Emma Stonex - The Lamplighters

Bring them off quietly, Trident said. Do it discreetly. Find a boatman who’ll keep it under his cap; don’t make a fuss; don’t make a scene; nobody needs to know. And make sure the light’s all right, for God’s sake somebody make sure about that.

Three men climb, one after another. The wall on the next level is lined with detonators and charges for the fog gun. There is no sign of a struggle. Each man thinks of his home, his wife, his children if he has any, the warmth of the fire and a touch at his back: ‘Long day, love?’ The tower isn’t a place that knows families. It knows three keepers only: three keepers who are concealed here somewhere, dead. Where will they find the bodies? What state will those bodies be in?

They ascend to the third floor, to the paraffin tanks, then the fourth, where the oil for the burner is kept. One calls again, as much to ward off that taunting quiet as for any other reason. There is no indication of a getaway, no sign of flight, nothing to suggest the keepers have gone anywhere at all.

From the oil store, they mount the staircase, a cast-iron coil that runs around the inner wall all the way up to the lantern. Its banister gleams. They’re an abnormal breed, lighthouse keepers, obsessed by the intricacies of domestic detail, polishing, tidying, buffing; a lighthouse is the cleanest place you’ll ever set foot. The men check the brass for prints and find none: keepers never touch the rails on account of this diligence. Though if one had been in a hurry, if one had fallen or grasped, if one had forgotten himself due to a terrible thing… But nothing is out of the ordinary.

The men’s tread sounds the death drum, dogged and deep. Already they long for the safety of the tug and the promise of land.

To the kitchen they come. Twelve feet across and a socking weight tube set down the middle. Three cupboards are mounted on the wall, inside which are tins of food, precisely stacked: baked beans, broad beans, rice, soup, OXO cubes, luncheon meat, corned beef, pickles. On the counter sits an unopened jar of frankfurters, tightly packed like tissue in a science lab. By the window there’s a sink – red tap for rainwater, silver for fresh – and a washing-up bowl left to dry on its side. A wizened onion remains in the cavity between the inner and outer walls, on the racks the keepers use as a larder. Over the sink hangs a mirrored cabinet that doubles as their bathroom: the men find toothbrushes, combs, a bottle of Old Spice and one of Tabac. Next to that a dresser containing cutlery, plates and cups, everything organized and put away with the expected level of care. The clock on the wall has stopped at eight forty-five.

‘What’s this—?’ says the man with the moustache.

The table is laid for a meal uneaten. Two places, not three – a knife and fork each, a plate waiting for food. Two empty cups. Salt and pepper. A tube of mustard and an ashtray, cleaned. The counter is Formica, a half-moon, and fits snugly round the weight tube; there’s a bench tucked under and two chairs, one with the foam spilling out and the other positioned askew as if the person sitting in it had risen quickly.

Another man, the one with the comb-over, checks the Rayburn in case there’s something warming, but the temperature’s fallen and anyway it’s empty. Through the window they can hear the sea, sighing against the rocks below.

‘I have no idea,’ he says, and it is less an answer than an admission of general, fearful ignorance.

The men glance to the ceiling.

Nowhere to hide on a lighthouse, that’s the thing. In every room from bottom to top, it’s two strides to the weight tube and two to the other side.

Up they go to the bedroom. Three banana bunks curved round the shape of the wall, each with its curtain open. The beds are fastidiously made, with sheets drawn tight, pillows and camel-coloured blankets scratchy to the touch. Above are two shorter bunks for visitors and a ladder for climbing. Under the stairs, a storage hollow with its curtain pulled. The comb-over draws it, breath held, but all he finds is a cowhide jacket and two hanging shirts.

Seven floors up and they’re a hundred feet above sea level. In the living room there’s a television set and three worn Ercol armchairs. On the floor by the biggest, they’re guessing it’s the Principal Keeper’s, is a cup with an inch of cold tea in the bottom. Behind the tube is the flue coming up from downstairs. Perhaps the PK could come down to them now; he’s been up in the lantern cleaning the mantle. The others are there too, out on the gallery. Sorry they didn’t hear.

The wall clock here reads the same, stopped time. Quarter to nine.

Double doors access the service room on the eighth. Feasibly the dead men could have been here – the cavity would have stopped the smell escaping. But, as they have come to expect, it is deserted. They are running out of tower. Only the light left. Nine floors found and nine floors empty. Up to the top and there she is, the Maiden lantern, a giant gas mantle encased by lenses fragile as birds’ wings.

‘That’s it. They’re gone.’

Feathery clouds advance on the horizon. The breeze freshens, switching direction, flicking ridges of white onto the jumping waves. It’s as if those keepers were never here in the first place. That, or they climbed to the top and simply flew away.

Adventure novelist Dan Sharp is out to discover the truth behind one of the greatest maritime mysteries of our age. Sharp, the author of naval action bestsellers Eye of the Storm , Quiet Water and Dreadnought Down , grew up by the sea and has long been inspired by the unsolved vanishing. Diving into factual writing for the first time, he explains: ‘The story of the Maiden Rock has captivated me since my childhood. I want to shed new light on the matter by speaking to the people at the heart of it.’

Twenty years ago, in the winter of 1972, three lighthouse keepers disappeared from a Cornish sea tower, miles from Land’s End. In their wake, they left behind a series of clues: an entrance door locked from the inside, two clocks stopped at the same time, and a table laid for a meal uneaten. The Principal Keeper’s weather log described a storm circling the tower – but the skies, inexplicably, had been clear.

What strange fate befell these doomed men? Sharp intends to find out. He adds: ‘This riddle has everything a fiction writer looks for – drama, mystery, peril on the seas. Only it’s real. I believe every puzzle can be solved: it’s a question of looking in the right places. For my money, someone out there knows more than we realize.’

So this is it, she thought, as she watched him park his car a little way down the street, a Morris Minor in racing green with its exhaust hanging off the back like a cocked tobacco pipe. Helen wondered why he drove such a thing. He must be rich, if the claims on his books were to be believed: number-one bestselling author and all that.

She spotted him immediately, even though he hadn’t given her a description over the telephone. Perhaps she should have asked for one because you couldn’t be too careful about letting strangers into your home. It had to be him, though. He wore a navy-blue pea coat and a fixed, scholarly frown, as if he spent hours hunched over manuscripts that never quite gave him the time of day. He was younger than she had imagined, not yet forty.