He stopped dead a yard from the window, shocked totally awake: someone was crossing a moonlit patch of lawn just beyond the cobbles.
He blinked and drew to one side of the window, covering the lower part of his face with the dark sleeve of his pyjamas–white faces showed up even in darkened windows. The figure, moving delicately across the grass, disappeared into the shadow beside the dummy4
barn. Ten seconds passed like an age, and then two more shadows crossed the moonlit patch from the driveway entrance to the safety of the barn's shadow.
The geese still cackled angrily and Audley felt his heart thump against his chest. Three was too many for him. He had no gun in the house–he had never needed or desired a gun. Faith was asleep just down the passage. If mere burglary was the intention–God! He hadn't even put the Panin file in the safe. But if it was burglary he might frighten them off by switching on the lights.
But the light hadn't worked, he remembered with a pang of panic.
And if it wasn't burglary ... he saw Morrison again, in unnaturally sharp focus, at the bottom of the stairs. This sort of thing just doesn't happen! They'd got no reason –but he didn't know what reason they'd got.
I mustn't think–I must act, he told himself savagely. If you can't fight, run away. If you can't run away–hide!
He whipped his dressing gown from the bed, stuffed the torch from his bedside drawer into his pocket and sprinted down the passage.
She was lying on her side, snoring very softly, one white shoulder picked out by the moonlight. He shook the shoulder urgently.
'Faith! Wake up–and be quiet!' he whispered.
She moaned, and then came to life, startled.
Before she could speak he put the palm of his hand to her mouth.
'We've got visitors,' he hissed as clearly and quietly as he was able.
'Three visitors. We're not going to wait to find out what they want . . . we're going to hide . . . if you understand what I'm saying dummy4
— nod.'
She nodded, wide-eyed.
'Hide your clothes, smooth down your bed–and I'll meet you outside your room in half a minute!'
She nodded again.
He slipped out of her room and raced down the passage again to his study, blessing the day he had chosen to transfer it to the first floor. Pausing only to grab his brief-case he flew back to his bedroom, hurriedly bundled his clothes into a drawer, and pulled up the bedspread.
Faith was waiting for him, pale in the moonlight and hugging her dressing gown round her. She followed him obediently as he made his way to the deeply-recessed window at the head of the stairs.
Audley handed her the brief-case and the torch. Very gently he released the heavy iron catches which held back the shutters and closed out the moonlight. Then he took the left-hand catch and began to turn it anti-clockwise.
Oh God, he prayed, it's always worked before–let it work now!
He gritted his teeth and pulled. Very slowly, and with the smallest subdued rumble, the whole section of the wall between the window and the carved oak newel post which ran from floor to ceiling began to pivot outwards. Behind it was a second wall of smooth stone, broken only by a narrow aperture set low down in the outer corner.
'In you go,' he whispered. 'Crawl along for about ten feet and you'll come to some stone stairs. Wait there–and mind your head!'
dummy4
She stood irresolutely, looking from him to the pitch-black hole.
'Where does it go?' she whispered back urgently.
'For God's sake, don't argue–remember Morrison!'
Reluctantly she bent down and wriggled into the aperture, shining the torch ahead of her. For a moment Audley stood in the darkness, straining his ears. The geese had temporarily run out of abuse, and the silence was thick and heavy. Then from somewhere below him, inside the house, there was a muffled click.
Audley pulled the wall almost shut and eased himself backwards into the hole. Mercifully it was always easier to shut than to open.
He reached up and felt for the iron ring on the inner face, and then fumbled for the locking bar. They could turn the iron catch until domesday now.
Awkwardly he crawled backwards along the cold, dusty stone floor until he was able to lift his head and turn round at the foot of the flight of stone steps. Faith was sitting hunched about halfway up.
She shone the torch into his eyes.
'David, I'm not going a step further until you tell me where the hell we are.'
'We're perfectly safe now.'
'I don't care how safe we are. Where are we? What is this–place?'
'It's a priest's hole.'
'A priest's hole?' She shone the torch around her. Cobwebs and dust and rough stone.
'Go on up the stairs. But mind your head until you get to the top.
dummy4
There's a room there.'
At the top of the steps they emerged into a tiny room, barely big enough for the polythene-covered mattress which was its sole contents, apart from a pickaxe and a battered pewter candlestick with a new candle in it and a box of matches beside it. The room was doorless and windowless, but there was a faint draught of air from two small pigeon holes. It was dry, but cold.
Audley lit the candle and turned off the torch. Then he stripped off the plastic covering from the mattress to reveal an old army blanket.
'Wrap that round yourself,' he said, squatting on the end of the mattress.
She looked at him in the light of the spluttering flame. From her expression he was not sure whether she was going to burst into tears or laughter.
'A priest's hole! I've never seen one before!'
She wasn't going to cry.
'It's not surprising, really. It's an early sixteenth century house, and this was an obstinately Catholic district. Once it was a much bigger house too–we're living in what used to be the servants' quarters, next to the old barn. The rest was burnt down years ago.'
'David–it's romantic! Did the secret pass from father to son, right down to you?'
'Quite the opposite, I'm afraid. My family didn't move here until the Prince Regent's time, and no one told us any secrets. I'm probably the first person to know about this room for centuries.
And I only found it by accident.'
dummy4
'By accident? You opened that crazy door, or whatever it was, by accident?'
'Nobody opens that door by accident, Faith. It's designed not to be found even if you're looking for it.
'No, they built this room by adding a false wall to the end of the barn, where it joins the house. Except for this room and the passage to it, that wall's over ten feet of solid masonry, only the barn's so long you don't notice it until you measure it accurately.
And that's how I found it.'
He pulled his dressing gown tightly round him. In the little stone box of a room spring had not yet begun to thaw out winter.
'I had an idea of building a squash court in the barn. It cost too much, but I found out that the outside length didn't match the inside one. I had a feeling that there might be a room here then–no one builds walls ten feet thick. But I couldn't even find an echo. I had to cheat in the end–I broke through the roof, and then through the ceiling.'
He pointed to an irregular patch of new plaster above her.
'So I learnt how the door worked from the inside: the catch turns a diagonal bolt on a ratchet. But you can lock the bolt from the inside–and there were dressed stones ready to pile up in the entrance hole so there wouldn't be any echo there if the priest-hunters started knocking around.
'And the whole wall there is wedge shaped–the false wall–and built on an iron plate. The old owners probably had servants to help swing it out, but I've fixed a little roller at the bottom, underneath.
dummy4
And the whole thing pivots on the newel post. It's–rather clever.'
She smiled at him in the candlelight. 'There was a good Catholic David Audley in Elizabethan times, obviously! Did you find any relics in here?'