“And what exactly would an acetone chemistry bottle and”—he glanced at the scraps of paper—“over-the-counter cold medication be doing in the walls of my house?”
“Maybe you have a mad scientist with sinusitis living in your walls?” she offered with a smile to let him know she was joking.
He snorted. “It would be more likely to be a homeless person conducting illicit drug activity than a mad scientist.”
“True, but at least you know one thing: it’s someone contemporary, not one of Sir James Baskerville’s long-dead ancestors.”
“I think I’d prefer the long-dead ancestors,” he said, pocketing the scraps of cold medicine label. “They, at least, have a chance of hiding treasure. Shall we continue?”
“Onward, Ned!”
They continued down the passageway, the walls still damp and unpleasant. Before long, the change in air could be noticed.
“Salt water,” he said, sniffing.
“Told you it was the ocean.”
“Hmm.” Another two minutes, and they reached an arched opening, through which they came into a cave. At their feet, an ebony rippling line of water lapped at what looked like a primitive pier. Here the lights hung drunkenly from a zigzagging copper pipe that had been bolted to the low ceiling of the cave, the lights movinggently with the breeze coming in from the entrance. “I’ll be damned. Do you know what this is?”
“A cave? With water in it?”
“It’s exactly that. And who would use a cave with water access in Cornwall?”
She sucked in her breath. “The free-traders! Holy moly, Alden, you have a smugglers’ cave under your house! An actual, honest-to-god smugglers’ cave! One with... electricity?”
“Exactly. Smugglers may be using the cave, but it’s not free-traders. I’d be very interested to know who else is aware of the cave’s existence... and why they’re lighting up the insides of my house.”
“Not to mention what they’re doing in there. I mean, a homeless person wouldn’t string lights all over.”
“This is true.” He took Mercy’s hand, her fingers cold and stiff in his, but curling around his hand in a way that not only provided comfort but stirred his desire. “Shall we see if anyone is out at the cave entrance bringing in some contraband?”
She waved the heavy spanner she’d evidently taken from his tool chest. “You bet. I’m armed, so even if it’s white slavers or ivory smugglers, we’ll be safe.”
“You have the oddest notions of the sorts of things people would want to smuggle in this day and age.” With another quick glance around the area, he turned his back on the dead end to the left, and led Mercy along the stream, into the unknown.
Chapter 12
“So you’re saying you didn’t find anything in the tunnel?” Fenice, who had listened to my tale of my nocturnal subterranean adventures with Alden, sat with her toast and tea getting cold, too riveted to consume the breakfast I’d interrupted. “Nothing? Not even so much as a clue as to what was going on? Or who put the lights there?”
“Nothing. The stream led out to an entrance in the cliffside, about eight feet above the beach. Alden said watermarks on the cave walls show that it used to be much more of a river than a stream, which would explain why the smugglers liked it. We couldn’t see any signs of a person on the beach—no boat, no campfire, nothing—and likewise, when we backtracked our way to his bedroom, we didn’t encounter anyone.”
She blinked a couple of times before absently pickingup her cup, and promptly setting it down again. “How utterly, utterly bizarre. And unsettling. It does sound like homeless people are using it.”
“Possibly, although that doesn’t explain the lights. There was a big switch where the cave meets the passageway to the house, and three others that we found at various points, but no clue as to who turned the lights on, let alone put them in. Alden thinks the lights have been there for several decades, though. They look kind of old.”
“World War Two?” Fenice asked.
I shook my head. “We think earlier.”
“Well, it’s odd. And unsettling.”
“I know, right? Just the idea that someone could be sneaking around in the walls of the house spying on us... it’s creepy as hell.”
“What’s Alden going to do?”
I went over to the electric kettle to make myself a cup of spicy orange tea. “We talked about that for a while once we got back to his room. I thought he should nail everything shut that could be nailed shut—like the window seat—and block the entrance at the beach, but he figured that would let whoever was using the tunnel and secret passageways know that we were on to him. Or her. But probably a him, because honestly, can you imagine a woman sneaking around like that?”
“Yes,” policewoman Fenice said, taking a bite of her toast.
