Free 4 Impression of Bones by Melanie Jackson Page A

was.
    A few moments
of pressing and she had it. The wainscoting swung back and a narrow staircase
was revealed.
    Manoogin
snorted. Juliet interpreted the sound as half amusement and half frustration
that he hadn’t been able to find it on his own. The latch wasn’t so much hidden
as just made less obvious.
    There was a
light switch by the opening which worked, and the air from down below was
fairly fresh since ventilation had been installed. But there was still
something uncomfortable about venturing down that narrow stair which had to
have been an afterthought in the original design since it was not a practical
way to move bodies into the morgue.
    Juliet
examined the door and could see no obvious latch or handle that would open the
cellar from below. There had to be one, of course. Unless it
hadn’t yet been installed. As an afterthought, Juliet pulled down one of
the blackened pots and used it to prop the door open.
    It would not
have been beyond imagining if Julia Mannering had gone ahead and installed some
manacles and maybe a skeleton or two, but the cellar was free of bones and
cobwebs and even dust. The place had been recently power-washed and shop- vacced . Still, the expression I wouldn’t be caught dead here occurred to Juliet.
    As of yet
there was no wine in the cellar but some of the redwood racks had been
installed. Just to be clever they had been laid out in a maze pattern that made
the place feel like a labyrinth. The smell of new wood was still strong enough
to cover the general smell of damp, but there was also a hint of baking earth
floating on the air. It didn’t quite cover the old musty odor, though it helped.
Juliet was of the opinion that they could stock the cellar with all the wine in
California and it wouldn’t completely hide the fact that this room had been
used for something unpleasant.
    “I’m glad
there are lights. And no rats,” the stranger added. His words which probably
hadn’t been intended for Juliet’s ears echoed oddly.
    “Amen,”
Manoogin answered.
    In spite of
its cleanliness and artificial light, Juliet found the whole place to be rather
sinister, perhaps because of knowing its original purpose, but Manoogin and the
stranger seemed to feel that nothing was amiss as they examined the space with only
cursory attention.
    “Should a wine
cellar be this damp?”
    “No. It’s been
recently power-washed.” Perhaps to try and rid it of the
unpleasant smell.
    Juliet looked
around carefully and couldn’t see any sign of recent brickwork, which there
should have been if Dolph had truly sealed up the old morgue tunnel. It could
be that the new wall was concealed behind some of the racks, but there should
have been an odor of curing mortar, which there was not.
    Had Dolph been
delaying the repairs, hoping that everyone would reconsider his idea of some
kind of a gruesome ghost tour of the old morgue? Or were there money problems
with the project that had caused a delay?
    The eddy of baking earth smell rubbed by her face again.
    “Check for
another door,” Juliet said softly.
    “What?”
Manoogin turned toward her.
    “Check behind the
racks against the wall. It may be that the original entrance wasn’t actually
bricked over after the supposed cave-in. Maybe, if there was a cave-in, it was simply
cleared instead of sealed.” She pointed at a brick barricade which was old, but
that had been laid in a different pattern suggesting a different set of
builders had been at work in a different era. When no one reacted she
explained: “There may still be some other way in and out of the castle.”
    “There is
another entrance to the wine cellar?” the stranger asked. He sounded affronted.
“That’s stupid.”
    “Yes, it would
be, if you were building a wine cellar from scratch. But this cellar was the
hospital morgue back in the twenties, and I doubt that the bodies were brought up
or down through the kitchen on that narrow stair. At the very least there would
have been another