Page 103 of The Little Flower Shop By the Sea
To my delight and amazement not only the black hooks but the keys are still there – and they’re all labelled too! I grab the one that says ‘Cellar’ and head back out into the corridor.
For a moment I think I hear footsteps, but when I stop and listen all I can hear is the distant sound of music from the ballroom. ‘Stop imagining things!’ I tell myself. ‘Otherwise you’ll never do this for Stan.’
And that really is my driving force in all this – Stan. I genuinely feel I let him down by not being around when he had to leave Trecarlan. Maybe, if I’d known, I could have helped him, possibly even prevented it from happening. But I was too caught up in my own trauma back then to even think about St Felix, let alone return here.
I approach the wooden door, slip the key into the lock, and as if by magic it creaks open to reveal stone steps leading down into the darkness of the cellar.
Luckily in this modern age I don’t need to carry a lantern. I’m able to flick a light switch to illuminate my way.
When I get to the bottom of the steps I find myself in a large cellar lined with wine racks, each holding vast quantities of bottles; there’s wine, champagne, whisky… It’s like being in the cellar of a pub, except the bottles are all dusty and forlorn, like they’ve been waiting a long time for someone to return to select them to help celebrate a birthday or complement a dinner party.
Stan had instructed me to head to the far right of the cellar and find a narrow passageway. Unlike the rest of the cellar, the passageway isn’t lit so I flick on the torch on the back of my iPhone and feel my way along even more racks till I come to the very end. I notice that in this part of the cellar most of the racks are empty. I count three shelves up, five spaces across, and reach my hand up to feel in that space where a wine bottle should be.
But there’s nothing there. It’s empty. I shine my phone up on to the shelf, in case I’ve made a mistake with the counting, but there’s nothing, just empty spaces where bottles once lay waiting to be drunk.
How odd. Stan had been adamant that’s where he’d hidden the picture and the letter, inside a tin box to protect it.
I’ll have to speak to him again. There’s obviously nothing here, so maybe Stan had made a mistake, or remembered it wrongly. I sigh and turn to make my way back. I’ve only taken a few steps towards the light of the main cellar when suddenly everything goes black. Thank God I have my iPhone, I think, lifting it up higher to guide me out of the cellar.
It’s then I hear a sound that strikes fear into my heart.
The sound of the cellar door being shut above me, and then locked.
Thirty-five
Sweet William – Gallantry
I’m frozen to the spot for about ten seconds, then, realising that’s not going to help matters, I use the tiny beam of my phone to run towards the stairs and cautiously make my way back up them.
When I get to the top I push gently on the doors just in case I’d heard wrongly and they weren’t locked after all. But they don’t budge an inch.
I’m about to call out for help, when I remember I’m not supposed to be down here, and if someone did hear me I’d have to explain why I was here instead of at the party. Stan had told me to say nothing about the pictures to anyone unless we found them all. He didn’t want everyone – especially, Lou – knowing about his other ladies if it could possibly be avoided.
Damn! What was I going to do?
I sit down on one of the steps to think.
After a few seconds I light up the screen on my phone hoping to find a signal, but there’s none. So my plan to call Amber and get her to come and unlock the door for me is immediately down the pan.
OK…I think again.
Stan used to say that Trecarlan was filled with secret passages constructed back in the days it had stood as a fortress overlooking the sea, protecting St Felix. But Stan told us so many tales about Trecarlan when we were children that we gave up believing him in the end. If Stan was to be believed it had been used as a refuge by King Arthur when he was resting from battle, by Cavaliers hiding from the Roundheads, and by British spies during the Second World War.
But what if Stan was right about the secret passages? And what if one of them led out from here?
It’s a long shot. But what choice do I have?
I climb down the steps again, and use my phone to guide me for a few minutes while I look for alternative exits. Then the thin beam of light falls on some packing crates stacked in a corner.
I wonder…
I manage to prop up my phone on one of the wine racks, giving me just enough light to see what I’m doing. I grab hold of one of the crates, expecting it’s going to be heavy, but surprisingly I find it’s quite light.
I lift that crate down, and then another, until I’ve moved about six crates, and it’s then in the dim light that I see it: another door…
I pull the rest of the crates aside, and pray as I grab the rusty wrought-iron handle that it won’t be locked.
Hallelujah, I silently cry as it turns easily in my hand.
