Jack was prowling round the barn, peering into corners, reaching behind bits of the wooden framework. I wandered over to the wall that I calculated must back on to the river, where I’d noticed a small edifice in stone which I thought was a shrine. It was a little over waist-height, with a door set into one side. I touched the door, and to my surprise it was cold: it wasn’t made of wood, as I’d thought, but of iron.
‘Have you got that smaller key handy?’ I called softly.
I was still staring at the shrine, and sensed Jack come to stand beside me. ‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘It looks like a shrine, or a sort of miniature chapel,’ I said. ‘But it has an unexpected door.’ I tapped it and it rang out a low, clear note.
‘Why lock a chapel so carefully?’ Jack wondered. He put the smaller key in the lock, and it turned with a definite click of some hidden mechanism.
He pushed the door open and we bent down to look inside.
It wasn’t a chapel or a shrine. It was a small stone-built, iron-doored and very secure storage area, lined with neatly made wooden shelves, the flagged floor covered with straw.
And it was empty.
‘What did he keep in here?’ I asked. ‘Gold? Jewels? Coins?’ Any or all seemed likely.
Jack had forced his broad shoulders through the low, narrow doorway and was feeling round the shelves. ‘It’s very clean,’ he observed. ‘Not a speck of dust or dirt.’ He pulled himself out again. ‘You try,’ he said. ‘You’re smaller than me so you can get in further.’
I knelt down and crawled inside. Once I was right in, I was able to turn so that my body was no longer blocking the light. I went over every shelf, but there was nothing to be found. I was about to crawl out – it was a little as I imagine being buried alive would feel like in there – when my knee struck something sticking up out of the floor.
‘Ow!’ It hurt, a lot, and I felt blood well up as my skin split. Jack reached to help me out, and we looked at my cut knee. I was quite touched by his evident concern, but then he said, ‘Whatever could have done that?’ and I realized he wasn’t actually interested in the wound.
We both reached back inside the stone edifice. One of the flags was sticking up very slightly; you wouldn’t have noticed it underneath the covering of straw, and we’d only discovered it because my knee had struck it. Jack put both hands to it and began heaving it up, and, after a great deal of sweaty effort and quite a lot of cursing, finally it gave. The flagstone would have thundered right over backwards on to the floor had Jack not had the presence of mind to put his forearm under it. It obviously hurt, and he’d have an awful bruise, but at least the household servants wouldn’t have heard anything.
We stared at the dark, narrow, earth-smelling hole that had appeared beneath the flagstone.
‘He made this hiding place so secure, with its stone walls and roof,’ Jack said softly, ‘but, assuming it wasn’t he who dug the tunnel, he forgot it has six sides, not five.’ He looked at me. ‘Fancy going down there?’
I didn’t, not at all, but one of us had to if we were to find out where it went, and clearly Jack was out of the question. I wriggled across the floor on my stomach, and, with my arms above my head as if I were diving into water, forced myself down the hole.
The tunnel was truly horrible, and I only went on because I didn’t think I had a choice. There was no way I could have turned round, and I was so terrified of finding I couldn’t wriggle backwards that I didn’t dare put it to the test. The earth pressed all around me, sometimes crumbly and choking, sometimes slimy with things I didn’t want to think about. The tunnel’s sole virtue was that it was quite short: after heaving myself only perhaps five or six times my height, the tunnel started to climb steeply, then level out, and I saw daylight filtering through greenery. I shoved my head out through a patch of dense undergrowth beneath hazel trees on the river bank, and, observing there was nobody about, dragged myself into the open. I was about to dance with relief when it struck me that if we were not to advertise the tunnel’s existence – and I just knew Jack wouldn’t want to do that – then I was going to have to return by the same route. I took a quick look round to see exactly where I was, then, not pausing to think about it – there was only one way to do it and that was quickly – I took a deep breath, dived back down the tunnel and wriggled back to Jack.
‘It comes out on the river bank,’ I whispered as I crawled out of the stone room and stood up, ‘and I’ve memorized the place where- What’s the matter?’ I added crossly. Jack was trying unsuccessfully not to laugh.
‘You are absolutely filthy,’ he replied, already reaching out to brush off the worst of the dirt and the smears of mud. Then he extended the white sleeve of his undershirt and carefully wiped my face.
For a moment we stood looking at each other. His touch had been tender – caressing, almost – and it had affected me with a shock whose force took me by surprise. I tried to say something, but my throat was suddenly dry.
‘We should get on and check the warehouse,’ he said eventually. ‘We…’ He trailed to a stop. He was still staring at me, his clear green eyes intent on mine, and whatever was running through his mind seemed to distract him.
I reached for his hand, striding off across the barn and pulling him with me. ‘Come on, then.’
One of us had to make a move.
Robert Powl’s warehouse stood at the end of a row of similar buildings, although it was small in comparison to the others. As we drew nearer, it became clear that it was a workshop as much as a storage facility; the side facing the river had an open area beneath an overhanging roof, and was presumably where repairs to the boats in his transportation fleet had been carried out. Between it and its neighbour a narrow little passage ran back, away from the riverside, and right at the far end of the passage, overshadowed by the large buildings on either side, there was a low door, presumably giving access to the adjacent warehouse.
The quayside was not as busy as it usually was on a fine morning, although quite a lot of people had apparently managed to persuade Sheriff Picot that they had good reason to be down there, and thus avoid the strictures of the new law. None of these people – and, more crucially, none of the handful of sheriff’s men who were lounging about and watching the watermen and the quay workers – had eyes for Jack and me as we approached, keeping as much as possible under cover of the trees and shrubs that grew along the river bank.
We slipped in beneath the overhanging roof and Jack tried the door leading inside the warehouse. It opened. Jack turned to look at me. ‘I don’t believe Robert Powl would have left this door unlocked,’ he said.
Hurriedly he pushed the door open. It was clear, from the most cursory glance, that the space within had been searched. Far from being neat and tidy like its owner’s house, office and barn, it was in total disarray. A stack of planks had been toppled over; a pot of what looked like congealed pitch lay on its side; the cinders of the hearth had been kicked apart; a set of shelves against the far wall had apparently been swept with a brawny forearm, and the contents were now jumbled together in heaps at the far end of each shelf, sundry objects spilling on to the floor.
‘Of course,’ Jack said heavily after a moment, ‘with everything disturbed like this, we cannot know if the thieves found what they came for, and, if so, what it was they took.’