Page 37 of Ghost in the Garden
Slowly, she turned her head so that she could see the rest of the fog-clogged garden. She was in no hurry to move. They waited.
And then she saw it.
Chapter Eight
At first itseemed to be just a shifting of the mist, thick and rolling. But then she realized this particular shape wasn’t moving. It stood perfectly still while the fog swirled around it. Light and silvery, not quite part of the fog that clung to it, it was undoubtedly the shape of a veiled woman.
With one hand, Constance caught Solomon’s face and pushed it to the right angle. She felt his slightest nod against her palm. He saw it too.
The ghostly figure began to glide, perhaps a foot toward the house, and then it vanished into the opaque fog.
Solomon took her hand, and together they crept in the direction they had last seen it. Though her heart beat with excitement and her skin prickled in response to the unworldly thing she had seen, she wasn’t afraid. Not with her hand in Solomon’s. Chiefly, she was aware of curiosity.
Were they about to solve Silver and Grey’s first case?
Not easily, it seemed. No sounds reached her, no further sight of the ghostly figure through the mist. Frustration grew as they reached the wall of the house and peered hopelessly in all directions. The faint glow from the kitchen was marginally brighter from here, but it revealed nothing.
Constance began to feel her way along the wall, remembering her curiosity about that walled-off side of the house. A secret way into the house would surely explain the ghostly vanishing.
She felt occasional patches of brick, but mostly, she touched the damp tendrils of dense ivy and other creepers that covered it. Solomon followed, also running his fingers along the wall but higher up.
The corner of the building almost took her by surprise. She turned to follow the line of the house and bumped her shoulder against the boundary wall that extended from the garden. Constance was not a large person, but she could certainly not walk through that space. She peered down the narrow alley, making out only mist and blank wall. She could probably squeeze in sideways to investigate further, but her clothing would scrape and rustle against the stone.
Solomon’s hand on her arm drew her back the way they had come. This time he bent low, feeling along the wall at about her waist height. She could sense his vexation that they had lost the ghost so soon after finding her, but he had not yet given up.
Constance shivered, beginning to wonder if they should seriously consider the alternative explanation—the unquiet ghost vanishing into the ether or through the solid wall into the home of the man responsible for the death of her child. After all, Angela herself couldn’t quite shake off that fear…
Constance walked into the solidness that was Solomon. He had come to a halt. She caught her breath, listening intently for whatever threat he had sensed. His fingers, surprisingly warm compared to hers, caught her hand and drew her closer, not with tenderness, but some other excitement.
He placed her hand flat against the wall of the house. As always, there was plant and brick…and a crack in the stone. And beneath it, wood.
Her gaze flew to his. But already he was lifting the creepers. They came so easily that they must have been hanging loose over the hidden door. Excitedly, she crouched down, but she could find no handle to the door. Nor was there space around it to insert more than her fingernails. Then she found the keyhole. Thrusting her little finger into it, she felt something with her nail—surely the end of a key on the other side of the door.
She cast Solomon a quick grin, then shoved her hand into the left pocket of her gown to find the little tool she needed. She had lockpicks in her other pocket, though she was not terribly adept with them. The narrow pliers were simpler.
Inserting them into the lock, she managed to grip the end of the key and turn. They slipped off twice before she got the right hold and turned the key with the faintest click.
Solomon hauled her upright and behind him, wary, no doubt, of some kind of attack from within. But the door did not fly open. No sound came from inside. After several moments, Solomon took a penknife from his pocket and inserted it into the crack around the door. Soundlessly, it opened.
Both lock and hinges were clearly well oiled and smooth. Well used.
Solomon bent low and went in. Constance followed, with a quick glance behind her into the fog. As she drew the door closed behind her, she was sure she heard the whisper of the ivy falling back over it.
Inside was pitch black.
Solomon struck a match, and the light flared, showing a large, cavernous room, and a small wooden barrel just inside the door, the stump of a candle sitting on top. Solomon, who seemed to have thought of everything she hadn’t, drew his own candle from his pocket, lit it, and blew out the match. At their feet, a steep wooden ramp led down into a large cellar, surely beneath the kitchen. Various old barrels covered in dust lined the left-hand wall.
As they crept forward and down, still listening intently, she saw that the room was L-shaped. A closed door stood on her right, and around the corner shortly afterward they came upon more barrels, full ones this time, and shelves full of wine bottles. And there, sure enough, were the rough stairs that surely led up behind the kitchen to the door she had asked Duggin about.
This, clearly, was Lambert’s wine cellar. But the whole complex of cellars must have stretched at least the length and breadth of the house, with several doors leading to different rooms. Some were closed, others ajar.
A bump on the ceiling above made her start. A faint voice drifted downward, a muffled laugh. The sounds echoed eerily around the stone walls of the cellar, making it impossible to place them.
If the ghost had come in here…why?
The door to the main house above was always locked. Unless the ghost had obtained a key to that one too. Or there were others.
Solomon moved away from her, peering through the doors that were left ajar. Without a word, he took out another candle, lit it from the first, and held it out to Constance.
