Page 100 of Pandora

Edward is rising from the chair. “Cornelius, I don’t think—”

“No,” Dora says, mastering her strength. “Mr. Ashmole is right. What did you mean, Sir William, when you said that?”

Sir William sighs. “I do not want to cause you further pain.”

“Tell me.”

He sighs again, wipes a hand across his face, takes one more sip of wine.

“As you know, your parents were not so deep in the collapse as we had feared. They must have tried to make their escape. Their bodies were recovered, buried. You were shipped off back to London in the care of your uncle. It was classed as a terrible accident, the kind that happens all the time in that line of work.” A deep line has begun to form between Sir William’s eyebrows. “But something just didn’t sit right with me. I had surveyed the site myself. You say, Dora, you don’t know why we all came to be in southern Greece. I can tell you now that Helen’s theory intrigued me. I funded the dig and asked that I be part of the team to search for the pithos.

“Your parents were thrilled to accept. I’d overseen many digs and always taken an active part in them, so they knew I was no idle aristocrat. And we did it, Dora, we found a pithos. One that matched in every particular to the historical and geographical sources. And even more convincing, it depicted the myth of Pandora’s creation. There was no reason not to assume it was the pithos we had sought. We were ecstatic. Can you imagine the historic implications? We began to make arrangements to retrieve it. But then...

“Dora, I am positive that site was sound. I admit it would have benefited from reinforcing but there was nothing to make me believe there was any imminent danger, so when it collapsed I suspected some sort of mischief. I had no proof, or course. And matters were of such a nature—” Sir William stops, clears his throat. “All I could do was preserve the site. As I said I bought the land, put an overseer in place. Then, last year, I received word of a flood. The deluge washed away enough of the earth that it seemed there was a chance we could access the site again. So, I reopened the dig.”

The whole time Sir William has been speaking, Dora has felt a clamping at her heart. Somehow, she knows what he means to say next.

“My uncle...” she begins.

His face closes.

“Hezekiah Blake was nowhere to be found during the cave-in. He turned up only later, a bloody scratch on his face. He claimed he had been caught in the collapse, had got out another way. But the problem is there was only one way in and one way out, and Dora...” Sir William looks grave. “I was there the whole time. Digging you free.”

***

There can be no question of staying. No earthly question at all.

She leaves Edward and Mr. Ashmole in the carriage, refuses to wait for them as she pushes open the door to the shop.

The putrid smell of Hezekiah’s leg and something else—something ammoniac—hits her hard as she rushes over the threshold. She stops, notes the overturned shelf, the remains of crockery scattered on the floor like refuse on the Thames.

“Uncle! Uncle!”

Dora wants to cry—she can feel the tears pent up behind her eyes—but her anger is surer than her grief. How could he do such a thing? If he was responsible for her parents’ deaths—and an attempt on her life too, it seems—then the pithos itself must be the cause. For it to be here in London, now, after all these years... But why? With a shout she rushes across the shop floor and scrambles over the shelf. The crockery scrapes loudly on the splintered floorboards. She hears material rip.

“Dora!”

Edward’s voice, but she barely registers it. She reaches the basement doors and pulls on the handles, but they do not give way. Dora looks down to see the padlock shut and secure, the chain swaying from the force of her desperate tugging.

Upstairs, then.

She turns, makes her hasty retreat to the shop floor.

“Dora,” Edward tries again, holding out his hand, but she ignores him, sweeps past both him and Mr. Ashmole who stand uselessly at the counter, watching her with ill-disguised pity. Through the connecting door she goes—the bell harshly loud on its spring—up the narrow stairs, her footsteps unforgiving on the treads.

When she pounds on the door to Hezekiah’s bedroom there is no answer. Angrily Dora pulls it open, finds the room as black as pitch.

“Missum...”

Dora spins round. In the doorway of her old bedroom stands Lottie. The housekeeper wrings her hands together, and her unbruised eye looks red and puffy, as if she has been crying.

“Where is he?”

Her voice is full—she can hear the dangerous note in it—and the housekeeper stares at Dora without making another sound.

“Where is he?”

Lottie jumps, her face crumpling. “Gone!” she finally cries, clenching her fists under her chin. “I don’t know where.”

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