The floor of the billiards-room had been destroyed in the fire so that the big storeroom in the cellars below now lay open to the sky. Most of its floor was buried deeply in mounds of tiles, charred roof-beams, plaster fragments, stones and bricks, but the area against the outside wall of the house had escaped burial completely. Paul looked down into its depths and stiffened, a wave of horror and sickness sweeping over him.

‘Oh Christ,’ he murmured, his brow cold and wet with sweat. Ardvreck House had given up its last secret.

18

18 Devil in the Darkness

Meredith and Bourne stood beside him, looking at what had been disclosed by the destruction of the billiards-room floor. At his cry they had hurried back. With a trembling hand, Meredith took a handkerchief across the lower part of his face.

About three feet from the outside wall of the house a second brick wall stood parallel to it forming a cavity that stretched the full length of the cellar storeroom. The second wall must once have divided off the cavity from the rest of the cellars, stretching up to the ceiling of the basement premises. Outside it, in the store-room, most of the debris had fallen, burying the storeroom to within three feet of the former ceiling. Some beams, crashing down from above, had jammed themselves across the brick wall and shielded the three-foot-wide cavity from most of the falling debris. Water from melting pipes had also flooded it to a depth of four feet, further helping to preserve its contents from the full ferocity of the fire.

Paul looked into the cavity. His eyes seemed drawn to its contents. Mercifully the filthy water surface concealed most of the interior. He found his mind in a turmoil of distressed half-formed speculations. Beside him Arnold Bourne moved forward.

‘What are you going to do?’ asked Meredith.

‘Get down to the surface of the debris for a closer look.’

Meredith glanced at Paul but said nothing. They watched intently as Bourne eased himself down through the gap on to the piled-up debris, testing its bearing strength before resting his full weight on it. It resettled itself a little, creaking and clattering.

Smoke rose lazily from it like a swarm of bees from a disturbed hive. Bourne, one hand on the inside of the wall that formerly had been the back of the house, edged his way across the four feet of wildly irregular surface separating him from the broken brick wall. He grabbed at the wall, lurched as a section broke off and finally finished leaning against it, the upper half of his body almost over it. Concentric rings spread out across the water surface from the place where the brick section had splashed into the flooded cavity. Some bubbles rose, burst, and something else surfaced to float, almost submerged.