“What do you think?”
Watson brightened. He thought what he always thought. Game on!
“Come on.”
The puppy trotted into the chamber, and Ellery followed. His flashlight beam played around the interior, spotlighting the faded jewel tones of the painted ceiling, the glittering eyes of gleaming statues covered in gold leaf, the dizzying swirl of the blue and green tile mosaic floor.
His impression on Saturday night that the mausoleum itself did not contain sarcophaguses, tombs, or coffins, was correct. However, the far wall was a columbarium with decorative niches for urns. Most of the niches were empty.
That meant there would have to be a way down to the crypt where the eighteenth century Bloodworths were entombed. All available real estate below must have been used up, which was why the more modern-looking columbarium had been added. No room at the zoo.
But there was no obvious entrance to the lower chamber.
He turned his attention to the columbarium. The ceiling-high structure seemed to consist of three panels: the left half of the columbarium, then a central panel with a long inscription carved into stone, and then the right half of the columbarium.
It was easy to believe the structure had been designed to preserve the large and clearly older inscription, but Ellery couldn’t help noticing that the panel with the inscription was door-shaped.
That fit with his theory.
Except there was no hillside or cave or anything built behind the mausoleum, so even if there had been a door, where would it lead to? There was a thicket-sized rosebush, but how did that help? Or was that the point? Did this support Marguerite’s statement that there had been a tunnel at one time, but a cave-in had closed it off?
Maybe. Except architecturally, it still didn’t make sense to have a door there.
Maybe it wasn’t a door.
Maybe the inscription itself was the clue?
Slowly, Ellery read the inscription aloud. “‘Instead of the laughter of men, the singing gull. Instead of the drinking of mead, storms there beat the stony cliffs, where the tern spoke.’”
Okay, then.
What did it mean? There were caves in the cliffs overlooking the ocean all along this coastline. Was this a reference to that? Maybe there was a passage leading to a cave in the cliffs? That might have been useful in Captain Blood’s time, but did it have any relevance now?
Sometimes a poem was just a poem.
Was that the case here?
He was distracted from his thoughts as Watson strained at his leash, sniffing mightily at the large, asymmetrical ink stain spreading from the corner of the far wall. Ellery’s stomach retreated to his throat.
Dried blood. A lot of dried blood. Dried blood spray on the wall. Dried blood spread on the floor. From the size of that ominous human-sized stain, Brett had been killed inside the mausoleum.
That eliminated one theory: that Brett had died somewhere else and his body had been hidden in the tomb to delay discovery. In that scenario, someone would probably have arranged things to look as though Brett had left the island of his own free will.
But that had not happened. If Brett had been killed in the mausoleum, something else must have been going on.
Maybe there wasn’t a plan. Maybe the murder had not been premeditated. Maybe Brett had opened the mausoleum himself, opened the door to his murderer.
That didn’t prove Brett’s murderer wasn’t a member of the family, but it did open up other possibilities. Brett’s killer might not have known the secret to opening the mausoleum.
Or they might have. Julian hadn’t tried to hide how to open the mausoleum from Ellery. It seemed safe to assume that a number of non-family members knew the way through that forbidding stone door.
He swung the flashlight beam toward the entrance. Something on the tiled floor glinted in the ray of light.
Ellery bent down and picked up…a spoon.
A very small sterling silver spoon. A demitasse spoon?
Now that was truly weird. Weird in itself, sure, but also weird that the police would have missed it in their crime-scene investigation.
Not just weird. Impossible to believe.
But if the police had not missed it, then the spoon had been dropped after the crime scene had been cleared.
Which meant—
Ellery sensed a strangeness in the air, something hard to pinpoint. Motion? Movement? Watson gave another of those unnerving guttural growls. His huff rose as he stared past Ellery. Ellery looked around, nearly overbalancing as he swung the light. The flashlight beam illuminated a nightmarish vision.
Someone—some thing—stood over him. It was right there. Ellery’s horrified gaze took in a mask-white face with a long beak and soulless black eyes…
The curtain dropped.
* * * * *
Kisses.
Wet, sloppy, frantic kisses. A whining that hurt his ears.
He tried to pry his eyes open. Too painful. No point. He couldn’t see anything.
More kisses. More whining. Puppy breath…
* * * * *
“Ellery?”
He knew that voice.
Once again he tried to open his eyes. His lashes weighed a million pounds. It hurt to move them. He struggled to unstick them, lash by lash…
A blinding light stabbed at his eyes. He winced. Closed them tight.
Jack’s voice reverberated down a long tunnel…a secret passage…
“Ellery? Can you hear me?”
Poor Jack. He sounded frightened. Frightened and angry. Ellery wanted to answer. Wanted to tell Jack it was okay. But he was so tired. The light was so bright, and Jack’s voice was so far away.
He closed his eyes.
* * * * *
That smell.
He knew that smell. What was it?
Disinfectant. But not just disinfectant. Chemicals. Cleaning fluids. Other fluids. Nothing good. That smell never meant anything good.
Hospital smell. That was it.
Ellery frowned, opened his eyes. Blue walls, generic framed photos of the pier at Pirate’s Cove, an IV pole. Yes, a hospital bed. In a hospital room. The bent and battered blinds on the window seemed to squint at the early morning light filtering through. On the other side of a beige curtain divider, someone was snoring up a storm.
What the…?
He hadn’t had a headache like this since…ever. He put a cautious hand to his head and felt a goose-egg-sized lump.
“Oh, you’re awake!”
He turned his head cautiously.
She was young. Late twenties? Blonde ponytail, huge hazel eyes, anorexically thin in powder-blue scrubs. “How are you feeling?”
“Is that a trick question?” Ellery croaked.
“If you can joke, you must be feeling better.” She smiled. “I’m Daisy. Would you like some water?”
Yes. Definitely. His mouth felt like a blanket that had been wrapped in mothballs for the last twenty years. “Thanks.”
He struggled to sit up, and Daisy said, “No, no. Let the bed do the work.”
She hit a button, and the top half of the bed rose into reclining position. “How’s that? Better?”
“Yeah.” A lot better. He felt so dizzy. How could you feel dizzy sitting?
Daisy handed Ellery water in a plastic cup.
His hand shook as he gulped it down. It was the best thing he’d ever drunk, although he felt slightly sick afterward. His head was thumping, and he felt disturbingly woozy.
“What happened to me?”
“Well…” Daisy hesitated. “It’s normal to have some blank spaces. I should probably get Dr. Mane.”