The Complete Kate Benedict Cozy British Mysteries

by Carrie Bedford

  I shut my eyes, trying to blot out the sight of that knife and the violence of the blow. Through closed eyelids, I sensed the sky darken, felt the air quicken around me. The rain Lachlan had predicted fell in huge drops that splattered onto my rubber boots and waxed jacket.

  Standing, I bent my head against the deluge and turned back the way I’d come. Within minutes, I was lost. Multiple tracks webbed the moorland, and fog and low cloud deleted any view of the castle or the rocky outcrops behind it. I had my mobile phone in my pocket, but a quick check confirmed that there was no service out here. There hadn’t been inside the house either.

  Flustered, I picked a path and hurried along it. Ten minutes later, I almost bumped right into the strange rock formation, the Brynjarr Stone. Whether it had magical properties or not, I was overjoyed to find it. From there, I could follow the trail that ran alongside the water until I came to the track between the two granite boulders. Although that narrow shortcut made me nervous, it would take me safely to the castle grounds. I was drenched and still rattled by the vision; the faster I reached the shelter of the house, the better.

  Ten minutes later, I realized I must have missed the passageway that led through the rocks. I turned to retrace my steps towards the end of the loch just as thunder rolled overhead and a flash of lightning split the sky. The rain fell in torrents, stabbing deep pockmarks into the surface of the grey water.

  Amidst the tumult, I heard another sound. A voice. Startled, I strained to listen. And then I realized it was Josh calling my name. I shouted back over the din and stumbled along the trail. Soon, Josh’s arms enfolded me, and I felt the warmth of his chest against mine.

  “There, it’s all right,” he said. “You’re soaked through. Let’s get you back to the house.”

  “How did you know to come and find me?” I asked through chattering teeth.

  “We all took a break from the meeting. I wanted to talk with you, to bring you up to date, but I couldn’t find you. Then I saw Lachlan in the entry hall, and he told me he’d met you out on the moor. He said he warned you of the incoming storm.”

  “He did warn me. But he didn’t come out to look for me, did he?”

  6

  After changing into dry clothes, I felt considerably better, but the memory of what I’d seen on the moors still roiled my stomach. Josh paced the bedroom while I told him about the ghostly encounter and the violent murder. I knew it must be hard for him to listen, outlandish as the story was, but he didn’t interrupt and he didn’t question what I’d seen.

  “Have you been out there? You’ve seen the ruins?” I asked.

  He nodded. “I can’t say I’ve ever really stopped to look, but I’ve passed by a few times. I seem to remember Lachlan saying it was a shepherd’s cottage, but I don’t know when it was abandoned.”

  “It didn’t look like a cottage,” I said, remembering my vision and the heavy wooden door half-opened in a carved archway. “Could there have been a church there once?”

  “I don’t know, but there should be records somewhere in the library, I’d think, or Fergus might know.”

  “That would be a good start. If we could pin down the likely dates of construction, I’d at least have an idea of when those people were living.”

  “You’re going to try solve a centuries-old murder?” Josh asked.

  “I’d like to know what happened. Why did the man in the black robe kill that woman, and what was the book she was holding?” The skin prickled on my arms when I recalled the expression of desperation on her face.

  Josh stopped pacing and leaned against the windowsill. “Kate, one of the many things I love about you is that you can you care about people. But you can’t help that woman, whoever she was. And more to the point, unraveling a past mystery won’t save Fergus. We need to stay focused until we know what it is that threatens him, which, in my mind, is something to do with the sale of the estate.”

  I felt his eyes searching my face as I perched on the edge of the bed to pull on my boots. “You think I’m barmy, right?” I said.

  “No.”

  “You know I’m grateful to you for putting up with my insanity,” I said. “And I agree we should be working on saving Fergus. But I have no idea where to start. It’s so frustrating.”

  “Yes, it is. I feel bloody useless.” He took a look at his watch. “I should get back.”

  “Oh heavens, I’m sorry. I didn’t even ask how the meeting is going?”

  “It’s not bad, under the circumstances. Stanton may be a small, skinny guy, but he has an incredibly outsized ego. Truly epic. He has the reputation of being a tyrant to his employees, and I think he forgets we don’t work for him. But still, he seems intent on making the purchase happen, and his assistants are cooperative. But Duncan’s not helping. He’s being very argumentative, picking on every detail. At this rate, it’ll take weeks to resolve all the issues.”

  “How’s Fergus holding up?” I asked.

  “More or less as you’d expect. When they ask questions about the state of the building, he flinches as though they’re slapping him in the face. But he shouldn’t feel so guilty about it all. The decline has been centuries in the making, and began long before he inherited the castle. Duncan doesn’t seem to realize that his father, had he lived, would have faced the same dilemma.”

  The zip on my boot stuck, and I yanked on it hard, pinching my finger in the process. I examined the red mark on my skin. “I know I raised this earlier and you don’t want to talk about it, but you have to recognize that Duncan has a motive. If anything were to happen to Fergus, Duncan would inherit the estate, right? And if he inherited it now, and sold it to Stanton or someone like him, he’d receive a large sum of money, which would be his to keep. Or he could do all that stuff he was talking about earlier, developing the estate and investing the income. It was easy to see Fergus didn’t want to discuss it. So Duncan might decide to force the issue.”

  Josh pushed away from the window. “I’m not going to talk about this, Kate. Duncan is a hothead, but you can’t seriously believe that he’d kill Fergus?”

  “I know it’s a stretch, but it’s all we’ve got. I’m just pointing out that Duncan stands to benefit if Fergus dies. So far, we don’t know who else would.”

  “But why now? Duncan has always been the beneficiary. He could have killed Fergus any time in the last ten years if that’s what he intended to do.”

  “Because the sale has introduced an element of uncertainty. Before, it was accepted that Fergus would live here, maintain the estate and pass it on to Duncan, who could then decide what to do with it. He could keep it and develop it, or sell it and capitalize the assets. Either way, he’d have some control over his inheritance.”

  Josh nodded. “True, but still, it’s a bit far-fetched to imagine Duncan committing murder.” He looked at his watch. “I need to go. I’m doing my best to moderate the proceedings.”

  I stood up. “Come on then, I’ll walk over there with you.”

  Before we left, I checked that my iPhone was still in my pocket. Josh noticed. “There’s no phone service or Wi-Fi because the walls are so thick,” he said.

  “I know, but it has a camera. I’d like to take some photos of the building. How does Fergus manage without a smartphone or a computer? That would drive me crazy.” I grinned at Josh. “Crazier than I already am, that is.”

  We walked out, closing the bedroom door behind us, and took the stairs down to the gallery.

  “Actually, Fergus does have a PC and an ancient dial-up connection,” Josh said. “It’s in his office, and I’ve used it a few times. The computer’s as old as the castle, but it works. If you want to use it, he won’t mind at all. The password is ‘bannockburn.’ ”

  “Bannockburn?”

  “Fergus is a great fan of Robert the Bruce. Hence the dog’s name, Arbroath. The Declaration of Arbroath was the Scottish declaration of independence, written in 1320. And the Battle of Bannockburn, June 1314, was a great Scottish vict
ory over the English.”

  “Thank you for the history lesson. Although, in spite of what you think about my English education, I knew most of that already.”

  “Sassenachs,” he muttered. “Think they know everything.” His smile faded and he grabbed my hand. “What will you do for the next few hours? Promise me you won’t go back out on the moors by yourself.”

  I slowed down, thinking about how best to spend my time.

  “I realize this isn’t quite what we planned for this weekend,” he said. “I thought we’d be out hiking or sitting in the village pub today. Once this meeting is over, we’ll have some time together.”

  I gave him a quick hug. “Don’t worry about me. You stay close to Fergus, and I’ll keep pondering possible threats. I’ll go to the library and dig around. Maybe something will jump out at me.”

  “Hopefully not. You’ve had one scare already today.”

  “Very funny.”

  When we reached the Great Hall, Josh went inside and closed the door. I set off, hoping I could find the library without getting lost. As Fergus had said during my introductory tour, the castle was huge, and the layout was rather eccentric. Corridors dead-ended unexpectedly, and there were at least two staircases. But I soon recognized the wide, green-carpeted hallway that led to the library. At the far end of the corridor was the door that Josh had told me led to the abandoned east wing. I looked more closely. It seemed that the door was ajar. Yet Josh had said it had been shut off for years.

  I tiptoed up the hallway. The door was open a couple of inches. I listened but didn’t hear anything, so I pushed it open slowly and peered inside. A bright beam from a torch illuminated the furthest wall of a pitch-dark room. Before I could step back, the light turned in my direction, blinding me. I shielded my eyes with one hand.

  “Who’s there?” I asked.

  No one answered, and I asked again. “Who are you?” I positioned myself in the door frame, ready to run if I had to.

  “It’s Lucy.”

  “Lucy? What are you doing in here? How did you get in?”

  When she lowered the torch, my eyes adjusted to the gloom. In fact, the darkness wasn’t as profound as I’d first thought. Gaps in the roof and chinks in the boards at the windows let in slivers of grey light. The room was large and square. On one wall was a limestone fireplace that had once been handsome, but the chimney had crumbled, leaving a rockslide of sooty bricks on the hearth. At the end of the room was a painted door, sage green and decorated with pink and white flowers. In the middle of the floor was a hole six feet wide with jagged edges. I looked up. The high ceiling above us had collapsed, leaving only exposed beams and, above them, panels of plywood that filled the spaces where the roof tiles had shattered. That must have been where the bomb crashed through. Decades of Scottish rain and snow had wreaked havoc on the damaged building, filling the air with the stench of damp and mold.

  Surprisingly, the furnishings were mostly intact; a tattered sofa faced the ruined fireplace, and several side tables held ornaments and a clock. An armoire and several chests filled another wall while a desk was located under one of the boarded-up windows. Lucy was standing next to the desk, her hand on the closed roll-top.

  “How did you get in here?” I asked.

  “It’s incredible, isn’t it? Like that ghost ship, the Marie Celeste.” She walked slowly across the room, skirting the treacherous hole in the floor to reach the green door. Grasping the handle, she turned it, and the door creaked open.

  “Lucy,” I began, but she was on her way through. I went after her.

  On the other side of the door was an oak plank landing, leaning at an unnatural angle towards a staircase that led downwards. Mounds of greying plaster littered the landing and the staircase.

  “What a mess,” I whispered.

  “What happened here?” Lucy asked, but more to herself than to me. I answered anyway, relating the story Josh had told me about the bomb. It had crashed through the roof, down through the salon, and had come to rest on the ground floor. “It didn’t explode,” I said. “Josh said the army came in to defuse it and took it away. But the impact was substantial enough to wreck the entire east wing. And one person died.”

  “So this place has been closed off for more than seventy years,” Lucy said. “Fascinating. Who died?”

  “Josh said it was his great-grandfather’s sister. That’s one reason it was abandoned. Didn’t Duncan tell you about it?”

  “No, it never came up in conversation. Why would it?”

  A splash of color caught my eye, and I ventured closer to find a child’s toy, half buried in dust and plaster, a wooden train covered in flaking blue paint. I wondered if it had once belonged to Josh’s grandfather, and thought of taking it back to show Josh. But when I straightened up, I saw that Lucy was moving again, picking her way down the stairs. The banister had been destroyed, leaving only a couple of spindles that rose like bony fingers from the rubble.

  A loud crack made me jump. One of the stair treads had collapsed, the wood splintering beneath Lucy’s feet. She yelped and scrabbled at the wall to stop herself from falling.

  “Lucy, come back up,” I said. “It’s dangerous.”

  “It’s okay,” she said, edging down more slowly, one shoulder against the wall for support. I sighed and followed, curious to see the extent of the damage, and even more curious to find out how— and why— Lucy had opened the door.

  On the ground floor, a spacious hall appeared relatively intact. Octagonal green and white tiles, chipped in places, covered the floor, while the domed ceiling was painted with a chocolate-box scene of cherubs cavorting amidst greenery and roses. Off the hall, we found six rooms, all of them still furnished as bedrooms, with rugs on the floor and curtains at the windows. I heard a rustling noise behind me and swung around to see a mouse scampering to the shelter of a chewed-up armchair. Startled, I brushed up against one of the silky drapes, and the yellow fabric fell apart, cascading to the floor in a shower of tarnished gold.

  “Lucy, how did you get in, and why?” I asked again. My first impression of her had been that she was nervous, perhaps shy, but now I wondered. She seemed to have no fear of rotten floorboards. Or mice and spiders.

  “The door was unlocked,” she answered. “I couldn’t resist taking a peek. But we should go back before we’re missed. Oh, and we probably shouldn’t mention this to anyone. Duncan would be cross if he knew I’d been here, with it being so dangerous, you know.”

  It seemed to me that Duncan was cross all the time, and it puzzled me that Lucy would put up with him. I didn’t answer her though. I certainly intended to tell Josh about my visit to the east wing.

  With another look around the destroyed accommodations, we started back up the stairs, both of us hugging the wall and stepping gingerly around the holes. When we reached the main salon again, I gazed up through the joists to the roughhewn planks that blocked the void created by the German bomb. Thank goodness it hadn’t actually exploded. There would be nothing left. Knowing what I did about the precarious finances of the estate, I understood why repairing the wing had never risen to the top of the priority list, but it was sad to see the ruins of rooms where the family once lived and slept. If Stanton Knox didn’t buy the castle, perhaps this is what it would all look like in ten years’ time.

  Lucy brushed a cobweb from her skirt. She looked at me, her blonde head tilted to one side. “And what were you doing here?” she asked. “Suffering from the same curiosity as me?”

  “No, I was on my way to the library and saw the door ajar,” I said.

  “Anyway, where is everyone? Are they still in the meeting then?” she asked. “With what’s his name, that Silicon Valley entrepreneur?”

  “Stanton Knox. Yes, they’re still discussing the contract and will be for some time.”

  “What are you looking for?” she asked.

  “Looking for?” How could she know I was searching for clues that might reveal the danger to Fergus? Then I re
alized she couldn’t know that. “Just a book to read,” I said.

  “Anything in particular?”

  “No.” I didn’t feel I needed to tell her I was looking for something to explain my bizarre vision. I turned to walk up the hallway, and Lucy fell in step beside me. The interior of the castle felt warm and cozy compared to the chill in the damaged wing.

  “Duncan said there are some wonderful collections in the library,” Lucy said. “Including a whole section of books on the Wars of Scottish Independence. I’d like to take a look around as well if you don’t mind the company.”

  “Of course,” I said, leading the way into the library, where we separated, each doing a circuit of the shelves. I scanned the titles of an extensive collection of science and astronomy books, and moved on until I reached the history section, where Lucy was kneeling, examining books on the lower shelves. I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for, but one volume, A Short History of Castle Aiten, caught my eye. I eased it off the shelf and carried it to an armchair. It turned out to be a description of the construction of the castle over the centuries. Perhaps it would provide some information on the building out on the moor. I flipped pages, looking for a mention of the estate’s cottages and outbuildings. But then I stopped. Looking for an explanation of my strange vision wasn’t going to help Fergus. I needed to focus, as Josh had said earlier. With the book open on my lap, I struggled to come up with a strategy. What I should do, I realized after a few minutes, was talk to people. If someone out there intended harm to Fergus, I needed to find him before he could act. Reading books was not the solution.

  When I stood up, Lucy glanced over from her exploration of the history section. “Are you leaving already?” she asked.