‘How would she have known to call Blanchard?’
‘You can ask him yourself if we don’t get out now.’
Ellie checked their window. At the back of the house, all was still — long lawns and box hedges bathed in moonlight. Below her, the wall was sheer and bright, unbroken by any drainpipe or decoration.
‘Can we jump?’
Ellie shook her head. ‘We might not break our necks, but we wouldn’t be able to walk away.’
She grabbed the backpack and slipped out on to the landing. A light had come on at the bottom of the stairs. Low voices drifted up from the hallway; shadows swayed on the flagstones, though the staircase hid the people who made them.
Doug joined her. Three floors down, Ellie heard a stair creak.
‘We’re trapped.’
A bleak desolation overwhelmed her. To have come so far, only to be caught so easily. She should have known it would end like this.
But Doug was hurrying down the landing, checking the doors. Ellie followed after him.
‘We can’t hide,’ she hissed. ‘If we’re not in our room, they’ll tear the place down.’ The footsteps had reached the first floor — the awkward sound of big men trying to tread softly.
‘A house this big must have had back stairs for servants.’
Doug reached the end of the corridor and felt around on the wall. It was painted white and panelled, indistinguishable from the other walls.
‘There’s a hole here under the moulding.’ He stuck in a finger. With a click and a squeak, the wall swung in.
‘Et voilà.’
Doug’s phone had a torch built in. He turned it on and held it forward. In the diode glow, Ellie saw a spiral staircase dropping away, too steep for the light to make much impact. She pulled the door shut behind her and followed after Doug, chasing the phone’s orb of light as it spiralled down. Generations of servants had worn the stone smooth: when she glanced back, she slipped and almost pitched head first down the stairs. Doug caught her and put his finger to her lips.
‘Careful.’
Ellie listened. She could hear voices again — below them, around the corner, too muffled to be in the stairwell. As they crept down, a bar of light appeared in front of them, pouring in through a round hole in the wall.
‘It must be the latch for another entrance.’
Ellie knelt and put her eye to the hole. She was looking into the drawing room where they’d sat earlier. The fire had gone out, but all the lights were on. Annelise Stirt stood beside the fireplace clutching a brandy glass, looking at someone Ellie couldn’t see.
‘Twenty-five years since he showed it to me, and I still remember it like yesterday,’ Annelise said. ‘And I never lost your number. Just in case’
‘Very fortunate.’ Blanchard’s voice, cool and unshakeable as ever. Ellie’s mouth was dry as salt. ‘Mr Spencer will be delighted to have it back.’
Annelise took a sip of her brandy. Her movements were snatched; the glass banged on the mantel when she put it down.
‘You don’t know how much I’ve wanted to see it again. Ever since Mr Spencer invited me to his chateau, I’ve been like a latter-day Sir Perceval. I spent a night in a castle and saw wondrous things, and ever since I’ve been trying to get back to it. Of course, I never breathed a word.’
‘If you had —’
Shouts echoed through the house: through the hole in the door, and down the stair-shaft as well, so they seemed to come from all around. A thump echoed down to them. Someone was pounding on the door above.
Doug pulled Ellie to her feet.
‘They know we’ve gone.’
More pounding. Ellie heard a creak, then a crash and angry shouts. She looked around. They were on the ground floor, but the stairs didn’t end. There must be a basement. She didn’t dare go into the drawing room with Blanchard there. They carried on down.
The light from Doug’s phone stopped in front of an old door, thick timbers studded with nails and banded with iron bars. It wasn’t locked — they pushed through. On the far side, they found a pair of heavy bolts. Doug slammed the door and shot them home.
‘That should hold them for a while.’
‘Where are we?’
Doug swung the light around, giving glimpses of brick vaults and cavernous spaces. A few dusty barrels sat in the shadows.
‘These would have been the old champagne cellars. The chateau must have had a vineyard attached to it at one stage.’
‘So where now?’
Doug shone the light around the room again, more slowly this time. ‘Champagne ferments in huge barrels. There’s no way they ever got them through the servants’ entrance.’
Footsteps descended to the far side of the door and stopped. Ellie gazed at the bolts and wondered how long they’d hold.
‘Are you in there, Ellie?’
Blanchard’s voice. The sound of it was like a spell, gripping her throat so she couldn’t speak.
‘You’re trapped, Ellie. Open the door.’
He waited.
‘I always knew you were special, Ellie. You’ve done better than anyone in eight hundred years. You’ve led us quite a chase. But it’s over now. You have some things that belong to us. Give them back, and we will have no hard feelings.’
Behind her, Doug was rummaging in a corner. Ellie still couldn’t speak. Blanchard began to sound irritated.
‘And you, Douglas Cullum. Did you come to rescue your friend? How chivalrous of you — especially considering how she treated you.’ A dry laugh. ‘Perhaps she did not tell you? She betrayed you. She gave herself to me completely. You were nothing to her — until she discovered she had a use for you.’
Ellie felt as if she were made of glass, as if a hammer blow had just shattered her into a million pieces. She glanced over her shoulder. Doug had half-vanished into a recess between two pillars, struggling with something in the wall.
‘My patience is not infinite, Ellie. Open the door.’
She heard some noises she couldn’t decipher — a shuffling, a murmur, a click. What —?
An almighty explosion detonated through the cellar, echoing off the vaults until Ellie thought her head would crush in. The door shook: dust billowed off it like an old carpet. But it didn’t give.
Someone grabbed her from behind. She screamed, though with her ears still ringing from the blast she barely heard it. It was Doug, grim-faced. He was saying something, but the words wouldn’t register. He dragged her to the recess in the wall, where a wide low door stood open. Another blast shivered the door — Doug mouthed something that looked like ‘shotgun’.
He led her down a low, stone-walled tunnel that ended in a wooden ladder and a trapdoor. An open padlock had been hooked through the hasp: Doug pulled it off and pushed the trap door open.
They’d come up in one of the outbuildings. Through a window in the back wall, Ellie could see the chateau standing tall and proud about twenty yards away. The building must have once been part of the winery: now it was a garage. A green Land Rover filled the room, and the walls were loaded with gardening tools. A set of car keys on a champagne-cork key ring hung from a hook. Doug threw them to Ellie.
‘You drive.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Just be ready.’
Doug took a rusted sledgehammer from one of the shelves. The look on his face was so fierce she was relieved when he hurried outside with it. Ellie climbed in the Land Rover and started the engine.
For a few moments the night was unutterably still. Ellie sat there in the dark, shaking so hard she wondered if she’d be able to drive. She looked at the backpack on the back seat, scuffed and muddy from their ordeals. She thought about throwing it out of the car, leaving it for Blanchard and just running away, somewhere they’d never be found.
The sound of smashing glass broke the silence. A second later, Doug came haring into the garage. He threw himself into the passenger seat, gasping for breath.