I looked down at my bandaged hands. Golden stains showed on the napkins.
‘The bleeding’s stopped,’ I said. ‘You know I heal quickly.’
‘Not that quickly,’ said Penny.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘If there’s any fighting to be done, you can do it.’
‘You’re too kind,’ said Penny.
‘I’ve always thought so,’ I said.
I led the way into the tunnel. The hollow between the two thin walls was so narrow I had to turn almost sideways to move along it. And every now and again I had to get down and crawl on all fours to scramble underneath the inset windows. The candles burned brightly in the walls, lighting the way.
‘This is why Albert had so many candles in stock!’ I said.
‘I’m still trying to figure out how they took Thomas from inside the toilet,’ said Penny.
‘The toilet must have backed on to an outer wall,’ I said, ‘with a hidden door that opened directly into the room. Thomas never even saw them coming. No wonder he never got a chance to fight back.’
‘They got him while he was sitting on the throne?’ said Penny. She shuddered briefly. ‘That’s creepy!’
‘All of this is,’ I said.
At the end of the wall a set of rough stone steps led steeply down. I followed them all the way down until they ended at a simple wooden door. I stopped before it, pressed my ear against the wood, and listened carefully. Penny waited behind me, trusting to my more than human senses to warn of any danger. I didn’t hear anything, so I straightened up and tried the handle. The door wasn’t locked. But then, why would it be? The Calverts thought they were the only ones who knew about it.
On the other side of the door was a great stone chamber, a massive open space almost the size of the inn above. Old-fashioned oil lamps and storm lanterns glowed on all sides, illuminating the Castle’s cellar – the fabled lost storeroom of the smugglers.
The missing guests – Thomas and Eileen, Jimmy and Valerie – hung lifelessly side by side from an old iron clothes rack. Heavy steel butcher’s hooks had been forced through their shoulders, so that they hung like fresh deliveries in a meat locker. Their faces were empty of all expression, their eyes staring at nothing, but I still felt like they were looking at me accusingly, accusing me for having failed to save them. Penny made a soft shocked sound deep in her throat, and put a hand to her mouth. I started to say something, but she shook her head fiercely. She was already back in control. Neither of us were strangers to bodies, or sudden death, any more.
I moved in closer. There were no obvious wounds or causes of death, and hardly any blood around the hooks in their shoulders, suggesting they’d been dead before they were hung up. A strange smell touched my nostrils, becoming clearer as I leaned in to study their faces. A rich, cloying smell. Like rotting flowers.
‘You couldn’t have saved any of them, Ishmael,’ said Penny. ‘You never had a chance.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘But that doesn’t help. It still feels like I let them down.’
Penny started to put a hand on my arm, and then stopped. When she spoke again, her voice was all business.
‘How did they die?’
‘No obvious signs,’ I said, stepping back. ‘Just this odd smell …’
‘I don’t see Albert and Olivia here anywhere.’
‘We can be sure now that they weren’t among the victims,’ I said. ‘Or they’d be hanging with the others. They must be the killers, and they must be around here somewhere.’
‘Want to check the walls?’ said Penny.
‘These walls would have to be solid,’ I said. ‘To support the weight of the inn above.’
It didn’t take long to search the cellar. There was no trace of the smugglers’ fabled lost treasure, just a few old wooden crates and some dusty bottles. The stone floor and walls were the same dirty grey; and heavily flecked with mould, suggesting no one had been down here in some time.
‘Do you think there was ever anything valuable down here?’ said Penny.
‘I doubt it,’ I said. ‘Smugglers dealt in food and wine and other taxable items, not gold or silver or jewels.’
Another door at the far end of the cellar opened on to another series of stone steps, dropping away further than even my sight could follow. All the way down through the cliff to the beach, probably. More lit candles, in niches in the walls, showed that someone had used the stairway recently.
‘The Calverts must be checking their escape route,’ I said.
‘Do we go after them?’ said Penny.
‘No need,’ I said. ‘I can hear footsteps. They’re coming back up.’
I carefully closed the door, backed away, and took another quick look around. ‘Albert and Olivia must have discovered all of this during the renovations and taken pains to keep it secret from the builders. I wonder how long it took them to work out how you make people disappear in plain sight.’
‘But why?’ said Penny. ‘Why did they want to kill their oldest friends? And why invite me here?’
‘We did it for revenge,’ said Olivia.
I looked round unhurriedly as Albert and Olivia emerged from the doorway. Penny stuck close beside me, almost quivering with suppressed anger. The Calverts didn’t seem surprised to see us; or guilty, or even scared. Just annoyed at being caught out. Olivia looked at Penny and me as though we were nothing more than an inconvenient interruption in her marvellous plans. Albert just looked sullen.
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ he said. ‘This is our place.’
‘Hush, dear,’ said Olivia. ‘I’ll do the talking.’ She smiled at me, ignoring Penny. ‘You’ve worked it all out, haven’t you?’
‘Most of it,’ I said.
‘I always knew you were the clever one,’ said Olivia. ‘I knew you’d be trouble, the moment I met you.’
‘Why did you kill your friends?’ Penny asked harshly.
‘Let me tell them, Olivia,’ said Albert. ‘I want them to know how stupid they’ve been.’
‘Tell them, Albert,’ said Olivia.
‘It was easy,’ he said, beaming with pride. ‘When Olivia and I researched the tansy pudding to make sure we were using a safe dosage, we discovered a long forgotten text that described the poison Tyrone put in his final meal. It was derived from the tansy flowers. The text also showed how the poison could be reduced to a powder which, when breathed in, would render the victim sedated and tractable, before it killed them. Tyrone never used it that way, as far as we know, but it seemed a simple enough process.’
‘So all I had to do,’ said Olivia, ‘was appear suddenly from nowhere, catching my victims by surprise, and blow a handful of the powder into their mouth and nose.’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I smelt it on their faces.’
‘They saw me as a fellow victim, not a threat,’ Olivia said happily. ‘Which bought me all the time I needed. They never even got a chance to make a sound. Then all I had to do was take them through the nearest door into the wall. There are hidden entrances all over the place, designed by the smugglers to open and close silently. All it took was a lot of practice and a steady nerve.’
She stepped forward, stuck out an open palm heavy with dust, and blew it into my face. Too late, Penny cried out a warning. Smiling at Olivia and Albert, I stood there and breathed the stuff in.
‘Sorry to disappoint you,’ I said, ‘but I’m immune to most poisons.’
‘So that’s why the drink didn’t affect you!’ said Olivia.
‘What drink?’ said Penny, moving in close beside me to make sure I was OK.
‘We put tansy poison in the plum brandy, so we could get him out of the way,’ said Albert. ‘Just one glass should have been enough to make him appear drunk and helpless. But instead, he drank the whole bottle and it didn’t even touch him!’
‘How is that possible?’ asked Olivia, glaring at me. ‘How could you be immune to a poison that no one’s even heard of in centuries?’
‘His ha
nds!’ Albert said suddenly. ‘Olivia! Look at his hands!’
I looked down at my bandaged hands and then held them up so the Calverts could see the golden bloodstains clearly. For the first time, the studied arrogance slipped from their faces. Presented with something beyond their experience, all their marvellous plans and underhand methods went for nothing. For the first time, they looked scared. As they looked at my hands.
‘What are you?’ said Olivia.
‘Very angry,’ I said. ‘Tell me about the concealed entrances.’
‘They were put in place while the inn was being built,’ said Olivia, still staring numbly at my hands. ‘Because we told you there weren’t any hidden doors or secret passageways, and I was the first to disappear, it never occurred to you to disbelieve us and check for yourself. If you’d taken the time to look closely, you would have seen them. But we kept you too busy thinking about other things …’
‘You were our hosts,’ said Penny. ‘We trusted you.’
‘You should have known better,’ said Olivia. ‘Nothing good ever came out of the Castle.’
‘Why?’ I said. ‘Why did you do all this? Why go to so much trouble to kill your oldest friends?’
‘They were never our friends,’ said Albert. ‘Not really. They drove us out of Black Rock Towen when the original deal for the Castle fell through and they lost all their precious savings. They blamed us, even though none of it was our fault.’
Olivia glared at Penny. ‘We did our best to make the deal work. And it would have, if not for your father!’
‘He promised us we could have the money we needed,’ said Albert. ‘And we all committed ourselves to the deal on the strength of his promise and his business reputation.’
‘And then he let us down,’ said Olivia. ‘And our so-called friends decided it was all our fault. They spread word around the town that we were not to be trusted. No one would even talk to us. We had to go away to London to start again. But we always said we’d be back some day, to have our revenge.
‘Finally, after all these years, the lottery win made that possible. We bought the inn and started the renovations, originally with perfectly straightforward intentions. We were going to turn the Castle into a successful business and then rub our friends’ noses in it, prove to them that we could do what they couldn’t. But then the idea came to us of a far more personal and satisfying revenge. That’s why we invited our old friends here this evening for this very special meal. And that’s why we invited you, Penny. We’d much rather have taken our revenge on your father; but since he was dead, we settled for you. The sins of the father and all that …’
‘We weren’t expecting you to bring someone with you,’ said Albert. ‘And certainly not someone so troublesome.’
‘You nearly spoiled everything,’ said Olivia.
‘You planned this whole evening just to kill your friends?’ said Penny.
‘Not just kill them,’ said Olivia. ‘Death on its own wasn’t enough to balance the books. Not after everything they’d put us through. All those years in London slaving over jobs we knew weren’t worthy of us. It was only fitting that our friends’ deaths should be part of restoring our fortunes to what they should have been. They, and you, were going to just disappear. Vanish into thin air, with not a trace remaining to explain what had happened and only Albert and I left to tell the tale … And what a tale it would have been! A party of old friends who gathered together to celebrate Tyrone’s infamous meal and were never seen again. The publicity would have been incredible. There’s nothing like an unsolved mystery to bring the customers pouring in.’
‘We had the whole story worked out long before any of you arrived,’ said Albert, smirking proudly. ‘Our very own murder mystery. All you had to do was disappear, with a little help from us.’
‘But why stretch it out, taking one person at a time?’ I said. ‘Why not just poison the meal like Tyrone did, and dispose of our bodies afterwards?’
‘Where would the fun have been in that?’ said Olivia. ‘All of you had to suffer. Just as we were made to suffer.’
‘And to keep you from working out what was happening,’ said Albert, ‘I was right there with you all along. Playing with you, messing with your minds, and loving every moment of it.’
‘He was very convincing, wasn’t he?’ said Olivia. ‘I always said he should have been on television.’
‘You got a taste for that while you were running your murder mysteries in London, didn’t you?’ I said.
‘Got it in one,’ said Olivia. ‘Albert provided the cues, and I responded. Especially during the seance. We had you all shaking in your boots.’
Penny gestured angrily at the four bodies hanging from the iron rack. ‘This wasn’t a game! Your friends are dead!’
‘They had it coming,’ said Albert. ‘All of them.’
‘And me?’ said Penny. ‘You were always so kind to me when I was a child.’
‘If you can’t hurt the one you hate,’ said Olivia, ‘hurt the one you can reach.’
‘The game is over now,’ I said. ‘You lose.’
‘Not necessarily,’ said Olivia. ‘I wonder … The tansy dust didn’t affect you, but what about Penny?’
‘Yes!’ said Albert. ‘Do it, Olivia!’
‘Why not?’ said Olivia. ‘You messed up my lovely plan, Ishmael. Someone has to suffer for that.’
‘We put all our money into the Castle,’ said Albert. ‘Everything we had. This plan has to succeed, or we’ll be ruined. And maybe a strong enough dose will do you in too, Ishmael. Whatever you are.’
‘I won’t be cheated out of my fortune again,’ said Olivia.
She brought her other hand out of her pocket, with more of the tansy dust, and went to blow it in Penny’s face. But I moved forward quickly and blew it back into hers. She cried out once, then collapsed into Albert’s arms. The impact knocked him to the floor and he sat there, holding his dying wife in his arms. Until she stopped breathing.
‘You should have stuck with your original plan,’ I said. ‘And then we could all have had a nice pleasant evening together. Why did you change your minds and decide you’d rather murder your friends?’
Albert looked up and smiled slowly. ‘It was the Voices. The Voices told us to do it.’
He leant over and kissed his dead wife on the lips, and the dust he took from her mouth was enough to kill him too.
Penny looked at me. ‘Didn’t you just know he was going to say that?’
EIGHT
Clean-up
I found my phone in a bag, along with all the other phones and the car keys, hidden in one of the wall hollows. I called the Colonel, and after a minimum of questions he called a cleaning crew. A local team turned up within the hour. At least, I assume they were local. I didn’t see how they could have got there that quickly if they weren’t. Quiet, professional young men and women, they pulled on hazmat suits and brought out the dead in body bags, then spent a really long time making sure no trace remained of anything that had happened at the Castle. No evidence, no clues, not even a speck of DNA. When the Organization cleans up, it does a thorough job. The everyday world can’t be allowed to know about the kind of things we take for granted. And they definitely can’t be allowed to know about me.
I didn’t know what would happen to the bodies. I’ve never asked. I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know.
‘So the Castle will have a new legend,’ said Penny, as we stood together out in the car park watching the cleaning crew pack up. ‘Six people gathered here for a special meal, the Calverts and their old friends, and none of them were ever seen or heard of again.’
‘Maybe Olivia was right,’ I said. ‘Nothing good has ever come out of the Castle.’
‘And no one will ever know we were here.’
‘Officially, we weren’t. Only Olivia and Albert knew you’d been invited.’
Penny looked at me. ‘What do you think Albert meant at the end? When he said the Voices made them do it?
’
‘I don’t think he meant anything,’ I said. ‘He was just messing with our heads one last time. I wouldn’t worry about it.’
Penny looked around the car park. All the cars had been taken away apart from our hired car, which was standing beside the cleaners’ anonymous white van. It was morning now, and a sour grey light fell heavily across the empty space.
‘No hanging tree, no ghosts,’ said Penny. ‘All the old stories were just stories, after all.’
‘Sometimes, that’s how it works out,’ I said.
‘No demon, no alien.’
‘No. Just a couple of very ordinary monsters.’
‘Let’s go home,’ said Penny. ‘These quiet evenings away will be the death of me.’
Simon R. Green, Into the Thinnest of Air
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