The Vault Read Online Free PDF Page B

down to look into the hole, the flat, slightly irregular paving felt warm to his touch. There was nothing to be seen down there and nothing, any longer, to be smelt. He could just make out the brickwork of the walls and the shape of the door into the cellar.
    ‘That is where they all were,’ Lucy said. ‘Sort of piled on top of each other.’
    They returned to the house, standing in the hallway outside the kitchen door. Wexford looked once more at the blank wall and put out one hand to touch it, as if it might give way and fold inwards to reveal the staircase.
    Tom said, ‘You can understand someone removing a door and bricking up the doorway if it serves no useful purpose, but this door – and there must have been a door – did serve a purpose. It was there solely to lead to the steps down into the cellar.’
    ‘This is conjecture,’ Wexford put in, ‘but it looks to me as if whoever put the bodies of the two men and the older woman into the hole also bricked up the doorway. This would leave only one means of access into the hole, that is by the opening in the patio.’
    ‘Does that mean he was a builder? A skilled handyman? I couldn’t do it. Could you?’
    ‘No, Tom. I couldn’t. The idea of me doing it is a joke. But that leads me back to the opening in the patio. If he’s skilled enough to remove a door and brick up and plaster over adoorway, why didn’t he brick up or pave over the manhole opening?’
    ‘Maybe he meant to,’ said Lucy, ‘but he was interrupted or even couldn’t get hold of the materials.’
    ‘If he could get hold of bricks and plaster, he could get paving stones. If it was an interruption it must have been a very significant one, because once he had sealed up that opening he would have been safe, not for just eleven or twelve years, but for ever. Those bodies would have been enclosed in an impregnable tomb.’
    ‘And no one could have gone there two years ago and added a fourth body. It was two years ago, wasn’t it?’
    ‘It was two years ago that she died. We can’t be certain that she was put there immediately after death but someone put her there,’ said Tom. ‘No doubt about it.’ They moved into the kitchen and sat down on stools. ‘It wasn’t Rokeby. He’d have to be a very dark horse indeed. If he put that fourth body down there the last thing he’d do is call us to tell us what he’d found in the hole.’
    ‘You mentioned something about DNA,’ Wexford said.
    ‘Right. I did. The samples that were taken showed that the older man and the young man were related. Not father and son or uncle and nephew but maybe cousins. The women had no connection with them or with each other. The – well, baffling thing is that none of them correspond to the descriptions of any persons reported missing around twelve years ago. And that in itself is very strange. Not so much in respect of the men. Men are less likely to be reported missing than women. These two may have been loners. There is no reason to suppose they lived together.
    ‘How did they die? We don’t know. There is nothing on the bodies to show how they died. With the women it’s a different matter. Both had severe skull fractures. According to pathologyeach was capable of causing death.’ Tom looked at his watch. ‘All right. I’ve an appointment to see Mrs Anthea Gardner at eleven-thirty in Bolton Mews. She’s been seen before, but not by me. She’s the one person we know of connected to Orcadia Cottage in the Mertons’ time. So if you’ll drive us to Boltons Grove, Lucy, we’ll leave now.’
    ‘Who’s Anthea Gardner?’ Wexford asked when they were in the car.
    ‘The sort of widow of Franklin Merton, who owned Orcadia Cottage from sometime in the Seventies until 1998.’
    ‘Ah, including the relevant period. What does “sort of” mean?’
    ‘He was married to her before he married someone called Harriet and who seems to have been the Harriet of the picture. For some reason he never divorced