Page 43 of Happily Ever After
Everyone had their demons.
I tipped my head back against the leather cushions and looked up at Oswald; his huge face seemed somewhat sympathetic today, or maybe that was because I was seeing it through dust. I wondered what demons he had carried. Apart, obviously, from Lady Tanith.
As I looked up at the portrait, The Master jumped down off my lap, leaving our stroking hands forced to entwine fingers in a clasp of understanding. We sat for a few moments longer in a feeling of dawning peace and acceptance and potential for happiness, and the cat perched himself on a pile of books that sprawled open-paged, like dancers at the finale of the Can-Can. He ‘wowed’ loudly.
‘What’s the matter with him?’ Jay asked, without moving.
‘Dunno. He really likes sitting under that picture.’ I didn’t move either. This was nice. No, it was more than nice, it was lovely.
‘Do you think he really is the reincarnation of Oswald?’
‘I hope not. He’s in bed with me most nights.’ I watched the cat, stretching himself full length against the firmly-fixed-and-not-containing-secret-cupboards panelling beneath the portrait, claws extended, as though he were trying to reach high enough to pull at the picture, the lower edge of the frame of which was around a metre and a half off the ground. ‘What are you doing? Puss?’
The cat looked at me over his shoulder, blue eyes blazing, then went back to clawing the wall.
‘Rats, do you think?’ Jay went to stand up, realised he was still holding my hand, and sat back down again.
A sudden realisation struck me. ‘Oh my God!’
Now Jay let go of my fingers and leaped to his feet. ‘What? What’s wrong? Are you all right?’
I stood up too. ‘I’ve never moved the picture!’
He stared at me. ‘You’ve never what? Moved the picture? Why the hell would you?’
‘Because it’s the only bloody place in this room that I haven’t practically taken to bits and rebuilt. It was put here when Oswald was still alive! I’ve been treating it as though it’s part of the wall, but it’s not, it’s attached to the panelling. Come on.’
The Master shot out of the way as, between us, we heaved the big table across the room to the spot underneath the portrait. Then, with a hand from Jay, I climbed up onto it, which unfortunately put me level with Oswald’s groin, and stretched my arms full length to grasp both sides of the frame. This pushed my face into the painted crotch, but I still couldn’t stretch far enough. Jay had to hop up next to me, and with him holding one side and me holding the other, we managed to slide the picture upwards enough to disengage it from whatever fixture was holding it in place.
In a choreographed movement worthy of any ballet, we spun around and let Oswald slip gently to the ground behind us, where he flopped forwards to rest his face against the nearest bookcase, like a drunk passing out at a bus stop. Now revealed was a stretch of panelling, slightly paler than the rest, having been protected from whatever had gone on in here for the best part of seventy years. It bore some vicious fixing arrangements, which had been keeping the portrait not only up, but so close to the wall that I hadn’t realised itcouldbe removed. I wouldn’t have put it past Lady Tanith to have glued it up there.
The panelling also had a crack in it.
At first it looked like a crack in the wood, where the weight of years had pulled two planks apart, just an ordinary result of ageing and drying out. But a closer look revealed it to be some kind of hinge.
My heart began to beat faster. I’d bitten my lip in my eagerness to remove the portrait and the blood had the metallic taste of anticipation.This could be it.
‘How does it open?’ I stuck my nails in the gap and tried to prise the two halves apart.
‘I don’t know. But, look, look at the portrait fixing on the wall there.’ Jay stretched up, and by standing on tiptoe he could just reach the lower attachment that had fixed the picture in place. ‘It moves. Bit rusty now, of course, but it’s a pivot. In Oswald’s day you could have moved the picture to one side with a fingertip.’
I stared at him. ‘Ten minutes ago that would have been brilliant information. You mean we struggled to get that thing down when we could have just moved it?’
‘I don’t know it if it still works. It’s pretty old and it might have seized. But it does mean thatOswaldcould move the picture without taking it down.’
Jay and I looked again at the crack in the panelling. ‘Right,’ I said. ‘That’s coming off if I have to take to it with an axe.’
‘If there is a hiding place here and Oswald used it by moving the picture, it shouldn’t bethathard to open, we just have to find out how.’ Jay stood back and looked at the panel with his head on one side.
‘OK, Jonathon Creek,youwork it out,’ I panted, trying to pull at the wood again.
Jay slithered down off the table and began to walk around, staring at the wall. ‘He must have used one hand to hold the picture back,’ he said, ‘so it must only take one hand to open. And it should be doable from here, assuming that that portrait isn’t life sized and Oswald wasn’t twenty feet tall.’
I got down next to him. The Master came and sat with us, all three of us now gazing at the oak panelling. ‘So it must be something really simple that we’re missing,’ I said. ‘Like just pressing it, or something.’
To demonstrate, I pressed the panel, and to our collective astonishment it popped out, sliding smoothly open to reveal a small space behind. And in that space…
‘Well, bugger me,’ Jay breathed.
