Tiia had alerted me to the fact someone was coming. She could easily hear the footsteps on the stone floor even though we could not. We slipped into a room we had not looked in yet and it was full of stuff, great for hiding though in case that person, or persons, decide to look around. I had left one of our mini cameras behind, so we will get a picture of whoever it is.

Another notable thing is this person came from the opposite direction that we came in, therefore there are at least 2 ways to get down here. Could it be that same maid? She is just a part time maid but is here full time while we are here. Obviously she knows her way around and must be working for Andrew. The person did not stay long and left the same way they had come down.

There were lights in this room too, something I found rather odd since Jim and Anne do not know about these basement rooms. Yet someone had electricity installed down here without their knowledge. It must have happened one time when they were out for an extended period of time. That way it also gave Andrew time to install cameras and listening devices in those six rooms.

I wonder what those extra two rooms are, and where are they located? Kyan hooked up her phone to that monitor in the other room, so whenever it is turned on, she will see it too. She just attached a tiny gadget of some kind to the back of the monitor which relays the signal to her phone. It is something she made herself. I think Baldwin would be interested in that.

We began to look around the room and I downloaded the photos from my hidden mini camera. Amazing how clear those pics are too. Amazing is right. I showed everyone who it was. This certainly throws a twist into our simple case, which is no longer simple. Perhaps Andrew is not the only one interested in this castle. But this new information just does not really add up, yet there it is, very clear. Muffin patted Tiia on the head for doing a good job of listening.

Muffin helped in the training of both Tiia and Snow. MC was the main trainer for Tiia and Storm for Snow. I am not positive, but I think Storm has his eyes on Muffin. Whenever they are in the same room, Storm’s long tail curls up tight. It never does that otherwise. I think he will likely be talking to me soon. I chuckled at the thought. “What is so funny?” asked Crystal. “Oh, nothing important,” I said, “I will let you know later Kat, I mean, Crystal.”

“Watch that,” she said smiling. We continued looking through the boxes, lots of books, very old books, but in very good condition. Lots of old dishes too and a couple boxes of very old papers. They were the most interesting boxes. Too bad we cannot take them upstairs with us, but they might be found by the wrong person, and they might be missed if that person knows they are here.

We spent quite a bit of time going through the papers. They were rather hard to read, some were impossible. We need Sigurbjorn and Cinnamon to figure out those papers. I called Rock and gave the phone to Muffin. Meow,meow?=It okay to talk now? “Yes, we are alone and outside at the moment,” responded Rock.

“Good,” I said, “we discovered there is a basement to this place and we have found some very old papers here, among other things. We need Sigurbjorn and Cinnamon, so I will send you Angel and Kristina. They will meet in our room.” “Okay Steve,” said Rock, “I will send them right away.” They were soon down in the room going over those papers.

Cinnamon was very excited about the papers, some were a type of parchment dating back to the 1600’s and mentioning a lot about the castle and it’s owners. Interestingly, Andrew’s family is not mentioned in those papers, so if they did own the castle, they must have come into possession of it later than that, but before 1850 when Jim’s family bought the castle. We put everything back in proper order, placing the boxes back where they had been.

We did remove some papers however, I did not want to lose them. We will just have to keep them hidden for now. It was time for lunch anyway and we all met in the kitchen. “Where is Anne?” I asked Jim. “Oh, she went to the city for the day,” he said, “she had a doctor’s appointment, so she left right after breakfast.” Crystal looked at me.

This is getting more interesting all the time. We talked a bit, then we went back downstairs. I wanted to see where that other passageway went. It ended in another room which also looked like a bedroom, but we had trouble finding a way out of there. Finally Muffin found a small door about a foot off the floor, and just big enough to crawl through.

Fortunately it opened into a regular passageway but it kept getting narrower as we walked along. Then we came to a dead end and I felt my foot move down a bit and a wall slid across the passageway behind us. “Hmm, that is kind of interesting,” I said. “I do not like tight spaces,” said Crystal, “and this is tight.” She was certainly right about that. Kat never did like tight spaces…

To Be Continued.

©2023 Steve McLeod.