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They both turned to Aleksey, and he was sure they were waiting for him to utterly forbid this risky venture. He glanced up. ‘Do we have a rope that long?’
They didn’t. Even the professor couldn’t come up anything useful that could be woven together to make a rope eighty-nine and some feet long. Although he did suggest searching the boathouse for a ladder, a proposal everyone else ignored.
Finally, Ben snapped irritably, ‘What about the cottage? Where’s that? Maybe that’s got something we could use.’
As there wasn’t much more they could do, Aleksey shrugged and began to untie the dogs.
Suddenly, Squeezy asked, ‘How wide do you fucking think it is? I mean around?’
They all turned to their guru, who consulted his book. ‘It doesn’t say. Why?’
Squeezy wobbled his head a little, still apparently thinking. He turned to Aleksey. ‘You know those guys who climb for coconuts? Or maybe it’s bananas. Dunno. Same fucking trees probably.’
‘Not personally, no.’
‘Well, you know, they wrap a bit of rope around and…’
Squeezy demonstrated this climbing technique in a way which made Aleksey ask, curious, ‘Is he fucking a horse?’
Squeezy rolled his eyes and tried again in hisI am now being patient for the impairedvoice. ‘You wrap a rope around the tower, go barefoot for grip, and—’
‘—and no.’
For once Ben did not argue with Aleksey’s abruptness, although he did cast a glance to Squeezy that Aleksey didn’t like. ‘No.’
‘I didn’t say anything! I agree. It’s a dumb idea.’
They reached the bottom of the slope. ‘No.’
‘What! We don’t have a rope!’
‘That is exactly the answer I expected, and it doesn’t give me confidence. Whether we have a rope or not, it is an idiotic suggestion.’ He released the dogs from their leads, and they all headed over to the other side of the dunes, to return to the house along tracks they had not yet explored.
Ashecouldn’t be the one to try it, no one was.
Looking more thoroughly for the key first had also occurred to him.
* * *
Chapter Thirty-Three
The cottage was tucked away in a grove of trees in the woods and was apparently what Ben had expected the house to be: a small, undistinguished building of no particular interest. It was not visible from Guillemot or vice versa, a fact which did not surprise Aleksey. They did discover two very useful things about the staff dwelling, however: firstly, it had not been cleared of furniture, and secondly, it had a full log store. Clearly, the prince had not thought any of this worth taking. Aleksey would have agreed with this assessment about most of the furniture, expect that there were beds still in the bedrooms, and these, critically, had mattresses.
None of them were averse to sleeping on dubious second-hand comfort, given the night they’d all spent on the floor, and so Squeezy and Ben were volunteered by Aleksey to haul them up to the big house later that day. As both tiny bedrooms contained three bunk beds each, presumably to pack as many staff in as possible, there were enough for even the dogs to have one each, so a more cheerful little group, arms filled with dry wood, returned to Guillemot House for lunch.
They had each been trying their phones for service on and off during the morning. Aleksey had thought the lighthouse headland would be the most likely place to pick something up, given it was the highest point, but nothing. They had a radio on the boat, so he wasn’t particularly worried by the way the storm was worsening.
By the time they got back to the big house, it was blowing drizzle, and by the look of the sky, this would soon turn to hard rain.
They lit a fire in the fireplace in the big room and didn’t stint themselves with the logs. They brought down their sleeping mats and made a circle around the hearth. There was no way Aleksey could really sit comfortably like this, so he lay on his belly, his chin propped on his folded arms and waited for someone to feed him. He’d wanted to live on sugar, but so far all he’d eaten since coming to the island was a mars bar, something called acurly-wurlyand a packet of biscuits. Even he thought this regime needed improving upon.
‘Are you not supposed to be a chef these days, Benjamin?’
Ben, who was sorting some foodstuffs and fending off two starving dogs, huffed. ‘Maybe we should order in.’
‘I wonder what they ate when they were here and where it came from. I do not remember any stinting at the dinners I attended in their presence.’
Tim accepted a jar of peanut butter and a spoon and began to eat it, gazing around the room. The heavy rain had darkened the whole place, and the flames created crazy dancing shadows on the plain walls. ‘Imagine the parties here and who might have come. Royalty from around the world. Wealthy industrialists from the States, maybe. Like a real lifeGreat Gatsby.’ He added for Ben’s benefit, ‘It’s a book,’ then gave him an apologetic pat on his knee at his annoyed expression.
