Property of a Lady

‘As you said, if we don’t, we’re going to wonder,’ said Michael. ‘Shall I do it while you stay here?’


‘No fear,’ said Nell, getting up and stepping out of the recess. ‘Let me get another torch, and I’m coming down there with you.’ She darted back to the toolbox and found the spare torch kept for power cuts. When she came back Michael was wedging the trapdoor more firmly against the stove wall.

‘I’m making sure the hinges aren’t about to disintegrate and bring the door crashing down on our heads,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t trust this handle to open from beneath, would you?’

‘No, but let’s not even think about being trapped down there.’

‘Let me go first – no, I’m not being masculine and protective. Well, yes, all right, I am. But if I go head over heels down a section of crumbled stone, you’d still be up here to go for help.’

He started warily down, shining the torch as he went. Nell, peering anxiously over the edge saw the light sweep over ancient walls, crusted with soot and grime.

‘I’m at the bottom,’ he said. His voice echoed slightly and eerily. ‘There are ten steps, and they all seemed sound, but they’re very worn so make sure you don’t slip.’

‘Here I come,’ said Nell. ‘The smell’s clearing a bit now, I think. That’s something to be grateful for.’

But descending the stone steps was a grim experience. Once, thought Nell, someone lived here or worked down here – maybe was even held prisoner here – and whoever it was suffered such agonies of black and bitter despair, the feeling’s soaked into the walls. She remembered how Harriet Anstey had said Brank Asylum made her think of people drowning in the dark. That’s what it feels like down here, thought Nell, and for a moment she had to resist a compulsion to bolt back up the steps. But she reached the bottom of the steps and was grateful when Michael put an arm round her.

‘For warmth,’ he said.

‘Was I shivering?’

‘No, I was,’ said Michael.

The cellar was bigger than they had expected – a narrow but fairly long room that must stretch under the whole workshop and even extend under part of the courtyard. Nell had been expecting to see a traditional underground room, perhaps with a stone floor and walls, bare of anything saved the accumulated dirt of decades. But the room, although it was certainly stone, was not bare. It had been lived in. Standing against the walls were the remains of bookshelves – rotting and splintering with age, but recognizable.

‘There are still books on them,’ said Michael softly. ‘Dear God, look at them.’ He moved the torch, showing up rows of old yellowing books, many of them crumbled beyond retrieval, but some still with the leather or calf spines intact. Here and there a vagrant glint of lettering, perhaps once gold leaf, caught the light.

‘An underground study,’ said Nell in a whisper.

‘A secret library,’ said Michael. ‘Forbidden works, I should think.’

The torchlight moved again, and Nell felt as if something had slammed a clenched fist into her throat. She gasped, and in the same moment felt Michael’s hand tighten around hers.

At the far end of the cellar was a large writing desk, with a chair drawn up to it. Seated in the chair was the partly-mummified figure of what had once been a man. His head had fallen forward on to the desk, near an elaborate inkstand, and in the sweep of the torchlight it was possible to see the fragments of dried skin that clung to the rounded skull. Hands – not quite fleshless – reached across the desk, and Nell took a step backwards, because it was dreadfully easy to imagine the hands would suddenly move and reach out . . .