Borrower of the Night - Elizabeth Peters [49]
‘Looks as if someone has had it up, once upon a time,’ George agreed. His eyes glowed like a cat’s in the dim light. ‘I don’t envy them the job. That stone weighs hundreds of pounds.’
‘That’s why I enlisted you,’ Tony said affably. ‘With my bad arm I can’t lift a pillow.’
George glowered at him, and then burst out laughing.
‘All right, old boy. I asked for it.’
Tony did enjoy the next hour. Reclining comfortably, with his back up against the stone feet of Count Burckhardt, he watched George sweat. I didn’t help much. George had the necessary muscle, and he knew what he was doing – first the crowbar, then a series of wedges to prop the slowly rising stone. Finally he had it tilted back like the lid of a box, with about three feet between its lifted edge and the floor.
George sat down and lit a cigarette.
‘I don’t think we should risk raising it any more,’ he wheezed. ‘There’s nothing to brace it on the other side if the angle gets too steep. Now what?’
‘Now I take over.’
Tony crawled to the edge of the hole. I was already peering in. I couldn’t see anything, though; it was too dark down there.
Besides shoving in wedges, at George’s orders, I had spent the time kicking myself. I should have noticed that crack. Here we were looking for a hiding place, and this was one of the right size. This could be it. I was so excited I forgot to breathe. I even forgot George Nolan, big and brawny and thoroughly unscrupulous, standing over me.
Tony turned his flashlight down into the crypt. But no flash of refracted light from huge jewels dazzled our eyes. No gilded wings glimmered and shone. There seemed to be nothing in the vault but a wooden coffin bound with strips of rusted metal. It rested on the bottom of a hole that was faced and floored with stone. The top of the coffin was about two feet below floor level. It was pushed to one end of the vault, so that there was an empty space at the bottom. Tony turned his light in that direction.
A moment later I was backing hastily away on hands and knees like a puppy that has encountered a porcupine. George stared at me and bent down to look for himself.
‘Nolan, go get Blankenhagen,’ said Tony, in a funny croak.
George stepped back.
‘For that? Believe me, old man, he doesn’t need – ’
‘He doesn’t, but I do.’ Tony lay down on the floor and closed his eyes.
George peered into the hole again, shrugged, and went to the stairs. When he was out of sight Tony scrambled to his feet.
‘Better you than me,’ I muttered, as he slid into the pit and bent down, out of sight, below the lifted slab. For a while I could see only agitated but controlled movement as he worked. Then he poked his head out. He was in his shirt sleeves.
‘Don’t look if you’d rather not,’ he said, eyeing me.
‘Don’t be insulting,’ I said, breathing slowly through my nose. ‘It was just the air down there that got me – made me dizzy for a minute.’
Tony lifted a dark bundle out of the hole and deposited it gently on the chapel floor. It was his jacket, rolled around something that bulged in peculiar places. Tony climbed out beside the bundle and started to open it. I spoke without premeditation.
‘It isn’t – it isn’t the old count, is it?’
‘No, he’s still resting peacefully in his coffin. At least I hope he is. This is a little something extra.’
He folded his jacket back. I braced myself, but there was no need. Disconnected and jumbled, the bones suggested an anthropological exhibit rather than a human being who had died in agony. But I knew I would not easily forget my first sight of the huddled shape, with its fleshless face turned up as if gasping for the air that had been denied it.
The skull was yellow but intact. A wisp of rusty hair hung over one side. There were other objects in the pile besides bones: bits of tarnished metal, a blackened silver ornament, some scraps of rotting cloth. And under a handful of ribs .