Knife Edge

CHAPTER TWELVE

Dinner was a bizarre, excitable affair.

From Sherlock’s point of view it was as if his revelation of trickery during the second séance, the night before, had never happened. Count Shuvalov, von Webenau and Herr Holtzbrinck were clustered together at one end of the table. They were all talking together animatedly about psychic phenomena and the ‘spiritual plane’, suggesting ways in which communication with the dead might benefit the living, and debating what it might mean for organized religion. Sir Shadrach Quintillan and Ambrose Albano were absent, presumably to give their ‘guests’ time to talk among themselves. Niamh Quintillan and Virginia Crowe were further down the table, talking to each other — probably, Sherlock thought, about horses. They formed a barrier like an ocean between the continent of belief at the top end of the table and the island of disbelief at the other — Sherlock, Mycroft and Amyus Crowe.

‘I just can’t believe it,’ Sherlock said as he took a forkful of lamb. ‘Did that second séance actually happen, or did I just dream it?’

‘It’s human nature,’ Crowe pointed out. ‘If people are predisposed to believe a thing then they will accept any and all evidence that it is true and they will do their best to reject any evidence that it is false. Our international colleagues at the other end of the table really do want to believe that spiritualism and psychic phenomena exist. The three of us down here are much more likely to be guided by logic than by wishful thinkin’.’

‘But why?’

It was Mycroft who answered, in a low voice. ‘In the case of von Webenau and Herr Holtzbrinck, I suspect that they have both lost someone dear to them, and they do not wish to believe that the person has gone forever. They cannot let go, and so they will cling to any shred of evidence that might mean that their loved ones are happy and that they can still communicate with those of their family who are still alive.’

‘You may have noticed that neither of them was happy when you demonstrated the trickery in the séance,’ Crowe pointed out. ‘Ah thought at the time it was because they were angry that they had been duped, but now Ah realize it was because they’d had something precious taken away from them. Albano and Quintillan have waved that precious thing under their noses again, and they’re goin’ for it.’

‘In the case of Count Shuvalov,’ Mycroft continued, as if Crowe hadn’t interrupted, ‘I believe that the answer is more to do with his nationality than with his personal history. In my experience the Russians are a highly religious and fatalistic people. They are already inclined to believe in all kinds of things that would seem bizarre to those who are not Russian.’ He smiled. ‘I remember that a military acquaintance of mine once said that if you put a British general, a Russian general, an American general and a German general in a room together and give them a problem to solve, the British, American and German generals would come up with one solution and the Russian general would come up with a completely different one. The Russians do not think like us, and the world will get itself into a lot of trouble if it ever forgets that.’

‘They’ve all fallen for Ambrose’s explanation that he was ill, and therefore his powers were unpredictable.’ Crowe shook his head, and his voice took on an oratorical quality. ‘“Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not,” as the Good Book says.’

‘Can we persuade them that this is still trickery?’ Sherlock asked. ‘Or is it too late?’

Crowe sighed heavily and looked at Mycroft.

‘That,’ Mycroft said judiciously, ‘depends entirely upon whether we can work out how the trick with the painting was done. If we can’t explain that logically then the explanation might just as well involve psychic phenomena.’

‘The first step — choosing the right room — is pretty clear,’ Crowe pointed out.

Mycroft nodded. ‘Yes, you are correct. That part is childishly simple.’

Sherlock looked from his brother to his mentor and back again. ‘Do either of you want to explain it to me?’

‘Surely it is obvious?’ Mycroft stared down at his plate sadly. ‘One of the unfortunate side-effects of being struck on the head is that it does interfere with one’s appetite. I am not sure I can eat any more.’

‘No,’ Sherlock said patiently, ‘it’s not obvious. The slip of paper with the room number on was chosen randomly, and we know that all of the slips in the bowl had different numbers. Quintillan couldn’t have known in advance which number was going to be chosen.’

‘That is correct,’ Mycroft said, ‘but what if I reminded you about the apparent random numbering of the rooms along the corridor. Would that help?’

‘No.’

‘Then what if I said that I believe none of the numbers in the bowl actually appeared on any doors?’

Sherlock thought for a moment, and then the answer hit him like a bolt of lightning. ‘Of course!’

‘Then please explain to us, just to check you have the right answer.’

‘All of the rooms on the top floor were numbered with chalk marks, with the exception of the room that Quintillan wanted to use. That was left blank. The bowl was filled with numbers written on scraps of paper, but none of the numbers on the scraps matched any of the numbers on the doors.’

‘An easy way to do it would be to make sure that the numbers in the bowl were odd numbers and the numbers of the doors were even numbers,’ Crowe said, ‘although Ah believe a more sophisticated scheme was used in this case.’

‘When von Webenau chose the number and called it out, a servant outside the dining room rushed upstairs with a piece of chalk and wrote that number on the blank door that Quintillan had already chosen.’

‘Exactly.’ Mycroft speared a mushroom with his fork. ‘Well, perhaps a few more bites. Just to keep my strength up.’

‘But why were the numbers on the doors random?’ Crowe asked.

‘Easy. Since Quintillan didn’t know which number would be chosen, he couldn’t have the numbers sequential, because it would have been obvious that the one von Webenau chose — the one written rapidly on the blank door — was out of sequence.’

‘Bravo,’ Mycroft said, chewing. ‘But do any of us know how the trick with the painting was done? Sherlock — you spent more time in the room than we did. Do you not know?’

Sherlock shrugged. ‘I didn’t see anything that might help. Someone must have gone into the room, or observed it from outside, but I don’t know how. We all inspected the chalk in the corridor and on the roof afterwards — Quintillan insisted that we did. It was obviously undisturbed. Nobody had walked along that corridor or along that roof after the chalk was scattered, and we were all outside watching the window. It was impossible. I thought maybe a balloon — but I was looking and I saw nothing.’

‘I think we can eliminate the impossible explanations,’ Mycroft said. ‘Which means that we must start working our way through the improbable ones.’

That statement stopped the conversation for a long while, as each of them tried to come up with some improbable explanations, and failed.

Lying in bed later, Sherlock felt fragments of fact, observation and supposition flying around his skull. The attack on his brother had been explained — at least, as explained as it was going to be — and he was as certain as he could be that the performance with the painting was just an elaborate trick, but he still hadn’t figured out how it was done. Then there were the sightings of the Dark Beast — were they real, or just rumours, hearsay and illusions? And did the death of the servant Máire fit into it somehow — had her body been moved, and if it had, then why? Did the moving of her body indicate that she had been murdered — and if that was so, then, again, why? He had too many questions and not enough answers.

He fell asleep without realizing, and drifted through dreams in which shattered mirrors reflected fragments of scenes in fractured ways, and somewhere behind it all Niamh was staring at him. Or was it Virginia?

Sir Shadrach wasn’t present at breakfast the next morning. Ambrose Albano was, although he looked ill at ease. He kept picking up his cutlery then putting it down again without eating anything. Perhaps he hadn’t slept very well. He kept on looking at Silman, the butler, and she kept staring back at him. Sherlock thought there was something odd about her expression — it seemed like she was trying to warn him about something, or warn him against doing something. Either way, it wasn’t the normal expression he would have expected on a butler’s face.

At the end of breakfast Silman nodded towards Albano, giving him a signal. He stood up and rapped the table for attention. Sherlock remembered the knocking on the table at the séances and stifled a laugh.

‘Gentlemen, esteemed international colleagues, ladies,’ Albano started. ‘I am sorry to tell you that Sir Shadrach has been taken ill during the night, and will not be available today.’

Niamh Shadrach glanced up, concern in her eyes. Obviously she didn’t know anything about this. ‘Is father—?’

Albano raised a hand. ‘He is perfectly fine,’ he said, although there was something about his expression which meant Sherlock didn’t quite believe him. ‘He is just tired, and needs to rest.’ He looked quickly at Silman, and then away again. ‘The auction will proceed as planned, after lunch. It will take the servants a while to set up the room. Instead of Sir Shadrach conducting the auction, I will be conducting it myself, with the aid of Silman. I trust that will be acceptable.’

There was a general murmur of assent around the table. Niamh got up and rushed towards the door, but Albano called after her. ‘Miss Quintillan — your father is asleep. Please do not disturb him.’

‘Please convey our regards to Sir Shadrach,’ Mycroft said, ‘and wish him a speedy recovery.’

‘We all wish him that,’ Albano said quietly.

After breakfast, Sherlock went wandering. He headed for the library, with some vague idea of continuing to look for secret passages, but was surprised to find that Ambrose Albano had got there first. He was sitting at a long table reading a book. His jacket was slung across the back of his chair.

Albano stared at Sherlock. ‘Have you come to discredit me some more?’ he asked, but he seemed amused rather than angry.

‘No,’ Sherlock said. ‘Actually, I didn’t know you were here at all, but now that I know you are, may I ask you some questions about magic? You obviously have a considerable amount of skill.’

‘I did spend some time on stage as a magician,’ he admitted, ‘although that was under another name, and before I had my accident and discovered that I could communicate with the dead.’ He tilted his head on one side and stared at Sherlock. ‘How exactly did you see through my tricks at the séances?’ he asked. ‘Everyone else was convinced, or on the way to being convinced.’

‘You might even have convinced me, if I hadn’t searched your rooms and found the evidence of how you had performed the tricks beneath the bed.’

‘I should be angry,’ Albano murmured, ‘but I haven’t the energy. Besides, it would be petty of me. After all, I searched everybody else’s room, looking for things that I could use in my performance. I found a letter from Herr Holtzbrinck’s brother that he keeps with him. I can hardly complain if my own rooms are searched.’

‘So what can you tell me about magic tricks?’ Sherlock asked, trying not to think about the psychic poking around in his room.

Albano smiled to himself. He stood up. ‘It’s all to do with misdirection,’ he said. ‘For instance —’ he tugged at his right shirtsleeve with his left hand, pulling it up to display his right wrist, while he held his right hand up with the fingers held apart — ‘as you can see, there is nothing hidden in my right hand or up my right sleeve, and —’ he did the same with the other arm, pulling the left sleeve up to expose his left wrist and splaying out the fingers of his left hand — ‘neither is there anything hidden in my left hand or up my left sleeve. Do you agree?’

‘I agree,’ Sherlock said, knowing that a trick was coming but unsure from which direction.

Albano shook his head. ‘Then you weren’t watching carefully enough.’ He brought the fingers of his right hand and left hand together until they touched and then moved them apart again. He was suddenly holding a banknote between his fingertips. ‘So where did this come from?’

‘I don’t know,’ Sherlock said honestly. ‘It wasn’t up your sleeves, or in your hands. It must have been hidden somewhere else.’

‘Of course it was.’ Albano smiled. ‘Watch again.’

He folded the banknote in two, rolled it up carefully into a thin tube, pulled his right and left sleeves back down to cover his wrists again, and then carefully tucked the rolled banknote into a fold of his left sleeve that was located in the crook of his elbow. He stopped it from falling out by keeping his left arm bent, but he held his left hand with his right in front of him to make the position look natural. ‘Now, can we agree that there is nothing hidden in my right hand?’ he said, pulling his right sleeve up again, as before.

‘Agreed,’ Sherlock said.

Albano used his right hand to pull his left sleeve up again, but this time Sherlock spotted that while his left hand was held up, splayed open, his right hand plucked the rolled-up banknote from the fold in the sleeve’s material and palmed it. ‘And there is nothing up my left sleeve, as you can plainly see.’

‘Again, agreed, but the sleeves are the misdirection, aren’t they?’

‘Exactly.’ Albano brought his fingers together again, with the right hand concealing the banknote that he had plucked from his sleeve. He took a corner with his left hand and pulled the note open. ‘Now do you see?’

‘It’s so simple,’ Sherlock said, ‘that I almost feel cheated.’

‘That is the shameful secret of professional magicians. What we call magic is actually a set of obvious ways of hiding things. The trick is in the way we take your attention away from the place where the things are hidden. The first lesson about magic is: if our audience only knew how obvious are the hiding places, and how much effort we go to in order to distract attention from them, then magic would suddenly lose all its attraction.’

‘But you must already have had that banknote folded and rolled up somewhere, ready to hide in your sleeve. You didn’t know that I was coming.’

‘You’re right.’ Albano smiled, and this was a natural smile, not a fake, theatrical one. ‘So, the second lesson about magic: always have several prepared tricks in your pockets, ready to go. Preparation takes time, and you never know when you might get the opportunity to perform a trick.’ He frowned. ‘Now, let me see what else I have to show you.’ He took his jacket from the back of the chair and slipped it on, patting the pockets and sliding his hands inside as if looking for something.

Sherlock smiled to himself. He recognized in Albano’s theatrical gestures a typical misdirection. Somehow the man had already started another trick.

‘Oh, that’s a shame. I seem to have lost it.’ Albano took his hands out from inside his jacket, holding them flat, palms towards Sherlock. ‘Nothing there, you see?’ He closed his right hand into a fist and opened it again, and suddenly he was holding a playing card. ‘Ah, there it is!’ He handed it to Sherlock. It was the eight of clubs. With a sudden flourish he made the same movement with his left hand, and another card — the nine of diamonds — appeared from thin air. ‘Oh, and another one!’ He handed that to Sherlock as well.

Sherlock laughed. He couldn’t help himself. There was something so engaging about Albano’s simple pleasure in the tricks. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘You were somehow hiding the cards in your hands, but how?’

‘Watch carefully.’ Albano took one of the cards back. He held it in his right hand, between his thumb and his fingers, then bent his second and third fingers so that the knuckles were pressed against the back of the card. He then curled his first and fourth fingers around to grip the edges of the card, and straightened his fingers out again. The card rotated around to the back of his hand, still held between his first and fourth fingers. He held his hand out to Sherlock, showing how the card was bent between the fingers. From the palm side it was invisible. ‘Lesson Three: this is called a “back palm”, for obvious reasons. It is one of the foundations of card magic. Once you get this right, once you can perform it invisibly, again and again, you can produce cards from the air to your heart’s content.’

‘Can you show me another trick?’

The man sighed. ‘Always it’s another trick.’ He collected the other card from Sherlock, then reached inside his jacket and pulled out a full pack. ‘Very well, let me tell you the story of the four burglars. Sit down.’

Sherlock pulled out a chair and he and Albano sat at opposite sides of the table. Albano shuffled the cards, riffled them open and pulled out the four Jacks. Leaving the rest of the pack face down on the table, he showed them to Sherlock. ‘There were once four burglars named Jack, who set out to burgle a house that had been left empty for the evening by the owners.’

‘I don’t need the story,’ Sherlock pointed out. ‘Just the trick.’

‘Lesson Four: the story is the trick. Or, at least, it is part of the misdirection. Remember, every trick is a performance, and you must entertain the audience as well as amaze them. You must lead them on a journey that you have pre-planned for them. Now…’ He placed the four Jacks face down on top of the pack. ‘The four burglars all got on to the roof of the house and lowered themselves down on ropes. The first burglar broke into the basement.’ As he spoke, he took the first card from the top of the pack and inserted it lower down, near the bottom, pushing it in until it was flush with the rest. ‘The second burglar managed to get in through a kitchen window.’ He took a second card from the top and inserted it halfway up the pack. ‘The third burglar broke in through an upstairs window.’ Suiting the words, he took a third card from the top and pushed in into the pack above the first two, just a little way down from the top. ‘The fourth burglar stayed on top of the house, watching out for trouble.’ He turned the top card over to show that it was the fourth Jack, and then turned it back again. Abruptly he rapped his knuckles on top of the pack. ‘After a few minutes the burglar on the roof saw the owners returning to the house, so he called to his friends. They all quickly ran upstairs, got on to the roof and made their getaway down a drainpipe.’ He slid the top four cards from the pack and turned them face up. They were, of course, the four Jacks again, even though Sherlock had thought that three of them had been pushed into the pack lower down and were hidden among the other cards. ‘So, I challenge you: how was the trick done?’

Sherlock thought for a moment. ‘If the Jacks are on top now, then the three cards you pushed into the deck couldn’t have been Jacks. Therefore they were something else. So, when you picked the four Jacks from the pack and showed them to me, you must have had three cards hidden behind them. When you put the Jacks face down on top of the pack, those three cards were on top of them, and they were the ones you removed and inserted lower down.’ He finished, and took a deep breath. ‘It’s obvious.’

‘Exactly. The trick is in how smoothly you can pick up seven cards rather than four, and how well you can disguise the three spare ones behind the four Jacks. That depends on never showing your audience the cards edge on, just front on. The trick is actually over before the story starts, and that is the misdirection.’

‘Can you teach me?’ Sherlock asked quietly.

‘You exposed my… unfortunate and ill-conceived tricks,’ Albano pointed out in a calm voice, ‘and you made it harder for me to convince those here to bid for my services that I really do have psychic powers. I don’t owe you anything.’

‘No.’ Sherlock nodded. ‘You are right, you don’t owe me anything, but I think you want to show someone your tricks. You want other people to know how clever you are. Taking money is one thing, but if nobody knows it was a trick then you don’t feel satisfied. So teach me. Show me the tricks. You know by now that I am probably the only person in this castle who will properly appreciate them.’ He stared intently at Albano. ‘You’ve already started. You’ve given me four lessons already. You want to pass on your knowledge.’

Albano nodded slowly. ‘Perhaps I do. It’s the dream of every sorcerer, to have an apprentice.’ He sighed. ‘Very well. Let’s start with the basics of card tricks, as we happen to have a pack here…’

Sherlock stayed with Ambrose Albano for several hours. During that time Albano taught him different ways to hold a pack of cards — the dealer’s grip, the mechanic’s grip and the biddle grip — and the many ways to cut the cards — including the swing cut and the Charlier cut. After that they moved on to ways of secretly getting a glimpse of the bottom or the top card on a deck. Albano then showed Sherlock ways of controlling a card — moving a card from the top or the bottom of the deck to wherever you wanted it to be. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is the essence of card magic — knowing where a particular card is, and then knowing that you can move it anywhere you want.’ Finally he showed Sherlock the difficult art of getting a spectator to take what they thought was a card at random but which was actually the card that the magician had already identified and moved. By the time he had finished, Sherlock’s head was spinning.

‘It’s all just simple trickery,’ Sherlock said, amazed. ‘But it depends so much on being able to handle a pack of cards perfectly, without anyone knowing what you are doing.’

‘The real and only secret is practice,’ Albano pointed out. ‘You need to keep handling that pack of cards until you can manipulate it with your eyes shut. Never go anywhere without it. If you are travelling anywhere, take that park of cards out and just move it through your fingers. Fan them out, rife them, deal them, do anything and everything with them. They need to become your best friends.’ He handed the pack of cards across. ‘Keep practising. You never know when you might need these skills.’

‘Thank you.’ Sherlock shook hands with Albano, and left, feeling an unusual spring in his step. He felt revived, refreshed. He felt as if he had been given a glimpse into his own future. He even felt able to talk with Virginia again, but when he asked a servant where she was he was told that she had gone riding with ‘the mistress’ — which, he presumed, meant Niamh Quintillan. It was strange, and rather disturbing, how well those two seemed to be getting on.

He wondered if they were talking about him.

Sherlock found that he needed a breath of fresh air before lunch after the concentration of the past few hours, so he headed outside. Remembering his walk with Virginia, and his sight of the mysterious folly that he hadn’t been able to investigate then, he set out to find it again.

It took about twenty minutes before he was emerging from the undergrowth into a clearing at the base of the folly. It was narrower than he had thought: probably ten feet or so across and about fifty feet high, constructed from a dark grey stone that felt rough to his fingers when he touched it. He walked around it. The lines where the stones met were so thin as to be almost invisible. The workmanship was impressive. In the weak sunlight that filtered through the clouds above he could also see that the stones were riddled with tiny holes. There was something about the sight that provoked a memory, and it took him a few seconds to realize that the folly was actually built from the same material as the smooth, curved wall that had blocked the tunnel beneath the castle.

He looked in the direction of the castle. How far was it? He tried to estimate the distance. Was it about the same as the distance he had walked in the tunnels underground? Had he gone as far then as he had now? Was the curved wall that he had found beneath the ground the same as the curved wall of the folly that he was looking at? It seemed crazy, but he thought that it might just be true. The trouble was that it added new questions to the list. Why would the tower continue beneath the ground in the same way that it did above the ground? What was the point? Surely a folly like that would be built on a foundation on flat ground. Why excavate the ground so that the folly could be extended down as well as up?

The point of follies, he reminded himself, was that they were follies. They didn’t necessarily follow any sensible rules. They were things built by the wealthy landowners and had little rhyme or reason to them other than to show how rich the owners were. Why was he even looking for logic?

Sherlock could see dark spaces in the wall of the folly: all in a line leading up to the top. They looked like windows. The problem was that he couldn’t see a doorway at ground level. What was the point of that? What was the architect trying to do?

If he strained his eyes, he thought he could see ramparts, or battlements, around the very top of the folly. The thing looked from below, he thought, like an elongated version of the piece known as the ‘rook’, or the ‘castle’, in the game of chess.

He walked around the folly again, this time in the opposite direction. There was definitely no way in from the ground level, but the presence of windows suggested that there were rooms within the tower, and what was the point of having rooms if you couldn’t get into them?

He stood there for a long while, just staring at the tower, trying to work out some explanation for the oddities in its construction. Following through the thought that the tower continued below ground in the same way that it continued above, he moved towards the curved wall and knelt down to examine the point where the tower entered the ground. It was overgrown with grass and small furze bushes, but he found that he could slide his fingers down between the side of the tower and the ground. There was a gap.

A little further along he noticed a stone block sticking out of the tower wall. It was lighter in colour than the tower: made of a different stone. He hadn’t seen it before because a small shrub was growing in front of it. Sherlock could only see it because he was off to one side.

He moved across to take a look. It was about the size of his body, and it nestled in a hole in the side of the tower, fitting so snugly that there was no space around it. A large iron ring, battered and crusted with age, was set into the end, for reasons that he couldn’t fathom.

He moved around the tower for a third time and found another three blocks, exactly the same as the first, equally spaced around the circumference. Based on the position of the sun and the time of day, they seemed to be oriented along the points of the compass. Was that significant? He wasn’t sure.

He sat back, letting the facts slide around in his mind like pieces in a child’s wooden puzzle, hoping that some coherent picture would emerge, but nothing came.

The only answer, he decided, was to climb the tower and see what was in the rooms, and what was on top.

The stone wall of the tower seemed sheer, and the fact that the joins between the stones were all but invisible meant that he wouldn’t be able to jam anything, like a knife blade, into any gap to act as a makeshift step. For a few moments he wondered whether it would be possible to carve notches in the stone with an axe so that he could climb up, but that seemed close to an act of vandalism. Also of course, he didn’t have an axe either. The alternative was to go back to the castle and get some rope, in the hope that he could form a loop and fling it up high enough to hook on to one of the projecting battlements, but he would have to go all the way back to the castle and hope that they had some rope somewhere that he could borrow, and he really wanted to investigate the folly now, not later.

It occurred to Sherlock that the nearest window was only about twelve feet off the ground. If he could find a way of getting up that high then he could investigate what was inside. It might at least give him some clues as to what the folly was all about.

He looked around. There were a few ash trees growing among the furze bushes, but none of them had branches close enough to the folly to use as a jumping-off point.

He wandered a little way into the undergrowth and climbed up one of the trees until he was on a level with the lowest window. Unfortunately the sun was at the wrong angle and he couldn’t see inside.

The branch creaked beneath his weight, and he shuffled backwards quickly, lest it break. Looking along its length he noticed that it split into two after a few feet, and the two separate lengths also each split into two. Suddenly an entire plan sprang fully formed into his mind. If he could break the branch off then he could lean it against the tower and use it as a ladder!

Before his logical brain could give him sixteen reasons why the plan would not work, he started bouncing up and down on the branch. It creaked and bent beneath his weight, but it didn’t break. He edged a little way along it, using a higher branch to hold on to, and stood up. The branch he was standing on abruptly gave way. Sherlock nearly fell, saving himself only by grabbing the higher branch with both hands.

He swung himself down the tree and pulled the broken branch over to the folly. The branch was about twelve feet long, and Sherlock found that if he set the thicker end on the ground so that it did not slip, he could raise the thinner end up to rest against the edge of the lowest window. Sherlock clambered up like a monkey until his head was level with the dark opening in the wall.

He lunged for the ledge, fingers catching on the rough grey stone, and his chest crashed against the side of the tower. He hung there for a few moments before he pulled himself up and over the ledge.

He lay inside the window, breathing heavily.

The room was circular, with only the one entrance, and it was entirely empty. Well, empty apart from some splinters of wood on the floor that looked like they came not from a branch but from a box of some kind. Maybe a crate.

The sunlight barely penetrated the room but even so, Sherlock saw that one of the flagstones was darker than the rest. He moved across to examine it, and discovered that it wasn’t a flagstone at all — it was actually a hole in the floor. He reached down and waved his hand around. There seemed to be plenty of space down there. Perhaps it was a way into a lower room, one that was at ground level but had no door to the outside? He supposed he could climb down and check, but he was reluctant to do that without a lamp. He could break his ankle or his leg if he fell badly, and he wouldn’t be able to get out again.

A sudden thought struck him, and he looked upward, at the ceiling of the circular room. There was a hole there as well, offset from the one in the floor. Looking at the holes in the floor and the ceiling of the room he was in, he decided that they must have been put there to allow for a short ladder to climb from one room to another: that’s why they were offset. The ladder could presumably be pulled up from each room into the next, and used again. With luck, the holes would lead all the way to the top of the tower. If only he had a ladder…

He had the next best thing: a strong pair of arms and a strong pair of legs. Crouching, he leaped for the hole above. His fingers clutched at the edge of the hole and, arms straining, he pulled himself up.

The room above was exactly the same as the room below, with the exception that the view from the window was higher. And he had been right — there was another hole in the ceiling.

It took him an exhausting five leaps and straining pulls to get from room to room until he was finally at the top, on the flat platform that capped the tower.

There he found Sir Shadrach Quintillan’s dead body, still in its bath chair, looking over his lands with blind, unseeing eyes, the front of his shirt and jacket stained red with drying blood.