by Tamara Berry
A much shorter, much less grandiose schoolgirl playing dress-up. In other words, an assistant.
“I’m afraid there’s been some confusion—” I begin, but the woman cuts me short and addresses Birdie again.
“Nicholas has always kept unusual company,” she adds. “I should have known better than to be surprised by anything he says or does. I’m Sid, of course, but you must already know that.”
“Indeed, my child,” Birdie agrees. “How could I not? You’re the spitting image of your father.”
Now it’s my turn to be confused, but it’s a short-lived sentiment. Nicholas’s old school friend Sid is not, as I originally suspected, a pretentious windbag with a love of tradition.
She’s a woman.
She’s a beautiful woman.
She’s a beautiful woman who thinks that Birdie White—a walking puppet with eyebrows like the Gateway Arch—is dating Nicholas Hartford III.
It’s all I can do to tamp down a giggle in time. I manage it, though, and not just because giggling is beneath a woman of mystery. Now that I have a better understanding of the situation, it’s time I regain a semblance of control. Birdie White might be skilled at the art of being a medium, but I was the one who received an invitation from someone with a pulse.
“I’m afraid there’s been some confusion,” I say again, more firmly this time. I hold out my hand. “I’m Madame Eleanor Wilde. This is Bridget Wimpole-White. We met coming up on the train. When we discovered we were bound for the same place, we decided to travel together.”
“We’re all bound for the same place,” Birdie says. “Death takes everyone in the end.”
The effect of this gloomy pronouncement is to cause Sid’s eyes to open wide. They’re a warm, rich hazel that reflects the light of all this gilded illumination perfectly. “Oh, I see,” she says somewhat vaguely.
“No, you don’t,” Birdie says frankly. “But you will.”
On those depressing words, she seems content to step back and allow Sid to turn her attention toward me. The other woman does this with interest, taking in the details of my dress and demeanor with something like relief.
“Everything makes so much more sense now,” she says, her sigh tinged with laughter. “I can’t think what made me so stupid.”
“We came barreling in incredibly late, and you’ve recently experienced a major loss,” I say. “Please, don’t think anything of it.”
Her relief grows, accompanied by a smile that causes twin dimples to appear in her cheeks. “You are a comfort to have around, aren’t you? Nicholas said you would be.”
My eyelid twitches, but I’m careful not to give anything away. Comforting is the last word Nicholas would willingly use to describe me. Conniving, sure. Cheeky, absolutely. But he’s the first to point out that nothing in his life has been ordinary since the day I entered it.
However, this woman seems to both want and expect comfort from me, so that’s what I plan to give her. She’ll be much more likely to open up to me about the secrets of her family that way.
“I’ll do my best to make this as easy on you as possible,” I promise, and cast a glance back the way we came. “Speaking of, the man who brought us to the island had us leave our bags at the dock, but I’m wondering now if that’s too much of an imposition. Would it be better if we . . . ?”
“Oh, I sent my brother down to fetch them as soon as we heard you arrive. He should be here any moment.” She glances at a grandfather clock to my right and furrows her brow. “Were you two the only ones on the late ferry?”
I look to Birdie in an attempt to include her in the conversation, but she’s taken a keen interest in a gold-framed painting of a hunting dog and doesn’t appear to be listening. “There was a family on board with us as well as a young woman who looked like a college student on holiday,” I say. “Why? Were you expecting someone else?”
We’re joined just then by a man in a peacock-blue satin robe and matching slippers, both of which are lined with velvet of a deep, rich fuchsia. He appears in the doorway as if materializing from out of nowhere, looking like a silent film star who was only recently colorized and digitally enhanced. An image like that isn’t easy to pull off, even allowing for a setting as decadent as this one, but this man manages it with panache. Even his pencil-thin mustache seems to have been contrived to set female hearts aflutter.
My heart is already taken, so I’m able to withstand such charm. Besides, he appears to be about my age and bears a full head of Sid’s same rich, auburn hair, so I can only assume this is the brother . . . A brother who doesn’t appear to be carrying bags of any kind.
Sid notices at the same time. “Oh, Ashley—what are you thinking? Don’t tell me you went all the way down and didn’t bring the bags up?”
“There weren’t any bags,” he says, blinking somewhat dazedly around him. Since I can only presume he’s been inside this room before, it must be Birdie who’s eliciting that response. Well, either Birdie or me, and I like to think that I’m a little bit less startling than her. Upon first acquaintances, at least.
“You wretch. You didn’t even go look, did you?”
“I did,” he protests. “There wasn’t anything on the dock.”
“Well, you’ll have to go back and check again,” Sid insists. “They can hardly have sprouted legs and walked away.”
The scolding note in Sid’s voice goes unheeded by her brother. He’s still wearing that slightly bewildered look. “Don’t be fussy. The bags aren’t important.” I’m about to politely disagree with this when he adds, “Sid, I got word that Harvey wasn’t on the ferry. A man called from the station.”
“Yes, I was just asking Madame Eleanor whether or not he came that way. If the trains are running as far behind as it seems, perhaps he’s been delayed. I’m sure he’ll come up tomorrow.” She turns to me with a nod. “Harvey Renault is our father’s solicitor. He’s been very helpful in getting everything sorted since Father’s passing, and he knows more than anyone about the estate. We thought you’d like to include him in the, ah, proceedings.”
“How kind of you,” I murmur noncommittally. A solicitor might prove an invaluable source of information in a case like this, but those in the legal profession have a tendency to view my kind with suspicion. Harvey’s presence could end up swaying the family in either direction. “I look forward to meeting him.”
“McGee won’t like taking a second trip so soon after the last one, but he won’t turn Harvey away.” Sid releases a sigh. “At least, I don’t think he’ll turn him away. I don’t remember him being so unpleasant. He was always a bit naggy when we were children, but—”
“Harvey’s not coming tomorrow,” the young man says, cutting his sister’s commentary short.
“He’s not?” Sid blinks at him, her lashes so long and curled they almost catch together. “Then when will he be here?”
“Never. It’s happening again—cursed ‘with book and bell and candle.’” There’s barely time for this bizarrely poetic phrase to penetrate before he adds, “Sid, he’s dead.”
At those heavy words, every muscle in my body seizes up at once. I find I can’t move—not to blink, and certainly not to breathe.
I warned you, Ellie, my sister says suddenly. I told you not to do it.
“He died on the train up,” Ashley adds. I strain to hear the next part, even though I already know, deep in my gut, what’s coming. “They’re saying he suffered a heart attack.”
Chapter 4
“Nicholas Hartford the Third, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll cancel all your plans and get here immediately.” Even though I’m only talking to a messaging service, I’m careful to hold nothing back—not my fear nor my anger, and certainly not my annoyance. “You sent me on that train with a murderer. A murderer. Well, either that or a real psychic. I’m not sure which is worse.”
The sound of footsteps in the hallway has me lowering my voice to a near-hiss. “If I’m found tomorrow morning dead in my be
d, you have no one to blame but yourself. And I’ll haunt you—don’t think I won’t. I’ll haunt you so bad that you’ll wish I was still alive to lay myself to rest.”
On this nonsensical threat, I click my phone off and toss it onto the bed. I’d also called and left a message with my brother, Liam, telling him I loved him and that he’s duty-bound by blood to adopt my two cats should I meet with an untimely end, but my connection was cut off about halfway through, so I don’t know how much of it he’ll understand.
To be perfectly honest, I don’t know how much of it I understand. All I know is that our dead man now has a name. A name and a personality and a knot that ties him inexorably to this case.
Harvey Renault. Oxford wing tips. Heart attack.
“Madame Eleanor! Oh, Madame Eleanor!” Birdie knocks on the door to my room, her voice carrying nothing but cheer and goodwill. If the night’s events have upset her, she’s doing a much better job than me at hiding it. “Have you gone to bed, dear? I brought us that nightcap.”
I toy with the idea of climbing out onto the terrace and scrambling down the rocky exterior to escape my fate at Birdie’s hands. There’s something altogether appealing about a young woman descending several stories into the bosom of the dark, swirling sea, but I decide against it. My chances of surviving an encounter with Birdie are probably better. I didn’t get in quite enough swim practice for ocean currents in the dead of night.
Tiptoeing to the door, I pull it open just enough to reassure myself that my visitor isn’t carrying any weapons on her person. There’s always a chance that the wine bottle in her hand is poisoned, and I wouldn’t put it past her to have a knife concealed somewhere underneath the voluminous folds of her purple shawl, but she seems safe enough.
“Splendid.” Birdie shoves her foot into the open space of the door and nudges it the rest of the way open. “I didn’t think you’d be asleep yet. There’s always so much to do when one arrives at a new house, isn’t there?”
As a matter of fact, yes, there is. One of the first things I do whenever entering someone’s home is to spend literal hours poking into every nook and cranny I can find. When there’s a “ghost” present and in need of exorcism, I look for loose boards and draughty windows, check into heating appliances, and search for vermin in the walls. It’s amazing how quickly the things that go bump in the night will stop bumping once you nail down a few boards. When there isn’t a ghost but the family expects me to somehow manifest one anyway, as is the case here, my activities are more about squirreling out old family photos and checking the medicine cabinet in search of clues.
So far, I haven’t had much time to do anything but berate Nicholas for sending me to my death. But the night is young, so there’s no telling where things will lead.
“How’s Glenn’s room working out for you?” I ask as Birdie floats past me. Her patchouli scent is much less pungent as time goes on, but it still cloys my senses. “Any signs of our ghostly host?”
“Oh, nothing worth mentioning,” she replies in a tone that matches my own. “Just the usual settling-in antics.”
I give a sympathetic tsk and gesture for Birdie to take a seat in one of the plush red-velvet chairs by the dwindling fire. My room might not be the former domicile of the dead man I’m supposed to be conjuring, but it is beautiful. Unlike Castle Hartford, where everything is either worm-eaten or recently purchased from a discount store, this castle has been meticulously kept up and maintained throughout the centuries. My room manages to strike a perfect balance between gorgeous and gothic—full of oversized furnishings and heavy fabrics and all the more delightful because of it. There’s even a metal-cast coat of arms on the wall.
“Cold draughts and flashes of light?” I ask. “You won’t get any sleep that way, I’m afraid.”
Birdie heaves a long-suffering sigh as she lowers herself to the nearest seat. “Likely not,” she agrees. “But then, I didn’t expect this to be a relaxing sojourn. As I always tell my clients, I can’t rest until the spirits do.”
“Very wise.”
“And now we have poor Harvey on our hands, too.” She looks at me with a smile that holds nothing but bland interest. Extracting two glasses from underneath the folds of her shawl, she pours out the wine and pushes one at me. “What do you make of it, dear? I had no idea that our dead man was going to be tied up in this business. Did you?”
To an outsider, Birdie and I probably sound like friends settling in for a comfortable chat about murder before bed. To me, we’re strangers approaching dangerous ground. I have no way of knowing how much Birdie is involved in Harvey’s death—if at all—but I don’t care for the odds.
Theoretically speaking, my vision could be called nothing more than a fluke. I never confirmed that the body carried out of the train was wearing Oxford wing tips, or that he was drinking tea when he died. In fact, the only thing I got verifiably correct were the red seats in that particular car, and I could have easily absorbed that information without knowing it when I walked past the train on the platform.
Birdie, on the other hand, knew when and where he was going to die, right down to the village where the train would come to a stop.
People don’t know that sort of thing. People can’t know that sort of thing.
“No, I didn’t,” I say carefully. “All I got were the shoes.”
“Yes, you did get those, didn’t you?” she murmurs. She lifts the wine to her lips, her eyes never leaving mine over the top of the glass. “Have you felt his presence yet?”
“Whose, Harvey’s?” I accept the other glass but don’t drink. I get the feeling I’m going to need all my wits if I’m going to make it out of this interview intact. This is no mere social call. “No, I haven’t felt anything from either man, but I also haven’t made any attempts to reach out, so that’s not surprising.”
It’s obvious she was hoping for more. A flash of something like disappointment crosses her expression, but she quickly tamps it down and tries again. “A solicitor and close family friend dying like that . . . rather suspicious, wouldn’t you say? When there are valuable heirlooms missing?”
I’m tempted to point out that it’s equally suspicious for her to descend on the Stewart family at just such a time—and on a train carrying the solicitor whose death she predicted—but I don’t. Until I know what this woman’s game is, I’m not giving anything away.
“He can’t have known where they’re located, or he would have told Sid and Ashley weeks ago,” I point out. “It may have been nothing more than unfortunate timing. People die of heart attacks all the time.”
“True.” She purses her lips and nods at my glass. “But you’re not drinking, Madame Eleanor. This is a lovely port. The wine cellar here is one of the best in the country. Glenn Stewart was known as something of a connoisseur. I was going to grab a merlot, but he recommended this one especially.”
Which makes me especially loath to drink it. I don’t trust dead men’s motives any more than I do Birdie’s. I lift the glass to my lips and feign a sip. “Very nice,” I murmur.
She beams as though she had hand-pressed the grapes herself.
In an effort to keep the conversation on topic, I add, “It could prove useful that you and Glenn are so close. If he’s helping you select wine already, then you should be able to find the money in no time. You’ll have me out of work before the week’s over.”
“Money?” she echoes with a laugh. “It’s not money that’s missing, dear. You’ve been misinformed. It’s family heirlooms we’ve been called to find.”
I think back on my conversation with Winnie. “Money can be an heirloom.”
Birdie only stares at me.
“Gold coins, for example. One might consider them both currency and collectible.” I smile blandly to show I’m joking. “I’m sure all will be revealed to us tomorrow. What do you think of the family so far?”
This is meant as little more than a conversational gambit. I’ve made my own conjectures about the Stewar
t siblings, and my first impressions are rarely wrong. They have money—too much of it, if you ask me—and little worldly sense. It’s a dangerous combination, especially once you start introducing them to the Birdie Whites and Eleanor Wildes of the world. How easy it would be for a medium to take advantage of their fear and grief for her own gain.
How easy it would be for anyone to do it.
Strangely enough, Birdie seems to agree with me. “Sid Stewart is a beautiful widgeon, and the brother isn’t much better. But their family is an old and respected one—not just in Scotland, but everywhere. Glenn had a good head on his shoulders.”
I don’t know how good his head was if he managed to misplace a batch of important family heirlooms, but I keep that to myself.
“I like them,” I say with perfect truthfulness.
“Do you?” she asks, blinking. “Already?”
I could easily tell her that my like of the Stewarts is matched by a dislike of her, but I don’t. There’s still that chance of a knife tucked underneath her shawl. I might be exhausted, but I’m not stupid.
“Oh, yes,” I say instead. “I’m not as adept as you at controlling the weather, but I’m not without my uses. I always seem to have a sense of when someone is hiding something.”
Birdie eyes me speculatively but doesn’t show alarm. “I couldn’t agree more. Innocent little lambs, those two. Perfectly unobjectionable.”
I don’t know that I’d go that far, since beautiful widgeons and resurrected silent film stars can be pushed to extremes like anyone else, but I’m willing to play along. “Indeed,” I agree. “They’re nothing but victims of circumstance. You and I, on the other hand—”
The large grandfather clock on the far wall of my room chimes just then, ringing in the two o’clock hour with somber glee. It’s as good a reminder as any that if I want to get my usual poking done before the family rises for the day, I’m going to need to get started soon. As enlightening as it is to sit trading commonplaces with a woman I trust as much as a baited bear, I need to find a way to get rid of her.