44 Scotland Street - Alexander McCall Smith [127]
Domenica answered her question. “It goes all the way up to Waverley Station,” she said. “It ends opposite platforms 1 and 19. It’s bricked up there, I’m afraid, and so we shall have to come back by the same route.”
Pat reflected on this and then asked where the trains went.
“Down to Granton,” said Domenica. “Peter Backhouse showed me a map once which made it very clear. The trains set off from Canal Street Station in the centre of the city and went down the tunnel purely by the force of gravity. Coming up the other way, they were pulled by a rope system, which was powered by a stationary engine. When they came out at Scotland Street Station they made their way down to Granton. You could get a ferry there to take you over to Fife. There was no Forth Bridge in those days, you see.”
Cyril barked suddenly, and Domenica swung the beam of the torch round to illuminate him.
“He’s seen something,” said Angus Lordie. “Look at the way his nose is quivering. What have you picked up, boy – what have you sniffed?”
Cyril growled. “He’s never wrong, you know,” said Angus Lordie. “He’s found something. Shine the beam in the direction he’s looking in, Domenica.”
Domenica moved the beam of the torch to the side. They were all silent as the light moved and then there came a gasp from Domenica. She was the first to see it – the first to understand what they were looking at. And then the others realised too, and they looked at Domenica, on whose face a small part of the light of the torch was falling. And they waited for guidance – for an explanation.
93. A Further Tunnel – and a Brief Conversation About Aesthetics
Domenica broke the silence that followed Cyril’s extraordinary discovery. And it was Cyril’s discovery, as everybody later agreed
– one for which he should be given all due credit. Had he not barked to alert them to the change in the smell of the air, then they would have walked right past the largely-concealed mouth of the side-tunnel. But Cyril, detecting a new whiff, gave them warning, and when Domenica turned her torch in the right direction, they had seen the much smaller tunnel sloping off to the west.
“Peter Backhouse said nothing about this,” muttered Domenica, as she took a step towards the mouth of the smaller tunnel.
“It has no doubt been forgotten about,” said Angus Lordie, reaching out to twist off a piece of the board that had been used to block the entrance. The wood came away in his hand, and immediately another piece fell off the now-crumbling barrier.
“I suspect that this is a service tunnel of some sort,” said Domenica, directing the beam up the very much narrower passage.
“Shall we?” said Angus Lordie. “Would it be safe to walk up a little? Heaven knows what we might find.”
The idea of fresh exploration seemed attractive to Domenica and Angus Lordie – and immensely so to Cyril, who was straining on his lead to enter this territory of uncharted smells. Pat was not so enthusiastic. It was one thing to walk down a well-known tunnel, and quite another to explore a tunnel which nobody appeared to know about. Again she worried about the possible failure of the torch. It would have been bad enough having to navigate down the central tunnel in complete darkness, but if they entered what might well be a warren of service tunnels, then they might be lost indefinitely, wandering around beneath the streets of Edinburgh until hunger and fatigue claimed them and they failed. There would be no prospect of rescue, then, as nobody knew that they had ventured into the Scotland Street tunnel in the first place. Their disappearance would thus be a A Further Tunnel – and a Brief Conversation About Aesthetics 267
complete mystery, rather like the disappearance of that party of Australian schoolgirls who were swallowed up by the earth at Hanging Rock. That had not been a successful picnic, on the whole.
“Do you think this is safe?” she asked. Her voice in the darkness sounded very weak, and she wondered whether anybody had heard