by Sarah Kelly
Tasha shuddered. “No offence, but I couldn’t stay there. It’s too creepy.”
“Oh, nonsense,” Mrs Rowan said. “It’s fine. You young people watch too many ghastly horror films.”
Mrs Clitheroe laughed a tinkly laugh, shaky with age. “Well, India, if you and your husband become uncomfortable for any reason, I have a spare room here you can use. It would be no bother. No bother at all.”
India smiled. “Thank you, Mrs Clitheroe. I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.”
CHAPTER 3
“Do you always dine like this?” Xavier asked with a grin, looking around at the grand drawing room with portraits in heavy golden frames on the walls.
“Ha!” Laurence said, spearing some beef with his heavy silver cutlery. “A ready meal in front of the telly is more my style, I’m afraid. I can’t remember the last time anyone ate in here. I’m surprised the whole thing isn’t covered in a thick carpet of dust. Old Row insisted we should put on a proper spread for you, so she cooked earlier and left it to stay warm in the oven. Is it all right for you?”
“It’s wonderful,” India said, meaning it. Roast beef, roast potatoes and a delicious thick onion gravy were going down a treat. She didn’t often drink alcohol but Laurence had brought out a red wine and she didn’t mind taking a small glass.
They sat in a cluster at the end of the 12-seater table, Laurence on one side and she and Xavier on the other. There was a rather grand chair at the head of the table, but Laurence would have looked all wrong in it.
“Yes,” said Xavier, “it’s really really nice.”
Laurence grinned. “Well, at least I’ve got something right, then, eh?”
“Oh,” India said, reminded of the whole missing money fiasco. “I meant to ask you something, Laurence.”
Laurence looked up with his dreamily cloudy green eyes, his fork poised on his potato. “Hmm?”
“I don’t mean to be rude,” India said, “but I must be direct.” She’d certainly got better at that the more crimes she investigated. India always wanted people to be comfortable and happy. That was the goodness of her nature. In the past that would have stopped her pushing boundaries and stepping on people’s toes. But in the years that had gone by, and with each investigation, she realized that justice had to come before people’s feelings sometimes. “Your accounts were a total mess, you said, correct?”
Laurence grimaced. “Yes, indeed.”
“What I don’t understand is how you came to the definite conclusion that it was Felicia who stole the money,” India said. “I mean, I don’t mean to accuse people, but isn’t it possible it could have been your accountant himself, Geoffrey Forsythe?”
“Oh no,” Laurence said quickly, picking up his wine glass and swilling it around, perhaps a little too violently. It splashed over his plate and he swore, then burst into laughter. “Well, looks like I’ve just made my own red wine jus for my beef.” He sighed, mopping at a tiny splash on his tie. “I think Geoff likes one or two glasses of whiskey too many,” he said, “but that doesn’t make him a thief. And I didn’t trust Felicia from the get go. She said she wanted to learn about her family’s English heritage. I know you Americans sometimes have quite romantic views about England and things. Well, this house is probably an American’s daydream of what England is like, to be fair. Not very representative of everyday England, though. Anyway, she struck me as… disingenuous somehow. Always very polite. Always smiling. And yet… there was something awfully fake about her. I extended goodwill to her as my niece, even though my brother and I don’t see eye to eye. We make a phone call at Christmas, Alexander and I. That’s the extent of our communication.” He took a sip of wine and stared off at a portrait with distant eyes. “They’re probably laughing together at my expense right now.”
“But £20,000 was taken, you say,” Xavier said. “Surely if your brother’s a super successful business man, that isn’t a lot of money to him.”
Laurence’s face was like a dark cloud about to burst into lightning and thunder. It was the most serious India had ever seen him. “That’s what makes it so… so evil!” The words seemed to reverberate up from his throat with a rumbling sound. “He sent her here to ruin my plans for this house, for the art school.”
“But why?” India asked, and then, with an afterthought, “And how did he know about the art school idea if you never spoke?”
Laurence spoke quickly while staring at his plate. It seemed he was ashamed and wanted to get through the process of explaining as swiftly as possible. “I thought the damnable hard hearted man would find it in him to donate the money for the roof. After all, it is his childhood home. But he laughed at me and said that in the real world when adults wanted things they had to pay for them. And that if they had made stupid career choices they would have to go without, not go around scraping and begging.”
“Ouch,” Xavier said.
“It’s ridiculous,” Laurence said, letting his cutlery clatter against his plate as he dropped it. He pushed his seat back in fury, then stopped still for a moment, breathing and trying to get his breath back. “Yes, money helps us do the things we want to do, in some ways. But it doesn’t mean anything, does it? No one is going to have their lives changed from someone else earning a decent living, and buying a Bentley or whatever. It’s all just smug satisfaction and showing off. But art… art can transform lives. Not only of the artists themselves, but of the people who immerse themselves in the art. True expressions of the human soul, in all its beauty and its ugliness, too. Art is learning what it is to be human. And its impact can last hundreds of years. But Alexander doesn’t understand any of that. In fact if he were here he would be having a good laugh at my expense, right at this moment.”
India thought his speech was actually rather touching. He was obviously very passionate about what he did, about opening the school. “The two of you sound very different.”
“Yes,” Laurence said, “especially for identical twins.” Then he laughed. “We should be a case study for scientists. Just to illustrate how different identical twins can be.”
“Oh, you’re identical!” Xavier said. “My sister Nadine always wanted to be an identical twin. She even had an imaginary twin for a while, Ebony.”
India laughed. “She’ll kill you for telling people that.”
Laurence smiled wryly. “I imagine being a twin would be jolly good if you got on with them. But when you can’t stand each other, it feels like a kind of hell you can’t escape from. In a way I’m not surprised Alexander left. If he hadn’t, I think I would have. Not to America, though. I mean no offence by that,” he added quickly. “But I think I would have gone to Egypt, perhaps, or Morocco. To study the ancient art and architecture. I still daydream about it, you know, taking a year off or more to do so, but who would look after the Hall?”
“It’s a pretty big responsibility,” India said.
“Indeed,” Laurence replied. Then he looked up, his eyes full of light. “But perhaps also a pretty big opportunity. For young artists.”
India and Xavier smiled at him.
“Let’s hope so,” Xavier said. “We’ll do what we can to track down Felicia and recover your money.”
Laurence looked between the both of them, seemingly overcome with emotion as his eyes glazed with tears. He swallowed, and speared a potato with his fork. His voice was low, and thick with feeling. “Thank you.”
***
The next morning, India and Xavier were hurried along down the grand staircase by the warm smell of freshly baked bread.
“Laurence went off to the studio a few hours ago,” Mrs Rowan said. “He’ll be locked up in there until lunch. He’d sleep in there, if he could.”
India sipped the sweet black coffee Mrs Rowan had made. “He sure is dedicated to his art.”
“I hope his school idea is a success,” Xavier added.
Mrs Rowan raised her eyebrows as she dried up a mixing bowl with a tea towel. “Yes, well, let’s hope so.” Indi
a could tell she wasn’t holding out any hope herself. “After you’ve finished your breakfast, I’ll take you to the room where Felicia was staying, and the room she was using as an office. That way you can see if you can find anything.”
Though India knew Mrs Rowan was talking about clues, she threw a meaningful glance at Xavier. He returned it with bright eyes, knowing exactly what she had planned. She was going to scan for Energy.
After they’d finished their omelet, sausage and coffee, Xavier and India followed Mrs Rowan as she hurried down the corridor. With a manor so large, India could see why she did everything so quickly. She looked like an old VCR tape on fast-forward, the way she rushed around. They took two flights of stairs, then a corridor to the left, then a turning to the right. By that time India had lost her bearings, though she tried to repeat the instructions in her head. The manor was a maze of corridors, and it seemed to be the same polished mahogany door set in the wall over and over again. It really was a spectacular place, like something out of a gothic fairy tale.
“Here we are,” Mrs Rowan said happily. “This is where she slept. Now, I haven’t the time to wait for you, heaven knows, with all the things that need doing around here. But I’ll give you directions to the room she used as a study. It’s very easy. You go down one flight of stairs, then take the first right. You go to the end of the corridor, then you’ll see it bends to the right again, and you’ll go down there. Then it’s the second door from the end on the left. That’s in the East Wing. She said she liked to watch the sunrise.” She made her last comment in a way that made it clear she thought it an extravagant indulgence to watch sunrises. Of course, there would be something to scrub instead, or something to make or mend. India wondered if the only fun she ever got was flower arranging at Mrs Clitheroe’s. “Well, I hope it’s useful.”
“Thank you, Mrs Rowan,” Xavier said.
India smiled. “You’ve helped us so much already.”
“Oh, nonsense,” Mrs Rowan said with a smile. “Like I told you earlier, I’ll leave sandwiches in the fridge for your lunch.” And then she was gone.
“So this is where Felicia slept,” India said, walking around the rather unremarkable room. It was wood paneled, like every other room in the house they’d seen so far, but it had none of the ornate crown moldings and ceiling murals of the dining room, and no rich thick carpet like the stairway. The boards looked old and creaked terribly as India and Xavier walked about. A starkly modern single bed with a red duvet was in the corner, unmade, like Felicia had just rolled out of it. A matching chrome and light wood dresser was at the opposite wall, all the drawers open. A T shirt was draped over one of them but the rest were empty.
India stood still for a moment and closed her eyes. She was making her mind go blank. At first it was always hard, putting her thoughts to the side and trying to settle into the blankness, the vast blackness behind her eyelids. But soon she managed it, and she began to feel things. Very subtle twinges in the air around her. That was one perk of being a witch, the ability to feel how the Energy manifested around them. The patterns were always different wherever she went. Places where people had fought always had sludgy energies, where loud, bold colors clashed and looked discordant to the eye. Where there was love was always beautiful. Sometimes with fresh pastel greens and yellows and blues, especially where there were little children. Often with pinks and crimsons and lilacs, swirling into one another and dancing in their just-about-visible beauty. They were like wisps of smoke to India, there one moment, gone the next.
Xavier wasn’t as good at that type of magic. He was more into exerting spells rather than quiet, sensing ones. “Are you getting anything?”
“Yes,” India said. “A green and a gray together, like slashes, I think?”
“What does it mean?”
India opened her eyes. “She was scared of something. Of someone.”
“Oh,” Xavier said, frowning. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
“Neither me. But that’s definitely what it is. I feel it very strongly. Like she was truly terrified of what someone was going to do.”
Xavier sat on the bed. “But who was there to be scared of? Unless… unless she was scared of Laurence finding out she took the money?”
India walked over to the window, gazing down at the gardens and the woodland beyond. “Laurence? Who would be scared of him? He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“We don’t really know him,” Xavier said. “I don’t think he’s a fearsome character, but who knows? People can be so different behind closed doors.”
India nodded. “That’s true. There’s still so much we don’t know about her, though. And about everyone around here. She could have been scared of anyone. In any case, I don’t think she did this alone, somehow. Or… I just feel like there’s a whole lot to know that we don’t know right now.”
“Me too,” Xavier agreed. They fell into silence for a moment or two, each of them thinking hard. “How do we even know that Felicia even took any money? All we have is Laurence’s word… But then, why would he lie about it?”
India laughed a little. “Maybe he just spent the money himself and accused her to save face? But then why would she have run away? Maybe he paid her off to run away so he could pin the money wasting on her. We should probably go speak to the accountant.”
“Definitely. Tomorrow, if possible.” Xavier smiled. “But Laurence has no one to answer to, does he, for the lost money? So there would be no need to pretend. He doesn’t seem to have much pride about money. I doubt he’d go to all those lengths.”
“Me neither,” India said, then laughed as she turned to him. “It’s crazy what ideas pop into our heads, isn’t it? I swear when people say trust your intuition, and trust the first thing that comes into your head I want to scream. So often we’re just wrong. Just plain wrong.”
“I know!” Xavier said. “If we went with our first thoughts on all these cases, there would be a whole lot of innocent people in jail right now.”
“Right? And a whole bunch of guilty people roaming the streets.” India looked around the room, the rest of which was bare. “I don’t think there’s anything in here to see, really, is there?”
Xavier got up and took a quick look under the bed, then stripped the cover back. “Nope. I guess there’ll be more paperwork and stuff in the office room thing she was using.”
“Yeah,” India said. “Let’s go. Do you remember the directions?”
“Sure,” said Xavier. “Down the first flight of stairs, then to the left, then follow the hallway around to the left again, then it’s the second one from the end, either on the right or left. I think.”
India shrugged. “Well, you remember better than me.”
They followed those directions, wondering at the strange heavy tapestry on the floor of the lower wall, depicting some bloody scene from the Bible, it looked like, and the painted portraits that hung, the subjects staring at them.
“I know what Tasha means,” India said. “It is just a tiny bit creepy. With Mrs Rowan or Laurence there it doesn’t seem to be scary at all, but when it’s just us…”
“It is kind of creepy,” Xavier agreed. “Especially as there are no windows in the hallway.” The only window was where the staircase ended, but the day was a gray one and the sun shone so dimly it could barely strain as far as India and Xavier ventured.
When they made the turn at the corner, another window at the end of the corridor made things rather better.
“Ah,” India said, relieved. “I feel like we’ve rejoined the world now. It doesn’t look creepy at all down here. Quite homely, in fact. I can see why Felicia would have chosen here to work.” There was a pale yellow wallpaper dotted with white flowers and it gave the whole place a much friendlier vibe.
“Me too, actually,” Xavier said. He leaned over and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Love you, Mrs Kirby-Bradford.”
India still loved when he did that. She loved to hear his name incorporated into hers, and even
after a year it was still somewhat a novelty. “Love you too, Mr Bradford.”
He smiled affectionately back at her and they were silent for a moment. Soon his brow creased into a frown. “Do you hear that?”
All India could hear was the distant sound of what she presumed was traffic.
“It’s like… buzzing?” Xavier said.
India paused. “Oh yes, I think I can. I thought it was cars or whatever, but now you say it, it does sound like buzzing. Like an electrical buzz. Very faint, but definitely there.”
“Exactly,” Xavier said, then shook his head. “Probably old electrics. These kind of places often need a whole rewiring. I remember my neighbor Jim complaining about the cost in his Queen Anne house.”
“I’ve heard that too,” India said. “All the systems often need to be redone. You know, I saw this advert for the largest house in Europe once. Somewhere in England, only £40 million, which is quite cheap, considering how enormous it is. At least ten times the size of this one. But do you know why it’s so cheap?”
Xavier grinned. “I expect you’re going to tell me.”
“Because it was built on top of a mine, and it might collapse into it at any moment.”
Xavier’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh my gosh. That’s crazy.”
“Tell me about it,” India said, then pointed to a door. “I think that must be the one Mrs Rowan meant.”
“Yep, I think so.”
India pushed the door open and found nothing but an empty room, the floorboards stripped bare. “Ah, man. We must have gotten the directions wrong.” She reached over and gave him a playful slap on the arm. “It’s all your fault.”
He gave her a slap back. “At least I came up with directions in the first place. Unlike someone else I know.”
She stuck her tongue out at him. It was childish, but she loved how they could act silly together.
“I think we should go downstairs and ask Mrs Rowan to explain again,” Xavier said. “I’m sure she won’t mind.”