The Dead of Winter

by Jane A. Adams

  ‘Her portrait is on the first floor landing,’ Rina commented. ‘She looks very young.’

  ‘She was twenty when she married Albert Southam. He was fifty-three.’

  ‘And she left?’

  ‘The morning after the seance, very early. Pym’s body was found after she’d gone. She never came back here.’

  ‘Where did she go?’

  ‘Italy,’ Robin said. ‘The family had a villa in Rome or somewhere close. She went there and never came back home again. Albert Southam died five years after, and this place was rented out. She didn’t even come back for the funeral. The room was walled up, and it was a condition of the tenancy that it was never opened up again – and it wasn’t. Not until a month ago when Melissa got the builders in to take the false wall down. The room was just as they’d left it. Table, chairs, even what was left of a bowl of roses on the table. Melissa took pictures as the work was being done.’

  ‘I’d like to see those,’ Rina said thoughtfully.

  ‘Pity she didn’t get someone to film it.’ Robin was regretful. ‘Surely there was someone here with a video camera, or even a mobile phone.’

  Viv laughed. ‘Well, anyway, the room was opened and the re-enactors started to prepare.’ She pulled a face. ‘We got here two days ago to set up, but no one’s told us anything much yet.’

  Joy left Tim’s side and came over to join them. ‘He’s talking shop,’ she said. ‘I’ll not get a word in.’ She didn’t sound as though she minded too much. ‘I read through your stuff,’ she told Viv. ‘I didn’t realize that Mrs Southam was the medium.’

  Rina had missed that. Joy had evidently been more assiduous in her research.

  Viv nodded. ‘She was at it before they married. Only private parties and stuff, not in public, though there were impresarios who tried to persuade her father and offered big money. She came from what they called an “old” family, lots of tradition and no cash, but then she married Albert Southam and I suppose that sorted that.’

  ‘They met at a seance,’ Robin said. ‘I’m not sure if that’s my idea of an ideal first date.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Dinner in a couple of minutes,’ he added. ‘I’ll give you the quick biographical tour before we go in, so at least you’ll know who’s sitting next to you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Rina said. ‘I think that might be a good idea. Start with the man Tim is talking to.’

  ‘Ah, well, I’m not surprised they’re so engrossed. That’s Jay Statham. He’s American—’

  ‘African American,’ Viv corrected him with a little giggle. ‘You know how Toby likes us to be politically correct. He’s a nice guy,’ she added. ‘Jay, I mean.’

  ‘And Toby is not?’ Joy evidently couldn’t resist. She’d spent far too much time with her, Rina thought.

  ‘Oh, he’s OK, he’s just a bit . . . Anyway, Jay Stratham. Magician and technical adviser. He writes books about the history of magic and also advises film companies and stuff. We’re lucky to have him here. He’s going to be the fourth camera on the night. I was just standing in for him today.’

  ‘What will you be doing?’ Joy asked.

  ‘I think, if I remember the seating plan right, sitting between Rina and that man over there who’s talking to Toby.’

  Blond, close cropped hair, his expensive suit cut to emphasize the musculature beneath, Rina felt an immediate sense of familiarity. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘That’s Terry Beal, isn’t it? The one who does all those action films.’

  ‘Didn’t know you watched that sort of thing, Rina.’ Joy was amused.

  ‘The twins like them.’

  ‘Stephen and Matthew?’

  ‘No, dear, Bethany and Eliza. They like all that overblown muscularity. Some things don’t change even when you reach the age to know better. What’s he here for?’

  ‘His agent got wind of what we were doing and arranged it,’ Viv said. ‘I think he’s playing an exorcist in his next film or something. Over there, the Asian man is Rav Pinner. His dad is English or Welsh, I forget. Anyway, he’s a physicist, he’s a member of one of those debunking groups, but the old man he’s talking to is Edwin Holmes—’

  ‘Grand old man of psychic research,’ Robin said. ‘I’m quoting Toby there. He’s lovely, and he and Rav seem to be really good friends even if they do sit up all night arguing.’

  ‘And playing poker,’ Viv added. ‘Rina, just in case you’re tempted, don’t. They are scary good, they really are.’

  ‘And the girl standing next to the middle-aged man?’ The pair of them were standing in the corner of the room, observing. Occasionally, the man had spoken to the girl, but she seemed almost to be ignoring him.

  ‘Oh, yes, them.’ Viv frowned. ‘Sorry, he gives me the creeps. If you had to describe a stereotyped shrink then he would be it. You get the feeling he’s judging you all the time. Anyway, that’s the famous professor David Franklin. Gail is the medium; she’s one of his research students. I think Toby mentioned that?’

  Rina nodded, recalling that he had said something about her. She didn’t look comfortable with her mentor, Rina thought. In fact, she looked as though she’d rather be just about anywhere else.

  Still full of misgiving for the weekend, Rina could not help but be intrigued by the company and speculate as to how events might unfold. It would, as she had said to Joy, be interesting if nothing else.

  Out in the hall the handbell rang and then Melissa appeared. ‘Dinner is ready,’ she said. ‘Sorry it’s a few minutes late, but the rest of the temporary staff don’t get here until morning, so I’m pretty much it.’

  They followed her through from the anteroom in which they had been chatting to the formal dining room.

  ‘Do you happen to know who else is on my corridor?’ Rina asked Viv. She had knocked on the door of the room opposite hers before coming down, but had received no reply.

  ‘You’re on the nursery floor, aren’t you? I don’t think there’s anyone else up there. Melissa said the renovations are only part complete on that floor.’ She glanced curiously at Rina. ‘Any particular reason?’

  ‘No, not really. I just noticed that the door along from mine was open.’

  ‘Probably Melissa,’ Robin speculated. ‘She’s still using a lot of the un-renovated rooms for storage.’

  ‘Probably was, then,’ Rina agreed, but something, she felt, was wrong with that analysis. Melissa was a bustler: she scurried and hurried and made noise wherever she went. Some people moved quietly and calmly, some did not – and Melissa was definitely a did not. If Melissa had been in that room, Rina would have heard her.

  FIVE

  Aikensthorpe, 1870:

  It had been only a few weeks after their return from honeymoon that Elizabeth had been told about the Reverend Spinelli. Ellen Creedy had been so desperate and so distressed when she had come to see her new young mistress that Elizabeth had felt bound to do something.

  ‘Those that were with him said he told them,’ Ellen whispered. ‘Mr Creedy swore that he’d been shot at, that it wasn’t his weapon that went off.’

  ‘Who on earth would shoot your husband?’ Elizabeth had, at first been reluctant to listen. Albert was doing all he could to help the family: he had kept a roof over their heads at no rent and given them the promised pension – more than most employers would have done, Elizabeth well knew.

  ‘He said it, ma’am, he told them. Oh Mrs Southam, forgive me, but I can’t get out of my head that he was killed and that the man who killed him is still out there.’

  ‘Did he name someone?’

  Mrs Creedy nodded emphatically. She leaned forward and whispered a name that at the time meant nothing to Elizabeth. Spinelli.

  ‘I will look into this, Mrs Creedy,’ Elizabeth had promised. If nothing else it would add a little excitement, she thought, to a life which had proved dull since their return from Europe.

  Later, she had summoned those employees who had been there on the day of Creedy’s death and asked them to confirm what his wid
ow had said.

  ‘And what do you think?’ she had asked both the estate manager and the head gardener who had been first on the scene and watched the gamekeeper die.

  The gardener shuffled his feet, twisting his cap between his hands. He shook his head. ‘I saw nothing, Mrs Southam, nor heard nothing either.’

  ‘You can go, Michael,’ George Weston, the manager of her husband’s estate, told the man.

  Elizabeth opened her mouth to protest, but a slight shake of Weston’s head caused her to hesitate and keep silent until the man had scurried away.

  ‘Mr Weston?’

  ‘Please understand, Mrs Southam, that you cannot expect those who are vulnerable to the wrath of their superiors to speak freely. I will confirm Creedy’s words, but I do ask that you leave the servants out of the matter. For their sake.’

  Elizabeth frowned. ‘Very well, Mr Weston, and what will you tell me?’

  Weston hesitated for a moment, and then he said, ‘Creedy’s weapon was un-loaded when I took it from his hand. It had not been fired.’

  ‘You lied to the police?’

  ‘I lied to the police. I perjured myself at the inquest. Creedy asked me to do so. I did not see fit to deny the wishes of a dying man, especially as I fully understood his reasoning.’

  Elizabeth rang the bell and ordered the maid to bring them both tea.

  ‘Sit down, Mr Weston,’ Elizabeth commanded. ‘And you will explain your reasoning to me.’

  It was after nine by the time Rina headed back to her room. She had decided she would call Mac and ask him to look some things up for her on his computer. She had become used to having Internet access this past year and really missed it now. She supposed she could have asked Melissa if there was a terminal she could use, but really didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that she was checking up on her fellow guests and doing a bit of her own research to supplement Viv’s very able appraisal. It didn’t seem very polite, apart from anything else. She’d been relieved to have been seated at dinner with Joy and Tim, and their other table companions, Rav and Terry, had proved to be amiable and easy. Much to her surprise, Terry Beal, internationally acclaimed action hero, more famous for his muscles than his brain, was a bright, intelligent soul who had been far more interested in finding out about his fellow diners than talking about his acting career. Best of all, he knew of Rina. Her lead role in the TV series Lydia Marchant Investigates was familiar to him and affectionately recalled.

  ‘I used to watch it with my mother, and now I catch it on reruns when I’m travelling. You’d be amazed at how many languages it’s been dubbed into or subtitled for.’

  Actually, Rina thought, she knew precisely how many – and picked up a nice little royalty cheque on a regular basis. Lydia Marchant had paid for Peverill Lodge in the first place; now she did her bit to help with the running of it, and Rina was profoundly grateful to her alter ego.

  ‘It must have been hard to give it up. What did it run for? Ten years, twelve?’

  ‘Eleven series,’ Rina told him. ‘And three films, but it had run its course by the time it was finally axed. You know, there was a twelfth series commissioned?’

  ‘No, I didn’t realize that. What happened?’

  ‘Oh, change of mind at the top. Some new executives drafted in wanted to modernize, and apparently Lydia Marchant was too old-fashioned for them. Every so often someone will talk about a revival – I’ve even had a couple of meetings about it – but I doubt anything will ever happen.’

  Terry Beal had looked keenly at her. ‘Would you want to?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say no. It could be fun.’

  ‘It could indeed.’ He flashed a smile and leaned across the table. ‘Leave it with me,’ he said, and Rina had smiled back, trying to ignore the frisson of excitement at the thought that he might in fact be able to do something. It would be fun, she thought, after all this time.

  Rina arrived at the final landing and, on impulse, turned off the light so that she could see out of the large window. The rain had ceased, the sky cleared and she could now see the two wings leading back from the main body of the house and the outbuildings Melissa had told her had been the stables and accommodation for live-in outdoor staff. There was a yard beyond, but Rina’s view of this was blocked by the tall, pitched roof of the carriage house. All of this, Melissa had told her, was to be converted into guest accommodation for the conferences she hoped to host. The space between the wings was grassed, skirted by paths, and beyond that was a larger expanse of lawn, which stopped at a line of trees. Aikensthorpe wood was out of sight on the other side of the house, but Rina assumed that this line of tall trees must be an outcropping from it; they looked too densely packed to be merely a field boundary. She released the catches on the sash window and eased it up, glad to find that it had not been painted closed as so often happened with these old windows. Cold, damp air flooded on to the landing, taking her breath. There’s snow on that wind, she thought. It might not be there in the morning, but it wouldn’t be long after. Checking the latch was secured and she was not about to be decapitated by a falling sash, she leaned out and looked towards the unlit windows of the seance room. Melissa had shown her the pictures she had taken when it had been unsealed. When she had entered the room that afternoon, Rina had assumed it was windowless, but now she knew that close fitting shutters, matching the wall panelling, had been fastened tight over them.

  ‘They drew the shutters that night and they were never opened again,’ Melissa had said. ‘The room was closed and locked and that was that.’

  Robin had been accurate in his description of the room’s contents, but in addition to the remains of roses still in a silver bowl, Rina had noticed a single glove left on a chair, a lady’s paisley shawl draped across the back. It was these small items that spoke so eloquently to Rina. Something had frightened the participants so much that they had departed in haste and sealed the memory inside, not even venturing back to retrieve their possessions.

  She started to close the window, glancing first at the still lighted windows of the dining room and the little anteroom where they had gathered before dinner. The curtains had not been fully drawn, and a shaft of light that fell on to the paving stones and the sodden grass was momentarily broken as someone passed between light and window. She had left Tim and Jay Statham deep in conversation with Rav, and Joy playing poker with Edwin and Gail. Rina, having seen Joy play before, felt sorry for the other two.

  A slight movement attracted her attention, and she looked towards the rear of the stable block. Now her eyes had become accustomed to the light, she could see a small door fitted into the grey stone wall. A figure moved beside the door and then opened it. Rina could see a light come on, and then the door closed again. She frowned, annoyed with herself that she had seen no one leave the house and could only guess who the figure might have been. Tall and slim built, she would surmise Melissa. Not that it mattered, she told herself. It was just that she liked to know these things.

  She was about to move away from the window and go to her room when a second figure detached itself from the shadows by the library wall and walked swiftly across towards the stable door. Intrigued, Rina noted that whoever it was walked the length of the lawn rather than down the path, as though to avoid the sound of gravel crunching beneath their feet. Rina leaned out a little further. This second person was male, and something in the way he pushed back his hair caused her to believe it might be Toby. He paused, glanced around, then opened the small door and went inside.

  ‘Well,’ Rina breathed. ‘Now, isn’t that interesting?’

  Or was it, really? So Melissa and Toby were meeting in the stable; there could be so many and varied reasons for that. Romantic, perhaps, or something merely practical to do with the events of the weekend.

  Telling herself not to be such a busybody, but knowing that the habit was far too ingrained for her head to take the blindest bit of notice, Rina withdrew and began to close the window, only to pause as a
third person stepped into view. He – she was pretty sure it was a he – moved out into the patch of light slanting through the dining room curtains and stood looking towards the door in the stable wall. For perhaps a couple of minutes, he didn’t move, and neither did Rina. She couldn’t place him. Carefully, she compared her mental images of the males in their party to the figure standing there, dressed, unlike Melissa and Toby, in a heavy coat and what she assumed was a thick scarf or hat muffling the shape of his head.

  Too heavily built for Rav, and not Robin either – far too tall, and definitely without Robin’s slightly apologetic little stoop. Tim she would know anywhere, and Jay Stratham had a distinctive way of moving that was quite unlike this man. Jay thrust his head forwards when he walked, as though listening for something, or stalking some mysterious prey. The old man, Edwin Holmes? No, definitely not him. Terry, maybe, or possibly the professor?

  The figure moved, and Rina retreated, suddenly uneasy about being seen. She watched as the figure marched confidently across the lawn, heading towards the line of trees. He didn’t seem worried about being seen, but then, she thought, why should he be? Melissa and Toby, the seeming objects of his interest, were in the stables, and no windows looked back out on to the lawn. The rest were in the dining room or anteroom, and both of these had their curtains closed. He, whoever he was, had no reason to give any thought to a potential spy in an upstairs window.

  ‘There’s trouble in this,’ Rina said to herself as she eased the window closed. ‘Just mark my words.’

  Reaching her room, she put the kettle on, the routine of tea making and drinking always guaranteed to help get her thoughts in order. Then, mug in hand, and notebook with a list of questions on her lap, she phoned Mac, knowing he wouldn’t mind being called so late. Mac, like most police officers, and his partner, Miriam, a CSI, often kept peculiar hours.