Page 89 of Disturbing the Dead
The lock is open. Oh, it looks as if it’s shut, but the shackle hasn’t been pushed down. Someone has left it like this so they can get back in without it appearing open. Someone who had access to a key… but didn’t count on having it for long.
I find a hiding spot for my carpetbag. Then I pull a box of matches from my pocket. I light one and show Mrs. Wallace the ladder before I position myself and put out the match as I descend. Only once I’m at the bottom, where no one will see the light, do I strike another match.
I move into the tunnel. I don’t wait for Mrs. Wallace. If she insists on coming, she can either keep up or bring her own damned matches.
To give her some credit, she doesn’t grumble. Or, if she does, it’s silent. She follows right behind me and when I glance back, she has her derringer in hand. Better yet, it’s not even pointed at me.
I relax a little and begin my search. I check the partial passage where we found Selim. Nothing there. I check others. None go beyond six or seven feet deep, and when I find one that seems to have been destroyed by a collapse, I wriggle partway into a crack between timbers, only to find a solid wall of dirt behind it.
I check another dead end that seemed to be the victim of structural collapse and find the same thing. As Gray suggested, these were almost certainly test runs, where those building the tunnel headed in one direction or another, only to find that it wasn’t a good spot to dig.
Not an old system of tunnels then, but a single one.
We haven’t determined the nature of the tunnels. Lady Christie knew of them, and said that, despite what the children thought, Sir Alastair knew of them, too, but hadn’t used them since he was a boy.
McCreadie’s investigations have revealed that no other houses on this street have subbasements. That suggests the one under Sir Alastair’s house was built for this tunnel. An exclusive secret passage just for the occupants.
It must be a smuggling tunnel. For getting illicit lovers and shady business partners in and out of the house? Or for transporting illegal goods? Whatever the original purpose, they’ve been co-opted by the children and Selim… and the killer.
I continue my search. I’m nearly out of side passages when I reach another one that looks collapsed, with a gap big enough to crawl through. I crouch and shine my match inside. Deep in the hole is a burlap bag.
“There’s something there,” I say as I pass the match to Mrs. Wallace. “I’m going to crawl inside.”
I’d love to take the match, but the hole is too small to crawl with it in my hand, and I don’t trust this outfit to be fireproof.
I remove the frock coat. Then I hike my skirts and tie them awkwardly, in hopes I won’t drag them through the dirt and ruin them.
Mrs. Wallace only watches. When she doesn’t complain, I presume she doesn’t care what I do to the dress. After all, it’s really not a dress at all but undergarments. Still, I don’t want to give her any reason to grumble.
I get down onto my hands and knees and crawl past the half-broken barrier between the tunnel and the solid ground beyond. What I discover past it is a hole dug into the earth, just over two feet in diameter.
It’s a tight squeeze for me. Was this something the children dug while they were bored? Or a hiding spot for smuggling tools and goods, hidden before that barrier broke?
I’m in past my hips when I can finally touch the burlap sack. I tug, but it sticks. A bigger tug has it coming free and, even in the dark, I can tell it’s empty. I push it past me and then reach my hands into the spot where I’d pulled it from. I touch dirt on all sides. It’s the end of this little passage, and there’s nothing else there.
I squirm backward until my hips are out. “Nothing. Just an empty—”
“Stop.”
I go still and whisper. “Did you hear something?” but the dirt swallows my words. I resume wriggling and something presses into the small of my back. Something hard and exactly the size of a derringer barrel.
“Are you holding a gun to my back?” I say, twisting my head so Mrs. Wallace can hear me.
The barrel presses in, answering that question. Anger surges, but I resist the urge to fight. For one thing, there’s a gun pressed to my spine. For another, I have a feeling we are about to have a long-overdue conversation, one Mrs. Wallace prefers to hold at gunpoint.
“Who are you?” Mrs. Wallace says.
I sigh and resist the urge to drop my face into the dirt. “You know who I am. If you think I’m conning Dr. Gray—”
“You have them fooled, lass, but that is only because they’ve never met the likes of you. I have. I used to see her in the mirror.”
That gives me pause. I work out what she’s saying. “You’re a con artist?”
“A what?”
“A grifter. A hustler.”
Silence.
