The Complete Kate Benedict Cozy British Mysteries

by Carrie Bedford

  I turned to check on Josh. He was jogging up the drive towards me. I pointed to the front door, indicating that I was going in, and he waved in acknowledgement.

  Turning around, I took a few steps towards the house and then stopped, perplexed. I swiveled my head to gaze up at the moon. It was still half-shrouded in cloud, emitting only a pale glow that bleached the color from the grass and trees. And yet I was sure I’d seen light reflecting on the damaged roof of the east wing. I walked closer and stopped when something glinted again, high up on the tiles.

  Josh arrived next to me, breathing hard. “What are you looking at?”

  I pointed. “Do you see lights up there?”

  We both stared for a full minute, but the roof remained dark. “It must have been the moon shining on the slate.” Josh shivered. “I’m getting cold. Let’s go in.”

  After one last examination, I followed him inside, and we pulled on the sweatshirts we’d left on the hall bench. Lachlan strode from the drawing room, accompanied by Fergus, who fussed over Arbroath as though he’d been gone for days. The dog shook himself wildly, spreading droplets of water all over the tiles.

  “G’night,” Lachlan said. “I’ll be on my way.”

  “See you around lunchtime tomorrow,” Fergus said.

  “Aye, bright and early.” The groundskeeper nodded goodnight and left through the front door, closing it behind him. He was an odd one; so aloof and withdrawn, he was almost sinister. I still thought he deserved to be on my suspect list, in spite of Fergus’s objections.

  “Good run?” Fergus asked us.

  “Yep.” Josh rubbed a calf muscle, which sometimes spasmed after he’d been exercising.

  “Are you all right, Kate?” Fergus gazed at me. “You’re looking pensive.”

  “I thought I saw a light up on the roof on the east wing.”

  Fergus exchanged glances with Josh. “It was moonlight,” Josh said. “What else could it be?”

  “Can we check inside? Just to be sure?” An idea had struck me. “It could have been light from a torch shining out through the gaps in the tiles.”

  Only Arbroath’s exuberant shaking broke the ensuing quiet.

  “Let’s take a gander,” Fergus said, somewhat to my surprise. Until now, he’d seemed so averse to talking about the east wing, baffled that anyone would have thought to enter it.

  After grabbing a couple of torches from the hall cupboard, we climbed the stairs, pausing briefly while Fergus told Arbroath to stay. The big dog wagged his tail hopefully until his master repeated the instruction. With a sigh, Arbroath slumped to the black and white tiled floor, head resting on his front paws.

  When we reached the east wing door, Fergus went in first. The door creaked as he eased it open, letting in light from the corridor. Beyond the first few meters though, the space was black, the darkness impenetrable. I looked up through the ruined ceiling to the rafters and the underside of the roof. In several places, thin slivers of grey light revealed spaces between the boards.

  “There.” I pointed upwards. “There are gaps. If someone were in here with a torch, the light would be visible from outside.”

  “But there’s no one,” Josh pointed out. Fergus clicked on his torch and gave the other to Josh. I blinked in the sudden brightness. Apart from the blighted furniture, the salon was empty. There couldn’t have been anyone inside. In a way that was a relief. We didn’t need any intruders to add to the chaos, but it left me wondering what I’d seen from the driveway.

  “Bloody hell,” Fergus murmured, surveying the ravaged room. “I haven’t been in here for years. It’s worse than I remember. I never liked coming in here. Too many bad associations, I suppose, of the war and the bomb that killed my great-aunt.”

  Skirting the hole in the floor, Josh toured the once-grand salon, stopping occasionally to examine the mildewed furniture and damaged artwork. “I seem to remember that roll-top desk was on the inventory list,” he said. “We never found it in the main house.”

  Fergus joined him in front of the desk. “My father said this was my grandfather’s favorite piece of furniture.” He patted the ornate inlaid top. “He sat at it to write letters and pay his bills. Maybe I should have moved it and had it renovated.”

  “You still could, and we could try to find that Queen Anne tallboy too,” I suggested. “It might be downstairs. Shall we go look?”

  “I’m not sure we should be rambling about in the darkness,” Fergus said. “We can come back in the morning.”

  “It won’t make any difference. It’s perma-dark in here with all the windows boarded up.”

  “All right, but be very careful. Kate, you lead the way and I’ll bring up the rear.”

  I picked my way around the room to the green-painted door that led to the landing and the stairs to the lower story.

  “The staircase is in bad shape, so hang on to the banisters, or what’s left of them anyway,” I warned the others. As I turned the old-fashioned porcelain knob and eased the door open, I heard a noise. It seemed to come from downstairs. “Did you hear that?”

  Josh nodded. “It sounded like a door slamming.”

  “Opening this one probably caused a draft,” Fergus suggested. “Let’s go check it out.”

  Cautiously, staying close to the wall, we descended the shattered staircase to the hall below.

  “They reversed the layout in this wing,” Fergus said. “The salon took up the entire top floor to take advantage of the views. There were windows on three sides, and lots of natural light, rather like the Great Hall in the main building.”

  “So these are bedrooms?” Josh poked his head around a plank of wood that dangled from one hinge, and pointed the torch inside.

  “Five of them, if I remember rightly, two bathrooms, and a dining room,” Fergus said, as we followed Josh into the first bedroom.

  “Is the door upstairs the only access point to the main house?” I asked.

  “No. There’s a passageway from the scullery here to the big kitchen in the main building. The servants used the big kitchen to do most of the food preparation and then brought them through here to the dining room. There’s a wine cellar on this side. I’ll show you before we leave. But take a look around first, if you like.”

  I followed Josh into one of the bedrooms, which was dominated by a four-poster bed with carved newels. Remnants of red silk hung in tatters from the wooden panel overhead, and the quilt on the bed was ripped, leaking its feather stuffing in grey mounds. A nice place for a mouse to nest, or perhaps a whole colony of mice.

  Josh seemed to be enjoying himself, sweeping the torchlight along the walls, exclaiming at the damage. Sidestepping a massive cobweb that joined a crystal chandelier to the back of a faded floral wingback chair, I wondered how big the web’s architect was and tried not to dwell on it. I didn’t mind spiders, just not very large ones.

  Josh led the way into another bedroom where the floor boards were splintered and the ceiling, ten feet above our heads, had a gaping hole in it. He held the torch up, highlighting the jagged edges of the salon floor. “That must be where the bomb crashed through. Can you imagine if it had actually gone off?”

  We wandered back into the hall. “Which door could have slammed?” I asked. Three of the rooms still had functional doors and two of them were closed.

  “Let’s take a look,” Josh said. Fergus stayed in the hall, examining some pictures that hung askew on the walls.

  We examined the last bedroom and the dining room where two silver candelabra festooned with cobwebs stood on a broad wooden table. It was creepy, but here was no sign of anyone or anything untoward. When we rejoined Fergus, he was looking at a painting of two horses. He unhooked it and tucked it under his arm, sneezing as dust flew up from the gilded frame. “I suppose it would be a good idea to come through and rescue what I can,” he said.

  Josh agreed. “I saw a jewelry box on a dresser in the bedroom that I think my mum would like, if that’s all right?”

  �
��Of course. Anything you want.”

  “Great. I’ll come back tomorrow with a bag and gather up a few things.”

  Fergus led us to a narrow door at the end of the hall. “This is the entrance to the scullery and wine cellar.” We passed through two small rooms with stone walls and wooden shelving, and through an arched opening into a corridor. “We’ll go out this way instead of risking those stairs again,” Fergus said. “They’re a deathtrap.”

  “Funny,” Josh said. “I knew about this passageway when I was a kid, but my mum was adamant that I never come to the east wing. She was terrified I’d fall through a hole or that the remains of the roof would collapse.”

  The corridor was narrow, with a flagstone floor. A series of gas lamps hung on the green-painted walls.

  “No electricity?” I asked.

  “The castle didn’t get electricity until the mid-1940s,” Fergus explained. “And even then it was limited to the main part of the house. The tower wasn’t wired until the ’60s, and of course the east wing never was. When I was a boy, I used to help change the mantles in the gas lamps in the bedrooms. I liked the light those lamps gave out, and that faint hissing noise of the gas in the pipes.”

  We continued walking until a sudden skittering noise made me jump. I grabbed hold of Josh’s arm. “Only a mouse,” he said, directing the torch at the flagstones. As he lifted the light, I put my hand on it to lower it again. “Look at that.” I pointed to something that gleamed against the stone, then leaned over to pick it up. “It’s a button.”

  Josh nodded. “So it is.”

  “But it’s not old.” I ran my finger over the silvered surface. “It’s shiny. It must have been lost very recently.”

  “Well, you said that Lucy and Duncan had been in here. It could be one of theirs,” Fergus said.

  “But that would mean they knew about this passage.”

  “Duncan knew about it,” Josh said. “One summer when were both staying here, he stole a bottle of cooking wine from the kitchen and sneaked in here to drink it. Then he boasted about it to me for days afterwards.”

  I examined the button more closely, trying to match it to anything I’d seen either of them wearing, but nothing came to mind. I slid it into my jeans pocket and caught up with Fergus, our footsteps echoing on the stone floors.

  Rounding a curve in the corridor, we came to another door. Fergus pushed it open and I looked past him, expecting to see the kitchen but, instead, we walked into a narrow room lined with shelves that were piled with pots and pans.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  “We’re in the old scullery. It’s not been used for years.” He crossed the room to a pine door, which he opened to reveal a larger space where there was an old-fashioned, coal-fired range, a farmhouse sink and a stone counter. “This is the servants’ kitchen.”

  We continued on. Just around a corner was the butler’s pantry and, beyond it, the kitchen, modern, clean and empty. Fergus turned on all the lights. In spite of myself, my eyes were drawn to the meat locker, and my mind rushed to finding Duncan in there.

  I turned to look at Fergus. Under the bright halogen lights, his aura was moving so fast it made me nauseous. My skin chilled as the blood rushed to my feet, and I bent over, hands on my knees.

  Josh hurried over and crouched in front of me. “Are you ill? What can I do?”

  I shook my head. “I’m fine. It’s Fergus. We’re running out of time.”

  32

  When daylight broke on Tuesday, I stumbled out of bed after a short and mostly sleepless night. Fearing that Fergus had little time left, I didn’t want to waste any minutes at all. Josh had already gone, his side of the bed cold, so I threw on some clothes and hurried downstairs. Through the wide-open front door, I saw DCI McMahon talking to Fergus and Josh, with Arbroath keeping them company. I joined them on the front steps. The sky glowed pink, threaded with purple and gold, but a stiff breeze bent the bare branches on the trees and whispered in the gables.

  McMahon was huddled in a navy blue waxed jacket with a red tartan scarf knotted at his neck. I shivered in my woolen cardigan.

  “So Knox isn’t a suspect?” Josh asked, clearly continuing a conversation that had already started.

  McMahon shook his head. “He was on the suspect list, of course, but he told us that he and his two colleagues worked in his room after they left the party at midnight— through until about three-thirty a.m. All three swear to the other two being present the entire time. And Knox emailed me a copy of his phone record, showing a steady flow of calls to and from the head office in Palo Alto for those hours.”

  “He makes his employees work on weekends?” I said.

  McMahon sighed. “A lot of us work on weekends.”

  “That’s true, I'm sorry.” Then something struck me about what he’d said. “He gave you his phone records, but there's no mobile service in the castle. I can’t use my phone at all here. There’s no signal."

  McMahon smiled. “Knox brought a satellite phone with him. He told me he knew the service here was almost non-existent and so he came prepared. I got the impression he regards Scotland as still being in the dark ages when it comes to technology.”

  “You mean he’s in the clear?”

  “I believe so.”

  Fergus nodded. “Well, I for one am glad to hear it. I’m trusting that Knox only has the best possible intentions with regard to the estate purchase.”

  I put my hand on Fergus’s arm, averting my eyes from the aura that rotated in the soft morning light like an eddy in a clear pool.

  “And the other piece of news I wanted to share with you is that I reviewed the CCTV footage from the pub car park again.” The wind tugged at McMahon’s scarf. He pulled it more tightly around his neck. “It’s my opinion that Remy was after Kate.” He looked directly at me. “We can place him at the car park when you left the Land Rover and crossed the road to go to the cafe. So, he certainly knew it was you driving the vehicle, not Fergus.”

  “How would he have known I was there?” I asked. “It’s the first time I’ve left the castle.”

  “I wondered that too,” McMahon said. “I assume he must have been watching the place. He saw you leave and followed you to the village.”

  “Charming.” My skin prickled at the thought of Remy stalking me.

  “Why would Remy want to kill Kate?” Josh asked.

  “I don’t think he intended to kill her. Messing with brake cables is a highly unreliable way of getting rid of someone. It’s more likely he just intended to scare her. He must have known Kate was conducting her own enquiries and he was, presumably, nervous she would soon be able to identify him as a killer.”

  “You think that Remy killed Duncan?” Josh asked.

  McMahon took a deep breath. “I can’t confirm that yet. But I do believe Remy killed Nick.”

  I gasped. I’d almost forgotten about poor Nick.

  “What brings you to that conclusion?” Fergus asked. He hadn’t shaved, and grey stubble dotted his chin and cheeks.

  “I’m not at liberty to say quite yet,” McMahon said, “I have a lot of questions for him. Oh, and I understand Nick’s funeral is this afternoon? Are you going?”

  Fergus nodded. “Of course. Mr. Jameson called to ask me.”

  I exchanged glances with Josh. I hadn’t realized the service had been scheduled already.

  “I’ll be there as well,” McMahon said. “Sometimes murderers can’t help but turn up to watch their victim’s funeral. It’s sick, but it happens.”

  “Shall we go inside?” Fergus asked, rubbing his hands together to warm them.

  “You go ahead,” McMahon said. “I’ll be off. Lots to do.”

  “One thing,” I said to him, digging in my cardigan pocket. “Last night, we found this button in a passageway that leads from the kitchen to the old east wing.” I held it out. “It looks new. Could it be important? I think it means someone used that passage recently.”

  “It’s not in reg
ular use,” Fergus explained to the inspector. “Most people don’t even know it’s there.”

  McMahon turned the button over in his hand. “Could be from a blazer or a jacket of some kind. Leave it with me. I’ll run it by my team.”

  When he’d driven away, we went inside.

  “I’d like to finish my breakfast,” Fergus said. I followed him and Josh, and we served ourselves from the sideboard. I stuck to my now usual diet of tea and toast and marmalade.

  “McMahon said Duncan’s autopsy should be finished this morning.” Fergus said once we were all seated. “Then we’ll be able to finalize plans for the funeral. Perhaps when Nick’s service is over later today, I’ll have chance to talk with the vicar and the funeral director.” He ran his hands through his grey hair. “Two young men, two funerals. Who would have thought?”

  “Kate and I will do whatever we can to help,” Josh said. “I’ve already heard back from most of the family that they’ll come up for Duncan’s service, and so will Duncan’s boss, who’ll also tell his work colleagues.”

  “What about Lucy?” Fergus asked. “Will she come back up?”

  “I can ask her,” I said. “She was still very upset when I talked to her last night. But I’m sure she’ll come.”

  “You talked to Lucy?” Fergus asked, holding his fork in mid-air.

  “Only briefly. I wanted to ask her about… never mind. It’s not important. I’ll ring her once you have the date and time and let you know what she says.”

  “I don’t have a tie with me,” Josh said after a pause. “Fergus, can you loan me one for the service this afternoon?”

  “Yes, we’ll get that sorted out. But first, I have a meeting with the solicitor about the sale. He should be here any minute.”

  “Do you want me to help?” Josh asked.