‘There’s nothing here,’ said Sch?nbrunn after a moment, but for the first time ever I heard a note of concern and puzzlement in his voice. ‘Nothing,’ he repeated, more loudly, and closed the door, turning the handle so firmly I think it probably jammed. ‘Let’s go back downstairs and see where else to look.’
‘There was a door under the stairs,’ I offered. ‘Probably it leads to a scullery and store rooms. Places where a child – two children – might have hidden and left more clues.’
‘Indeed so.’ He sent me an approving glance.
The door, which was set well back in the hall, opened with a scratch of sound – it was not a particularly loud noise, but it was enough in that old house to make me look nervously over my shoulder. But nothing moved – or did it? For a moment I thought I saw the figure in the window recess again, but when I shone the torch it was only the silhouette of an old tree immediately outside, dipping its branches towards the window.
‘There’s a flight of steps,’ said Sch?nbrunn, peering through the door. ‘I can’t see much else. There’s a disgusting smell, though. Where’s the torch?’
The torch’s beam cut a triangle of cold light through the darkness, and Sch?nbrunn began to descend the steps without hesitation. There was no indication that this would lead to sculleries, or that it would lead anywhere at all, but we had to make sure.
At the foot of the steps was a narrow passageway, and Sch?nbrunn pointed to the ground again.
‘Still no footprints,’ he said, then stopped and turned to look back along the dark passage.
‘Something there?’ I said, but even as I spoke I could hear it.
Footsteps. And the sound of someone breathing – doing so with difficulty, like a sufferer from asthma might.
‘Whoever it is,’ said Sch?nbrunn, very softly, ‘is in this passage with us. Between us and the door leading to the hall.’
Fear clutched at me all over again, but Sch?nbrunn called out, and his voice was perfectly steady.
‘Hallo? Who’s there? We’re down here. Two of us. We’re exploring the house.’
That ‘two of us’ was clever. It indicated that we could put up a fight if necessary. Not that I was ever much use in a fight. Masterly inactivity has always been my strength.
We waited, shining the torch back towards the door.
‘There’s no one there,’ I said, after a moment, but still speaking softly.
‘I can’t see anyone. No – look there!’
But I had already seen it. A shadow cast on the wall at the end of the passage, as if someone was standing there, just out of sight, but had not realized its shadow was visible. It was not particularly tall and there was a deformed look to it. The shoulders were hunched, and the head was bent to one side.
Sch?nbrunn called out again, and the figure seemed to listen intently. And then it vanished. One minute it was there, the next it had gone. It was as if it had been made of a cluster of spiders’ webs, and as if something had blown chill breath on it, causing the webs to shrivel. The reality, of course, would simply be that whoever was there had darted silently away.
I said, in a determinedly practical voice, ‘Whoever that was has gone.’
‘It was calling for the children. And,’ said Sch?nbrunn, ‘who were we told does that? Still calls for them, weeks after they vanished? Who is it who constantly walks the lanes around here, trying to find them?’
‘Battersby,’ I said, eagerly. ‘Of course. Except …’ I looked back uneasily, remembering the broken lock on the main doors. ‘That figure was misshapen,’ I said.
‘Yes, but Mrs Battersby told us that walking any distance was a trial to her husband, because he had been shot in the last war. There’s no one else it could be.’
‘Of course there isn’t.’ I felt a surge of gratitude. ‘You,’ I said to Sch?nbrunn, ‘are probably the sanest, most logical person I’ve ever known.’