She glanced up at the bulb that had caught his attention. "So it is. I haven't had time to notice it till now. Then we can't be in the Priory, can we?"
He got up, and began to move round the small room. It was like a square cave cut out of solid stone, all except the door which was made of thick wood. "No window," he said. "We must be underground." He went to the door, and slipping his hand sideways between two of the bars of the grille, tried to push back the shutter by inserting a finger into one of the ventilation holes. He could not move it, nor could he manage to see anything through the holes.
"If we're underground that accounts for the coldness and the smell of damp," Margaret said. "Peter-you don't think - they're going to leave us here - to starve?"
"Of course not," he said instantly. He stood by the door, listening. "That noise," he said. "That's a machine and an electric one, or I've never heard one!" He stared across at his sister, dawning suspicion in his eyes. He seemed about to speak, then checked himself, and went up to one of the walls, and closely inspected the stone blocks that formed it. "I believe we're under the cellars," he said. "I'm no geologist, but this looks to me exactly the same sort of stone as that one that moved and we sealed up. We are in the Priory!"
"Right under the ground?" she asked. "Below the cellars even?"
"I'm not sure, but I think we must be. The place feels like a tomb, much more so than the cellars did." He looked round again. "Why, what fools we've been not to think of it! Didn't those old monks often have underground passages leading from the monastery to the chapel?"
"Yes, I believe they did," she said. "You think that's where we are? But this is a room!"
"Cut, if I'm not much mistaken, in the foundations of the house. I don't know much about monasteries, but I suppose the monks must have had a use for an underground room or so. Storing valuables in times of stress, and all that sort of thing."
"But the light!" she objected. "There's no electricity at the Priory."
"It must be worked by a plant. Good God!"