Nor did they refuse to join Mr. Blasingstoke in prayer for the family and the house.
And throughout the wait for the bishop and his attendants, Allan clung to Mel’s hand.
*
The bishop andhis team didn’t reach the tower or the cellars that day. They arranged to return the next day, and went home. They were all pale and looked exhausted, and Allan totally agreed. But his own weakness in the family wing was bothering him.
“Before we go,” he said, “I want to go back to the marquess’s study.”Wantwas the wrong word. He wanted nothing less, but he was determined to do it, nonetheless.
Melody opened her mouth, and he could see from her expression that she was minded to argue. But she must have thought better of it, for what she said was, “I will come with you.”
In the end, they all went. Five brothers and their wives. And the suffocating weight of despair was not waiting for them in the family wing. Allan stood outside the study examining his own feelings. He was tired. He was happy to have Melody and others of his family at his side. But none of that negative miasma remained.
“It is gone,” said Ernest, sounding surprised.
“‘More things in heaven and earth,’” quoted Hudson, and stepped forward to open the study door.
Allan braced himself and followed Hudson and Parthena into the room, to be assailed with memories. But that was all they were. In this room, he had experienced many things, most of them terrible. He didn’t like remembering them, but it was not the devastating horror of that few minutes earlier today.
“A complete redecoration,” Melody said. “In fact, we should make another room into your study, Allan, and turn this one into a visitor parlor, since it is just inside the side door.”
“We did it,” said Ernest. “We showed each other how brave we all are. Now let’s go home.”
*
It took twomore days for the bishop and his team to go over every room, closet, and passage in the house, but the gruesome discovery on the second day overshadowed the third day, which was benign by comparison.
Allan and Melody were showing the men around the tower. Several of the other brothers went ahead of them, opening the hidden rooms and hiding places. One could only hope that five clerical gentlemen could be trusted to keep the secret of their existence. However, even if one or more had loose lips, sending the brothers ahead meant none of them knew where the catches were.
They had prayed for the deliverance of each room in both upper and lower tower, and in the stairwells and tunnels, and were about to leave the tower dungeon when Ernest said, “What about the oubliette?”
After his experiences yesterday, Allan was more than half inclined to tear the house down and not leave one stone on another, but Ernest was right. Best to be thorough.
He nodded to Ernest to open the hidden door, and said to everyone else, “There’s a hidden door on the right-hand side of the dining space on the fourth level. At first sight, it looks just like the one we came down by. The door lets on to stairs much like those behind the left-hand side, but certain steps will trigger ambushes—weights from the ceiling to drop on people’s heads, steps that drop away, arrows that fire from the walls. At the bottom is an oubliette—a bottle dungeon. Anyone caught in one of the traps drops down to end up in the oubliette, and there’s no way out except for the hole twelve or fifteen feet above an unfortunate prisoner’s head, with sheer walls all around.”
“We shall stand in the doorway for our prayers,” said the bishop. “Will that be safe, my lord?”
“Yes, Your Grace, but I warn everyone to go no further. The oubliette itself is covered with a thin piece of card, and the stairs are treacherous.”
“Allan, the traps have been triggered,” Ernest exclaimed. Sure enough, the hole to the oubliette was uncovered.
And worse, a foul smell rose from within.
At that moment, something happened. An attack, Mr. Beauclair had called it yesterday, when they approached the marquess’s study. This one was so much worse that Allan never for a moment thought that the emotions that surged out of the gloom had their origin in himself. Despair, envy, spite, anger, and surpassing all the rest, the tide on which they rose, hate—they battered at him with such force that his knees sagged, and only the grip Mel had on his hand kept him upright.
Dear Mel, once again keeping him sane in the insanity that boiled up from the oubliette, so strong that Ernest had fallen to his knees and was bent over, supporting himself on his hands.
And wonderful Mr. Beauclair had stepped forward to help Ernest to his feet and passed him backward to be supported by Rosina, and was standing in the entrance, holding up a cross and reciting the prayers with which they were all now so familiar. The weight on Allan was already lighter, and as the other clerics joined Mr. Beauclair, the gale of emotions lessened and finally whisped into nothing.
“Is anybody there?” called the bishop down into the hole in the floor.
There was no reply. Allan had not expected one. Perhaps the person who had triggered the traps and fallen into the oubliette had survived the fall, but surely not for long. And the similarity of the recent storm to the emotions that had infested the house for so long identified the person.
“We have found Teign,” Allan said.
*
It was, indeed,the Marquess of Teign and he was dead. The coroner had to send someone down a ladder to tie the corpse to a stretcher so it could be hauled out of the oubliette on a rope.
