6 Royal Treasure

Chapter 6 Royal Treasure The butler's body was brought out of the cellar and the local coroner was summoned. After examining him, he declared that the butler had been dead for some days, but there was no wound on his person to show how he had met his end. He suspected the man had died of suffocation due to the lack of air in the chamber. I admit I felt frustrated, Watson. True, I had found the missing butler, but I didn't yet know how or why he had ended up there, nor what had happened to the missing maid. You know my methods in such cases. I put myself in the man's place and tried to imagine how I would have acted in the same circumstances. Brunton was extremely intelligent, so this wasn't too difficult for me to do. He knew, from studying the Musgrave Ritual, that something valuable was concealed in this house. He found the place where it was buried,

but then discovered that the stone covering it was too heavy for him to move by himself. He would need help. But who could he ask? Who could he trust? Brunton knew that Rachel Howells had been, until recently, utterly devoted to him. However badly he had treated her, he must have believed that, deep down, she still loved him. He must have won her over with charm and flattery, then invited her to become his accomplice in a treasure hunt. On that fateful night, they had gone down to the cellar, with Brunton hoping

that together they could raise the stone. So far, it all made sense. What I couldn't understand was how just two of them—and one a woman—could have raised a stone that required the efforts of three men. They must have found something to help them. I returned to the cellar and searched for some tool they might have used. I thought about what I might do in these circumstances, and that's what made me think of the pieces of wood. I found several that had been flattened at the sides as if squeezed by a massive weight. One, about two feet long, had a deep indentation at one end. Now I understood what they had done. As Brunton had dragged up the stone, Howells had thrust chunks of wood into the gap to keep it open.

When the opening was large enough to crawl through, she had placed the two-foot piece lengthwise into the gap. The weight of the slab had caused the indentation. Brunton must have climbed down into the chamber while Howells waited above. He unlocked the box and handed up the contents to Howells. And then? Then what happened? Was it the maid's plan all along to trap him in the chamber, or did the idea occur to her in that moment? Whichever it was, it's clear that

Brunton made a fatal miscalculation in trusting the young woman. She had certainly not forgiven him. In fact, she hated him, and here was her chance to take a very gruesome revenge. A simple kick to the piece of wood propping up the slab would have been enough to send it crashing back down into its place, turning the chamber into his tomb. I could imagine her clutching the treasure as she ran up the twisting staircase, her ears ringing with the butler's muffled screams coming from below that slab of stone.

This explained her pale face, her strange smile, and those shrieks of crazed laughter the following morning. As soon as she was able to, she threw the treasure in the lake to get rid of the evidence of her crime, and then escaped. Thinking all this over, I climbed the steps out of the cellar and was met by Musgrave at the top. He had with him some of the coins we'd retrieved from the box.