Swiss Vendetta (Agnes Luthi Mysteries #1)(74)
“Is this the longest she has been missing?” Agnes asked, wishing she’d not been lost in her own preoccupation earlier. They should have explored every nook and cranny hours ago, in broad daylight.
“No, she hid in a trunk in the attic for a day and a half one time. Nanny almost threatened to quit,” said Madame Puguet. “Should have been fired.”
Agnes glanced around the assembled group; their faces were serious and, she admitted, tired. Three days of cold, and now it was already growing dark. The lack of electric light made their task more difficult.
Only Daniel Vallotton was staying behind. The marquise was teamed with Marie-Chantal. Carnet and Petit volunteered to check the outbuildings again. The household staff partnered amongst themselves and with Doctor Blanchard, Nick Graves, Ralph Mulholland, and Frédéric Estanguet. Julien Vallotton had offered to accompany Agnes.
The groups broke off and she followed Vallotton. They didn’t speak until he stopped at the top of a stairway. “Our assignment,” he said, motioning to the dark hall and handing her a flashlight. Slowly and methodically they started going room to room.
“Remember, she’s tiny,” Vallotton said, looking behind and under an enormous Spanish chest, before opening it to look inside. “She hid in my aunt’s bed one time. Right there in plain sight under a thick blanket so it appeared wrinkled from a distance. I think sometimes she doesn’t hide on purpose, but we pass by her and she likes the idea and stays until she’s noticed. When her parents first died no one wanted to upset her. Bad habits caught hold.”
Agnes turned toward the next room. “How many more?”
“Five on this level, upstairs is the same, then downstairs.”
Agnes checked behind long drapes, then ran her light under the bed, marveling that even bedrooms no one occupied were kept in a state of perfect readiness. “Downstairs? We are downstairs.”
“Euphemism for dungeon.” She started and Vallotton laughed. “Mostly a wine cellar now.”
They finished the last room on that floor and Vallotton pointed up then down with a questioning look.
“Down first,” she said, thinking a dungeon sounded more appealing as a hiding place to a little girl. Besides, she was curious to see what it looked like.
Vallotton led her to a door that looked heavy but swung aside on well-oiled hinges. Agnes could imagine a little girl doing the same, then sneaking into the forbidden depths. She had a suspicion that her boys would mark a dungeon high on their list of places to visit and claim as a private getaway. She wasn’t certain little girls felt the same; however, by all accounts Mimi was adventurous.
The stairs were steep and narrow. At the bottom of the flight was a wide arched opening through a thick stone wall. She paused as Vallotton changed the angle of his flashlight.
“It’s not a real dungeon,” Vallotton repeated. Before she could respond he flicked his light forward. The room was a marvel. Arches sprang from fat pillars and created domes that supported the enormous weight of the structure above. The floor was covered with fine white stones that Agnes knew would crunch pleasantly underfoot. But that wasn’t what was most impressive.
“Wine cellar,” she said matter-of-factly. She aimed her light alongside Vallotton’s, peering into the depths of the space, making a rough calculation. There had to be thousands of wine bottles. Maybe ten thousand. Or more. The long central corridor fed between rows of wooden shelves stacked with bottles.
“It’s been a wine cellar for two hundred years,” Vallotton commented. He started down the central aisle and Agnes joined him, then she realized that this was a waste of time since the bottles were too closely packed to allow anyone to hide, even a small girl.
“If Mimi climbed on the shelving she would have caused an avalanche of glass and wine,” she said. “Is there anywhere else she could hide down here?”
“There’s an older section through a door at the end of the room.”
“I’ll start there.” Agnes marched down the middle aisle, enjoying the crunch of gravel beneath her shoes. At the far end of the room a thick wood door was nestled in a recess. She pushed it aside with one shoulder and immediately felt the air change. Behind her might be a wine cellar but this was a dungeon. Even the air smelled of despair; thick with damp and earth. She stepped into the darkness and a second wall forced her to turn sharply to the right. She flicked the beam of her flashlight, orienting herself. The ceiling lowered until she felt she might touch it with her hands. The walls were not made from well-cut and aligned stone, as they were in the wine cellar. They were rough-hewn, darkened with age. Her arm brushed against a wall and came away moist. She stumbled over the uneven ground, thinking it was not merely constructed, but was actually carved out of the rock. The surface sloped down and she walked carefully, wishing she had a wider beam of light, only able to see directly in front of her feet. Everything else was pitch darkness.
She paused but heard nothing. She called out. Still nothing. She had the sense that there was another barrier ahead.
The corridor had transformed into a tunnel and it switched back and forth three times, each direction descending slightly farther into the cut rock, each turn cutting off more fresh air from the outer room. Finally she reached another door. This one was metal. Iron, she suspected, and for a moment she considered turning back. Surely a child wouldn’t wander this far alone? Nothing about this path was charming or intriguing. It was frightening. She pushed the door, testing it. There was a loud screech of metal on metal but it swung open and Agnes continued. If Mimi came this far she might easily pass through the opening and become too frightened to find her way back out. All the more reason to look.