Soon they reached the point where the halls branched off to the left and right; also where the temporary lighting ran out. As they continued down the central hall with Kingston holding the lamp aloft, the surroundings took on a more sinister turn. With their shadows dancing off the walls and pitch darkness only several feet ahead of them, they were walking into the unknown. The brittle silence amplified even the tiniest sound: a pebble dislodged somewhere behind them, a creak of what might be a door sagging on its hinge, or a single drip from condensation or leaching on the walls.
‘You sure you want to keep going?’ Jamie said, in a loud whisper, as they passed yet another room on their right.
‘I think we should, Jamie. Are you okay?’
‘Yes. I’m fine.’
‘I don’t think it can go on much farther. We’re a hell of a long way in as it is. It has to end soon.’
No sooner had he said the words than the hall took a sharp right turn. Round the corner, the hall was considerably wider. The ceiling was higher, too—like a gallery. A half-open door appeared on their left. Kingston shoved it with his foot and walked in, holding the lamp as high as he could. He caught his breath. This room was different from all the others—markedly different. To start with, a metal conduit ran up one wall and across the ceiling. In the centre of the ceiling was a wide, cone-shaped lampshade, the electric light bulb clearly visible. But that wasn’t all. The few pieces of furniture in the room were all modern. No question that they were from the twentieth century.
Jamie had joined him. ‘What do you make of this then?’ he asked.
‘Weird. Looks like it was an office of some kind.’ She looked up at the ceiling. ‘I wonder where the electricity comes from?’
‘I can only guess it comes from the house. We’re probably standing right underneath it.’
Jamie pulled the door back. ‘There’s a switch here,’ she said, flicking it up and down.
‘Probably disconnected.’
‘Right. What do you think this was, then?’
‘I’m not sure. My guess is that, at one point, Ryder discovered these underground rooms and decided that they would make the perfect place to run his art-dealing operation. Can you think of a better set-up?’
‘If you’re right, then chances are that they were accessible from the house.’
‘Almost certainly, I would say.’
‘So we should be able to get into the house from down here, then?’
‘Unless he closed it all up.’
They left the room and continued along the gallery and entered another room on the right. Save for a six-drawer metal filing cabinet pushed up against a corner, it was empty. This room, too, was wired for electricity.
Kingston had a gut feeling that, in the next few minutes, they would discover Ryder’s secret cache: where he stored his paintings while they were waiting to be sold on the illicit international market. When they finally opened that door, would they find any paintings? Would Fox and his client Girard be proved right? Would it reveal anything more about the mystery surrounding Ryder? Contemplating these thoughts, Kingston ushered Jamie out of the room and they continued along the gallery. How much farther could it go on, he wondered?
The answer came sooner than expected. Ahead, the light from the lamp was dancing off a wall some thirty feet in front of them, blocking their path. As they approached, a hollow feeling welled up in Kingston’s gut, the kind when the winner’s name is announced and it’s not yours. Glancing sideways at Jamie, he could see that she was experiencing a similar emotion.
Now that they were closer, they could see that the gallery ended in a solid wall of stone. Kingston took a deep breath, exhaled loudly and put a hand up to his forehead. This was it then: a dead-end in the true sense of the word.
Chapter Twenty-two
Kingston stood staring at the wall, the lamp hanging by his side. His reaction was confusion, bewilderment and exasperation. He had come so far to find this?
The disappointment registered on his face was clearly obvious to Jamie, who had chosen not to say anything but instead had gone up to the wall to examine it more closely. As he watched her studying the grey stone, he tried hard to overcome the bitter taste of defeat that in a few seconds had deflated his optimism like a shrivelled balloon. All that was left now was to retrace their steps back to the chapel. Holding the lamp up higher he went over to join Jamie.
She turned to face him. ‘Look at this,’ she said, placing a hand on the wall just above her head. ‘The stone is the same but the cement or plaster looks newer on this section.’
Kingston held the lamp close to the wall, moving it horizontally along the line of the cement. ‘You’re right,’he said. ‘It’s been sealed up. I bet this is where the entrance to the house was. Behind, there’s probably a flight of steps like those in the chapel that lead up to a room in the house. It makes sense. It was relatively easy to run electricity down here to this end of the catacombs. And once that was in, he could run power tools, a simple heating and ventilation system—the works.’