Death of an Adept

The doorway gave access to a dim, musty sitting room, with two deeply recessed windows piercing the east wall. Through gaps in the threadbare curtains, enough light filtered into the room to make out a high-backed black oak settle opposite the grey stone fireplace and hearth, flanked by a pair of rush-bottomed chairs. The wall adjoining the windows was dominated by a ponderous oaken sideboard laden with dusty blue and white china and a few pewter serving pieces. At some point in the decades long past, the gaslight wall sconces to either end of the sideboard had been electrified, but the overall appearance of the room suggested that little else might have changed for a century or more.

Harry drew a deep breath and saw his exhalation turn into a plume of white steam.

"I think it's even colder in here than it is outside!" he muttered. "If the temperature's anything to go by, this room hasn't been used for quite some time."

"Probably not for the last fortnight, if not longer," McLeod hazarded, as he swept his torch around the room, thinking back to Callanish. "Wherever this Evans may have gone, I have an uncomfortable notion that he isn't planning to come back."

A secondary door in the west wall led along a short corridor to a large kitchen running the entire length of the back of the house. The plaster overlaying the stone walls had been given a coat of whitewash that now was dingy with age. Harry fished a mini-Maglite out of a pocket of his leather jacket as McLeod swept his light across a tarnished array of copper pans and outmoded cooking utensils displayed on hooks above an old-fashioned coal-burning cookstove.

"I've feel like I've stepped through a time portal," Harry murmured as he and McLeod examined the age-stained porcelain sinks and wooden countertops. "I shouldn't think this place has been refurbished since the reign of Queen Victoria."

"I've seen cheerier morgues in my day," McLeod said with unsparing candor. "Let's move on."

A large walk-in pantry lay at the far end of the kitchen. After probing it with his light, McLeod entered to find himself confronted by an array of shelves running from floor to ceiling on all three sides. The boards underfoot had been overlaid with a worn sheet of linoleum that stopped several inches short of the skirting boards all around. The air was thick with the smell of mildew and mouse-droppings. Coming in behind McLeod, Harry took a sniff and curled his lip.

"Whew, not up to even my bachelor standards of housekeeping. D'you suppose he really lives this way? It has to be a health hazard."

"It isn't physical health hazards I'm worried about," McLeod muttered.

Together the two men inspected the contents of the pantry. The storage space to the left of the doorway held a spartan range of food staples. All the sacks and tins were generically packaged.

"Flour… salt… sugar… lard," McLeod read aloud, moving along the shelves. "Whatever else he may be, this Evans stocks his kitchen like a survivalist."

"Maybe he still thinks there's a war on," Harry offered with a sardonic lift of one eyebrow.

"Candles… matches… kerosene lamps," McLeod continued, carrying on with his survey. "Either our man is expecting a siege, or he doesn't have much faith in privatized utilities."

He took a step backward, hoping to get a better view of the upper shelves. As he did so, he felt the floor give way slightly beneath one heel. His muttered exclamation of surprise alerted Harry, who had started to light one of the kerosene lamps.

"What is it?"

"I'm not sure," McLeod said, bending to look at the floor. "Bring that light down here. Yes, indeed." He shone his own light along the edge of the linoleum, now revealed as a crack that went right around the square.

"Right," McLeod murmured, running his fingers under the area where his heel had pressed. "I think we've found the way into the cellar. Help me lift this trapdoor."

Though the two of them braced themselves to tug, the trapdoor lifted with unexpected ease. A dark cavity yawned below, with a wooden ladder extending downwards into the shadows.

"This is beginning to get interesting," Harry said, as McLeod shone his torch down into the opening. "Should we give Davies a shout?"

"Not before we've had a chance to reconnoiter," McLeod said, testing the first rung of the ladder. "I shouldn't want to frighten our good inspector. Bring that lantern, and let's see what's lurking in the cellar."

The cellar proved to be a cramped, rectangular chamber perhaps six feet by ten, with a trestle table under the angle of the ladder and wooden tea chests stacked untidily at one end. The other end was screened behind upright stacks of old timber and worm-eaten planking, the floor in between littered with half-open boxes and burst packing cases, like the flotsam washed up from a wrecked cargo ship. Looking around him by the flickering glow of the kerosene lamp, Harry gave a disparaging grunt.