Ariadne's Thread

by Marie Treanor

  “I think maybe I should,” Maxwell agreed. “I’ll come back later, Jack—be good.”

  Ruffling the boy’s hair with casual affection, he strode to the door, holding it for Addie to pass through first.

  As soon as it was closed behind them, he said, “What’s going on?”

  “Well, I can hear Shug and Malky down there, shouting at each other, so I suggest you get back to the sitting room. Also, I want to know about your ghosts.”

  He sneered. “Seems to me you know them better than I ever will.”

  “Don’t give up hope,” Addie advised. “I’m talking about a female ghost. Dark haired, beautiful, bone structure to die for.”

  “Julia,” he said, as if startled into it. “You’ve seen her?”

  “I don’t know who the hell she—it—was.”

  He smiled unpleasantly. “Got you rattled, did she?”

  “Well, she certainly rattled your sister. I thought you said your ghosts were harmless?”

  “Mostly harmless,” he amended, though distractedly—his gaze never left Addie’s. “Tammy can’t see the spirits. Never could, beyond the age of five.”

  “Well, she felt this one. And I saw it. Scared the shit out of us both, if you want the truth. Is it your late wife?”

  He began to walk toward the stair, frowning, as if he’d forgotten her. But after a pause, he answered, “Sounds like her. She’s not really a ghost. That is, not in the way of the others. She just hasn’t passed on.”

  Addie blinked as she caught up with him. “I thought none of them could have passed on.”

  “Well, in a way. But they choose to be here. Julia…Julia is more haunted than haunting—she has something to do before she moves on.”

  Bring her killer to justice? Had Tammy, not John, been responsible for her death? And how the hell did you ask her widower that question? After a moment, she said carefully, “Did your wife like Tammy?”

  He shrugged. “Well enough. They didn’t see that much of each other.”

  “So what’s changed? Why would she want to harm her now?”

  “Harm her?” Maxwell turned to stare at her.

  “I’m sure of it. It was as if it was sucking the life from her.”

  “Christ. Gavin.”

  “Gavin?”

  “That’s what’s changed since Tammy was last here. She’s taken up with Gavin. He wants to marry her—as soon as she divorces Inspector Plod. It’s…” Abruptly, he broke off, as he heard what Addie did: the voices of Shug and Malky as they shambled along the hall below.

  Taking her arm in a firm grip, Maxwell sped her down the last of the stairs and into the well of darkness beneath.

  “Let go, for fuck’s sake,” Shug said irritably. His voice seemed to come still from several feet away, at the main stairs. “I can get down myself on my bum.” There was a bump and a grunt and then the sound of a heavy body bumping its way down the stairs.

  In spite of herself, Addie sniggered. Just for a second, she caught a glimpse of an answering twinkle in Maxwell’s eyes. He was too close to her. The darkness was too friendly, and his strong, earthy presence too appealing.

  He said softly, “You don’t like these people, do you?”

  “What’s to like?” she muttered.

  “I can’t make you out.”

  “I know you can’t,” she said bitterly, and pushed past him into the relative light of the hall.

  ef

  Johnny watched her go with an odd sense of disappointment. Something in her brusqueness told him she was running away, though from what wasn’t terribly clear. Probably his reputation as a wife-killer, even though his ego wanted to believe she was avoiding his irresistible if inconvenient attraction.

  Spot the asshole, Maxwell…

  Only a few hurried steps away, she paused and glared at him over her shoulder. Her head jerked significantly, commanding him to follow her. The girl had guts, he’d allow that. Afraid of him she might be, for whatever reason, but she was damned if she’d let him know it. A tune began in his head, or perhaps it had been there for some time and he was just becoming aware of it: intricate, insistent, standing up to the bullying beat of the drum. He let it play in the back of his mind, building…

  Strolling after her, he wondered if she realized how easy it would be for him to overpower her, to use her as his own hostage to obtain the release of his family. Or perhaps she knew the Psycho-Weasel would happily sacrifice her for his own ends… What was he to her, anyway?

  “Thought you fancied a quick one for auld lang syne.”

  What had Shug meant by that? And why was he, John Maxwell, even wondering? The girl was a poisonous little gutter rat.

  In the downstairs hall, she pointed wordlessly at the sitting room door and took herself off in the direction of the kitchen. Though half inclined to follow her—just to see what she’d do about his disobedience—the unmistakable tones of the Psycho-Weasel demanding his presence drew him to the sitting room instead.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” Shug snarled.

  “With the girl,” Maxwell said mildly, “like you said.”

  His mother was standing by the window, gazing raptly at whatever she saw there, lost in her own, isolated world. Tammy occupied the sofa, while Gavin sat rather stiffly in the armchair some distance from her. A falling out there? I do hope so.

  Maxwell slouched into the space beside his sister who, however, seemed to have other things on her mind which didn’t concern Gavin at all.

  “That girl,” she whispered, before his back had even hit the cushion. “I think she’s more on our side than theirs.”

  “Secretly, she’s Special Branch,” Maxwell agreed.

  “I’m serious.”

  “You read too many novels.”

  “Johnny, she’s trying to get them out of here, and she’s looking after us in the process. I think she saved me from the ghost of—well, a ghost.”

  “Julia.” Johnny focused on her, frowning. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Tammy admitted. “It—something made me stop in the middle of the hall. It was as if I was paralyzed. I felt really—weak, like I was ill, and so cold… I thought I was going to faint, and then suddenly she—Addie—shoved in front of me and shouted, ‘Go away, leave her alone!’ Or something like that. And the sickness seemed to go away as suddenly as it had come. It was weird, Johnny, really weird. What’s going on? Have these people upset the spirits somehow?”

  “No…I don’t think they have.” He settled his gaze on Gavin, wondering, trying hard not to let personal dislike colour his reasoning. “Tammy, you’re not really going to marry him, are you?”

  At once, the veil dropped over her stormy eyes like shutters. “Why the hell shouldn’t I?”

  “What, apart from the minor inconvenience that you’re still legally married to Inspector Plod? And Gavin’s rather tasteless affair with my wife does tend to point to the notion that he’s as trustworthy as a rattlesnake. My other reason is purely personal. I don’t like the bastard.”

  “Really, Johnny?” Tammy marveled with heavy sarcasm.

  “If you’d any sense,” Addie interrupted as she laid a tray of steaming mugs on the coffee table in front of them, “you’d shut up and let her make her own decisions.”

  For an instant, Johnny stared at her, simply flabbergasted by her cheek. Then, almost to his own surprise, amusement drowned the rising indignation. Leaning forward to lift the mug she’d placed for him, he murmured, “Proper little Mary Poppins, aren’t you?”

  He delighted in the flush that rose up her neck and suffused the fair skin of her face. It seemed to rob her completely of that tough, Glasgow shell, allowing a glimpse of a far sweeter and more vulnerable creature. The insight distracted him, trapped him, just as she’d enchanted him by her contradictory charms when he’d first discovered her playing his piano.

  She was all emotion. Her technique stank. But with the right teacher she could be really good…

 
She muttered, “I prefer strident trollop.”

  The strident trollop who was feeding his son and hiding him from her less than savoury associates. Who risked herself for Tammy. Maxwell smiled straight into her eyes. “No you don’t.”

  She turned away quickly, letting her hair fall forward over her flushed face as she said to the room in general, “Tea.” She stood back to let everyone grab a mug. With people between them, she obviously felt safer, but Johnny kept watching her. That song was back, stronger, growing in harmony, mingling with the music he’d thought of while he’d kissed her and felt her passionate, yielding flesh under his hands and lips…

  It was she who picked up a mug and took it to his great-grandmother, who still sat rigidly in her winged armchair, taking everything in and storing it up like the old witch she was. He wouldn’t be surprised if her testimony was what sent the burglars down in the end.

  What did surprise him was Addie’s action in taking her the tea. Whether it was compassion for the elderly or some innate courtesy of which she was unaware, her civility intrigued him. Everything about her intrigued him.

  John Maxwell wanted to get to a piano.

  He wanted to take Addie to bed and do unspeakably intimate things to her gorgeous, writhing little body. He wanted to sink into her hot wetness, lose himself in lust and music.

  He wanted to strangle her for coming into his home and threatening his family, and confusing the hell out of him.

  Abruptly, he stood and walked across the room in her wake. Shug’s gun followed him the whole way. He noticed it as he would an irritating and persistent fly.

  He heard Addie say mildly, “Tea, Mrs. Maxwell,” as she laid the mug down on the little side-table.

  Old Jemima stared at her. “Lady Maxwell actually. They knighted the old bugger before he died.”

  Before you did him in, Johnny corrected her silently. But Addie had flopped down on the edge of the sofa nearest the old witch, staring back at her with new interest. “You’re Sir Christopher Maxwell’s wife?” she asked, awed.

  Jemima cackled. “Think I should be dead, do you? So does he.” She nodded at Johnny, causing the girl to whip round and notice him. She looked away again immediately, more interested, apparently in the composer’s wife. “You’re both right, of course, I should be dead. Never seems to happen, though. I’m a hundred and two, you know.”

  “My Gran says that as well,” Addie murmured. “But I know for a fact she’s sixty-eight.”

  “Yes, but Jemima’s telling the truth.” Johnny lounged into the sofa beside the girl. “She really is a hundred and two. Addie here’s seen Kit.”

  “Bad luck,” said the old lady at once and, as if she remembered their early conversation about Christopher Maxwell’s ghost, Addie cast him a startled glance.

  Then she said, “Do you see him, too?”

  “All the time,” said Jemima. “Wretched scoundrel hangs around more now than he ever did when he was alive.”

  “Really?” Addie said. Again, she glanced at Johnny. “Was he a scoundrel?”

  “Not by the standards of present company,” Johnny said and watched with some delight as well as satisfaction when she flushed.

  “No point in asking him,” Jemima scoffed. “He thinks the sun shines out of Kit’s dead backside.”

  “He was a great composer,” Addie offered.

  “Ha!” Jemima scoffed. “He wasn’t bad, although I wrote most of ‘his’ best music, you know. Doesn’t matter. He was still a fool and a cheat. Who the devil are you, anyway? Are you his next, now that Julia’s dead?”

  Johnny laughed. Ignoring him, the girl said, “No. I’m with the bad guys. I drive the car and make the tea. Did you know Julia well?”

  “No, and I didn’t want to. She was a cheating little slut, too.”

  “Don’t beat about the bush, Jemima, tell it as it is,” Johnny drawled. And because he didn’t want to get into the old pain and all the awfulness that went with it, he got up and walked away again. It interfered with the music building to bursting point in his head.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Shug shouted after him.

  “To play the piano.”

  “Not on your own, you’re not.”

  “Christ!” Johnny swung round on him. “What’s your problem? You’ll hear me when I stop. If I take longer than ten seconds to come down, you can send in the commandoes.”

  For a moment, as he slouched out of the room, he thought Shug would call him back, wondered how far he could actually go…but the Pycho-Weasel contented himself with a mere “Arsehole.”

  ef

  Addie watched him go with mingled relief and disappointment. She couldn’t help it. Whenever he was around, she just felt more—alive. And it didn’t matter that he despised her, that every moment in his company brought pained awareness of her own shortcomings. If she had to spend much longer here she would become so totally obsessed with him that she’d never break free.

  Even in prison.

  Christ, I can’t go to prison. What would happen to Kate if I went to prison? And why the fuck didn’t I think of that before I came?

  But there was no point in dwelling on the might have beens or the might bes. Practicality returned to the fore, and she looked again at the old lady—who was regarding her with slightly malicious amusement.

  “I can see you agree with me. It’s not so much the cheating as the bad taste. I mean, if you were married to Johnny, why would you look at him?” She nodded across the room, directly at Gavin who was in low-voiced conversation with the journalist Liz Conway.

  Addie closed her mouth. “Julia had an affair with him?”

  “Didn’t you know? It was all over the papers during the trial.”

  “I didn’t read much about it,” Addie confessed. “Didn’t want to know, to be honest. I saw him play a couple of times.”

  The old lady nodded. “Hands like an angel,” she agreed. “Like Kit. Of course, Kit taught him. After he was dead.”

  Something like laughter caught spontaneously in Addie’s throat. “You like doing that, don’t you? Shocking people.”

  “Nothing much else to do at my age.”

  “But you see it all, don’t you? And understand it all. Would Julia object to Tammy being with Gavin?”

  “Might do. Dog-in-the-manger was Julia. Why?”

  “Do you see her ghost, too?”

  Unexpectedly, the old lady’s gaze fell. For the first time since this horrible situation began, she looked rattled.

  “It’s not Julia.”

  Addie leaned forward. “Not Julia? Then who is it?” she demanded. “Why does it want to hurt Tammy?”

  “Not just Julia,” Lady Maxwell amended. The malice was back in her eyes. “What’s it to you anyway? Think you can make up for robbing us?”

  Addie, who hadn’t even been sure the old lady had picked up on that, looked away. “No,” she said flatly. “Just curious.”

  ef

  Maxwell had told the truth. They could hear him playing. Distantly, like an echo, piano music tinkled pleasantly in the background. You couldn’t tell the tune, or even the genre, but just the fact that he was producing it was vaguely, ridiculously soothing.

  Staring out of the window at the pristine white ground, the snow-covered trees scattered about the grounds and the spectacular hills beyond, Addie tried to imagine his life here, growing up in this crazy house among the ghosts, in the shadow of his ingenious great-grandfather—from whom, in a ghostly sort of a way, he received extra tuition. Another young genius in a houseful of eccentrics.

  They all needed looking after, she realized. Not just the extraordinary old lady, but his frail, wandered mother, the unworldly uncle, the willful Tammy who had already made one disastrous marriage by all accounts and now seemed hell-bent on another—with the man who’d already had one affair with her murdered sister-in-law.

  And that was another thing.

  “Why does he hang around here?” she murmured.


  “Oh, he wants the house…”

  Addie blinked, realizing she’d turned to look at the oblivious object of her thoughts, Gavin, who’d fallen awkwardly asleep in his chair. But it was Helen Maxwell who had spoken, John and Tammy’s mother. She stood beside Addie, gazing out of the window so that Addie had to doubt she even knew who they were talking about.

  “Gavin wants the house?” she asked low-voiced.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “It’s a beautiful house,” Addie offered, and Helen turned to direct a smile at the younger woman.

  “Yes it is,” she said warmly. The smile faded. “But Gavin doesn’t see that. Fat young women with too much money. Men with muscles and no soul…”

  Addie couldn’t make much sense of that. She elected to stick with the facts. “But Tammy doesn’t own the house, does she?”

  “Oh, yes. We all do.” She frowned. “I think. Except Herbert. It’s all a bit hazy now…so long ago. You didn’t get any tea, dear.”

  Helen called Shug “dear”. There was no point in feeling flattered over the endearment. Yet it was still oddly warming to be called “dear” by the vague, gentle woman who didn’t seem to care, if she even knew, that her “guests” were there to rob her.

  Addie found herself picking up the lone mug left on the tray and drinking. In the odd peace which Helen managed to radiate over her unquiet and guilty soul, Addie gazed out of the window once more.

  Julia didn’t want Tammy to have Gavin, because Gavin had been hers. But the old lady had said it wasn’t just Julia… What did that mean?

  And why did she care? She needed to be out of here, and…

  Refocusing, she realized the hazy object moving in the distance was a car, chuntering slowly along the road. If she strained her ears, she could even imagine she heard it.

  She said, “There’s a car on the road—it must be cleared. Malky, why don’t you check the car again, and we’ll see if we can’t get out of here?”

  And why that should bring unhappiness welling up inside her, she had no idea. Or if she did, it was so stupid she didn’t even want to go there.