Matthewson managed a smile. ‘Enough to repair and paint a few stairs? And maybe a classroom or two?’
‘Oh I should think so.’
The principal’s smile broadened: he seemed intensely relieved. ‘OK. I think I can explain that to the Trustees. So yes, let’s do it.’ He paused. ’Though I wonder if you are actually looking in quite the right place.’
‘You have another idea?’
‘Tentatively…Just a notion.’
‘Tell us!!’
‘Well. I’ve always thought…’ He lifted his gaze up the stairs. ‘I have sometimes wondered why this little stairway dog-legs at the top. See there, look, it just turns about. At the top. For no apparent architectural reason. Annoying if you are carrying lots of books: you can trip. It’s so dark. We had a student break an ankle just this Christmas.’
Rob was already running up the stairs with Christine after him. The stairs did indeed turn. They led up to a panelled wall and then shifted abruptly left. Rob stared at the panelled wall, then slapped it. It sounded hollow.
They all looked at each other. Matthewson was now noticeably flushed. ‘Extraordinary! I guess we need to open it up and have a look? We’ve got a chisel and a flashlight in the cellar, I’ll just go and fetch-’
‘Bugger that.’
Reaching in his pocket, Rob produced a Swiss Army Knife and unclasped the sturdiest blade.
Christine, Dooley, Forrester and Matthewson were silent as Rob slammed the blade straight into the panel. The wood was easily pierced. It was thin, like a false panel. Rob rotated the blade to get some purchase, then sliced down and the panel began to give way. Forrester reached in and grabbed the corner of the wooden square, and the two men peeled the complete, yardwide section from its frame.
A dark, receding alcove lay beyond, and a musty smell exhaled from the blackness. Rob leaned in, and rummaged. ‘Jesus. It’s dark, it’s too dark…I can’t see…’
Christine took out her mobile phone, switched on the phonelight and flashed it into the hidden space, over Rob’s shoulder.
Rob and Forrester stared; Dooley swore; Christine put a shocked hand to her mouth.
Right at the back of the alcove, swathed in cobwebs and grey dust, was a large and very battered leather box.
46
Reaching in to the echoey darkness, and slightly grunting from the exertion, Rob pulled the box along the planks and dragged it onto the stairway.
The round, flat-topped box was made of ancient leather, cracked, worn and battered black leather. It had the distinct air of something from the eighteenth century, something aristocratic. Like the luggage of a lord on the Grand Tour. The case seemed to match the architectural style of the house wherein it had lain, secretly concealed, for so long.
The box was also covered with thick cobwebby dust. Christine brushed way the top layers of grease and dirt, and a series of letters and words appeared on the lid, inscribed in a thin, delicate gold:
TW, Anno Domini. 1791
The lovers exchanged glances. Christine said, ’Thomas Whaley.’
‘Before he went to Israel. And became Jerusalem Whaley…’
The principal of the college was looking agitated. Hopping from one elegantly-shod foot to another. ’Guys, look, sorry, but do you mind if we take this somewhere else? We have students coming up and down these stairs all the time, and…Not sure I want all the…brouhaha?’
Forrester and Dooley saw the point; they all agreed to shift elsewhere. Rob picked up the box again, holding it like a drum in front of him. The box wasn’t that heavy: just unwieldy. Something quite large was rattling inside it. He tried to hold it as steady as possible as they walked. Every second that passed, every second they wasted, he thought of Lizzie. Every second took her closer to death.
Rob was finding it hard not to shout at people; setting his jaw into determined silence, he followed Principal Matthewson up the rest of the stairs and along a short corridor. And then at last they were in a bright, elegant office: the principal’s study, overlooking the trees and sunlit lawns of St Stephen’s Green.
Forrester glanced through the windows at Sally and Boijer sitting there, on a bench, in the Green. Waiting. ‘Just a moment,’ he said. He took out his mobile.
The box was clunked on Mathewson’s desk, sending a cloud of dust flying out of the venerable leather casing.
‘OK,’ said Dooley. ‘Let’s open it.’
Christine was already examining the box. ‘These old straps and buckles,’ she muttered, trying one. ’They won’t undo.’
Dooley struggled with another buckle. ‘Totally rusted.’
Rob stepped forward, his knife out. ‘My daughter is waiting!’ He knelt and slashed the straps open. The very last strap was the toughest of alclass="underline" he had to saw at it for a while: viciously; then at last it gave up, and flopped away.
He stood back. Forrester was lifting off the black leather lid, with the printed gold lettering. They all peered into the depths of the historic box and found themselves looking down at the Black Book, the first time it had been seen in two hundred and fifty years.
Except that it was not a book that stared back at them; but a face.
‘Jesus!’ said Dooley.
Sitting at the bottom of the box was a skull.
It was a very strange skull. Obviously human, yet not quite human. It had slanting cheekbones, and almost birdlike, snakelike eyes, handsome and Asiatic, yet oddly broad, and cruelly smiling.
Rob recognized it immediately. ‘That’s exactly what I saw in Lalesh. The same kind of skull. Sort of half man…half bird. What the hell is that? Christine, you’re an osteo…expert. What is it?’
With a confident dexterity, Christine reached inside the black leather case, and took out the skull. ‘It’s very well preserved,’ she said, examining the cranium and the lower jawbone. ’Someone has had it treated it to prevent it from decaying.’
‘But how old is it? What is it? Is it human? What’s with the eyes?’
Christine walked to the light of the long sash windows. She held the skull up, in the slanting sunshine. ‘It’s definitely hominid. But it’s hybrid.’
The door to the office pushed open. It was Sally and Boijer. They stared in shock, at the skull in Christine’s hands.
‘That’s it?’ said Boijer. ‘That’s the Black Book? A human skull?’
Rob nodded. ‘Yep.’
‘Not quite human.’ Christine twisted the skull in her hands. ‘It’s hominid, but there are stark differences between this and a normal Homo sapiens skull. Here, look. The large braincase size, the sagittal size, and the orbitals, very intriguing…’
‘So it’s a crossbreed between humans and…and what?’ asked Rob.
‘No idea. Not Neanderthals. Not Homo habilis. This seems to be some unknown human type; and one with a very large braincase.’
Rob was still in the dark. ‘But I thought humans couldn’t breed with other species? I thought different species couldn’t breed?’
Christine shook her head. ‘Not necessarily. Some species can interbreed. Tigers and lions, for instance. It’s rare but it happens. And this kind of hybridization is not unknown in human evolution. Various experts think we interbred with the Neanderthals.’ She set the skull on the table. Its white teeth glittered in the lamplight. The skull was yellowy cream, and very large.
Dooley was still looking in the musty leather case. ‘There’s something else.’ He reached in, and pulled out a folded document. Rob watched, transfixed, as the Irish detective carried the document to the principal’s desk and laid it next to the skull.
The document was weathered and creased, and made from some form of robust parchment. Yellowed and old: maybe hundreds of years old.
Very carefully, Rob unfolded it; as he did so, the parchment creaked and gave off a distinct and not unpleasant fragrance. Of sadness, and age, and funeral flowers.