‘This is the second unusual feature. There were no reports of suspicious activity, no hint of trouble, no dead body, no sign of a weapon lying around, a trapped man who claimed to have been accidentally locked in – who would suspect a murder? But after the man had made his getaway it was soon clear Antterland, Willer the Wonder, was nowhere to be found. Once the police started searching it took another twenty-four hours before they found his body. It was discovered in what they describe as the basement area of the theatre. He had been shot in the chest. They launched a search for the weapon, and it was eventually discovered stuffed inside the cushion of one of the audience seats.’

I said: ‘He was found in a basement? Here – in this building?’

The layout of the room was plain: the four walls, a carpeted floor. There was no sign of a staircase, or any other way down.

‘Somewhere here. Probably beneath where the stage used to be.’ Spoder walked across to where I was standing by the cabinets. ‘There must be a secret hatch of some kind.’

First glancing back towards the main door, presumably wary of Ketty returning, he bent low and looked carefully at the base of all three cabinets. He rolled the one on castors a short distance to one side. He tapped the floor hard, listening with his head pressed against the carpet.

As he was doing this the screen door on the cabinet I was standing next to silently closed. It was in the under-lit part of the museum, and it gave me an uneasy feeling that some hidden supernatural power had moved the screen.

‘If there’s a basement, it must be beneath that cabinet,’ Spoder said. ‘Open it up again.’

I used the key and the cabinet screen door instantly re-opened.

Spoder said: ‘The pathology report says that when he was shot, Willer, as they call him in this report, Willer stumbled backwards. The impact of the bullet alone would have thrust him violently back. There were impact bruises on his head, on one of his arms, on his back. So he crashed into something, or fell heavily. He was shot at close range, from the front. There was evidence of powder burns around the entry point of the bullet. He was in deep shock, on the point of death. So how did he manage to get to the basement, and where is it?’

He moved forward excitedly, shoving past me. He leaned forward into the cabinet, his weight on his hands, gripping each side of the entrance.

‘Spoder, be careful! You heard what Ketty said.’

‘I’m just looking. If he was thrown or he collapsed back into this cabinet, then there must be some sort of concealed entrance to the basement.’