“It’s been a wine cellar for two hundred years,” Vallotton commented. He started down the central aisle and Agnes joined him, then she realized that this was a waste of time since the bottles were too closely packed to allow anyone to hide, even a small girl.
“If Mimi climbed on the shelving she would have caused an avalanche of glass and wine,” she said. “Is there anywhere else she could hide down here?”
“There’s an older section through a door at the end of the room.”
“I’ll start there.” Agnes marched down the middle aisle, enjoying the crunch of gravel beneath her shoes. At the far end of the room a thick wood door was nestled in a recess. She pushed it aside with one shoulder and immediately felt the air change. Behind her might be a wine cellar but this was a dungeon. Even the air smelled of despair; thick with damp and earth. She stepped into the darkness and a second wall forced her to turn sharply to the right. She flicked the beam of her flashlight, orienting herself. The ceiling lowered until she felt she might touch it with her hands. The walls were not made from well-cut and aligned stone, as they were in the wine cellar. They were rough-hewn, darkened with age. Her arm brushed against a wall and came away moist. She stumbled over the uneven ground, thinking it was not merely constructed, but was actually carved out of the rock. The surface sloped down and she walked carefully, wishing she had a wider beam of light, only able to see directly in front of her feet. Everything else was pitch darkness.
She paused but heard nothing. She called out. Still nothing. She had the sense that there was another barrier ahead.
The corridor had transformed into a tunnel and it switched back and forth three times, each direction descending slightly farther into the cut rock, each turn cutting off more fresh air from the outer room. Finally she reached another door. This one was metal. Iron, she suspected, and for a moment she considered turning back. Surely a child wouldn’t wander this far alone? Nothing about this path was charming or intriguing. It was frightening. She pushed the door, testing it. There was a loud screech of metal on metal but it swung open and Agnes continued. If Mimi came this far she might easily pass through the opening and become too frightened to find her way back out. All the more reason to look.
Agnes swept her light into the room. “Mimi?” she called. The beam glowed against the far wall. Here, the stone was more than moist, it was damp and dotted with moss. Iron rings were fixed at intervals, the metal glistening with orange rust. She shivered.
“Mimi?” she called out again, louder this time, running her light across the floor and over the walls, trying to ignore the piles of chains lumped at intervals. This was what her boys would imagine and it was more frightening than she wanted to admit. People came to sad and lonely ends down here.
She was nearly finished with her survey of the long room when she realized that the fourth wall wasn’t original. It was more like what she remembered in the wine cellar. The stones were well cut and nearly smooth. More modern than their surroundings. She ran her light along the entire surface, looking for a door, or any indication of a passage or hiding place. Nothing. She wondered if they had considered extending the wine cellar into this chamber, started the work, then changed their minds.
It didn’t matter. This was a dead end and there was no Mimi.
Quickly and carefully she retraced her steps. Vallotton met her by the door. He shook his head. Desperate to be aboveground, Agnes turned toward the stairs and led the way up. On the main floor of the chateau they crossed to other stairs and started up another level. She felt calmer now. It was somewhat of a relief that the little girl hadn’t been trapped in such a terrible place. She had slowed to catch her breath, hoping Vallotton wouldn’t remark on what smoking did to lungs, when his light flickered. He tapped it hard. The light dimmed then doused.
“I’ll get batteries. Wait here and I’ll be right back,” he said.
For a few moments Agnes waited in the semidarkness, then, unwilling to stand in one place in the cold, she continued up the flight of stairs and headed for the other end of the corridor, hoping to get a view out across the lake and rid herself of memories of the dungeon. She was nearly at the end when she saw a shadow. The figure moved. It was Ralph Mulholland. She lifted her flashlight to illuminate his face and he pulled a cigarette from his gold case and offered her one. Reluctantly she shook her head no.
“I thought you were helping with the search?” she asked.
“I needed a minute alone.”
“You had enough strength to go for a walk after spending the night with a corpse and now you can’t help find a little girl?”