“How’re we going to get in?” whispered Carole out of the side of her mouth as they walked across to Cottage Number One. Although there was no one in sight, she felt as though an entire battery of surveillance cameras was focused on her every move.
“Well, first we’ll see whether Mopsa locked up or not.”
“Oh, come on. She must have done.”
“I don’t know. Everything down here seems pretty laid back. There’s nobody about, and Mopsa doesn’t seem to be the most diligent of guardians. It’s quite possible she’s left the cottage open.”
“I’d doubt it. But, anyway, Jude, I’m not sure that we should be looking at the cottage.”
“Why not?”
“Well, you said when Chloe was playing the role of Prince Fimbador, she talked about the Wheel Path…and we thought that was something to do with wheels that go round, but now we know that it was a ‘wheal’ as in Cornish tin mine. So shouldn’t we look at what’s left of Wheal Loveday first.”
“Good idea.”
Their search didn’t take long. In the bottom of the ruined pump house and round about there were a few old shafts, but all of them had been blocked up to the surface with stones and rubble. Grass had grown over some, so that they were little more than indentations in the hillside. The fact that there were no protective railings around them meant that they must be safely sealed. They offered no possible access to the tunnels below.
“That was worth trying, but I’ve a feeling what we’re looking for has to be in the cottage.”
Carole nodded, still feeling the scrutiny of a thousand unseen cameras as they moved towards the door. Jude’s fantasy that Mopsa might have left it unlocked turned out to be exactly that, a fantasy. But the girl’s burglar-deterrent system proved not to be very sophisticated. They didn’t have to lift many of the potted plants around the front door before they found what they were looking for.
“I wonder,” mused Jude as she lifted it up, “whether this is the Key of Clove’s Halo…?”
“Looks more like a Yale to me,” said Carole sniffily. She was feeling a prickling at the back of her neck at the illegality of what she was doing, and this intensified as they went inside the cottage.
“Quick tour, looking for obvious hiding places,” said Jude. “You do downstairs, I’ll do up.”
But they both looked crestfallen when they met again at the foot of the stairs. Every available door and cupboard had been opened. Not only had they not found anyone, they hadn’t even found a space big enough for anyone to hide in.
Carole looked nervously at her watch. “Nearly forty minutes gone, from the time Mopsa drove off. What do we do now?”
“Well, if there is a secret entrance…the Face-Peril Gate…we haven’t found it. Come on, you’re more logical than I am. Tell me what I should be thinking.”
Carole was touched by the compliment – though she thought it no more than an accurate assessment of her character – and concentrated hard to come up with something that would justify it. “Presumably what we’re looking for is a hiding place that has something to do with the mine workings. The Wheal Path…that’s where Prince Fimbador was going to hide…”
“Right.”
“So logically we should be concentrating on the side of the cottage that is nearest to the ruins of the mine buildings.”
“I like it. This is good.”
“Maybe there’s some secret entrance in the new extension…though I think that’s unlikely…It looks like it was built in the last twenty years, and I’m not sure how many modern builders are up for making secret passages.”
“Something in the older part would also make more sense, because it might have some connection with smuggling. Most of the secret passages and hidey-holes around here would have been built for hiding contraband goods.”
“Good point. So if it’s not in the extension…” Carole moved through as she spoke, “…the place which is closest to the mine workings is the kitchen…” Jude followed her in, “…and this one must be the closest wall?”
They both looked at it. There was a door to a larder, but Carole had already checked that. Otherwise, it was just a stone wall that could have done with another coat of whitewash, about a third of whose width was taken up by a deeply recessed fireplace. The floor was stone-flagged, and the individual slabs looked too heavy to hide any cunning trapdoors.
“There’s something here, there’s something here…I can feel it.”
“Oh, Jude, you’re not about to tell me the place has an aura, are you?”
“No, I know you too well to bother saying that. Mind you, it does have an aura.”
“Huh.” Carole sat defeatedly on a kitchen chair and fiddled with a pencil and piece of paper that lay on the table. “If only…if only…” A thought came to her. “Just a minute…”
“What?”
“Well, look, I got the ‘Biddet Rock’ anagram because the words looked funny. That’s how you usually spot anagrams in crosswords. The words don’t look quite right – or their juxtaposition doesn’t, so you start playing with them. Yes, I think whoever invented ‘The Wheal Game’ likes anagrams. ‘Biddet Rock’ sounds and looks funny…Good God, so does ‘Face-Peril Gate’!”
Carole scribbled out the letters in a circle, the first two opposite and the others next, going round clockwise in turn. It was the way her father had done anagrams for his crosswords and one of the very few things that he had passed on to his daughter. She looked at the ring of letters and narrowed her eyes, hoping that the solution would leap out at her.
“No, it won’t come. I can get ‘place’ out of it.”
“Well, that’s good, isn’t it? We’re looking for a place, aren’t we?”
“Yes, but then the rest of the letters…it doesn’t leap out at me.”
“Well, maybe there are too many letters? Maybe you shouldn’t be using all of them?”
“That’s not how anagrams work, Jude. You’ve got to use all the letters, otherwise…Oh, my God…” Carole’s jaw dropped as she moved forward to the paper. “You’re right. Forget the ‘Gate’. Just concentrate on ‘Face-Peril’…which is an anagram of…‘fireplace’!”
They both turned to look at the shadowed space, blackened by centuries of cooking and heating. Jude moved excitedly forward, saying, “And Mopsa had a streak of soot on her hand! There must be something here!”
Close to, there were definitely vertical lines either side to the grate, lines that could be the outline of a door. And the soot had been worn thin along the lines, as though the edge had been moved quite recently.
“It’s here! It’s here! This is the Face-Peril Gate. But how on earth do we open it?”
“Is there a keyhole?”
Jude, oblivious to the soot that was smearing her hands and clothes, scrabbled away at the back of the fireplace. Her fingers found a narrow slot. “Yes, yes, there is! But what do we use to open it?”
“Presumably,” said Carole, “we use the Key of Clove’s Halo.”
“And what the hell is that?”
This one came easily. “Forget the ‘Key’. And the ‘of’. Is there a ‘Coal Shovel’ anywhere, Jude?”
There was. An ancient implement, rather too narrow to be practical for lifting much coal. The scoop was curved and thin, more like a garden tool for cutting plant-holes than a coal shovel. It was black, except where, abraded by familiar grooves, the dull original metal shone through.
“I’ll see if it fits,” said Jude. “I’m so filthy already, a little more soot’s not going to make any difference.”
The end of the coal shovel slipped into its predestined slot with the ease of long practice. Tentatively, anticipating resistance, Jude turned the handle to the right. But no resistance came. The smugglers of the nineteenth century had known their craft. The key turned.