He sat back, holding up the old key in the palm of his hand. Like a skeleton key from a Victorian novel. It wasn’t tarnished with age, which told Hamish that, until recently, it’d likely seen regular use, and he imagined he felt the grease from Faegan’s palm upon it.
Trevor’s jaw gaped. “Bloody hell! What does that key fit?”
“Upstairs. Third floor. Eh, second floor, you all call it. I think in American English now, sorry.”
“Do you need me?” Ken asked Peyton. “I want to see what else I can find in those files.” He patted his backpack holding his laptop.
“Feel free to set up wherever you want,” Peyton said. “Even in here or in the dining room.”
“We have a secure Wi-Fi,” Trevor added. “The password’s in the dining room.”
“Thanks.”
Everyone else followed Hamish to the third floor, where several disused bedrooms were located, as well as the attic landing.
“We thoroughly searched the attic,” one of Trevor’s men said.
“I’m sure you did,” Hamish replied. Instead of opening the attic door, he walked past it to a walk-in linen closet and opened the door.
The shelves were stacked with old sheets and towels, neatly folded but smelling musty from disuse. Hamish pushed through a few ancient coats hanging in the back of the closet and knelt, peeling back a small section of baseboard that didn’t look otherwise disturbed, but which exposed a small latch switch. Upon pressing that the back wall swung in, exposing a small door with an ancient-looking lock.
And that’s what Hamish fitted the key into. Before he unlocked the door and pushed it open, he asked, “Have you had someone here constantly since he scarpered?”
The blood drained from Trevor’s face as he immediately intuited Hamish’s meaning. “Most of the time, yes, we’ve had at least two people on the grounds. But they have shift changes, or go out for food. Never more than a few minutes here or there of people not being present, or at least one person being on guard.”
“I don’t smell his scent fresh in here, but this whole place stinks of him anyway.” Hamish pounded on the door with his fist and froze, listening. When he heard nothing in response, no person scrambling around, he unlocked the door and pushed it open.
He didn’t know if Faegan had another key to this door hidden somewhere, but the fact that this key was in its hiding spot likely meant Faegan hadn’t managed a secret return. There wasn’t an easy way to jimmy this lock short of trying to break the door down, and that would have obviously attracted attention.
Hamish took the lead down the short but claustrophobically narrow hallway into the main room. Windowless, it sat under the attic, wedged behind the stairs and positioned in such a way that the layout of closets and bathrooms disguised its presence from all but the most determined of experienced architects.
Peyton, immediately behind Hamish, wrinkled his nose. “The scent isn’t fresh at all.”
“Hyacinth never mentioned this room,” Trevor said as he crowded in behind them. “We specifically asked her about these kinds of places.”
“I’m certain he didn’t tell Hyacinth about it,” Hamish said as he reached up to pull the light cord, casting the small space in a glowing yellowish light. “He forbade her from unapproved wanderings up here. These were, back in my day, servants’ quarters. When we were children, Father told us to keep this room secret, even from the servants. He would have blistered our hides with a cane had we disclosed it. If Mother knew of its existence, she never spoke of it. Faegan, Donnel, Bryn, and I knew of it. Bryn only knew because she snuck up behind Father and spotted him going inside, so he had to bring her into the fold, as it were. Even then, she still received a caning she didn’t soon forget.”
He’d spent years trying to forget the sound of her pained, muffled cries while their father had forced her three brothers to observe her punishment and understand theirs would be tenfold if they told anyone about the room.
It hadn’t changed much from the last time Hamish saw it over a year before he departed. There was a mix of old crates he remembered, as well as newer boxes from the past decade or so.
“To the best of my knowledge,” Hamish continued, “there are no additional hidden spaces in this room. There is a hidden passageway on the second floor, running behind what was our parents’ room before Faegan took it over after their deaths, that is ostensibly a plumbing access corridor. But he likely could have utilized that, too.”
“Did Hyacinth know about it?” Peyton asked Trevor.
“She never mentioned it. Given the interrogations we’ve put her through, it’s highly unlikely.”
“Then he never told her,” Hamish said. “Father never ordered it be kept a secret, but it was not used for storage back then, as far as I remember. I doubt she would concern herself with anything like that.”
“Let’s check it out,” Peyton said.
Trevor had to exit first. “Please empty this room and bring everything down to the office,” Trevor asked his men, who immediately set to it once Hamish, Peyton, and Trevor cleared out of the way.
Hamish led them back downstairs to the western wing on the second floor, depressed to see that here, too, Faegan had made no efforts to update. While clean, it looked like a husk of its former self, with threadbare carpets and faded wallpaper.
Trevor and Peyton followed Hamish. He stopped at another linen closet sandwiched between the bathroom and the master bedroom. Here, the laundry had, until recently, obviously seen frequent use and didn’t smell nearly as stale.
Here, also, lay Faegan’s scent, but not any fresher than upstairs.
