He wondered whom she’d been talking to. Thomas? Not like him to need consoling.
Frederick then descended a few stairs to allow Miss Lane to look through the squint after him.
She mused, “Do you suppose the abbess used this hole to spy on the nuns in the cloisters?”
“Maybe.”
Frederick continued down the stairs until they abruptly ended at a wall. He felt around its surface. Not a wall but a wooden door, the faintest lines of light showing through its vertical boards.
He tried pushing it open. It did not give. “I think it’s locked from the outside. Or perhaps this is permanently sealed and not a door at all.”
She said, “I will go around and unbolt it.”
Frederick would have offered to go himself but knew there was no decent way to move past her in the confined space. He asked, “Do you know where it is?”
“Yes. I know.”
———
Rebecca made her way back up the spiral stairs and let herself from room three, shutting the door quietly behind her.
Hoping to avoid a lengthy encounter with Lady Fitzhoward or anyone else, she decided not to use the closer, more public main stairway and instead hurried through the gallery passage and down the night stair, returning to the cloisters that way. Reaching the southwest corner, she paused. Seeing only a waiter in the courtyard, clearing a table, she stepped into the shadowy alcove.
Leaning near the plank door, she whispered, “Sir Frederick? Can you hear me?”
No answer. Disappointment flared. Perhaps this was not the same door after all.
She tugged the sliding bolt, but it did not give. Using both hands, she took a broader stance and pulled again. It stuttered to the side.
“Miss Lane?” Frederick asked, his voice close by.
“I’m here,” she whispered back.
She pulled, and he apparently pushed, and the plank door creaked open toward her, revealing cobwebbed corners, dust, and the handsome, intent face of Sir Frederick Wilford.
He lifted his chin and looked out in amazement. “So therewasanother way into the room.”
She nodded. “By the way,” she said. “I called your name a moment ago. Did you not hear me?”
“Sorry. I had retraced my steps to the squint. I found something interesting on the wall near it. Come and see.”
He extended his hand.
She put her hand in his, lifted one foot to the door’s bottom lip, and ducked her head. He pulled her into the entombed spiral staircase.
“Up here,” he said in a hushed voice. “It is another wall painting, like the ones Mr. Mayhew showed us.”
She shut the plank door behind herself and followed him up and around the sharp curve of the stairs.
“See it?” he whispered.
The glow from the squint, aided by the lamp, revealed a drawing on the wall nearby. Compared to the preserved paintings of St. Andrew and the abbess in the library, this was far simpler. The figure of a rabbit had been scratched into the limestone. Amateurish, almost childish. Below it were the wordsJOHAN fecit hoe.Perhaps, Rebecca mused, the name of the abbess or chaplain who had drawn it.
“What does it mean?” she asked.
He lowered the lamp to study the words.
“John did this.”
