Deadlight-Hall(94)

‘Can you see the row of doors yet?’ asked Hurst.

‘Not yet … Oh, yes, I can now,’ said Michael after a moment.

‘Six rooms,’ said Hurst. ‘The furnace room’s the seventh.’

Michael said, half to himself, ‘It would be the seventh chamber. of course. The one containing Bluebeard’s butchered wives.’

‘Sorry? You’re breaking up—’

‘I think the signal’s going,’ said Michael, snapping back to reality. ‘But I should be almost there now. Is there any sign of the fire engine yet?’

‘No, but—’ Hurst’s friendly voice cut off and a thin whine emitted from the phone.

‘Hell and damnation,’ said Michael, and the enclosed space picked up his last words and spun them eerily around him. He cursed under his breath, thrust the phone into his pocket, and went cautiously along the stone passage.

Here were the six doors. Despite the need to get out, he was aware of a sudden compulsion to open each one. Why? his mind demanded. To see if there are any more sad, twisted wraiths wandering around? Or were you expecting to find a calendar scratched into the stones by some forgotten, unjustly incarcerated prisoner? Still, if the Count of Monte Cristo had been here, at least he would have been company for Bluebeard’s wives.

He began to feel as if he had been groping his way through this bad-smelling darkness for a very long time – and clutching a broom, said his mind, wryly. But it was no longer quite as dark as it had been. Michael registered this with relief, because if light was trickling in it must mean he was almost at the door with the window.

Except there was something odd about the light. It was not the thin bluish light of outdoors; it was not moonlight or even the electrical beam from Nell’s torch. It was a flickering light – dull and tinged with red as if something had bled into it …

For several panic-filled seconds Michael thought it was the fire – that it had spread down here – then logic kicked in, because the fire Nell had seen had been two – no, three – floors up. If it had somehow found its way down here, he would have heard it – smelled smoke at the very least.

Here was the furnace room. The seventh chamber. This was where that other Hurst had carried Esther’s body, so that all evidence of his son’s murder could be destroyed. It was extraordinarily sinister. Black and secret – banded by the thick strips of iron, and with the unblinking eye of the circular window set into the top half. The dull light seemed to be coming from inside it.

Michael stood up against the door, peering through the thick glass. The light was coming from inside – he could see a faint red haze. And a movement – two small figures with long hair …? Imagination surely. He tried the handle, but it did not move, and he was about to continue along the stone passage when he became aware of other sounds. Footsteps? No, the sounds were too rhythmic; they were more like water dripping, or even someone tapping lightly with a hammer. He listened, and with a dawning horror realized what he was hearing.

It was the slow, inexorable ticking of machinery heating up. After a moment, a new sound began: a slow, deep, grating noise, as if an old, forgotten mechanism was struggling into life. Michael could see the shape of the furnace now – black and massive. There was a gaping hole where there must once have been a round door. Inside, threads of scarlet were thickening into solid blocks of fierce heat. There was a dull roar from the corroded pipes, and a smell of hot iron. The furnace was firing. It could not be happening, but it was. In another moment it would roar into life.

Michael went swiftly down the passage, and with immense thankfulness saw ahead of him the door Jack Hurst had described. A triangle of torchlight showed beyond it, with Nell’s face peering anxiously through the window.

The dull roaring was getting louder, and the scent of hot metal was filling up the passageway. Michael grabbed the broom firmly, and waved to Nell to stand clear. He brought the blunt handle of the broom smashing against the glass. It splintered at once, but nothing more, and he dealt it a second blow, then a third. Still the glass would not break completely, and by now he could hear the fire burning up, and the sound of something heavy crashing over. Pipework caving in?

He returned to the window and at the next attempt large splinters began to fall out. Michael plied the broom again, and this time most of the glass fell away. Behind him he could hear the fire roaring up, and the stone walls were flickering and glowing. Beating down panic, Michael knocked out the remaining shards, and Nell stepped back to the door, unwinding the thick woollen scarf she was wearing, and folding it over the rim, to pad any remaining fragments.