There was a latch on the inside of the movable panel so it could be opened from below, and a worn ladder going down.

As Lydia had guessed, the low room beneath looked as if it had been the subcrypt of a church, either the one that backed the house-in a square named, oddly enough, Spaniard's Court-or some forgotten predecessor. Barely visible in black paint on the ceiling groins were the words Salvum me fac, Deus, quoniam intraverunt aquae usque ad animam meam.

Lydia had not been raised a Catholic-her aunts considered even the inclusion of candles on the parish altar grounds for complaint to the bishop-but recognized, from her residency at St. Bartholomew's, the words from the Mass for Deliverance from Death.

A granite sarcophagus filled the far end of the chamber like a somber altar, all but concealing a low, locked door. Lydia stood before it for some time, holding the lamp high and gauging the probable weight of the stone lid. Then she knelt and studied the floor.

Dustless.

A laborious investigation of the cracks in the gray stone floor showed her the trapdoor, an eye-straining business by the amber glow of the lamp; she gave up early trying to do the business tidily and without griming and wrinkling her skirt, and it was equally impossible to keep her corset bones from jabbing her ribs and the pump sprayer from knocking her repeatedly on the elbow. Another squinting, painful half hour revealed the trigger to the trapdoor's catch behind the projecting stone frame of the chamber's inner door.

As she had deduced, the sarcophagus had nothing to do with anything. It was simply too obvious.

The steps leading downward were shallow, so deeply worn in the centers that she had to press her shoulder to one wall and brace herself against the other to maintain her footing. She guessed it was well past dark outside, and beneath her growing fear-the panicky conviction that she was completely unqualified to deal with the encounter that lay ahead-she wondered precisely how dark was dark enough. She suppressed the urge to check her watch and make notes.