The Bluebeard Room Read online

“No, thanks. I have my car.”

  Before returning to the castle, Nancy stopped off at Polpenny Harbor to stow her scuba gear aboard the rented dinghy.

  Lisa greeted her as she arrived back at the castle. “Get everything you need?”

  “Yes, I think so. I saw Diane Roscoe, by the way.”

  “I know. She called just a few minutes ago and told me. She sounded very interested in your scuba expedition tomorrow morning.”

  Shortly before 9:00 the next morning, Nancy bicycled into the village. Alan was nowhere in sight, so she strolled back and forth on the shingle, watching the fishermen at work.

  By 9:30 the reporter still had not appeared. Nancy was growing restless. There was a telephone call box nearby on a corner of the high street. She decided to try his number in Penzance. She heard the phone ringing for a long time at the other end of the line without answer.

  On the off chance that she might have dialed incorrectly, she tried again. Still no answer. Nancy figured that if Alan wasn’t at home, he must have overslept and was probably driving to Polpenny at this very moment, with one foot jammed on the gas.

  But half an hour later, Nancy was fuming. Surely Alan hadn’t chickened out! Or had he?

  Once again she tried Alan’s number. She let the ringing go on and on, determined to make him answer.

  But at last Nancy reasoned, All right, so Alan isn’t coming; no sense throwing a tantrum. She decided to sail out to the cavern and explore the underground stream by herself.

  Squaring her shoulders, she started back to the dock, then stopped. A sleek red sports car had just driven up, with a man and a girl in it. The girl was Jane Royce, and the driver, Lance Warrick, was getting out to speak to Nancy. “Nancy!”

  She faced him, unable to find her voice.

  “I—I just wanted to apologize for . . . for what happened the other night.” For once the rock king seemed to have lost his cool self-assurance. “Where are you going?” he added lamely.

  “Out in a boat.”

  “May I come?” Nancy shot a quizzical glance at his honey-haired companion, and he added quickly, “Never mind her! May I come?”

  “I’m going scuba diving.”

  Lance’s lean, high-cheekboned face brightened to a smile. “Terrific! That’s my favorite sport. I have full kit in the boot of my car. I always come prepared when I’m anywhere near the coast.”

  Nancy shrugged and tried to sound indifferent. “Suit yourself, then.”

  He turned back hastily to his car. As she walked away, she heard Jane Royce exclaim angrily to Lance, “Just what do you think you’re doing?”

  “What’s it look like, duckie? I’m going diving.”

  “And what am I supposed to do?”

  “You really want a suggestion?”

  Nancy stifled a smile. Lance joined her on the dock with his gear. As they shoved off in the dinghy, he began speaking urgently. “I must’ve been out of my mind to take you for granted, Nancy luv, and to let Jane Royce talk me into that stupid publicity campaign! I reckon I’m so used to that rock scene groupie mentality, I can’t even recognize a nice girl when I meet one!”

  He took Nancy’s shoulder to make her turn and face him. “I found out, darling, just how much you do mean to me! Will you take me back,” he pleaded, “and let me try to make things between us the way they were before?”

  “Maybe,” Nancy said, her own eyes twinkling. “But you’d better watch the tiller and haul in the main sheet, or you’ll run us right into the breakwater!”

  Lance gasped and swung the helm hard aport!

  On their way to the headland, she filled him in quickly on her detective work so far. Lance responded to the adventure with high spirits.

  “Blimey, this could be the most fun I’ve had since that night we all got carried away at the Hammersmith Palace, and Bobo rammed his foot clear through his bass drum!”

  It was a tricky chore getting their scuba gear from the boat into the grotto. Nancy had a brief, uneasy feeling that the hogsheads had been moved slightly from where she and Alan had left them. But she dismissed her suspicions in the excitement of their subterranean adventure.

  Lance slithered down the crevice first. After lowering the scuba gear, she joined him.

  “What now?” he grinned. “Dive in?”

  “Let’s check things out a bit first.”

  Following Nancy’s flashlight beam, they made their way along the narrow bank of the underground river. Gradually the walls of the stream bed converged until they could explore no farther on foot.

  “Okay, swim we must, I guess,” said Nancy.

  She had on a bikini under her tank top and jeans. While she was doffing her outer clothing, Lance changed into his wet suit behind her back. Then both strapped on their scuba gear and plunged into the water.

  “Fairly warm,” Nancy remarked gratefully. “Must be the effect of the Gulf current.”

  The warmth indicated that the underground stream they were exploring was definitely fed from outside, which in turn confirmed Alan’s belief that the level might rise considerably at high tide.

  Nancy had brought a small but powerful undersea lantern which served to light their way. After they had swum on the surface a fair distance, the roof of the underground passage began to slope downward until at last there was no air clearance left, and they had to don their scuba masks.

  But presently both were able to raise their heads again above water. They removed their mouthpieces so they could talk. “Wonder where we are now.” Lance said.

  “Quite far under the headland, I should think.”

  Minutes later, Nancy gasped in surprise. Just ahead, a cylindrical iron cage appeared out of the darkness. “What on earth is that?!”

  “I was about to ask you the same thing, luv.”

  She played her lamp beam over the strange contraption. It seemed to be suspended from the solid rock overhead. Its massive iron bars were rusted and slimed with moss. They could make out what looked like a hinged door.

  Lance grasped one of the bars and heaved himself up out of the water. When he tried the latch handle, the door opened easily. Both were amazed.

  “Somebody must keep it oiled,” said Nancy, reminded of the locked door of the Bluebeard Room.

  Lance entered the cage and pulled her up to join him. A short flight of ladderlike metal steps ran upward around the inside of the cage to a small trapdoor in its solid metal roof.

  “Any idea where it leads?” Lance asked her.

  “I can only guess. One thing’s for sure—we must be underneath Penvellyn Castle!”

  As they took off their scuba gear to explore further, Nancy shivered with excitement. It was almost uncanny, she thought, how closely events seemed to be bearing out her suspicions!

  She felt confident that her “connecting link” theory would also prove correct. A musical trap had been laid for her which almost ended fatally in a quicksand bog—but first she had had to be lured to the engine house by that gleam of light. And what better place to see the gleam than up on the castle tower at night!

  Assuming there was, indeed, a connection between the two incidents, the plotters must have known she would go up on the tower, and maybe even when, which meant that Lisa had been programmed to decoy her up there!

  But if so, Lisa must surely have been acting under hypnotic influence—and only one person, Nancy theorized, was best able to exert such influence.

  As these thoughts were passing through her head, Lance was mounting the iron ladder treads. He reached up to push against the small trapdoor. It opened with a creak, and he climbed through the opening. Nancy followed.

  They found themselves in a dank stone stairwell.

  “Game to go on, luv?”

  “Try and stop me!”

  The stone steps, grooved by centuries of use, wound endlessly upward. At last they found their way to the top, only to be blocked by a plain wooden panel.

  Again Lance pushed, and the panel opened outward. Both
caught their breaths at the sight that met their eyes. They were in a beamed and vaulted stone room, richly furnished in antique style.

  “If this don’t beat all!” Lance tried to sound joking, but his voice was husky with awe.

  Nancy swung her lamp around, revealing tapes-tried walls with gilt sconces, heavy oak and walnut furniture that was medieval in appearance—and before a huge fireplace at one end of the room, what looked like a low stone altar.

  On the altar, a ring of candlesticks surrounded a shiny statuette of gold—a woman glancing at a mirror held in her right hand.

  “The mate to the Golden Mab!” murmured Nancy.

  She tilted her beam upward, and a huge oil portrait came into view above the mantel. It portrayed a stunningly beautiful girl with long blond tresses and slanty emerald-green eyes, clad in the sumptuous court costume of the early 1700’s.

  Behind her, in shocking contrast, through dark veils of smoke, loomed a goatish, horned devil!

  “Who’s that?” Lance queried. “The bird, I mean.”

  “The one-time witch queen of Polpenny, Lady Phoebe Penvellyn,” said Nancy. “She died under torture, and because of her extorted confession, other villagers were burned at the stake.”

  Lance shuddered. “What jolly tidbits you know!”

  “Well, here’s another. She’s almost an exact double of the present Lady Penvellyn. Phoebe was an American girl, too. She must have been a forebear of Lady Lisa’s.”

  Nancy’s gaze turned to a pile of modern-day bales and crates. The bales proved to be marihuana and hashish, while the crates contained plastic bags of cocaine!

  Lance gaped. “Where’d this stuff come from?”

  “The Polpenny witch coven still exists,” said Nancy. “Only now they’re more into drugs and drug smuggling than witchcraft. Ian Purcell was recruited into the coven and got hooked. That’s how he happened to see the Golden Mab.”

  “Brilliant sleuthing, my dear!” said a cultivated English voice somewhere behind them.

  Nancy turned and gasped. The tapestry on one wall had been pulled aside. Several people were stepping out of an alcove behind it. The speaker was Ivor Roscoe. With him were Ethel Bosinny, Dr. Carradine and, surprisingly, Bobo Evans, as well as two hard-eyed men in stylish suits, each holding a gun.

  “Unhappily, Miss Drew,” Roscoe went on with a sardonic grin, “your kind of snooping is apt to have fatal results!”

  18

  Witch Bane

  Nancy’s initial shock gave way to a rush of fear. Her instincts told her these were ruthless, twisted individuals, but she tried not to panic. “Lance and I seem to have interrupted a business transaction,” she said coolly, pointing to the pile of drugs.

  “So you have, Miss Drew,” said Ethel Bosinny, after lighting a wall sconce, “and we find it most inconvenient. Diane warned Ivor yesterday that something like this might happen.”

  “And your two friends with guns, I presume, are drug dealers from London. They must have slipped in by posing as sightseers with the tour group, but actually came to pick up more goods. Crooks seldom trust each other, I’ve noticed, so you each make it a point to come and collect your cut in person.”

  “What a perceptive little busybody you are!”

  “But tell me, Miss Bosinny,” Nancy went on, “how did you all get here unnoticed?”

  “I was visiting Lisa, my dear. It wasn’t hard to slip over to this wing, while pretending to let myself out of the castle. The others came through a secret ‘priest-hole’ passageway that dates back to the days of Cromwell and King Charles.”

  “And these drugs you’re about to sell were smuggled in by sea the night before last.”

  Dr. Carradine eyed Nancy suspiciously. “Now how the deuce would you know that?”

  “I saw the boatman from my bedroom window,” said Nancy. Suddenly she caught her breath. “Oh no! Did you people stop Alan Trevor from showing up at the harbor?”

  “Our London friends here attended to him early this morning,” said the doctor with a thin smile. “They forced him at gunpoint to swallow a powerful sedative. It knocked him out almost at once. But don’t be alarmed, Miss Drew, he’ll sleep it off.”

  “In point of fact,” Ethel Bosinny added, “we were hoping his absence might discourage you, Nancy dear. But no! You are such a persistent little—”

  Just then a key grated in the lock. The door opened and Hugh Penvellyn stepped into the Bluebeard Room. He stopped short, gaping in disbelief. “What the devil’s going on here?!”

  “My!” We seem to be collecting quite a crowd of gate-crashers,” said Ivor Roscoe mockingly.

  Lord Penvellyn’s face darkened with rage. “So you’re the filthy witch-cultists who ruined my uncle!”

  “These are just the ringleaders,” said Nancy. “There are usually thirteen in a coven, so they must have followers in the village, people who are just as much victims as your uncle was, I imagine. These witches are more interested in drug smuggling.” She gestured to the bales and cartons.

  Her words seemed to fill Hugh Penvellyn with fresh fury. He started forward, fists clenched—but the two drug dealers stopped him at gunpoint.

  “Don’t try anything, Your Lordship,” sneered one, “unless you’re bored with living in a castle.”

  “If only you’d stayed away!” purred Ethel Bosinny. “But the damage is done now. I’m afraid we’ll have to get rid of you along with these other two bothersome snoops.”

  “You must be out of your mind!” Hugh retorted contemptuously. “You can’t possibly hope to get away with murder—not here in Castle Penvellyn!”

  “But of course we can, Hugh dear, if nobody ever finds your bodies. Which they won’t, once we’ve drowned you at high tide in that iron cage down below, like rats in a trap!”

  “What are you talking about?!” Hugh growled.

  “Nancy will explain while the water’s rising.”

  As the two spoke, Nancy found herself clutching at a sudden straw of hope. She felt sure she’d heard the faint sound of footsteps ascending the stone stairs. Could this possibly be the person she prayed it was!?

  If it was, everything depended on warning him in time—and on distracting the crooks’ attention.

  Quickly she caught Lance’s eye and indicated the pile of dope. Then she looked straight at the door through which Hugh had entered, “Alan!” she cried. “Thank goodness you’ve come!”

  There was instant confusion! Both gunmen turned in the direction Nancy was looking. Lance seized his opportunity. Scooping up a bale, he hurled it with all his might. It struck one of the gunmen on the head, knocking him to the floor!

  At that instant, Alan Trevor appeared in the panel opening. He was clad in a diver’s wet suit and armed with a boathook.

  The other gunman saw him and swung around to fire. But the boathook was already whizzing through the air! It hit the crook in the chest, and he too went down, his gun flying from his hand!

  Both Roscoe and Dr. Carradine lunged for the fallen weapons. Hugh kicked one gun out of Ivor’s reach and felled him with a vicious right hook. Lance was subduing the doctor.

  Ethel Bosinny dashed toward the door, but Nancy snatched up the boathook and tripped her. Ethel went sprawling on the floor, screaming with fury!

  In moments it was all over. Alan and Lance kept the prisoners covered with the drug dealers’ guns while Hugh went to phone the police.

  “Oh, Alan, what wonderful timing!” exclaimed Nancy. “But how did you manage to recover from the sedative so soon?”

  “The phone rang twice for a very long time,” he grinned. “It was ringing practically right in my ear. By the time it stopped, I was out of my fog. When I finally got to Polpenny Harbor, I spied your dinghy over by the headland. Reckon you can work out the rest of it.”

  “You sure know how to keep a date!” Nancy laughed, and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Hey, don’t I rate one?” Lance complained, so she kissed him too.

  That evening
in the castle drawing room, Nancy discussed the case with Lisa and Hugh. Lisa had been deeply shaken when she learned about Ethel Bosinny’s role in the witch cult and drug smuggling racket. “How could she have been so nice to me, Nancy—that’s what I can’t understand!”

  “You were important to her, Lisa. The toxin in her herb cordial kept you just unwell enough to need her therapy, and her hypnotic suggestions enabled her to put you in danger at any time, in case Hugh went to the police. She probably hoped to eventually draw you into the coven.”

  Hugh revealed that his uncle had belonged to the coven. Shortly before his death, knowing that his nephew would soon inherit both his title and the castle, he had told Hugh everything. But he refused to name the other members of the coven and made Hugh swear to take no action against the cult. Hugh had agreed, provided it ceased to exist.

  “But the others obviously never trusted my promise,” he went on. “First I received an anonymous phone call, which I now know was made by Roscoe, disguising his voice. He threatened to create a scandal that would ruin my family name if I made any move. Then, after I married Lisa, that drug dealer saw me in London one day and swore his gang would kill her if I talked.”

  “Had you seen the portrait of Phoebe before you met Lisa?” Nancy asked curiously.

  “Yes, and I suppose I fell in love with her before I ever laid eyes on this little witch.” Hugh smiled fondly at his wife. “The resemblance was so striking, I knew there must be some family connection.”

  Nancy related that Ethel had had cult members spread superstitious rumors in the village that Lisa was a reincarnation of the infamous witch queen who had brought such tragedy to Polpenny. “That’s why they wouldn’t talk to you, Lisa—they were afraid of you.”

  “Good grief, that’s hard to believe in this day and age, Nancy!”

  “Not in Cornwall, apparently.”

  Dr. Carradine had confessed to the police that he was the one who had introduced the coven to drugs. But Nancy believed that Ethel Bosinny was the stronger character, and the one who had built up their profitable drug smuggling racket.

  She had drawn the two rock musicians, Ian Purcell and Bobo Evans, into the cult to use them as pushers. Ian had done his best to get off drugs and get out of the cult. When he saw the Golden Mab on a TV documentary show, he realized its mate on the cult’s altar was worth a fortune, and tried to cash in on it. Ethel Bosinny ruthlessly had him suspended in the iron cage at high tide, after drugging him, literally frightening him out of his wits.