the decayed hasp and lock. The chest was beyond repair.
Most of the interior was filled with the remains of a linen bag, also gnawed by rodent teeth. When I tried to lift it, the rotted cloth dissolved, spilling a heap of coarse grey powder into the bottom of the box.
I touched it with a cautious finger, wondering what it had been. The centuries might have reduced any substance, solid or semi-solid, to this state. My fingertip, penetrating more deeply, touched something hard. I extracted it and held it up to the light.
Not more than an inch in height, the small gold figure might have been an amulet; there was a rounded link at the top of it. After considering the object, I decided I would not care to wear it. It was meant to represent an animal of some kind. The wide, grinning jaws and pop eyes rather suggested a frog, but no frog I had ever met had such a wicked look. The Drachenstein crest had nothing to do with frogs. Whatever this monstrosity had been meant to be, it was not a dragon. It certainly wasn’t one of Riemenschneider’s pieces. He couldn’t have produced an abortion like this if he had wanted to. In fact, the trinket had a look of antiquity far older than the sixteenth century.
I shrugged and dropped it into the pocket of my robe. Maybe it was a talisman or lucky piece belonging to an ancestor of Burckhardt’s – that same crusading count who had brought the jewels back to Drachenstein. The amulet had an eastern look . . .
And with that, a dark and elusive memory stirred unpleasantly in the back of my mind – stirred and subsided, like a slimy thing in a swamp.
Chapter Ten
MY SLEEPNESS NIGHTS were beginning to catch up with me. I didn’t wake till almost noon next day. I had dreamed that some faceless intruder was tampering with the little chest, but when I stretched out an anxious hand, I found it on the nightstand where I had left it. That had been a stupid place to put it, but I had been too tired the night before to think straight. I tucked the chest into a corner of my suitcase and locked the case.
I didn’t see Tony till lunchtime. I found him alone at our table. George had gone off to Creglingen to see the altar there. Tony seemed vexed by this. His mood was not improved when the Gräfin came in, a royal procession of one, and joined us at our table. I wondered what she was after this time.
‘I wished to tell you again how sorry I am that your vacation has been so unpleasant,’ she began. ‘It is unaccountable. Never, until you came, have we known such violence.’
‘Is that right,’ I said. ‘You surprise me. I would think a place like this had seen a lot of violence over the years.’
‘Many years ago, perhaps. But this is ancient history now. There has not been a prisoner in those horrid cells since sixteen thirty. And on that occasion Graf Otto was severely reprimanded by the emperor.’
I exchanged glances with Tony. Damn her, the woman knew every move we had made.
‘You are well acquainted with the family history for someone who is not a Drachenstein by birth,’ I said.
‘I was forced to amuse myself. To be buried in this provincial spot after Prague, Vienna, Budapest was not easy for a spoiled young girl. My husband loved his home and would not leave it. I painted, embroidered, studied music; but these soon pall.’
‘Especially when one has mastered them,’ Tony said. It was a reluctant compliment, and not an empty one. I too was sure the old lady could master anything she attempted. She acknowledged his courtesy with a chilly smile.
‘So then I turned to a study of genealogy. As a professor of history, you will understand its fascination. Are you making progress with your research into the Peasants’ Revolt, and Count Burckhardt?’
‘I’ve been to the town archives.’ Tony eyed the woman with what he obviously thought was a look of fiendish cunning. ‘I imagine you’ve used them too.’
‘Oh, yes. I know the story of the Countess Konstanze’s death.’
‘Does your niece know it?’ I asked.
‘She does not. She is already sufficiently unbalanced on that subject.’
Tony was turning red – a sure sign that he was about to lose his temper.
‘Irma must know the story,’ he said. ‘How else can you account for what she said in the séance?’