by Tamara Berry
“I wonder, is there anything about Xavier that you have figured out yet?”
Even though his question is asked with heavy irony, I have to pause and think about it for a moment, which goes to show what a disaster this ghost-hunting trip has been so far. Usually, I not only have the cause pinpointed by now, but I’ve developed a firm plan of action for ousting the ghost and breaking as many bottles of wine as possible. To shatter my Châteauneuf du Pape at this particular cleansing would only be to contaminate a crime scene.
“Well, I know he hasn’t appeared at all today,” I say. “At least, not since—”
“—the mysterious mortal remains under the stairs were removed? Yes, I know.”
“I was going to say, since I found a dead man and the place has been crawling with cops, but yours sounds good too.” I peer up and down the hall. For the moment, it’s empty, but I don’t like how exposed we are. “Seriously—could we go somewhere private?”
His brow lifts. “You know something.”
“I know lots of things, but that isn’t the point. Shall we go for a walk?”
I don’t wait for an answer, since a walk is exactly what I need right now. Crisp, clean air. Distance from this house. I’ve never been much of a one for extolling the virtues of exercise, but the flight part of my fight-or-flight responses appears to be getting the better of me.
In this, Nicholas humors me once again, following me down the stairs and out through the foyer, since the kitchen is still closed off to the family. The sound of voices and scuffling from below indicate the police are still hard at work gathering evidence.
At least, that’s what I assume they’re doing. For all I know, they could merely be discussing how best to put the blame on the conniving American spiritualist in their midst.
“Is this far enough from the house that the spirits can’t overhear, or do we need to keep going?” he asks after we make it past the flashy red car—which, alas, I’ve discovered belongs to Cal rather than Nicholas. “I doubt Xavier’s range is all that great.”
“Let’s keep going,” I suggest. There are too many outbuildings and hiding places around here to make me very comfortable.
Nicholas hesitates but doesn’t question me, even going so far as to offer me an arm as we head onto a well-beaten, rocky path heading south toward Thomas’s smuggling cliffs. Once again, I’m surprised at the strength of that arm—the latent power of it. It’s a good reminder that I’m completely at this family’s mercy out here. Because, honestly, what do I know of them? Their current predicament, certainly, but nothing of their morals, their history. For all I know, they regularly kill people and hide their bodies under the stairs. I could be next.
I make a mental note to check in with Liam before I go to bed tonight.
“The family holdings extend to those hills just over there,” Nicholas says by way of conversation. “We used to own most of the county, but bits and pieces have been sold off throughout the centuries.”
I glance in the direction he indicates. Farming has never been something I have much interest in—or knowledge of—but the bleak, barren rocks don’t look to me to support anything but moss cultivation.
“What’s the land used for?” I ask.
“Dairy farming, once upon a time. Nowadays its sole use is keeping neighbors from creeping too close.”
I swivel my head to peer up at him. “You mean you don’t make money from this place?”
His laugh is short, almost a breath. “No. The Hartfords haven’t made income from this estate since the First World War.”
I think about what Rachel told me, how Nicholas divides his time between business and running the castle. But how much running could a castle possibly take if all it supports is a crusty old dovecote and a garden that’s more mud than vegetation? And more importantly, who pays for it?
As if reading my mind, Nicholas says, “This place is a money pit. Has been for decades.”
“Then why do you keep it?”
He inclines his head. “It’s our money pit. Did you pass the cemetery when you arrived that first day?”
I recall the moss-covered stones that filled me with such excited anticipation in the taxi and nod. “It’s yours?”
“My grandfather is buried there. My father.” He pauses but doesn’t look down at me, his gaze fixed on something in the distance. I glance, but anything he sees on that horizon is purely metaphorical. “I could no more sell that cemetery than I could my own limbs. You know what I mean.”
Oddly enough, I do. Family bonds are a strange and powerful thing.
I don’t know how Nicholas manages it, but when I look back at him, he appears just as much at home out here among the rocky landscape and barren trees as he does inside his stately home. You would think that a man as neatly starched and ironed as this one would only be at ease indoors and among velvet hangings, but he looks very much the lord of the manor as he takes long-legged strides over his land.
His useless land. His useless, money-sucking land. His useless, money-sucking land that everyone in this family is obsessed with in some form or another.
On that thought, I stop. The house is far enough away that I don’t fear anyone overhearing us, but close enough that someone will come running if I scream. Or so I hope.
“This is good,” I say and detangle my arm from his. “Now. I need you to tell me what you want.”
A look of placid amusement crosses Nicholas’s face, the beginnings of a smile at the edge of his lips. “We didn’t have to come all the way out here for that. I generally prefer to conduct that kind of—shall we say, conversation?—indoors.”
“About Xavier.”
“What about him?”
I can’t decide if he’s being purposefully obtuse or not. “As I said in the house, Xavier hasn’t been active all day. I’m guessing the presence of the police has spooked him—if you’ll pardon the pun—into temporary quiet.”
Nicholas feigns thoughtfulness. I call it feigned because he tilts his head to one side and places a finger carefully on his chin. No one makes gestures like that in real life. “Either that, or Thomas’s absence is telling us something very obvious,” he suggests.
I start. In my mind, Thomas’s absence indicates his innocence rather than his duplicity. If he left late last night, as Rachel said, then he couldn’t have had anything to do with the dead man. In fact, he’s the only person with an actual alibi.
“You’re missing the point,” I say.
“Which is?”
“That Xavier isn’t going to do anything while the place is buzzing with police. There are too many eyes and too much at stake. And when the cops do finally leave, he might use the bones being removed as an excuse to disappear.”
“Ah. You think that too?”
“Of course,” I say. “It’s what I’d do if I was in Xavier’s place. It’s a neat and simple solution to an increasingly messy situation.”
“Interesting. I wouldn’t have taken you for the neat and simple type.”
I suspect there’s more insult than compliment in that remark, so I ignore him. “Whoever is pretending to be the ghost is going to be the top police suspect, since he’s the only one we know for sure is skulking around in the dead of night.” With the exception of me. “Regardless of how Xavier is connected to the bones under the stairs—or not—it’s too risky for him to keep playing tricks. For good or for bad, I think your ghost just got laid to rest.”
“That’s rather poor-spirited of him,” Nicholas murmurs before flashing me a quick smile. “You’ll have to forgive my pun this time.”
“There’s also the small matter of the other body.”
“Ah, yes. I imagined we’d get to that eventually.”
“I’m not making it up, Nicholas. I wouldn’t.”
He looks me squarely in the eye. For once, his expression isn’t veering toward mockery, and it’s all the more upsetting because of it. The full force of this man’s stare seems a bit like looking at the su
n. During an eclipse.
“You asked me to believe you, so I do,” he says.
Although it’s the response I’m hoping for, the way he phrases it brings me no comfort. He’s choosing to believe in the existence of the body, as if there’s still a question of it lingering in the air. In other words, he’s acting on faith.
But I don’t believe in faith, and neither does he.
“We have to assume that Xavier destroyed all my equipment and pulled up that stair,” I say in as matter-of-fact a voice as I can muster. It’s the only way I can think to counteract his uncomfortable conviction about my honesty.
“We do?”
“Which means he probably also killed that man, because I’m ninety-nine percent sure that’s how he died.”
“Only ninety-nine percent?”
“Which also means that he hid the body while I went to get you and Cal. Which also means that Xavier is not only a nuisance, but a killer.” I pause, waiting for yet another sarcastic reply. “Well?” I prompt.
“Well, what? Keep going. You were finally starting to make some sense.”
I throw a pair of exasperated hands to the sky. “You hired me to come out here and find your ghost,” I say. “Not a murderer. No offense, but I’m not equipped for this sort of thing.”
A frown passes over his face, almost at the exact moment a cloud crosses over the sun. The day is already heavy and overcast, one of those cold, wet November days that seem ideal for faking ghostly escapades, and the loss of that tiny ray of sunlight does a number on my senses. A shiver works through me, goose bumps breaking out over my arms and causing the hair on the back of my neck to stand up straight.
It’s my arrector pili muscles reacting to the chill, nothing more. My body’s autonomic response to environmental stimuli.
I know this, yet I still can’t help feeling the same as when Xavier’s voice called to me through the house. Someone is trying to tell me something. Someone is trying to warn me away.
“If what you say is correct—” Nicholas begins, his voice low.
“It is.”
“If what you say is correct,” he repeats, lower still, “then I don’t see how anything has changed. I hired you to help me find Xavier. Now, more than ever, finding Xavier is of paramount importance, wouldn’t you say?”
“Well, yes. But—”
“Inspector Piper obviously isn’t going to be of help in this regard, and I’m at a loss to explain any of this on my own.” In a rare moment of candor, he adds, “You’ve already figured out that I like Cal for this, but he was upstairs and sound asleep when you stumbled upon the body, so he couldn’t have moved it.”
I know. He was upstairs. As were Nicholas and Fern, Vivian and Rachel. Only Thomas is unaccounted for, but it’s his weekend off.
Or so he wants us to believe.
“Please, Eleanor. Stay.” Nicholas gives me another one of those disconcertingly honest looks. “Help me find Xavier. I’m sure the rest will fall into place once we figure that part out.”
I don’t want to do it. Every instinct I have—mystical or otherwise—is warning me away from this place. I like the Hartfords, and I like the money I’m earning even more, but for the first time in my life, I fear I may have stumbled on a mystery that’s too big for me alone.
You don’t have to do it alone, silly. You have me. I’m on my way.
“Stop it!” I cry, holding my hands over my ears. “Go away.”
Not unnaturally, Nicholas assumes I’m talking to him rather than the strange voice that’s been plaguing me since my arrival here. “Of course, if you don’t think you can—” he begins stiffly.
“Not you,” I mutter. “Him.”
“Him, who?”
I wave a hand toward the castle. “Xavier. The house. I don’t know. Don’t ask me to explain.”
To his credit, he doesn’t ask. He also doesn’t let me off the hook for his request, looking at me with that same expectant air from before. I have no idea why he has such faith in my abilities, or even why he wants a stranger here during a murder investigation, but I’m not equal to that look of supplication.
I’ve also been told, albeit in uncertain terms, that England is going to be my home until Inspector Piper decides otherwise. Since I’m hardly in a position to spend several thousand dollars on a hotel when there’s a perfectly good—if chilly and slightly murderous—castle to be had, I make up my mind.
“Fine. I’ll stay.”
At his look of relief, I feel compelled to add, “But if one more body makes a mysterious appearance, I’m leaving on the next flight out of here.”
“I’ll see to it myself,” he promises. “By the by, what are your plans for Rachel’s drawing?”
“Get copies made. Post it all over town. Offer a reward for information.” I shrug. “Someone must have seen him around the village. How many small, mustachioed men can there be running around a place like this?”
I stop, alarmed, as I realize what I’ve just said. I don’t know about the genetic prevalence of small, mustachioed men in quaint English towns, but I do know that just such a man was described to me in the village museum not two days ago. A man digging around in the Hartford family history, no less.
It can’t be a coincidence.
Coincidences can and do happen in this world, and they explain away so much more paranormal phenomenon than people realize, but this isn’t one of those cases. Not when there’s so much at stake. Not when so many people are hiding something.
I cast a sidelong look up at Nicholas, but his bland expression gives nothing away. Of all the people in this castle, he has the most at stake—an inheritance, in fact. He also knows more about the ghost than he’s letting on. He admitted as much from the start.
But I say nothing. I merely allow him to take my arm again and start leading me back toward the castle.
“Make sure you take an extra copy to Inspector Piper,” he says with a perfectly calm air, his forearm like stone underneath mine. Or like age-old castle walls. “We wouldn’t want to withhold any evidence from the authorities.”
“We wouldn’t?” I ask, unsure if he’s being sincere. I was under the impression his opinion of Inspector Piper matched my own.
“Of course not,” he says and smiles down at me. “After all, the last thing we want is for any suspicion to fall on you.”
Chapter 14
Not even a real psychic could have foreseen the benefits of murder in a place like this.
“This one’s from Mrs. Cherrycove.” Vivian stomps through the dining room door, the aroma of cheese and potatoes trailing in her tempestuous wake. She slams a ceramic dish down on the sideboard. “The interfering ninny. It took me fifteen minutes and four glasses of sherry to get her out the door again.”
“She drank four glasses of sherry in fifteen minutes?” I ask, slightly alarmed. The alarm is only slight because I’m already up out of my seat and piling potatoes dauphinoise onto my plate. I don’t know who this Mrs. Cherrycove is, but it looks like she knows her way around a carbohydrate. “I hope she isn’t driving.”
“She never drives,” Vivian replies. She eyes the bulging sideboard with distaste. “She came with Penny Dautry.”
“Oooh!” From the other side of the dining room, Rachel sits up, a gleam in her violet eyes. “Did Penny bring her famous chocolate cake? We had it at the old vicar’s funeral last year.”
“There will be no cake,” Vivian says in her most quelling voice.
“I wouldn’t have minded a slice or two,” Cal says. He pats his stomach. “Or three.”
“It does seem a shame for you to make her take it back,” Nicholas adds with something like regret.
I’m curious about what kind of cake could move even a man like Nicholas to protest, but we hardly need the dessert at this point. The door knocker has been pounding from the moment we woke up this morning, revealing a succession of inquisitive neighbors laden with food. It’s a veritable smorgasbord of condolence casseroles in her
e, and it isn’t even noon yet. I’ve never seen people eat so much food in such a short period of time.
Well, everyone is eating except for Vivian and Fern. Vivian because she appears to like her neighbors even less than she does houseguests, and Fern because she mostly looks bored. She managed a few bites of salade niçoise about half an hour ago and has been draping herself in various poses over the dining room chairs ever since.
“I don’t know what we’re doing, sitting around here and accepting mourners like some Victorian family of old,” she says, frowning around the table. In direct opposition to our semi-funereal atmosphere, she’s dressed herself in a white lace pantsuit that’s much more elegant than it sounds. She’s practically bridal. “We should be packing up and moving as far away from this decrepit place as possible. Who knows how many other people are buried under our feet? There could be thousands of dead bodies lying around here.”
Cal’s eyes protrude in a moment of alarm. “Thousands of dead bodies? No, love. Hardly that.”
She waves her hand. “Who would be able to tell, with all the damp and falling bits?”
“I think we’d notice thousands of bodies lying amid the general rubble,” Nicholas says dryly.
“It’s not rubble,” Rachel protests, holding her fork like it’s a trident. “It’s home.”
I keep my mouth shut and let the family wrangle, pausing only to shovel a few more forkfuls of the potato casserole into my mouth. Although I’m not normally one to take a back seat to a promising argument, I’m doing my best not to insert myself any more into the family dynamics than necessary.
Part of it is professional interest, a medium’s need to gather information before taking steps to remove a ghost. An even bigger part of it is exhaustion. I spent most of last night lying awake in bed, clutching one of the axes from the foyer. I’m not sure whether I was more relieved or disappointed when the sun came up and I’d had no recourse to use it.
No one watched me sleep. No one left me notes. No one tried to murder me. I suppose I should probably consider that a win.
“Well, Madame Eleanor?” Nicholas asks, directing a look of inquiry at me. “What are your plans for the day?”
