“Yes, Spears, you certainly may. Come here and lie beside me and look up. You, my dear man, are in for a revelation. You asked me if I knew anything and yes, I most definitely know something now, as does the Duchess.”
Some ten minutes later Badger looked into The Green Cube Room, looking for Mr. Spears. He blinked. Mr. Spears, the Duchess, and Mrs. Wyndham were stretched out on their backs, all staring up at the ceiling. Esmee, the earl’s cat, was sprawled atop Spears’s chest, quite at her ease.
“What in the name of the devil and all his minions is going on here?”
“Mr. Badger, just excellent. Mrs. Wyndham doesn’t know everything, but she’s very close. Come here and lie beside me, and we’ll tell you.”
When Marcus strolled by a few moments later, looking for his wife, he heard Spears saying, “But who is the monster?”
He looked into the Green Cube Room and stared. The Duchess said without moving, “Marcus, do come here. We’ve nearly got the Wyndham treasure solved. Come and lie here beside me.”
He obliged her and stared up at the paintings. “Good God. I’ve looked at all those scenes over the years, admired them and the brilliance of the paint, the skill of the artist or artists, but I never really looked at them, never even thought to—”
“I know,” the Duchess said. “Me neither. Even if we’d known about the Wyndham treasure, I doubt we’d have connected it up with these paintings. But your mama did. That’s why she was lying here three days ago. She realized there just might be a connection between the treasure clues and these paintings. Do you know how old this room is, Marcus?”
“We’re in the oldest part of the house. I believe the Green Cube Room was one of just a handful left standing after the fire early in the last century.”
“Actually, my dear son, I just read all the journals left by Arthur Wyndham, who was then the third Viscount Barresford. The most god-awful boring accounts of his life you can imagine, but he was informative in the third diary. The fire was in 1723 and most of the Elizabethan manor was destroyed, all except for the Green Cube Room and the library, where you found the tome. They were literally the only rooms in this entire wing that held together. Arthur Wyndham said that distinctly. He wrote in his diary: ‘I have only the Green Cube Room and my library left and even they are so blackened with smoke I wonder if they will ever be as they were again. Although they have never been to my liking, they did survive and thus I’ll return them to what they were.’
“Arthur Wyndham also wrote that his father and his grandfather had both admired the paintings on the ceilings and so
he had them restored. Thank God he was a sensitive man, else all would have been lost.”
Marcus said thoughtfully, “Why is it called the Green Cube Room? I remember wondering as a child and even asking, but no one knew, not even my uncle.”
“I asked too,” the Duchess said, coming up onto her elbow, felt the pulling in her side and quickly lay back down again. “No one knew. Sampson suggested it might refer to the old panes of glass in the windows. He believed it likely the windows were mullioned and perhaps set with green squares of glass.”
“Yes, green glass, that would be it.” This was from Maggie, who was sitting with her hands wrapped around her knees behind Spears. “There’s something else. The room itself—don’t you see? It’s perfectly square.”
“Ah,” said Badger. “When the sun shines through the green glass into a perfectly square room then—”
“Yes, you’d have an illusion of a green cube, Mr. Badger,” Spears said. “Colored glass was quite popular years ago.”
“That could be it,” Patricia Wyndham said. “All old houses have rooms named the oddest things, like the Presence Chamber at Hardwick Hall, a grand room that’s so cold you shiver the whole time you’re in it.”
“Yes,” Badger said. “That’s from a ghost, no doubt.”
“Then there’s the Dial Room at Old Place Lindfield—I haven’t the foggiest notion where they got that name—then there’s the Punch Room at Cotehele House, where, I suppose, gentlemen imbibed liberally.”
“Yes,” Marcus said. “I think Maggie’s right. She’s solved the key to the name of this room.”
“Ah, look, Mr. Spears,” Badger said, pointing straight upward, “I see the well clearly now, and if I’m not mistaken there’s your bucket, Duchess, wood and bound in leather. But where’s that damnable monster?”
“Offstage, to the left, or nowhere at all,” Marcus said. “I’ve studied the rest of the scenes and there’s no horn-headed beast, no vile green gargoyle, nothing at all.”
“Oh there’s a monster, all right,” the Duchess said. “He’s there, even though we can’t see him. I can feel him, can’t you? Just look at the young man’s face in that final scene. He knows something awful is about to happen. It has to be the monster.”
“So,” Patricia Wyndham said, “in the first scene, our maiden is sitting on the edge of the well. The young man is playing his lute for her. He fetches another lute from the oak branches overhead. He then presses the lutes together and we’ve got our Janus-faced nines or Janus-faced bass clefs, and as the Duchess says, the monster’s there, just not seen by us. That takes care of all the clues.”
“Does it cover everything in your dream, Duchess?” Marcus lightly stroked his fingertips over her arm.
“I believe so,” she said, giving him a smile that made her mother-in-law momentarily forget the clues and the treasure and stare at them with delight and relief.
“That treacherous monk in my dream, or whatever it was, even hinted that the Janus-faced nines weren’t necessarily nines.”
“So much roundabout flummery,” Patricia Wyndham said. “Why didn’t they just give the treasure over to Lockridge Wyndham? So much nonsense and convolution and confusion. No wonder none of the succeeding generations of Wyndhams found a thing, and even forgot about it.”
“I daresay, madam,” Spears said, “that the monks weren’t alone in determining the disposal of the treasure. The Wyndham ancestor was certainly involved in hiding it, in providing clues to its whereabouts. Obviously he couldn’t show himself with sudden boundless wealth or the king and Cromwell would have heard of it. Given the uncertainty of the times, they would have most certainly removed the treasure, and quite probably his head along with it.”