Escapade

Chapter Thirty-six

"What tunnel?”

“The tunnel that runs from here to the manor. It must exist.” He looked around, narrowed his eyes. “You saw how the pathway curved back to the south? I estimate that we are perhaps sixty yards from the house itself. The west side of it.” He nodded toward another wall of trees and brambles. “Beyond the forest there.”

“Why a tunnel, Harry?”

He looked at me. “But Phil. How else could the ghosts get from here to the house without being seen?”

I remembered the gun again. “Harry-”

“Please, Phil. We do not have much time. We must find it. It cannot be far.”

It wasn’t. It was built into the side of a hill about twenty yards from the mill, hidden behind the overhanging leafy branches of a big oak. At its entrance was a pair of broad wooden doors, like the doors to the freight tunnel beneath the formal garden. Lying beside the doors, in the weeds, was a small wicker picnic basket.

“Harry?” I called out.

He was maybe forty feet away, thrashing through some bushes. He stopped and came running toward me. There were scratches on his cheeks that looked like African tribal marks.

“Aha!” he cried. He reached for the door. “You see, Phil!”

It swung open before he could reach it. He danced back.

“Miss Turner!” he said.

She stood there in the opening, a lantern in her hand. Her cheek was smudged and strands of pale brown hair were trailing across her face. She was smiling anyway.

“I heard you coming, Mr. Houdini! Look! I found it! She said this as if she were talking about El Dorado.

“But Miss Turner-”

“Wait a minute,” I said. I turned to her. “Miss Turner, you told me you wouldn’t wander off on your own. We agreed. Last night, in Mrs. Corneille’s room.”

“I know, I know,” she said in a rush. “But everyone else had gone to church and I was sitting out on the patio, where it was perfectly safe-there was a policeman on patrol every ten minutes, nearly-and then Mr. Houdini appeared and spoke with me, and I understood what he was thinking from the questions he asked, what he must be thinking, about the ghosts-”

“Okay,” I said. “Hold on. What’s the story on these ghosts?”

“… and so you see, Phil,” the Great Man said, “logically, this was the only possibility. The tunnel. It was the only way the two of them could have gotten into the house so quickly. And without being seen.”

I said, “Seen again, you mean.”

“Correct. Miss Turner had already seen them. Unfortunately for her. But, in any event, I determined to locate it. And I would have,” he said. He looked at Miss Turner. “I suppose,” he said stiffly, “that I should offer you my congratulations, Miss Turner.”

“But Mr. Houdini,” she said. “I should never have considered the possibility of a tunnel if you hadn’t spoken with me. It was you, after all, who first realized the significance of the ghosts. Once I understood what you suspected, I realized how important they must be. And how they must have returned to the house. I brought a lantern from the stables and I concealed it in the basket and I came out here. I found the tunnel, yes, but all the credit, really, is yours.”

He looked at her thoughtfully. “Well. Yes. You are correct, of course. And where does the tunnel lead?”

“It ends at a sort of pantry next to the kitchen,” she said. “They must have used it to transport milled grain, years ago. There’s an entrance to the kitchen from the pantry. And there’s another tunnel there, one that goes off at right angles to this one. I didn’t explore it.”

“The freight tunnel,” I said. “Under the garden.”

The Great Man nodded. “It is as I suspected.” He turned to me, smiling. “The entire house, Phil, all of Maplewhite, is one enormous gimmicked prop.”

“Okay, Harry.” I said. “You’ve figured things out. But you’re going to have a hard time proving it.”

He raised himself up to his full height. “I have a plan,” he announced.

“Uh-huh.”

“And Phil,” he announced, “there is one additional matter I have discovered.”

“What’s that?”

He told me. Miss Turner made a small gasp.

“Yeah,” I said. “I know that.”

“But… how?” he said. I had never seen him look surprised before. “How could you know?”

I told him.

“But what shall we do, Phil?” he asked when I finished.

I smiled. “I have a plan.”

“May I help?” asked Miss Turner I looked at her. “Maybe you can.”

The Great Man and Miss Turner took the path back to the house. Using Miss Turner’s lantern, I took the tunnel.

It led straight into Maplewhite, into the pantry Miss Turner had found, and from end to end it was only about sixty yards long. The floor of the thing was covered with the same gravel that covered the walkway around the grounds. The walls were made of dark stone, damp and slimy.

So were the walls of the other tunnel, leading out under the formal garden. I took a look down that, then came back and left the lantern in the pantry before I slipped into the kitchen. It was empty. The trip from the kitchen to the Great Hall took less than a minute. Lord Bob wasn’t there. I found him and Lady Purleigh in the library, sitting together on one of the sofas. Both of them were looking a bit depressed, maybe even a bit lost. I asked Lord

Bob if the Great Man and I could use his telephone. I told him we’d pay for the calls.

“Money,” he said sadly, “is the least of my worries just now.” Lady Purleigh smiled bravely and took his hand.

“Everything will work out,” I told them, but I knew that it wasn’t exactly the truth.

The Great Man and I were busy in Lord Bob’s office for an hour or so, on the telephone. Miss Turner helped out for a while. She did a good job, and we had some luck we didn’t deserve. By one o’clock, Miss Turner and I had done everything we could. She left and the Great Man stayed there, waiting for some calls. I went to find Higgens, the butler, and I asked him to ask Inspector Marsh to come to my room as soon as he got back from Purleigh. Then I went upstairs and lay down. There was nothing useful I could do at that point, and I was tired. It had been already been a long day, and it wasn’t over yet. There was still the tea party.

I was asleep when someone knocked at the door. My watch was on the night table. Two-thirty. I sat up, swung my feet off the bed, and said, “Come in.”

It was Marsh, smiling happily. “Ah, Beaumont. Knitting up the raveled sleeve of care, were we?”

“Yeah. Grab a seat. How was Purleigh?”

“Lovely.” He pulled the chair out from under the desk, twirled it around, sat down on it. “A typical Devon hamlet, white walls and thatched roofs and cheerful inbred villagers. Very picturesque. I quite enjoyed myself.”

“Good. You find out anything?”

“I did, yes.” He smiled. “Would you care to hear?”

“I’m all ears.”

“Well,” he said, “for starters, Dr. Auerbach was telling the truth. He was in the graveyard, making rubbings of the tombstones. The vicar spoke with him, and he tells me that the doctor left on foot, for Maplewhite, sometime before one. But not much before one, and certainly after twelve-thirty. He’s a bit cloudy as to time. A bit cloudy in general, really. But I measured the distance between the church and Maplewhite. Six miles. Dr. Auerbach could not have returned here before one o'clock, and probably not much before two.”

I nodded.

“Sir David Merridale was also telling the truth,” he said. “As he said, he took a room at the Cock and Bull yesterday. He neglected to mention, however, that this was not the first time he'd done so. He’s stayed there several times over the past few months.”

“Must’ve slipped his mind.”

“ Let us not burden our remembrance with a heaviness that’s gone. The Tempest.”

“Right.”

“He also neglected to mention that he didn’t remain in his room. The room is on the first floor, at the back of the building. I went round to take a look and I discovered, in the ground beneath the room’s window, a clear set of footprints. The earth was still quite damp. Up until yesterday, you know, we've experienced heavy rains.”

“I noticed.”

He smiled. “The footprints were quite distinctive. A small notch was visible in the print of the left foot, where a piece of the leather had been somehow cut away. And, clearly, the prints had been made by someone leaving the room by means of the window, and then returning to it in the same manner.

“Someone else could’ve left the footprints.”

“According to the landlord, no one but Sir David has used the room in a week.”

I nodded.

“By a curious coincidence,” he said, “the residence of Mrs. Constance Coburn, where Cecily Fitzwilliam was visiting, is only two houses away. The footprints led there, to a bedroom on the first floor, at the rear of the house. From the prints, it is obvious that Sir David climbed into this window as well. I spoke with Mrs. Coburn, and she was good enough to tell me that Cecily was feeling unwell during her visit, and lay down for an hour in the back bedroom. For a rest.”

I nodded.

“Mrs. Coburn is nearly deaf,” he said, “but I was able, finally, to obtain from her a record of Miss Fitzwilliam’s earlier visits to her house. These correspond, exactly, to the times at which Sir David was staying at the Cock and Bull. And, in every case, she lay down for an hour, sometimes longer, in the back bedroom.” He smiled. “It appears that Miss Fitzwilliam is rather a faster young thing than she appears.”

“Incredible,” I said.

“But you do see what this means. If Sir David and Miss Fitzwilliam were occupied with each other, neither one of them could have fired that rifle yesterday.”

“Yeah. So who did?”

He smiled. “But surely, Beaumont, you’ve determined who that was?”

“I’ve got an idea or two. But who do you think it was?”

Another smile. “You shall learn that in”-he took out his watch-“twenty minutes. Now. Did anything of note transpire during my absence?”

“Yeah.” I told him about Lord Bob and his father.

“Lovely. So things begin to fall into place at last. And you say Houdini was there at the time?”

“Yeah.”

“Has he in fact solved the mystery?”

“He thinks so.”

“Lovely. I look forward to meeting with him.” He glanced at his watch again. “I must go hunt up Sergeant Meadows.” A final smile. “I’ll see you in the drawing room, then.”

“Right.”

After he left, I washed up, checked the Colt, slipped it back into my pocket.

Downstairs, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was waiting for me outside the drawing room, tall and bulky in another tweed suit. “A moment, Beaumont?”

“Sure.”

He led me down the hall a short distance. Frowning, he said, “I’ve been attempting to talk to this Marsh fellow, but he refuses to listen to me. This is ridiculous. I possess information that is absolutely critical to his case.”

“What information?”

“Madame Sosostris was good enough to hold a small seance this afternoon, with only myself present, and Mr. Dempsey, of course.”

“You talked to Running Bear.”

“Yes. It is as I thought, Beaumont. Lord Reginald effected the Earl’s death.”

“The ghost.”

“Yes. He drove the Earl insane, you see. Drove him to madness and finally to suicide.”

“Uh-huh. And how did the pistol get into the Earl’s room?”

“Evidently Lord Reginald dematerialized it from the Great Hall, then caused it to reappear in the Earl’s chambers. As you know, perhaps better than anyone, dematerialization is a reality.”

“Uh-huh.”

He frowned impatiently. “I know you pretend to be something of a skeptic, Beaumont. But, look, man, do you happen to know the guiding principle of my detective work? It is this-that when you have eliminated from consideration all the impossibilities, then whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. And that is patently the case here. I ask only that Inspector Marsh listen to me.”

“I’ll tell you what, Sir Arthur. You hold on to your idea for a while. Let’s see what happens in the drawing room. If you don’t get an explanation that you’re happy with, then I promise I'll get Marsh to listen to yours.”

“Well… I expect that’s better than nothing.”

“But,” I said, “I’d like one small favor in return.”

“And what might that be?”

I told him.