Page 12 of Ruthless Riches
“What’s the new project?”
“I’m researching the history of the Avalon tunnels.”
Her eyes sparkled. “Ooh, that’s an exciting topic. Very interesting stuff,” she said, clasping her hands together in front of her. “You know, I actually had some policemen in here a few weeks ago, and they wanted to talk to me about the tunnels too.”
“I assume they wanted copies of any available maps?” Nate asked.
“That’s right.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “They’ve been searching through the tunnels because of this awful business with the copycat Butcher case. They thought we might have some old maps in the archives that could help them.”
“I’d actually like to take a look at the maps, too,” I said.
Edith nodded. “Of course.” She lifted a hand and beckoned for us to follow her. “Come through, and I’ll show you what we have.”
She led us into a musty-smelling room lined with bookshelves and cabinets. A massive table stood in the center. “Wait here,” she said, nodding toward the table. “I’ll get the maps.”
She scurried over to a cabinet on the far side of the room. When she returned, she spread out several large pieces of paper on the table. They were all slightly yellowed with age.
“Now, you said you were researching the history of the tunnels, didn’t you?” Edith asked, pulling a pair of reading glasses out of her pocket.
“Yes, so anything you can tell me would be great,” I said.
“Okay. Let’s start with the first stage.” She perched her glasses on her nose and pushed the smallest map forward. It showed Avalon Island in the early nineteenth century. A sprawling warren of tunnels lay in the southeast, marked by thin black lines.
“See how the tunnels were only located in this region back then?” Edith asked, pointing at the lines.
“Yes.”
“They were the very first ones,” she said. “Before the island was officially settled, smugglers and other shady folk used it a lot. They built the tunnels so they could keep all of their activities hidden from passing ships and fishing boats. Some of them kept very thorough records, including maps, and that’s what was used by nineteenth-century surveyors to produce this map.”
“Are these original tunnels still around?”
“Oh, yes. They were built very sturdily,” Edith replied. She pushed another map forward. “This one is from the later nineteenth century. See how the tunnels had extended by then?”
I leaned closer to pore over the map. By 1888, when it was created, the tunnels were vast, laid out like a spider’s web. The only part of the island that they didn’t reach was up in the northwest, where the mountains and national parks lay.
“There’s so many of them,” I said, marveling at the intricate detail.
Edith nodded. “1737 of them, to be exact. By the late eighteenth century, the island was inhabited by several thousand people, and they took it upon themselves to extend the original tunnels and add new ones due to their popularity.”
“Why were they so popular?” Nate asked.
“Well, there were roads everywhere on the surface, but in the colder months, nearly everyone preferred to use the tunnels to get around. Because of that, they added them all over the island, with the largest number of them right here in Avalon City, seeing as that’s always been the main settlement.”
“I see.”
Edith replaced the map with another one. “This was produced by surveyors in the mid-1930s, just after Prohibition ended,” she explained. “You can see that even more tunnels had been added by that stage, and in a few areas, some of them had been blocked from connecting with others.”
“Like the ones at Blackthorne.”
She smiled. “Yes, exactly. The Blackthorne tunnels were used by bootleggers as a makeshift prison for moles and informers during Prohibition, so they blocked off that particular part of the network from reaching any of the other tunnels in the area. That way, even if any of the prisoners escaped their cells, they still wouldn’t be able to make it out to the surface through any connecting tunnels. It’s morbid, but rather fascinating.” She pushed her glasses up her nose and tapped on another map. It was much bigger than the others, with details of streets and landmarks that sat above the tunnels. “This map shows the final stage of modification, which makes it the most up-to-date map we have of the Avalon tunnels.”
I squinted at the year printed at the top. “Wow. 1949. Long time ago.”
“Yes. Can you see how the network looks smaller by this stage?”
“Uh-huh. It was because of the war, wasn’t it?”
Edith nodded. “Yes. A lot of people on the island wanted bomb shelters on their properties, so they used the existing tunnels. They blocked them off or filled them in to create individual bunkers.”
