The stone stairs leading up from the washhouse were narrow, steep. Then it coated with a thin, glistening glaze of frozen water drops. The handrail was an iron rod bolted into the wet mortar, so cold that when Len’s wool-gloved fingers touched it, the moisture in the wool froze instantly to the metal. It pulled away with a faint tearing sound as he stepped upward.
Len kept his sounding pole tapping two steps ahead. His Road Sense shook through the ash shaft, reading the solid dark rock foundation beneath the yellow brick. No voids, no hollow under-road drains beneath the treads, but above their heads, the floorboards of the main east hallway groaned under the spreading and contraction of freezing timber.
The air grew steadily colder as they climbed.
In the washhouse below, the leftover heat from yesterday’s boilers had kept the heat hovering near forty degrees. Here, at the threshold of the ground floor, the draft was below freezing. It smelled of harsh cleaning acid, frozen lime. The flat, coppery reek of untreated lung infection. Through the cracked transom of the service door, Len could see down the central hall. Thirty yards of unlit hallway, flanked on both sides by closed pine doors, the floorboards dusted with white bitter salt powder that had blown in through broken window panes.
