A Murder in Time

by Julie McElwain

  A din of at least a dozen voices reached them as they entered the castle, growing louder as they moved down the wide corridor and through arched doorways. Here was the source of the noise: an enormous room with high ceilings and a fireplace that was big enough to roast a full-size boar. That should’ve been the focal point, but today it was a mere afterthought in the whirling dervish of activity. Every surface, including the long pine table, was taken up by boxes and piles of clothing.

  It was a little like being backstage at a Broadway production, Kendra supposed. Organized chaos. Personnel from Stark Productions had divvied up the space into designated sections: Lady’s Maid, Valet, Housemaid, Footman, Scullery Maid, and something called a tweeny.

  As Sally bounced over to the line for Scullery Maids, Kendra joined the one for Lady’s Maids, handing the woman the slip of paper she’d been given. Once again she was subjected to a measuring stare.

  “The hair ain’t right.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  The woman shrugged. “Size eight, right?”

  Kendra did the size conversion in her head, and nodded. The woman shoved a bundle of clothes at her.

  “Shoe?”

  “Seven—ah, I mean, four-and-a-half.”

  The woman pulled out a pair of ugly black half boots from a box. “You can change in the room down the hall. Third door on the right.”

  At least a dozen women, in varying states of undress, were already in the room, which had been converted into a women’s locker room. Scanning the high, white walls, Kendra wondered at its original purpose.

  “Isn’t this exciting?” said Sally as she came up behind Kendra. She put her bundled clothes down on the bench and began stripping. “When I played a tavern wench, I could at least wear my own knickers,” she remarked conversationally, lifting a shapely leg to tug on black wool tights, followed by a sturdy garter. “These drawers don’t even have a crotch. Might as well go starkers.”

  Kendra surveyed the undergarments she’d been given. “They weren’t kidding about authenticity, were they?”

  Sally giggled and pointed at the simple, shapeless white linen garment that bore a passing resemblance to a thin nightgown. “That’s a shift. And that,” she moved her finger to the rectangular scrap of fabric with a single string attached, “is called a short stay. It’s worn over the shift. Sort of like a bra.”

  “Hmm. What’s this?” Kendra picked up a long piece of fabric that resembled a belt for a robe, but it had two pouches sewn onto it.

  “Pockets. You tie the belt around your waist. Under your gown. There’s slits in the skirt so you can reach into the pocket . . . See?” Sally demonstrated. It looked like a feminine version of a workman’s tool belt. “Did you know that back in the day, pockets were considered sexy? Any woman showing off her pockets would’ve been considered a slut.”

  “I guess I’ll keep my pockets to myself.”

  Kendra stowed her purse beneath the bench, and stripped off her shirt. Sally was lacing up her half boots, but stilled. “Holy God. What happened?”

  “What? Oh.” Kendra realized that the other woman was staring at the puckered scars on her leg, arm, and torso. Self-conscious, she hurriedly slipped into the old-fashioned garments. “Nothing. I was in an accident.” She concentrated on figuring out how to tie the stay. Then she dragged on the muslin dress the color of an eggplant.

  “Turn around so I can button you,” Sally ordered, and after Kendra obediently presented her back, she nimbly did up the buttons. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you. They look like . . . well, never mind. There!” She forced a jovial note in her voice. “You look a lovely lady’s maid, Cassie. I, on the other hand, am a lowly scullery maid.” She tied on her apron.

  “You’d rather be a lady’s maid?”

  “I’d rather be a Lady!” Sally laughed. “I wonder how many of the toffs will be sneaking into someone else’s bedroom for a little slap and tickle tonight?”

  “You’re such a romantic,” Kendra said dryly.

  “This is a Regency house party, Cassie. That’s what they did! Have you got your room assignment yet?”

  “Room assignment?” Kendra tugged on her stockings and garters before picking up the half boots.

  “Well, you won’t have your own room. You may be an upper servant, but you’re still a servant,” she grinned. “I noticed you didn’t bring any luggage with you. If you need any help collecting it from the boot of your car, I’m sure Ian will volunteer.”

  Kendra’s fingers stilled briefly in tying her shoes. “Thanks, that’s very thoughtful of Ian. But I can handle it.” Of course, she had no intention of staying the night. Once she accomplished her mission, she would disappear. It was imperative that she be gone before the police arrived. “I want to look around first.”

  “Be careful that Mrs. Peters doesn’t catch you in the private rooms. You missed it, but she lectured us nearly an hour on how bleeding old and priceless everything is.”

  Kendra stood up, forcing a smile. “I promise to be careful.”

  At least here she could tell the truth. She planned to be very careful.

  And she wasn’t talking about Mrs. Peters.

  More than four hundred guests mingled beneath the blazing chandeliers in the grand ballroom. At another time, Kendra would have enjoyed the experience, watching the crowd that included some of the world’s most famous faces, wearing fashions befitting the early nineteenth century. They almost looked like they could’ve stepped out of the pages of a history book. Almost. If you ignored the tattoos and body piercings—most of which were sported by women.

  “Authentic, my ass,” she muttered under her breath.

  Her eyes focused on the man across the room.

  Sir Jeremy Greene.

  His hair gleamed like polished silver in the room’s soft light. His patrician features looked at least a decade younger than his sixty-one years, thanks to a cosmetic surgeon’s careful scalpel, the judicious use of Botox, and the latest collagen fillers. His body, beneath evening attire that vaguely resembled a tuxedo, albeit with knee breeches, was trim and still fairly toned, credit, no doubt, to his membership in one of the most exclusive fitness clubs in London.

  As she watched, he lifted the delicate crystal flute to his lips, drinking champagne that probably cost a week’s salary of one of the lowly employees at Greenway International. Once again, Kendra felt the molten rage rise within her. Damn him. He was chatting, smiling, laughing. This man, this monster, who was responsible for so much destruction.

  The anger felt good. Cathartic. It rubbed away some of the gnawing anxiety that had been building all day in the pit of her stomach.

  It was time.

  Kendra drew out the note from her pocket and glanced around. A footman was standing off to the side, observing the guests much as she had been.

  Summoning a smile, she walked over to him. “Excuse me,” she began, and was astonished when he flicked her a cold look before turning on his heel and stalking off.

  “Asshole,” she muttered under her breath, staring after him. She shook her head and scanned the room again, relieved when she spotted Ian, decked out in a similar wig and royal blue footmen finery, weaving his way through the guests, clutching a tray filled with empty champagne glasses. She intercepted him at the Carrara marble columns near the double doors.

  “Ian? Hey.”

  His eyes swiveled in her direction, and he grinned. “Cassie. What’re you doing here? I thought lady’s maids were confined upstairs.”

  “I’m on a mission.” She called on every ounce of her latent acting ability to infuse her voice with a lightness she was far from feeling. “One of the . . . er, ladies has an interest in a certain gentleman.” She managed a chuckle. “Sir Jeremy Greene. Do you know him?”

  “Cassie, everyone in Great Britain knows Sir Jeremy Greene.”

  That was probably true. They just didn’t know what he was.

  “Well, she wants this note passed to him discreetly—
very discreetly, since she happens to be married.”

  “Really?” Ian’s eyes gleamed with masculine interest. “Who is she?”

  “My lips are sealed, but you’ve probably seen her in the movies.” That seemed ambiguous enough. Kendra didn’t want to name names in case the actress in question happened to be standing next to Sir Jeremy when Ian delivered the note. Better to be vague. “She wants to meet him in the study.”

  Ian frowned. “The study? That’s in the old part of the castle, isn’t it? We’re not supposed to go there. I don’t think the toffs are even supposed to go there. It’s been cordoned off.”

  “I think privacy is what she’s looking for.”

  “Guess it’s none of my business where this lot wants to shag,” he shrugged, reaching for the note. “Let me get a fresh tray of drinks, and I’ll deliver it.”

  “Discreetly,” she warned.

  He grinned, nodding, and moved away. Kendra waited a moment before making her own exit from the ballroom. She dodged playacting servants rushing up and down the servants’ stairs, and retrieved her purse from the locker room.

  Earlier, she’d done a quick reconnaissance of the castle’s rooms, based on her Internet research. She’d selected the study in the oldest part of the castle for two reasons. One, like Ian had said, it was off-limits. Whoever owned or ran the castle (probably England’s National Trust) had roped that section off to discourage guests from traipsing into the area.

  And, second, the room boasted a secret passageway.

  In truth, that wasn’t uncommon in the older, historic households throughout Great Britain. The country had a long, bloody history filled with political intrigue and religious persecution. Priest holes and secret passageways had come in handy for many of England’s aristocrats. And, if anything went wrong, it might come in handy for her.

  Kendra approached the velvet rope that cordoned off the private area, shooting a furtive glance around before ducking under it. Despite her best efforts, her heart began to race as she moved down the corridor.

  This far away from the party, the castle was silent. The only noise was the whisper of her skirt and muffled footsteps as she walked the length of the burgundy and brown hall runner. The rug looked old—but then again, so did everything else in the castle. Still, she knew this section was older by centuries. If a castle had a heart, this would be it. These cold stone walls had been silent witnesses to both birth and bloodshed. It was a moody thought for a moody atmosphere. Adding to it were wall sconces, carefully spaced and cleverly designed to look like flickering candles, making shadows leap and dance.

  Kendra suppressed a shiver. Even though she told herself that she was being fanciful, she was still relieved when she arrived at the door of the study. It had been locked earlier, and she’d made sure that she’d locked it again when she left the room two hours ago. Better to be safe than sorry.

  Her heart began to hammer in her chest, so loud that the uneasy staccato filled her eardrums, but her hands were steady as she reached into her purse and withdrew two thin wires. Lock-picking wasn’t a skill one learned at Quantico, but she’d studied it when she’d tried to get into the head of a perp who’d been entering homes in the middle of the night.

  She held her breath as she worked the wires, then let it out in a rush of satisfaction as the tumblers fell into place. It had taken less than a minute, much less time than when she’d first entered the room. She dropped the wires back into her bag and slipped through the door, switching on the lights—more cleverly designed wall sconces.

  She looked around. Nothing had changed, she thought. No one had entered this room since she’d been there earlier. The claret, in its cut crystal decanter, was exactly where she’d placed it on the elegant sideboard.

  It was an interesting room. Octagonal in shape, it had high walls paneled in mahogany and papered in green silk, the same dark hue as the velvet-upholstered furnishings around the room. There was a fireplace here, too, as big as the one in the servant’s hall, but the mantelpiece was more ornate, carved in a neoclassical design. Above it was an elaborately framed oil painting depicting a woman and child dressed in what looked to be late eighteenth-century garb. On the opposite wall were Grecian fitted bookcases, flanked by two breast-high Chinese vases with a blue dragon motif against a pearly white background. The mahogany desk—Chippendale, if she wasn’t mistaken—was positioned in front of an enormous medieval-looking tapestry embroidered with a hunting scene. Behind the material, cunningly hidden in the wall’s paneling, was a door.

  She’d studied it earlier, had found the mechanism that sprang the lock. Behind the door was a claustrophobic space and stone stairs that spiraled upward. The steps led to a large room with enormous mullion-paned windows on the north and east wall. She didn’t know what the space had been used for, because it was empty now, but there was another door that opened to the hallway not far from the servant’s stairs that could take her all the way down to the ground level.

  She’d take those stairs before anyone noticed Sir Jeremy had disappeared. Of course, he might not even be discovered until morning, and she’d be on the plane to Rome by then.

  Kendra pulled her thoughts back to the present, and went to work. Opening her purse, she slipped on latex gloves and withdrew a small jar of face cream. Briskly, she unscrewed the lid, and fished in the cream for the small plastic packet, which contained exactly one gram of white powder.

  Her heart thumped now for an entirely different reason. Her palms, inside the latex gloves, began to sweat. She wanted to be calm, but there was something terrifying about handling one of the most deadly toxins known to mankind. Ricin. One fourth of a teaspoon, and it could wipe out a population of 36,000.

  She didn’t want to think what it would do to one man.

  Cautiously, Kendra tapped out the white powder into the Waterford crystal wineglass she’d brought. Her hands trembled only slightly as she lifted the decanter and poured the claret into the glass. In the soft light, it gleamed like blood.

  She put the glass and decanter on the silver tray, and stepped back. Only then did she realize she’d been holding her breath.

  She let it out and took a few minutes to regulate her breathing before stripping off the latex gloves, putting them into her purse. She glanced at the marble and bronze clock on the mantel. In ten minutes, Sir Jeremy Greene would arrive, believing he’d be rendezvousing with a mysterious starlet.

  There was no doubt in Kendra’s mind that he would come. She’d studied him. Profiled him. Even though he already had a mistress—a beautiful young Italian model who’d accompanied him here—he wouldn’t be able to resist the coy invitation of another. That was his pattern. And when he came, she’d serve him the claret. It would only take one sip before the effects of the poison would shut down his system and he’d collapse to the floor with multiple organ failure.

  Imagining it, she felt a little sick, and wondered suddenly if she could go through with the plan. Then she heard approaching footsteps.

  Too late to reconsider.

  She drew in a steadying breath, and tried to reassure herself that what happened next was justice. And once it was meted out, there’d be no turning back.

  The door, only partially closed, swung open. From her position, she could see Sir Jeremy’s hand, slim and elegant, wrapped around the doorknob. Kendra straightened, forcing her expression into one of subservience.

  Sir Jeremy paused, and Kendra knew a moment of confusion when he took a step back from the door. Then she heard it. More footsteps.

  Kendra froze. Had Sir Jeremy’s mistress followed him, suspecting his infidelity? Her eyes cut to the glass of wine. Crap. The idiot might have bad taste in men, but she didn’t deserve to die. She’d have to abandon her plan after all.

  “What are you doing here?” Sir Jeremy said, his voice sharp and too loud in the silence of the hallway.

  “Our last shipment was confiscated by the DEA.” The other voice was lower, masculine and faintly accented.<
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  “I heard. You should be more careful.” Sir Jeremy’s tone was dismissive.

  “We were careful. Our sources tell us that somebody talked.”

  “What? Who—What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?” Greene’s voice rose. “Are you mad?”

  There was a strange ppfftting sound, and Kendra nearly jumped out of her skin when the door suddenly flew inward, crashing against the wall. Shocked, she watched as Greene fell backward into the room, his features contorted into grooves of agony while his hands clutched at his chest. Blood seeped between his fingers. Even as her mind reeled at the implications, she looked at the man in the doorway, recognizing him instantly: the unfriendly footman from the ballroom.

  Their eyes met; time stood still. Then Kendra’s gaze dropped to the gun he held deftly in his hand, a silencer elongating the barrel, and instinct took over. She raced toward the hidden passageway just as he pulled the trigger. Another ppfftt. The bullet scored the fireplace mantel, spraying chips of marble. Kendra made it to the tapestry as the blue-and-white Chinese vase shattered into a million pieces.

  She’d left the panel door open a fraction—a foresight that now may have saved her life. Wrestling with the tapestry, she yanked the panel open and dove through. She pulled the door shut behind her, and was plunged into instant darkness.

  It would take the killer less than a minute to figure out how to open the secret passageway, she calculated.

  Oh God, oh God, oh God . . .

  Blind, she stumbled up the stairs, using her hands to feel the way.

  Fuck! Why was it so dark? She’d left the door at the top of the stairs open . . . but of course, it was evening, and whatever moonlight penetrated the windows in the upstairs room would be too weak to reach the stairwell. How could she have been so utterly stupid? She should’ve left the light on in the room above. But she hadn’t anticipated this. Who’d have thought that she wouldn’t be the only one after Sir Jeremy? What were the odds?