Amanderella and the Mystery of the Disappearing Vicar Chapter 7.

Chapter 7.

 

The Tunnel myth.

 

Rev. Lollop did not move when Amanderella inclined her head politely and stepped past him into the nave. She needed space, not from the vicar, but distance from his assumptions.

Inside St Gilbert the Lame it was cool and quiet, the sort of quiet that encouraged thinking.

She walked slowly, letting her eyes adjust to the dimness. The building revealed itself in layers: Norman stone beside Tudor timber, a Victorian arch grafted onto something older, a vestry that didn’t quite align with the wall it claimed to belong to.

Amanderella paused beside a buttress that looked suspiciously newer than its neighbours.

Bricked up.

Plastered over.

Incorporated into something else.

Or simply forgotten.

Rev. Lollop had said it without meaning to, that the church was not the one Gilbert knew, that pieces had been added and removed, that something once stood where nothing now did.

She moved on. The floor dipped slightly near the chancel, not enough for a visitor to notice, but enough for someone who had spent years in old buildings to recognise the tell‑tale sag of a space beneath.

Not proof.

But possibility.

She stepped out into the churchyard. The ground behind the church sloped oddly, as though the land had settled unevenly over something long buried. And the vicarage, the new vicarage, sat at a polite distance, on a footprint that did not match the one in the old parish map she had glimpsed in the porch.

Amanderella folded her arms, thoughtful.

Two disappearances. One valley. And a landscape altered again and again.

Rev. Lollop followed her into the churchyard. The air outside was fresher, moving, carrying the faint scent of grass and damp stone. The churchyard sloped gently away toward the marshes, the grass stirring in the breeze.

Rev. Lollop hovered at her elbow, hands clasped behind his back.

“I do hope,” he said, “that I haven’t muddled things. Trogbotter was a good man. Whatever those papers say about this ‘G’, I’m sure it’s nothing to do with him.”

Amanderella didn’t answer. She was looking at the building itself.

Rev. Lollop followed her gaze and gave a small, apologetic cough.

“Of course, the church is rather… piecemeal. Rebuilt in the eighteenth century, but they kept bits of the older structure. And then the Victorians added the vestry. And the porch is Tudor. And the boiler room was meant to be temporary.”

He gestured vaguely at the jumble of stonework.

Amanderella stepped closer to the wall. A section of stone near the vestry door didn’t match the rest, newer mortar, a different pattern of weathering, a faint line where something had once been and was no longer.

“Has this always been like this?” she asked.

Rev. Lollop peered at it.

“Oh, that? No idea. Could have been bricked up when the vestry was added. Or when the old heating pipes were taken out. Or when the chancel was repaired. Hard to say. The records are… incomplete.”

Amanderella’s expression didn’t change, but she stood a little straighter.

A blocked‑up opening.

A building altered repeatedly.

A disappearance that began at a door.

Not proof.

But a direction.

Rev. Lollop, unaware of the shift, added gently: “Is something the matter?”

Amanderella’s expression did not change. She stepped closer to the wall, her fingertips brushing the line of newer mortar.

Rev. Lollop hovered beside her, still looking faintly distressed.

A firm, steady tread approached across the gravel.

Rev. Lollop straightened.

“Oh, ah, Lady Gottsnobbler, may I introduce Mr Thatcham, our churchwarden.”

Mr Thatcham, a tall, weathered man with the calm, practical air of someone who had spent a lifetime coaxing old buildings into behaving, gave Amanderella a courteous nod.

“Ma’am.”

He glanced at the wall she had been examining.

“Noticed that patch, have you? Never did match the rest. Put in sometime before my day. Or after. Records are vague.”

Rev. Lollop made a small, helpless gesture.

“Mr Thatcham knows the building better than anyone.”

The churchwarden gave a dry snort.

“Wouldn’t go that far. But I know its bad habits.”

He tapped the stone with one knuckle.

“For generations,” the churchwarden said, “villagers have sworn there’s a tunnel from the coast to the church, and another from the church to the old vicarage. Smugglers, you see. Bringing things in under the noses of the excise men.”

He gave a dry sniff.

“But no one’s ever found an entrance. Not once. Not even the boys who went poking about with candles and string. Not even the Antiquarian Society when they came with their measuring rods and tapping hammers. Not even the diocesan architect, who muttered something about ‘irregularities in the foundations’ and left before tea.”

He tapped the patched stone with one knuckle.

“Folk say this was one of the spots. Could be. Could be nothing. Hard to tell with a church that’s been pulled about as much as this one.”

Rev. Lollop winced.

“Mr Thatcham does not mean to encourage rumours.”

“Didn’t say I believed them,” the churchwarden replied mildly. “Only that folk talk. Always have.”

He stepped back, brushing dust from his hands.

“Ground dips behind the vestry, too. My grandfather said it was where something was filled in, but he never said what. Could’ve been a drain. Could’ve been a hole. Could’ve been nothing.”

He gave Amanderella another polite nod.

“If you need anything opened, Reverend, I’ll be in the porch.”

He strode away, keys jangling.

Rev. Lollop sighed.

“I do wish,” he murmured, “that people wouldn’t mention tunnels quite so freely.”

Amanderella didn’t answer. Her attention was fixed on the place where the building had been altered.