Page 81 of Dead Serious Case 4 Professor Prometheus Plume
“No, this is coming from somewhere in particular,” he murmurs absently as he moves closer to the wall. “Help me with this.” He reaches down and grabs one end of the sofa that Dusty is splayed on.
Grabbing the other end, I help him move it out of the way. Obviously feeling a little put upon about being heaved about like a sack of potatoes, Dusty pops up, kneeling on the cushions and leaning her elbows on the back as she watches us.
“What are you doing? It’s a little late at night to be feng shui-ing the furniture.”
“Danny?”
He doesn’t answer; Instead, he’s running his hands down the faded wallpaper to the wooden panelling.
After a moment, he pauses and runs his hand down the edge of one of the panels. “Here, you can feel the cold air.”
He stares contemplatively at the wall for a moment, as if figuring it out, then he presses against the panel. There’s a click and a whole section of the wall creaks open with a blast of frigid air.
“Oh my god!” Ellis exclaims loudly from the other side of the room. He runs over to where we are, Rosie looking equally stunned by his side. “I can’t believe you’ve actually found one!”
He bounces up and down excitedly, and it makes me tired just to look at him. In reality, I can’t be more than five years older than him, but honestly, he sometimes makes me feel like a grandpa.
“Found what?” Greyson demands as he marches over with Ruby trying to keep up beside him.
Ellis bites his lip as he grins. “One of the secret entrances!”
“It looks like a tunnel.” Danny sets the flashlight function on his phone and leans in to look around, coughing slightly from the dust.
“It is!” Ellis replies a little breathlessly, his eyes wide as he practically climbs over me to peer into the cobwebs and darkness. “There are loads of secret passages, cupboards, and hidey holes in this place. I’ve heard about them but no one has ever actually found them.”
“So there’s definitely more concealed spaces in the hotel?” Danny asks.
“There are,” Rosie confirms, staring at the tunnel in fascination.
“I guess that answers the question of how to stash a body that a hotel full of people can’t find in a short amount of time,” Danny muses.
“Hardly full,” Grey mutters.
“Ellis, Rosie? You said no one has ever found them?” I ask and they both nod. “How certain are you?”
“Fairly certain,” Rosie says. “I mean, obviously we can’t be a hundred percent. But no one we know has said anything about them.”
I turn to Danny. “If Professor Plume’s body has been stashed in one of these concealed places, we may never find him.”
Danny scratches his jaw. “But if he was stashed in a regular hiding place, he’d have been found by now with all of us looking. So it stands to reason that someone here must know about the secret hiding places or tunnels.”
“Oh, the ghosts would!” Ellis blurts out. “I mean…” He glances at the others. “If ghosts were real… which they’re not.” He gives me an exaggerated wink and I can’t help the chuckle that bubbles up.
Maybe I’m so tired and stressed that I’m getting delirious.
“Are we going into the tunnel?” Ellis looks eagerly into the dark void beyond the door.
“Good heavens, what on earth for?” Greyson looks horrified. “The body’s not in there.”
“How would you know?” I ask.
“Well, judging from the look of it, it’s clearly not been used anytime in this century.”
“That may be so,” Danny allows. “But we should probably check it out, just in case. We need to see where it ends. It’s possible someone hid the body from the other side.”
“This is ridiculous,” Grey states emphatically.
“I’m not going in there,” Ruby sniffs.