He’d have better luck yelling for Shipka.
Yelling for anyone.
He could try firing a couple of shots in the air, but they would almost certainly be put down to someone hunting—as he’d done the day before when he’d heard rifle shots.
Or he could try shooting the lock off the door. That’s what he’d do if this was a movie. In real life, he wasn’t eager to risk getting hit by a ricochet, and the chances of damaging the keeper plate and locking mechanism were higher than managing to somehow disable the latch.
As a last resort he could break the window and climb out, but that really would have to be a last resort. He’d as soon cut a hand off as destroy an irreplaceable work of art.
The remaining options were even sketchier. Rely on Shipka to come looking for him eventually? Wait for whoever had locked him in to come looking for him eventually? And if no one had locked him in? Wait for Barnaby to take the dog for another walk? Wait for someone, anyone to stroll by?
What the hell was the point of locking him in? Was it supposed to be a prank? A threat?
He really couldn’t picture Barnaby tiptoeing back to lock him in the family chapel, and who else would have a motive?
Was this even the Hovey/Durrand family chapel?
He went back to the tomb and looked for a name. But there was only the carved inscription on the lid
.
Blessed sleep to which we all return.
Yeah, hopefully. And ideally in our own bed.
He took a couple of frustrated turns around his cell, noting a couple of very large, though apparently abandoned, spider webs over the door.
“I don’t believe this.”
One thing he could do, since he was stuck here anyway. He could make sure that whoever was in that tomb—or sarcophagus, to be more precise—was who it was supposed to be, and not a missing German art student.
Louis Comfort Tiffany had died in 1933, which gave Jason a rough idea of the age of the sarcophagus and its contents. He was looking for a body or, more likely, a coffin dating circa 1878 thru the early 1930s. He knelt down, put his shoulder to the heavy marble lid, and shoved. Lifting it was out of the question, but he could, in theory, lever it—
The lid scraped a few inches sideways with a grating, stony scrape.
A peculiar, almost sweet odor wafted out. Not the stench of recent decay, thank God, but Jason’s stomach did an unhappy flop all the same.
The opening was wide enough to look inside. He turned on the flashlight utility of his phone and shone the light into the stone interior.
He could make out the glimmer of black lacquer and dull gold fittings. A coffin. An old coffin.
So far so good.
The coffin appeared to be firmly sealed.
Even better.
Of course, if someone was really determined to conceal a murder, it would be possible to open the coffin and dump Havemeyer’s body in with Great-Great Grandma Ermine or whoever this was. But determining that would require a court order, and no way in hell was that going to happen.
Besides, why bother desecrating the family tomb when there were so many other, more permanent ways on this island to dispose of a body?
No. It had been worth checking, but no.
Jason dragged the heavy lid back into place and settled on the floor leaning back against the sarcophagus and staring out the grating at the fog-obscured world beyond.
Back to his original question. Now what?
Okay. If someone had locked him in, it had been with some purpose in mind. Correct? Why not wait and find out exactly what the plan was?