She pushed firmly but steadily, and the hidden door opened.

  ‘We’d definitely have lost our money,’ she said as the other two joined her. ‘Look where we are.’

  ‘Well, I’ll be buggered,’ said Skins.

  Dunn looked around the recording control room. ‘This changes everything.’

  The wooden racks that held the recording discs were attached to the door and had swung into the room with it. Dunn looked around for signs of the latch, and soon found a small hook on the wall, hidden on the other side of the rack. There was a large iron key, just like the one in Ellie’s pocket, hanging from it. He pulled on the hook and it moved outwards against the resistance of a spring. He couldn’t see any sign of a mechanism, but he was willing to bet this was how the door was opened. He tested his hypothesis by pushing against the rack to close the door. It clicked shut and he briefly admired the way it was completely hidden before pulling on the hook to unlatch it again.

  ‘It explains that weird thing Malcolm said when he was showing us round,’ said Skins.

  ‘What thing?’ asked Ellie.

  ‘He said it never got hot in here. Sometimes got too cold, he said. I should reckon having a draughty tunnel opening up behind the record rack would chill the place nicely.’

  ‘It certainly would,’ agreed Ellie. ‘But I’m having trouble believing it’s Malcolm.’

  ‘It’s the only reasonable explanation, though, isn’t it?’ said Dunn. ‘We all assumed he was in here the whole time, checking the recordings. We could hear them till he shut the door, but then nothing. He could have been back and forth to the house as often as he wanted and none of us would have known anything about it.’

  ‘But why?’ asked Skins. ‘And how?’

  Dunn frowned. ‘How? He went down the tunnel, shot his brother and came back up the tunnel again. It’s not complicated.’

  ‘There’s still gaps in that – the gunshot Ellie heard, for one. But even so, there’s no clear “Why?” is there?’

  ‘That’s the stumper, isn’t it?’ said Ellie. ‘We know his recording business was sound, and well financed. We know from the unsigned new will that the two got on – John was going to make provision for the business to carry on here whatever happened. Actually, that might even be in the original will – we don’t know for sure it was a new provision. He doesn’t seem to have any real reason to want to get rid of him.’

  ‘Now we know it’s him—’ began Skins.

  Dunn interrupted. ‘Think it’s him.’

  ‘Think it would be difficult for it to be anyone other than him, then. But anyway. Now we know that, maybe we should take another look at the new will. I only skimmed it, after all. And if we can find the current will, that might help, too.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Ellie. ‘Shall we do that now? There’s not much point in trying to work out the “How?” if we’ve got the wrong “Who?”, and the “Why?” should help us confirm it.’

  ‘I . . . er . . . yes,’ said Skins. ‘So does that mean we’re going back to the house?’

  ‘It does. We shouldn’t be hanging about here, anyway – if it really is Malcolm and he comes back and finds us snooping about in his control room it could all get a bit ugly. He’s not above shooting people, after all.’

  ‘And we need to lock the tunnel door and let Veronica know what we’ve found,’ agreed Dunn. ‘We can come back here later.’

  ‘Right you are,’ said Skins. ‘I just want to check something before we set off, though.’

  He rummaged around among the cables and mysterious electronics for a few moments, occasionally emitting what could have been murmurs of satisfaction and approval, but could just as easily have been indigestion. Finally, he stood up.

  ‘Happy now?’ asked Dunn. ‘Can we go?’

  ‘Lay on, McDunn.’

  Ellie pulled on the hook to unlock the door and they all trooped in. Once again Dunn was left to close the door behind them and they made their way quickly back along the tunnel, each lost in their own thoughts. They paused briefly to allow Ellie to relock the door, then continued to the room beneath the library.

  Dunn and Ellie mounted the stairs, but Skins was looking about.

  ‘You coming up?’ asked Dunn. ‘Or should we just get Mickey to send some food down for you?’

  ‘On my way, mate. Hold your horses. Just checking something.’

  ‘You’re not going to tell us what, are you?’

  ‘Where would be the fun in that?’

  Dunn tutted and gave the secret knock. A few seconds later, he heard it repeated back, so he opened the door and the three friends emerged into the library. Ellie turned off the lights and helped Skins pull the bookcase back into position.

  ‘Well?’ demanded Veronica excitedly. ‘Where does it lead? The chapel bathroom? I bet it’s the bathroom. No, wait. The cupboard in the vestibule. Or . . . or a manhole cover outside. Or—’

  ‘It comes out in the studio control room,’ said Ellie. ‘I’m guessing it would have been the sacristy when it was an actual chapel? Or maybe the priest’s private room. The priest could hide in there, then sneak back to the house. If anyone came looking for him, they’d just find an empty room.’

  ‘How exciting,’ said Veronica with a grin. ‘Oh. But . . . but that means . . .’

  ‘It’s looking very likely, yes,’ said Dunn.

  ‘Oh no, he’s one of my favourites. And why would Uncle Malcolm—’

  ‘That’s what we’ve come back to find out,’ said Ellie. ‘We’re going to start by having another look at the new will, if you want to come.’

  ‘The new will?’ exclaimed Veronica. ‘You found it? What do I get?’

  ‘Sadly, we don’t know,’ said Skins. ‘It’s not signed, so the old one’s still in force.’

  ‘I’d love to see it, though, nonetheless. Are you going now?’

  Ellie was already moving towards the door. ‘Now, yes. We don’t have much time. As soon as the motor coach gets here, we’ll be ushered out and it’ll all be too late.’

  ‘Then let’s go.’

  In the study, Skins was once again hunting about behind the gramophone.

  Dunn had gone straight to the desk with Ellie and Veronica. ‘Would you stop faffing about over there and come and show us the secret drawer,’ he said.

  ‘Just checking something,’ said Skins as he pushed himself upright and joined the others. He motioned for them to move aside, then reached under the surface of the desk and ran his fingers along the smooth wood, as he had done before.

  ‘There’s a little catch like the ones on the shelves . . . right . . . here.’

  With a click, the hidden drawer popped open, and Skins stepped back to let the others have a look.

  Dunn took out the will and started to read. Meanwhile, Ellie and Veronica rummaged through the other files and papers.

  ‘Did you look at this other stuff, honey?’ asked Ellie.

  ‘No, I was so excited to find the will I ignored all that other tat.’

  Ellie and Veronica split the papers between them while Skins returned to his examination of the gramophone.

  Five minutes passed with only occasional whistles and at least one ‘Well, I’ll be’ from Ellie.

  Skins had completed his own investigations and waited as patiently as he could.

  Eventually, his curiosity got the better of him. ‘Well?’

  Ellie smiled enigmatically. ‘I think I’m beginning to get an idea what might have made Malcolm do what we think he did.’

  ‘And you’re not going to tell me, are you?’

  ‘No, honey, not yet. I need to figure some other things out first. Are you going to tell us why you keep rummaging about with all those wires?’

  ‘No, love, not yet. I need to work some other things out first.’

  ‘Touché.’

  ‘If it makes you feel any better,’ said Veronica, waving the file she’d been reading, ‘I’ve only found some confidential ideas for a new line of biscuits, so I’ve no idea what either of you is talking about.’

  Dunn held up the will. ‘And this is exactly as laughing boy there described it the other day. There’s nothing in here that would make anyone want to kill him. Not that I can see, anyway.’

  ‘No,’ said Ellie, ‘it’s got nothing to do with the will. Nothing at all. Trouble is, I still can’t prove anything.’

  Dunn replaced the will. ‘Would it help if we could figure out once and for all how he did it?’

  ‘It couldn’t hurt. Maybe there’s something uniquely Malcolmish about the method that would absolutely rule everyone else out.’

  ‘I think I might be able to help there,’ said Skins. ‘Anyone fancy another trip to the chapel?’

  ‘Rather,’ said Veronica. ‘And Malcolm’s still in his room as far as I know, so we should be safe. I say, can we go through the tunnel? I’d love to see it.’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ said Dunn. ‘Now we know where it comes out, we don’t need a lookout in the library any more – we can just walk back through the grounds.’

  ‘It would also suit my own plans very well,’ said Skins.

  ‘Would it?’ said Dunn. ‘Would it really?’

  Skins tapped the side of his nose.

  Despite having recently been given the news that her uncle may have murdered her father, Veronica was close to being giddy as Ellie and Skins led her down the steps from the library. Dunn closed the secret door and joined them in the cellar room, where he found Veronica closely examining the oak door.

  ‘It’s like an adventure novel,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe we had something so utterly fabulous under our noses the whole time. Look at this door. Can’t you just imagine some terrified priest scuttling through it? I wonder if it was ever used in anger. Oh, would he stay here? No, of course not. He’d run up into the house and then hide in the priest hole. If he’d been followed, he wouldn’t want to be caught hanging around in a room at the end of the tunnel. Oh, I say, isn’t it just too thrilling?’

  Ellie smiled and opened the door.

  ‘A tunnel. Oh my goodness, these bricks.’ She brushed her hands against the red bricks that lined the tunnel. ‘Laid by Elizabethan artisans. This is marvellous.’

  She kept up her excited narration all the way to the locked door, then resumed as Ellie relocked it behind them. She finally relented as Dunn carefully opened the door at the top of the stairs at the other end. He checked that the coast was clear before leading them all into the control room.

  Veronica looked back at the rack of discs attached to the moving section of wall. ‘Oh, I say. Who would ever have thought it?’

  ‘Not us, certainly,’ said Ellie. ‘Now, then, Mr Maloney, what are you up to?’

  ‘Flick the tunnel lights off and push the door shut,’ said Skins.

  ‘It’s unlike you to be so tidy. Why aren’t you more like this at home?’

  ‘Because we don’t have a big rack of gramophone records at home that needs searching.’

  Ellie looked at the dozens of discs neatly stacked on the wooden rack. ‘You want to go through that lot?’

  ‘I want you and Veronica to go through them, yes, please.’

  Veronica looked a good deal more excited about the task than Ellie. ‘What are we looking for?’

  ‘First off, another copy of “Rhapsody in Blue”, if you can see one. Then anything that doesn’t look right. A peculiar title written on the disc. Or no title at all, maybe. A disc where only a tiny portion has been recorded and the rest is blank would be especially interesting.’

  ‘And what important task will you and Barty be undertaking while we’re doing secretarial work?’

  ‘While you, my darling Ells-Bells, are looking for the disc upon which the sound of a gunshot was recorded, Barty and I will be checking that it was possible to play it from one of the machines in here so that it could be heard in the study while you were standing outside.’

  ‘That explains all the ferreting about in dusty corners and the obsession with cables,’ said Dunn. ‘You’re much cleverer than you look, as well.’

  ‘Thanks, mate. There’s two pairs of wires running along the tunnel. One’s for the lights, obviously, but I needed to double-check that the other one connected the equipment in the study to the equipment in here. That’s what I was looking for in the room under the library. One pair runs up to the light switch, but another one disappears into the wall of the postcard room. Well, I assume that’s where it goes, anyway. From there it goes up into the study where it’s connected to the terminals on the loudspeaker alongside the ones coming from the gramophone in there.’

  ‘It’s all a bit of a mystery to me,’ said Veronica. ‘You’re saying that Papa’s gramophone could play records in here?’

  ‘Not exactly. In theory, the gramophones in here can play out through loudspeakers anywhere else, as long as there are wires connecting them. That’s the beauty of these new electric ones – the sound travels along wires instead of through tubes. And there’s a pair of wires going through the tunnel to the house, so you can put a disc on in here and hear it in the study.’

  ‘Like a telephone.’

  ‘More or less. But much better sound quality. So if Malcolm had a recording of, say, a gunshot, he could play it here and the sound could come out of the loudspeaker in the study.’

  ‘But the gramophone in the study was already playing “Rhapsody in Blue”,’ said Ellie. ‘I heard it.’

  ‘You heard the tune, yes, and you saw the record spinning on the gramophone when you broke in, but that doesn’t mean you heard that particular record.’

  ‘I don’t follow any of this,’ said Veronica, ‘but my own job seems clear: find a peculiar gramophone record.’

  ‘That’s it,’ said Skins. ‘We’ll catch the bugger yet.’

  Veronica and Ellie began the painstaking task of removing each disc in turn from the rack, taking it from its cardboard sleeve and examining it for peculiarities.

  Meanwhile Skins showed Dunn where a pair of wires entered the room through a tiny hole drilled in the wall. Together they confirmed that the wires were connected to one of the boxes of electronics.

  ‘So it could definitely be done, then,’ said Dunn. ‘You’re a clever old stick, aren’t you?’

  ‘It’s still only . . . What do they call it in the detective stories? Circumstantial evidence? That’s it. It’ll never stand up in court.’

  ‘I couldn’t tell you anything about that, but there must be other evidence. The clever ones never think they’ll get caught so they always leave something. You take those drawers in that table, I’ll check the cupboard.’

  It took Dunn a few moments to force the lock on the cupboard door, but once he was in, it wasn’t long before he let out a triumphant ‘Oi, oi! Look what we have here.’

  He held up an ornately engraved brass box.

  ‘That’s Uncle Malcolm’s pandan box,’ said Veronica. ‘He brought it back from India. They keep paan in it – betel leaves, areca nut and spices, all mixed into some sort of paste. I think I remember slaked lime being mentioned, but I might be wrong. Then they chew it. It’s a stimulant. Good for the digestion or something, I believe.’

  ‘Oh, it’s a stimulant, all right,’ said Dunn. He opened the box to show them the fine white powder inside. ‘But he skipped the betel leaves and went straight on to cocaine.’

  ‘Good Lord,’ said Veronica. ‘Are you certain?’

  ‘I don’t use it myself, but I’ve met a lot of people who do – I’d know it anywhere.’

  ‘It fits in with what I found in the study,’ said Ellie.

  ‘All I’ve got is a journal,’ said Skins, holding up a leather-bound notebook. ‘Oh, but I do have a door lock and some leftover lock parts. I’m going to bet it’s the original one from John’s study and the bits our murderer took out of the doctored one.’ He showed them. ‘How about you, Ells-Bells? Got anything?’

  ‘I’ve found a couple of likely candidates,’ she said. ‘Shall we try them?’ She held up two record sleeves, then looked at the gramophone. ‘If I can figure out how to get this thing working.’

  Skins was about to do it for her, but Veronica beat him to it.

  ‘Oh, that much I do know,’ she said. ‘If it’s anything like the one in the drawing room, you flick this switch here, turn that knob and retire to a safe distance while it hums to itself for a bit and makes you feel as though it could explode at any moment. This lever here will set it spinning, and the needle is like the old wind-up ones – just pop it on the record.’

  They watched as she brought the machine to life and put on the first disc.

  The familiar pops and crackles of the record sounded sharper through the loudspeaker. Then another set of pops and crackles, as though another disc had been put on. The familiar clarinet notes of “Rhapsody in Blue” filled the room. The piece continued entirely as normal until they heard a faint click. Then, with a suddenness that shocked even those of them who had been expecting it, there was a loud bang: the pistol shot that Ellie had heard on Saturday afternoon.

  They let the disc run through to the end before Veronica lifted the needle.

  ‘So how did he do that?’ asked Veronica.

  ‘Sounded to me like he played the original record into a microphone and recorded it on to a fresh disc, then fired the gun at the appropriate moment,’ said Dunn. ‘That click would have been the sound of him cocking the pistol.’

  ‘That’s it, then,’ said Skins. ‘He was the only one who would have known how to put all that together. I reckon all we need is the gun he used to record the shot and then we’ve got him bang to rights.’

  ‘Do you mean this gun?’ said a voice from the doorway.

  They turned to see Malcolm Bilverton, his walking stick in one hand and a Webley service revolver in the other. The pistol was pointed at Skins.

  ‘I should have liked to have used John’s own gun,’ said Malcolm languidly, ‘but he’d have missed it if I pinched it – he liked to keep it cleaned and oiled, d’you see? Even if I got it back to his desk in short order, its absence might still have been noticed. Still, I reasoned that no one but me would be able to tell the difference in the sound, so I used my own.’