To Sleep No More (A Dalton & Dalton Mystery)

by Kathleen Marks

  Chapter 6

  LOUIS GODFREY jumped up from the desk chair and backed into the far right corner of the room. He shook his long, brown bangs out of his face and quick-glanced between Rick, Alex, and the door.

  “Hello, Louis,” Alex said.

  He swallowed. The tendons in his neck strained the way Ivy’s muscles had when she’d faced the mouse creature, and emotion scorched the back of Alex’s sinuses. Fear. Had Mary felt that way before she’d died? Had she believed her parents had forsaken her? Alex turned to Rick, giving her a moment to slow her heartbeat. “Wait here. We don’t want to scare him.”

  “I think it’s too late for that, but all right.”

  Alex looked back to the boy. She smiled gently and inched across the red rug patterned with gold geometric designs: diamonds, circles, and pyramids.

  “See how important mathematics is?” Aunt Pauline had asked that question whenever she’d entered the children’s room to check on their education.

  “I’m Alexandra Dalton,” Alex said. “Mr. Watson is my uncle. I used to live here when I was a young girl.” She pointed to the bureau in the far left corner. “My cousin and I kept our dolls in those drawers. We pretended they were their secret hideaways.”

  Louis stared at her but said nothing.

  “Let me try.” Rick sauntered toward the desk, glanced at the paper on top of it, and moved on to the bed. He sat. “Looks like Miss Edna’s already given you school assignments.”

  “Mathematics,” Louis whispered.

  Alex winced. Did he hate that subject as much as she had? “I know these last weeks have been difficult for you, and we don’t want to make them even more difficult, but is it all right if we ask you a few questions about your father’s death? My uncle thinks you might know something that can help us solve another person’s death.”

  Louis’s pupils wavered. “The Night Hag killed him.”

  Rick stepped next to Alex. “How do you know?”

  “He—he yelled out. In the night. That’s what happens.”

  Alex lifted her eyebrows. “Did you check on him?”

  The boy flinched and pressed himself tighter into the corner. He lifted his chin. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “He didn’t call for me.”

  Alex took another forward step, but before she’d taken a second, Rick stopped her and gave her a small shake of his head. Alex held his gaze. Rick had always been good at reading people. She would follow his instincts. “What else can you tell us about the day your father died?” she said to Louis.

  “He wasn’t my father. He only told people he was. My mother left me at a convent when I was a baby. Jeremiah and his missus got me from the orphanage a few years after that.”

  “Did they adopt you?” Alex said.

  “It wasn’t like that with them.”

  Louis’s glare seemed more a challenge than an admission of truth. Was he lying?

  Rick touched Alex’s arm and inched closer to Louis. He stopped about four feet from him.

  Louis hunched his shoulders.

  “Can you tell us what you remember about the day he died?” Rick said.

  He shrugged.

  “Once at breakfast, maybe?”

  Louis nodded.

  “What time was that?” Alex asked.

  “He has to leave for work by eight o’clock, so before then.”

  “What did you do after he went to work? Go to school?”

  “School’s out for the summer.”

  “Of course.” Alex frowned. “Who else was with you?”

  “I’m not a baby. I can take care of myself.”

  “With Jeremiah’s wife gone, what else was the man supposed to do?” Rick cut in. “He had to make a living. And Louis is old enough he may have had his own job.”

  “I had chores,” Louis said.

  Alex quickly scanned Louis’s thin frame, red and calloused hands, and the dark circles under his eyes. Had Jeremiah provided him with more work than nourishment?

  “So the next time you saw Mr. Godfrey was when?” Rick said. “At dinner?”

  “At the baseball game. He was an outfielder.”

  Alex half smiled. She’d attended a few community baseball games with Fay and Uncle Henry. Businessmen and charity workers had set up so many activity and refreshment booths near the event it was paramount to a fair. “Did his team win?”

  “I don’t know. I went for the food. But I expect so. He was happy when he got home.”

  “So you saw him after the game,” Rick said.

  “From my bedroom window. I stayed in my room.”

  Rick glanced at Alex.

  “But you saw him well enough to know he was happy?” Alex said.

  Louis flipped his hair out of his eyes again. “No. I mean—I heard him, all right? He was whistling when he came in the house. He always whistled when he got what he wanted.”

  “Do you know what time that was?” Alex said.

  “About five. I got home from the game at four.”

  “We heard Mr. Godfrey was sick that day. Do you know if that’s true?”

  Louis shrugged.

  “What about at breakfast?” Rick said. “How did he seem then?”

  “Cross—same as always.”

  “Not sick?”

  Another shrug. “Can I get back to my studies now? Miss Edna said I had to finish before dinner.”

  “I have only one more question,” Rick said. “Is there any reason, other than that you heard Mr. Godfrey scream, that makes you believe the Night Hag killed him?”

  Louis clenched the upper rim of the straight-backed desk chair so tightly his knuckles turned white. His lower lip quivered. “I didn’t see a ghost or witch, if that’s what you mean.”

  Alex narrowed her eyes. Though Louis’s face had paled, he didn’t cower. If anything, he stood taller. Defiant, even. Louis might not have seen a ghost, but something had upset him. Something he obviously did not want to reveal to Rick and her.

  Rick set his hand on Alex’s shoulder but looked at Louis. “Do you mind if the two of us take a look around your house?”

  “It’s none of my care.”

  “Would you like to go with us?” Alex said. “I doubt anyone knows the way around it better than you do.”

  “I’ll never go there again.”

  Alex clamped her left hand over Mary’s pink ribbon. When the sheriff had told her and Rick the police had found Mary’s body in the grass by the river, she’d vowed never to go there either. Some places, like people, were too hard to face again.

  Someone tapped lightly on the door.

  Louis flinched. Rick strode to the door and quickly opened it.

  Edna stood in the doorway. She carried a pair of black pressed pants and a white shirt over her bent arm. She smiled apologetically at Alex and looked to Louis. “Cook says it’s almost time for dinner. Have you finished your studies?”

  “Not yet,” Louis said.

  “It’s our fault,” Rick said.

  Edna handed Louis the clothes. “I expected these two would mess up your schedule. All right, we won’t worry about mathematics tonight. Come down to dinner as soon as you’ve dressed.” She looked to Alex and Rick. “The two of you will be joining Louis, of course?”

  “We’ll be there,” Alex said, “but if we’re late, have him start without us.”

  “Very well.”

  Alex and Rick followed Edna from the room, but while Edna continued down the hall to the stairway, Alex paused.

  Rick cupped Alex’s elbow. “What do you have in mind? It’s too late to inspect the Godfrey home this evening.”

  “We’ll go in the morning. But I think we should record what we’ve just learned from Louis. We don’t want to forget anything.”

  “There isn’t much to forget.”

  “So it shouldn’t take us very long.”

  “Still meticulous.” He placed his hand on her shoulder. “It’s one of the things I love about you. And miss.
”

  Alex’s muscles relaxed, but she looked decidedly away from him. If he saw the emotion swelling behind her eyes, he might misinterpret her feelings as meaning something more for him than they did. And the fact was, she didn’t know what it meant, what she felt, what she wanted to feel. She knew only that deep inside her heart, she still hurt.

  ***