My unknown reader may imagine my feelings. Somewhere in this brooding old house, with young Gilmore’s body still lying in its grotesque huddle outside, someone was trapped. That someone might be my beloved Leonora. As I moved round the hall, my mind was tumbling with one particular thread that weaves its grim tale through the macabre literature of so many cultures. The doomed young girl, the virgin bride, accidentally walled up or entombed, mistakenly buried alive in a cell or a cupboard during a game … Not to be found until years later, as a poor, dried corpse … How much truth had there ever been in that story? Was it about to become a truth tonight? If she was here, trapped, would I find her in time?
Halfway round the hall’s panelling, there was a different sound – a faint hollowness. My heart leapt, and holding the candle closer I saw the outline of a small door. There was a tiny keyhole, but when I pushed the door it moved, and when I applied more pressure, it swung inwards. Holding the candle aloft, I went down a flight of stone steps.
Halfway down I called out, ‘Leonora? Are you here?’
My voice echoed in the enclosed darkness, then died away, and there was only the thick silence, pressing in on me. My skin was crawling with fear and with the horror of what I might be about to find, but, stepping carefully, I went all the way down the steps.
The tapping had ceased, and there was only the sound of my own slightly too-fast breathing, driven by the thudding of my heart.
I lifted the candle. A stone room – a cellar of some kind – with a few discarded items of household junk, and—
And a massive carved chest crouching in the corner. Carved and domed-lidded, and bound with thick chains and a padlock. In the candlelight it took on a dreadful sinister significance. The oaken chest, half eaten by the worm, where the ill-starred heroine found a grave … The living tomb …
As I stood there, a faint scratching came from within the chest. It was so faint it might have been made by goblin nails against a frost-rimed window-pane. It was so fragile it might be the last fading signal of a dying girl …
I set down the candle and knelt before the chest, dragging uselessly at the chains, cursing in Russian, calling her name, and pleading with any gods that might be listening to help me – I probably called on a few denizens of the darker side of heaven, as well. I did not care. If Leonora was in there, I would trade my immortal soul to rescue her and have her alive and living.
I could see no key to the padlock, and such a tiny key could have been anywhere. It might take hours of fruitless search. I could probably find an axe somewhere, and break open the chest – but to do that might wound or even kill what was inside. If, indeed, it was not already dead.
But I had not effected discreet entry into all those houses without understanding how to open a lock without the key. With the aid of a small thin implement without which I have never travelled, I had the padlock free in five minutes. I dragged the chain away and reached for the lid. Light years sped by, worlds died, universes crumbled to dust in those moments that I struggled with the heavy lid. If Leonora was lost to me, there would be nothing in the world for me anywhere ever again, no hope, no light, no joy …
The lid came up with a wail of old oak and disused hinges. She was there. Her hair was tumbled, and there was a smudge of dirt across one cheekbone. But she was pale and her eyes were closed—
Then she opened her eyes, saw me, and in a hoarse, dry voice, said, ‘I thought you’d never find me—’
‘I’ll always find you,’ I said, and I lifted her out and held her against me. She was crying, and so was I.
She cried again when I told her about Stephen, and it wasn’t until later in the morning that she was able to tell me what had happened, and even then it came out in fragments. My poor Leonora – she blamed herself.
It seems that while I was prowling the lanes, she and Stephen saw Niemeyer’s men skulking in the gardens. Leonora was all for running out of the house – perhaps making for the church and asking for sanctuary. But Stephen would not leave. He insisted that this was the only place where he could be safe. They would barricade themselves in, he said. And to be entirely safe, Leonora must hide.
‘In the oak chest,’ I said.
‘Yes. Alex, I argued against him, but he was adamant. And there wasn’t much time anyway, so I gave in. He said even if the soldiers found the stone room – which was very unlikely – they wouldn’t bother with an ancient chest. He said to make sure, he would lock it.’
I am not sure about the next part, because I think Leonora was frightened and confused, and I don’t think her recollection is entirely to be relied on. Nor, I should say, does she.
But she thinks Stephen came running down to the cellar and called to her that the soldiers had gone, and that they were safe. Then he tried to get her out. It’s somehow typical of Stephen – poor, well-meaning Stephen – that he had not used a key for the padlock, he had simply snapped an open padlock into place around the chain with no thought of unlocking it afterwards. And so he was unable to open it again.
Leonora thinks he shouted to her that he would get her out somehow – she thinks he tore at the chains and the lid, trying to force it open. She could hear his hands beating uselessly at the wood, tearing at the chains for a very long time.
Then, quite suddenly, he stopped. She thinks he said in a low voice that the soldiers were coming back, and he would hide in the grounds. But he would come back for her, he said. She must trust him in that. He would come back. Then she heard, very faintly, his steps going away, and the door in the panelling closing. And then there was nothing, only the silent darkness within the chest.
Michael said, ‘I think we have the explanation. Stephen ran into the gardens to hide, saw a figure and thought it was Leonora and that she had managed to get out by herself. Or perhaps he thought Iskander had come back and got her out.’