The Missing Bridegroom: A Charlotte Chase Mystery (The Charlotte Chase Mysteries Book 1)

by Georgia London

  Charlotte assumed that was what had happened anyway and she thought it likely that it was because they didn’t want to be seen going up to the Moor.

  Then there was Porthgowan Gaol, that gruesome place that Charlotte had long ago boycotted. It was open to the public but there were parts that were still closed off and it had more ghosts than anywhere else she’d ever been. They were not happy ghosts either, not spirits who just didn’t want to leave what they were used to; these were angry spirits, malevolent ones.

  Some were criminals rightfully convicted and hanged, and were still angry about being caught, but others were innocent, condemned to death on the flimsiest of evidence and they cried out for justice. They left Charlotte feeling distraught and trying her hardest to convince them to move on, but they never seemed to hear her and there was nothing she could do about it.

  There was one young man who had been hanged for the murder of his girlfriend; the locals had been so sure he was guilty, they’d even put up a memorial stone on the spot where her body was found, naming him as her killer and they had done it before the trial. He’d had no chance and Charlotte knew for certain he was innocent.

  It seemed likely she had committed suicide but the family would rather see an innocent man hanged than admit to the shame of such a thing. That case had really distressed her and she hoped she wouldn’t be led to that awful place.

  But she had a strong feeling that was precisely where she would be led. Miranda’s spirit had calmed down since her remains were discovered, but she was still hanging about which meant her needs had not yet been met.

  Was she waiting for them to find Simon? Probably.

  They passed the Porthgowan sign and Charlotte headed towards the Moor and that was when both dogs began to bark in the back of the people carrier. It was very rare for either of them to bark while travelling and even rarer for Fritz to bark at all.

  Samantha twisted around in her seat and put out a hand to sooth the two huge dogs.

  “What’s wrong, darlings?” She asked.

  But Charlotte knew the answer. She glanced in the rear view mirror and saw the cause of their agitation. Miranda had decided to make this journey with them.

  “Ok, Babies,” she said soothingly. “I see her.”

  “Who? Mandy?”

  Charlotte nodded.

  “She is in the back and she is telling us we are going the wrong way. That’s just what I was afraid of.”

  The transparent image in the back of Charlotte’s vehicle was pointing toward the road which led away from the Moor and to the Gaol. Damn!

  Miranda faded away as Charlotte pulled up into the car park and found a parking space outside the main doors. There was no sun, thank goodness. The doors were solid wood, very thick and encased in iron bars and sharp studs.

  She got out and let the dogs out to relieve themselves, then she put them back inside, opened the windows and shut the doors.

  “Where are we?” Samantha asked.

  “Porthgowan Gaol,” Charlotte replied. “I haven’t been here in years and I hoped never to come here again, but this is where he is.”

  Samantha gripped Charlotte’s sleeve as her hopes soared.

  “Simon?” She said. “Are you sure?”

  “Miranda is sure; that’s good enough for me.”

  ***

  “She’s gone from one parasite straight into the arms of another,” Jason Montfield said angrily. “How much will it cost to buy this one off, I wonder?”

  “Calm down, darling,” his wife, Sarah said soothingly. She put her hand gently on his arm and kissed his cheek. “This isn’t the same thing at all. She’s turned to this woman for comfort and perhaps she’s able to give it. Who knows? At least you managed to get rid of Simple Simon; he has, as you thought, taken the money and run. Give her time.”

  “I thought she had more sense.”

  “She does. But her heart is broken; she has not only lost the man she thought she loved, she has discovered he was a con artist, only after enough money to run away with this other girl. And he was good at it, too. He had this Mandy turn up all over the place, never leaving him alone, drawing our girl even closer in.”

  Jason looked down at his wife, where her head rested on his upper arm and he forced a smile. She was right; Simple Simon wasn’t so simple after all was he? He could have done with someone like that working for him.

  The doorbell rang, making Jason sigh impatiently.

  “What the hell now?” He demanded of the air around him. “If that is reporters, they’ll wish they hadn’t bothered.”

  They’d been pestered by reporters after the wedding farce, but since Samantha had got herself involved with a television medium for God’s sake, they’d be buzzing round liked flies on a dead carcass. It was bound to get out; there could be no stopping it, not in a town this size.

  But there were no reporters standing on his doorstep when he opened the door. Instead it was the police sergeant who’d had the effrontery to tell him he had no right to take his daughter home.

  “What do you want?” He demanded of the young man.

  “I would like you to answer some questions, Sir,” Detective Sergeant Middleton replied. “May I come in? Or do you want to come to the station?”

  “How dare you? And how dare they send a sergeant to me. If the police have questions, they can send a senior officer.”

  Paul sighed. Bloody rich people thought they could dictate everything. He didn’t begrudge them the money, only the ideas it gave them.

  “The station then,” Paul said, stepping back. “Do you want to get a jacket? It’s cold out.”

  Jason realised this could be done much quicker if he just invited the copper inside, although he couldn’t imagine what he wanted.

  “All right,” he said, moving back to make room. “Come in. But be quick. My wife and I have a lot to take care of.”

  In the sitting room Paul looked around appreciatively. There was no doubt someone had taste and he assumed it to be Mrs Montfield. Indeed, she was elegantly dressed as well. All good, expensive clothes but no top designer labels which cost thousands. Her hair was that elegant subtle blonde and immaculately coiffed, making Paul wonder if she’d taken time out from the family crisis to have her hair done.

  On her finger was the ring that Charlotte Chase had described. Could she have seen it somehow, on some other occasion? Sarah Montfield didn’t appear in public very often and any photos Paul had seen were not detailed enough to show the ring. Samantha must have told her about it.

  He shook his head, silently admonishing himself. He’d told Charlotte he believed in her and here he was doubting her.

  “Please, Sergeant,” Sarah said. “Sit down. Can I get you anything? Coffee, perhaps?”

  “Thank you, but no.”

  He sat in a large wing backed armchair which may well have been the most comfortable chair he had ever sat in, and pulled out a notebook.

  “Just a few questions,” he said. “The body of a woman has been discovered. The body of Miranda Davies, the girl your daughter’s fiancé is presumed to have run off with.”

  He couldn’t fail to notice that Sarah Montfield gasped and quickly covered her mouth to suppress the sound. Was she really so squeamish that the idea of a corpse frightened her? Or did she know something about it?

  “Mrs Montfield? You have something to say?”

  She shook her head, clasped her hands in her lap and seemed to be arranging her features in a passive expression.

  “Of course not, Sergeant,” she said. “It was just the idea of one so young losing her life like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Really, Sergeant,” Jason said quickly. “It is obvious if you have found a body as you say, and that you are here asking questions, that it was not a natural death. After everything this woman put my daughter through, of course my wife is distraught.”

  “Of course,” Paul said quietly.

  “So,” Sarah said, “you think Simon di
d it? His note said he had left with her. Perhaps he didn’t want to share the money after all.”

  “It is one avenue,” Paul said. “But when I told your daughter about the discovery, she didn’t seem all that surprised.”

  Jason slammed the mug he’d been holding down on the table, causing hot coffee to splash all over the polished surface.

  “I’ve heard enough of your insinuations, young man,” he said. “First you hint my wife might know something about this unfortunate young woman, then you accuse my daughter. I think it’s time you left.”

  Paul did as he was bid. He had no real authority to stay once the owner of the house had requested that he leave and as he climbed into his car, he looked up to see Jason Montfield standing on his doorstep. There was no sign of his wife.

  Miranda’s body showed signs that she had suffered a frenzied attack. It could mean that Simon Chandler had lost his temper over something, beaten then strangled her. Perhaps it was something to do with their plan, perhaps something had gone very wrong and he blamed her.

  He couldn’t simply accept Charlotte’s word that the letter hadn’t been written by Simon, much as he would like to. He had never met the young man in question, but he had come from nothing, no family, no support to owning and running his own business. That earned Paul’s respect, but he couldn’t let that cloud his judgement.

  Even without knowing him, he liked him a hell of a lot better than Jason Montfield.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Charlotte shivered as they entered the building and she opened her bag as she walked reluctantly to the ticket office.

  “I suppose we’ll have to pay,” she said.

  She handed over the price of two tickets to the clerk and collected a brochure containing a diagram of the parts where tourists were permitted to explore.

  She allowed her eyes to skim over the brochure laying out the opening times, price of entry and all the other tourist things, then she gave a short laugh.

  “God Almighty!” She exclaimed. “They charge people to stay here all night!” She tapped the glossy paper with the back of her hand. “Can you imagine that? If they could see what I see, they’d never set foot inside the place, much less stay the night.”

  “What do you see?”

  Charlotte eyed her thoughtfully for a few minutes. Did she want to answer that? She wasn’t sure she wanted the residents of this place to hear her. She shook her head but made no reply.

  The corridors were dark, the stone walls were grey and there was a chill in the air from the lack of sunlight. Men and women had been imprisoned here for years, starved and forgotten, and not just adults either.

  At the end of the corridor Charlotte saw a child, a little girl no more than five years old. She wore a filthy dress that hung off her skinny frame and black shadows encircled her sunken eyes. She looked about to cry, but was trying to hold back those tears, probably knowing they would do her no good.

  “Never mind,” Charlotte said at last. “Let’s get this over with.”

  “If Simon is here,” Samantha said. “How are we going to find him?”

  Charlotte looked back to where the child had now vanished, to be replaced by the wispy, transparent figure of Miranda Davies.

  “Just follow me,” Charlotte said.

  She followed the spirit to a barrier rope which hung across a passageway with a sign hanging off it. No Admittance - Staff Only. She looked around to be sure there were no staff members to stop her then stepped over the rope, Samantha following close behind.

  She placed her hand in Charlotte’s and clasped it tightly, her heart beginning to pound so hard she was sure someone would hear it and come and order them out of this part of the prison. The corridor disappeared into the dark as they moved farther along, the grey stone damp here and emitting a stench of staleness, like stagnant water. Charlotte wished she’d thought to bring a torch.

  On both sides there were doors, old wooden doors with barred openings at the top, the only light the inmates of these cells ever saw. There were no windows on the outside walls, just more grey stone.

  Their footsteps echoed on the stone floor as they walked, but Charlotte didn’t notice. There were other sounds here to drown out that one.

  Miranda had gone. They made their way warily along the narrow corridor, a slight wave of claustrophobia coming over Charlotte. And all the time, she could hear the cries of people trapped here, locked away in these cells for crimes they may or may not have committed.

  She was never afraid of the ghosts she saw. Always they were either just carrying on the only way they knew how or they wanted something specific from her. But the spirits here were different. This was the place where they all had one thing in common; it was the place where they had spent the worst days of their lives, probably the last days of their lives, and they were trapped, just as they had been trapped in life.

  And these spirits were malevolent. Fritz and Freya would never have come through here, even if Charlotte could have sneaked them in. They would have recognised the evil surrounding these phantoms and they would have fled.

  Charlotte never visited any of England’s ancient buildings where its violent past was best left forgotten. She had seen the same evil in many places as she saw here and it always left her wishing she could be an ordinary tourist.

  She tried to ignore the ragged and skeletal figures who gripped the bars on the cells they passed, tried to keep her eyes firmly locked in front of her. She couldn’t help them; if there was a chance she could she would have tried, but she couldn’t. She had tried before, in other places, and it never worked. These phantoms were trapped here for a reason and she had only a suspicion of what that reason might be.

  They kept walking, deeper and deeper into the darkest depths of the ancient prison. There was nowhere else to go except along this corridor, which got gradually narrower and thankfully became just lined with stones and dirt. The cells were behind them now, and there was no other sound.

  “If Simon is down here,” Samantha said in a trembling voice. “Surely he would cry out.”

  “Miranda has gone now, but she led us here.”

  “And ghosts cannot lie?”

  “They can, yes, but not this soon after death. She has a conscience about you, about Simon, and I believe it is because she knows where he is and possibly played a part in his abduction. She cannot move on until she tells someone and that someone has to be me. No one else can hear her.”

  Charlotte was beginning to wonder if her confident words to Samantha were true. She had no idea where they had come from or how she knew the truth of them, and the further they went into the darkness of this awful place, the more doubtful she became.

  And she was concerned for the dogs. She’d parked them close to the building and left the windows wide open, but she never left them this long and never where she couldn’t see them. She couldn’t stay here much longer, no matter how certain she was that this was the right place.

  But what else could she do? She could hardly bring the police down here on the word of a phantom. She could just imagine the reaction she would get, no matter how much that sexy sergeant declared his belief in her.

  “Is that another door?” Samantha said.

  Charlotte breathed a sigh of relief. Right at the end of the corridor was another iron studded wooden door with a barred window. There was a light behind this one, a faint, flickering light as though it was coming from an oil lamp.

  Both women picked up their pace and reached the door together, both standing on tip toe to peer through the rusty, iron bars. Yes, it was an oil lamp, and it stood on a small table beside a low, metal bed with a thin mattress. Lying on the bed was Simon and he appeared to be fast asleep.

  The door wasn’t locked, much to Charlotte’s surprise, and opened easily.

  “Simon!” Samantha called to him.

  She rushed to the bed and sank down on the floor beside it, stroked his face with her hand, leaned forward to kiss him. But there was no sign
of awareness from him.

  “He’s been drugged,” she said.

  Charlotte pulled her mobile phone out of her pocket but there was no signal.

  “Stay here with him,” Charlotte said. “I’ll get help. I wonder how they managed to get him down here without being seen.”

  “Hurry.”

  “I’ll be as quick as I can.”

  She had to go all the way outside before her phone came alive and when it did, there were several text messages from Sergeant Middleton. She didn’t have time to read those right now; he would have to wait.

  The first thing she did was go to her vehicle to be sure her dogs were okay. They were fast asleep but both looked up when they saw her and came to the window to lick her face.

  “Thank God,” she murmured, hugging them. She kissed each one then turned back to the phone to dial the emergency services.

  While she waited, she got the dogs out of the vehicle. She noticed a tap beside the massive front gates and turned it on for them to drink, then she put them back in the people carrier, and began to read the messages from Paul Middleton.

  She noticed several people smiling and pointing at the dogs where they poked their huge heads out of the open window. She was used to that; everybody remarked on them wherever they went.

  But the messages from Paul drew her immediate attention. Where was she? That was his first question and where was Samantha? Had they made any progress in finding Simon?

  The pathologist had completed his post mortem on Miranda and it had been confirmed that she had been beaten and strangled. Charlotte could have told them that, but she carried on reading.

  They were looking for Simon on suspicion of the murder of Miranda Davies.

  CHAPTER NINE

  She waited until the ambulance had arrived and loaded the unconscious Simon onto a stretcher and safely into the back of the ambulance before she rang Sergeant Middleton. She’d seen enough police programmes to know that when they believed themselves right, they’d go to any lengths to prove it.