“I know,” he nodded quietly. “And I understand how you must feel. We’re going to do everything we can to get to the bottom of this.”
Which didn’t seem to reassure her even a tiny bit. Her eyes took on a fiery glitter, venom creeping back into her voice.
“You’re treating this like a normal case?”
It was the first time in ages I had seen Saul look so flustered.
“We’re giving it top priority, Miss Tollburn. You have my word.”
“And where are the others? Vernon? The McGinleys? He was one of theirs! Why aren’t they here?”
Which was not police business, but Saul still felt obliged to answer.
“The judge was here earlier. He alerted us, in fact. You know perfectly well—Miss—that we have an understanding with the adepts in cases like this. If there’s nothing supernatural involved, then it’s up to my department and to no one else. And there seems to be no magic here.”
“You’re treating this as commonplace? The death of the most revered man in this entire town?”
“I know. Again, I’m sorry.”
She took a step back, something happening to her features once again. Softer quivers played across them, the small muscles working by themselves. And I thought I saw a strange glint in her piercing gaze. Then her face rearranged itself until it gave away precisely nothing. The dampness of her stare was like a pane of opaque glass. And when she spoke again, her tone was mollified.
“All right, then. I understand your position and respect it. But can I stay a little while, at least?”
I saw Cass jut her lower lip out. And Saul looked extremely doubtful.
“To be honest, it would be much better—”
“Yes,” she cut him off. “I know what the procedure is. But my Poppy and I were very close, and his death has been so sudden, unexpected. Could I simply spend a little time here, simply to say goodbye to him?”
She was exploiting Saul’s good nature, and I knew it. But he didn’t seem to have it in him to refuse the woman, she sounded so sincere.
“Just two minutes,” he replied quietly. “And you can get no closer than about four feet. Please don’t disturb anything.”
She nodded. “Certainly. Of course.”
Millicent stepped up to her grandfather’s body. Folded her hands in front of her and bowed her head a couple of inches. Then she looked around at us again.
“If I might be allowed a little privacy?”
“Right,” Saul muttered.
He turned away, closing in quickly on Hugh Williams, and I followed him. I could see by the set of his shoulders how angry he was. Not that it was my place to interfere. What Saul does with his people is his concern—I’d known that ever since I’d quit.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” he hissed at his subordinate, once we were out of earshot. “How did she get past you? You have to be twice her size.”
Hugh looked like someone who had trodden on a kid’s pet hamster and was trying to hide it underneath his shoe.
“I’m sorry, Lieu. I tried to, really. But she made like she was going to cast a spell on me.”
“And you’re not used to magic yet?”
“You should have seen the look on her face.”
Saul was about to answer that, when a yell from Cassie brought us spinning around. Millicent was no longer standing reverently by her granddad. She had crossed over to the roll-top bureau at the center of the conservatory. Was crouching down in front of it, and rummaging through the drawers.
“Miss Tollburn?” Saul exploded.
And he lurched at her.
Cassie looked like she wanted to join in, and I felt the same impulse. But we both hung back. This was police business too. Although the look on Cass’s face spoke volumes. She’d known from the outset that we couldn’t trust this woman.
“Miss Tollburn, what the hell d’you think you’re doing?”
Millicent took no notice of him, and kept on searching for whatever she was after. There was a clattering as her narrow fingers scrabbled through the second drawer. I could see a huge cluster of magic implements in there. It was a pretty even guess, given who her granddad was, that some of them were pretty powerful devices. But her hands went past them. Kept feeling around like busy spiders.
Saul ran across and grabbed her by the shoulders again, rather more roughly than before, and hauled her off. By that time, she’d already reached the bottom drawer. She pulled it back with her as she was dragged away. There were a load of small black books in there. But apparently, they were not what she’d wanted.
Her face was slightly flushed, her brow damp. But other than that, she looked perfectly composed when he let her go and she stood back upright. I watched her carefully, trying to figure her out. Didn’t like just being a spectator in this fashion, but what option was there? This was still Saul’s show.
“What the hell were you looking for?” he demanded.
The briefest hint of a smile flicked across her narrow lips.
“That’s entirely my concern.”
“Not if I arrest you, it ain’t.”
“Should I call my lawyer?” she inquired.
Which amounted to an open threat. Since, if she did that, it would be a terribly expensive example of the breed who’d turn up at the station house. We each knew that. Hobart took a step away and looked her up and down, seeing her in a brand-new light, his face creased up with apprehension.
“How can you behave like this with your grandfather lying there?” he asked her. And then he gave up on politeness altogether. “Exactly what kind of vulture are you?”
Millicent did not look in the least embarrassed. If she disliked being called a name like that, she didn’t let it show. The expression on her face got milder, her thin eyebrows riding high again. But I could see that peculiar, faraway gleam in her eyes a second time. And I didn’t like the look of that one tiny bit. It seemed to add up to some kind of madness.
“When he was alive,” she told Saul, “I was welcome here any time I liked. Poppy always told me I should treat it as my home, and make use of anything I wanted. That was all that I was doing, to be honest. And actually, part of this place is mine now. Legally, I mean.”
She could have at least waited for the will to be read. Saul glanced across at me, an open question on his face. Should he cut her some slack, or start reaching for the handcuffs? Me, I had my own ideas. I gave my head the tiniest of shakes. He took a breath, and rounded on her.
“I don’t give a damn whose property this is. For the next few days, it’s under my jurisdiction. And I’m having tape put up, the kind that reads, very clearly, ‘Do Not Cross.’ I want you on the far side of it from this point onward. Understood?”
“With perfect clarity.”
She turned smartly on her heels, and marched out of the room again. I noticed one more thing when she did that. When she’d first come in, her attention had been pinioned to the body on the floor. But—leaving—she didn’t even glance in that direction, not for a split second. Like her granddad’s death was already forgotten. Like…the grieving of before had been nothing but an act.
The sound of her heels retreated. We were left with each other and our reflections to stare at. A few more spots of rain hit the roof of the conservatory, but it didn’t seem like that was going anywhere. Cassie let out a slow breath, and Saul peered at me warily.
“Explain to me?” he inquired. “Why did I just let her go?”
I was glad that he had taken my hint. We’d have gotten precisely nowhere if he had arrested her.
“She was looking for something,” I pointed out.
“But couldn’t find it,” Cassie added.
As is usually the case, she was already on my wavelength.
“She knew exactly where to look, but it wasn’t there. Which probably means whoever killed old Lucas took it. That’s our lead.”
Saul’s face went a few degrees more slack.
“Okay?” he grumbled. “So�
��this is your case now?”
I’d run into problems like this with him before. And knew that the best way to deal with it was simply to push on through. Our town’s only detective lieutenant is a reasonable man, and puts getting results before matters of protocol. So that generally works.
“Whatever she was looking for, there has to be some kind of sorcery involved. You know I’ve got a gift for stuff like that. And if you’ll excuse me for saying it, I was always better at tailing a suspect. You stand out too much.”
The big guy thought that quickly through, then acquiesced and nodded, staring at me wearily.
“I’ve still plenty of work here, I guess. See you later?”
“Count on it.”
“How about me?” Cassie asked.
I knew she didn’t like inaction. There was nothing I could do about it at that moment, though.
“I’ll bring you up to speed as soon as I know more.”
The set of her mouth got slightly anxious.
“You be careful. I’d say that one’s capable of turning pretty mean.”
But that was a place I’d been to plenty of times before. So I just headed back outside.
CHAPTER 7
It turned out that Miss Tollburn drove a powder blue Jaguar convertible, an XK, barely six months old. I caught up with it a minute after I had swung back onto the main road. But then I hung carefully back, a good distance behind it, with my lights switched off. Like I pointed out, I’m better at this than Saul.
It kept on disappearing behind bends, then coming back in view again. Millicent had the hood down, in spite of the weather. And her tires were kicking up a good deal of spray, sending it into the air behind her in corkscrewing plumes. She’d untied her hair, which played out in the wind. But there seemed nothing carefree or relaxed about her. She was heading further uphill, taking the wet curves at a reckless speed. My old Caddy was pretty stable, but I still had trouble keeping up.
Plymouth Drive straightened for a while, the streetlamps showing half a mile of it at a continuous stretch. A dense wall topped with spikes flashed past and then, shortly after that, we went by Judge Levin’s handsome residence. Up ahead of me, there was a momentary gleam of yellow light. I thought at first that she might be using magic, but she’d only lit a cigarette.
Then the road described another huge bend, climbing ever steeper. And by the time we’d crossed the final intersection, there was little doubt where we were heading.
That made me a lot less happy, and I hadn’t been too cheerful in the first place. We were going to the very summit of the hill. And there was only one house up there. My least favorite in town. Raine Manor.
The Jaguar finally drew up to the front gates, which had rusted open long ago. You couldn’t even see the place, its grounds were so chaotically overgrown. You’d need a Sherman tank to make your way down its long, gravel driveway. Roots and saplings were pushing out through it everywhere you looked. Some of the latter were becoming full-blown trees. The only part of the house you could properly make out was the spire that Woody had added about a year back. It belonged on a church really, but that hadn’t seemed to have occurred to him. There was a huge capital W at its apex, standing like a second Cassiopeia against the night sky. N for “nut” would have been more appropriate.
By the time she was climbing out, I had parked back at the last bend in the road and then stepped up behind a tree trunk. Water was still dripping from it, but I ignored that. I watched while Millicent headed—at a brisk, stiff pace—in the direction of the mansion. And let her disappear into the gloom before I followed.
Once past the gates, a chill descended around my shoulders. It seemed to get worse, the further in I went. There’d been no coldness to the air the last time I had been up here. So…was Woody’s frame of mind affecting his environment even more pronouncedly than usual?
The grounds had gotten even more shambolic since I’d last walked through them. No one ever tended them at all. The spindly, leafless branches of the trees on either side of me had grown longer and meshed together, forming a wide canopy. I could barely make out the stars any more. And something rather large was on the move up there, making the twigs shake and rattle. I tried to get a look at it. Caught a glimpse of an unusual shape with wings, then took in the fact that it had two heads. It had spilled, in other words, out of Woodard Raine’s insane imagination. I’m not sure he even knows it, but he keeps on doing things like that. My heart missed several of its next few beats. But the creature moved away from me, disappearing quickly.
Which was what passes for something good happening, in this neck of the woods. I swore, and kept on heading through the clustered shadows.
A cloud of mosquitoes, with bodies the length of cocktail sticks, descended on me, whining dismally around my ears. A few of them tried to land—to feed presumably, which made my flesh crawl. But I could still hear Millicent’s crackling footfalls up ahead. So I batted at them and pressed on.
Finally, the mansion came in view. The moon had come partway out, catching the building at a curious angle. Traces of mist hung around its corners. The wind chimes that he’d hung around it last time I’d been here were gone. They’d never chimed when they were supposed to anyway, so he had probably grown bored with them.
The gargoyles on the roof were all asleep, mere hunched, darkened shapes by this hour. I knew they sometimes moved around. One of the place’s countless windows had no glass left in it, and was expanding and contracting like the mouth of a big fish. I stared at it bemusedly. What the hell was that about? But with Woody, as usual, there was no real way of telling.
His family had founded this town. Theodore Raine, his illustrious ancestor, was the face on the big bronze statue down in Union Square. And I often wondered. If they’d known how their bloodline was going to end up, would they even have bothered in the first place?
They had practiced magic regularly since the early seventeen hundreds. You’d have thought they would have got used to its strange twists and caprices. But in Woody’s case, the use of it had turned him—at first—agoraphobic. And then totally deranged.
Nothing could be seen beyond the windows. They were ordinary glass so far as I knew, but didn’t let light in or out. So the panes appeared completely black, like they’d been painted that way. The front doors were shut when I approached the porch. Millicent had already gone inside. I’d no clue what she had come here for. I’d been unaware, until this point, that Woody entertained visitors in the normal sense. But the kind of work that I find myself mixed up with often involves a lot of waiting. And so that was what I did.
Did Raine know that I was here? In spite of his madness, he was still extremely powerful. An awful lot came to his attention. He was the first person who had warned me of Saruak’s arrival in our town. But the trouble was you could never genuinely tell what he was going to do with the knowledge he collected, or even how real he thought it was. In a mind as warped as his, it might all be regarded like some kind of weird illusion. I scuffed at the mud and gravel at my feet, then wandered around to the mansion’s west side.
Something heavy began rustling about in the undergrowth near me. I tried to ignore it as best I could. But I really hated being out here. There was no anticipating what was roaming through these grounds. All kinds of bizarre things come out of Woody’s mind. When you’re around him, the impossible can become a living fact, with texture, form, and substance.
I stopped in front of the west wing. The soot stains were still there above the shattered windows. And the roof, already weakened by the fire that had gutted it, looked like the rain had damaged it even more. It was hanging inward like a long stretch of damp cardboard. This part of the mansion hadn’t been touched since his parents had both died here, more than six years back. Except that nature had now started playing its part in the equation, ivy winding thickly through the broken panes. Dandelions were sprouting in the gutters. If he didn’t do something about it soon, this whole section of his house would fa
ll apart.
It was possible he didn’t even notice it enough to care. Woody had always been a spoilt, unruly brat. But the night his parents died had marked the onset of his plunge into dementia. For all I knew, he’d blanked the whole thing out by this time.
This was one of those occasions when I thoroughly agreed with Cass. The inner workings of the very rich could be extremely tiresome.
About ten minutes passed before I heard the front door come back open. I returned to the corner and then ducked into the shadows there. I could see Millicent moving away from me along the drive, the fragmented gloom gathering her up. And waited until she was gone from sight before walking quickly to the porch.
My presence had been noted. Because Hampton—Raine’s manservant—was waiting for me just inside. He had on his dark blue uniform, but was wearing a pair of maroon carpet slippers too, which didn’t exactly set the outfit off very well. A massively round man, his skin tanned a light brown color, he was walleyed, one iris green, the other yellow.
He was not such a bad guy really, considering who his employer was. But he didn’t look overly pleased to see me, and I wondered why.
“I’ve been asked to tell you, Mr. Devries”—his voice was high-pitched for a man that size—“that you’re trespassing here and you should go away.”
Which was not the kind of reception I had been expecting. The last time I’d been up here, I had been in Raine’s employ. And he had even tried to help me, in his own disoriented way. But “changeable” is one of his numerous middle names. I tried not to look too taken aback.
“Seriously?” I asked him. “I thought me and Woods were on good terms?”
The big fellow glowered at me.
“I’d thank you not to keep on calling Master Woodard ‘Woods’ or ‘Woody.’ He doesn’t like it, and neither do I. He’s expressly instructed me to see you off the premises, if that becomes necessary. And be assured, I’ll do it.”
Or he’d at least try. His bulk was fat, not muscle, so it didn’t sound like too much of a threat. I’m six foot two, I used to be a cop, and I had a Smith & Wesson tucked inside my coat.
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