by John Inman
A lazy smile touched his mouth when he thought of Derek asking him to move in with him after they got back to the city. If they got back to the city. The way things were going, it wasn’t exactly a sure thing.
He wondered if he and Derek should simply take off through the woods. Right now. This very minute. A long hike in any given direction other than the one where the rampaging stream blocked the road should take them back to civilization. But he also knew the woods were deep and thick. With no sun in the sky, and with the storm bombarding them at every step, how would they know they weren’t going in circles? Yet what else could they do? Lock themselves in their room until help arrived? That wouldn’t work. If the killer was as dead set on doing them in as Jamie suspected he was, he could just murder everybody else first, then burn the house down around them to get them too.
A movement caught Jamie’s eye. It was Oliver Banyon, walking surreptitiously across the foyer below, heading toward the back of the house. Thinking he was unseen, Jamie jumped like a rabbit when Banyon suddenly stared straight up at him and motioned for him to follow.
Jamie glanced around to see if anyone else was present, but they were clearly alone. The women were in their rooms. Derek was in the basement. Banyon was in the foyer. And who knew where the hell the little horndog Tommy Stevens was. He’d better not be in the basement cruising Derek, Jamie knew that much.
Pulling himself upright, Jamie waved a silent hello to Banyon.
Softly, Banyon called up to him. “Meet me in the sewing room.”
Jamie nodded in agreement, wondering as he did so if it would be the dumbest thing he ever did in his life. Or maybe even the last thing he ever did in his life.
He traversed the carpeted stairs lightly and quickly, his fingers skimming the banister as he descended. When he reached the bottom step, he grabbed the newel post and pivoted himself into a turn to follow the foyer along the side of the staircase, past the little Harry Potter door and the point on the floor where Mr. Jupp’s blood still showed in the cracks.
The sewing room was three doors down. The door was ajar when he arrived. Banyon stood inside, eyeing Jamie expectantly, his hand on the knob, clearly eager to get Jamie alone.
“Come in,” he said, and Jamie obeyed. Guardedly.
There was no one else in the room. No one alive at any rate. Jamie casually touched his back pocket and felt the outline of the knife to reassure himself it was there in case he needed protection.
Satisfied, he turned to Banyon, who now stood in front of the closed door, having successfully penned them both inside the room. Jamie tried not to think about the mummy-like body wrapped in a blanket on the daybed behind him.
“What is it?” he asked, studying Banyon’s handsome face, and more particularly studying his sexy brown eyes, looking for a hint of impending malice.
Of which he saw none.
More gently, he asked again, “What do you want?”
“Where is your friend?” Banyon asked.
Jamie shrugged as if the matter were unimportant to him. “He’s around somewhere. Why?”
“Because I’m not sure any of us should be alone.”
“Why did you lure me here? If you know something,” Jamie said, “spit it out.”
Banyon heaved a sigh, as if battling within himself whether to speak or not. Finally, he did. “Tommy lied earlier when he said he was downstairs at the time Mr. Jupp fell from the landing.” Here Banyon tilted his chin at the body on the bed. His eyes lingered there for a second.
“How do you know?” Jamie asked.
Banyon tore his gaze from the corpse and refocused on Jamie’s face. “There is another staircase behind the dining room. It leads down from rooms up above, then on up to the attic as well. I heard Tommy’s feet on the stairs. He said he was on the first floor when he heard the fall, but he wasn’t. I’m wondering why he would lie about something like that.”
“He’s your boyfriend. You’re the one who knows him best. Why do you think he’d lie?”
“That’s just it,” Banyon said. “Tommy is one of my students, but I don’t really know him. He put the moves on me a couple of weeks ago.” Here Banyon had the good grace to blush. “And I succumbed to his charms. He can be a fairly persuasive young man.”
“But you both received invitations to this little wingding at Hell House?”
Banyon snorted an unamused laugh, acknowledging the joke. “Yes. Neither of us could figure that out. We barely knew each other. How could we both know the person who sent the invitations? And how could they know us? Our addresses and everything. It was practically a fluke we were together at all, and now suddenly we were getting joint invitations to a party.”
Jamie thought about that. “I see your point. Derek and I thought the same thing.”
Like the professor he was, Oliver Banyon popped a finger in the air and wagged it back and forth. “Unless,” he stated with a hint of Sam Spade in his voice, “he planned it all.”
“You’re saying you think Tommy’s the one who sent the invitations. You think Tommy’s the one who’s doing all this. Luring us here. Killing people.”
At that Banyon appeared to lose his sense of mental direction. He suddenly looked unsure of himself. Uncertain. Flailing. “No,” he stammered at last. “I can’t really believe that. Tommy’s just a rambunctious kid. Great in the sack, but that’s about the limit of his usefulness. I don’t think he’s really cruel. Nor do I think he’s crazy. I just think….” His voice trailed away. “Oh hell, I don’t know what I think.”
“But he did lie about where he was when Mr. Jupp died?”
“Yes,” Banyon said, certainty back in his eyes. “That much I’m sure of.”
“Then we’ll have to ask him why he did,” Jamie said. “We’ll have to ask him why he lied.”
He glanced down at Banyon’s arm. There was a scratch there, just above the wrist. A scratch that appeared as fresh as the one on the banister upstairs.
Jamie took a step back and pointed to it. “Where did you get that?”
Banyon glance down at his arm. He ran a quick thumb over the wound as if thinking he might wipe it away. With his other hand he touched the bruise on his cheek.
“Tommy did it last night when we fought. We told you about that.”
“What did you fight about?”
Banyon’s eyes narrowed. His chin came up. “That’s really none of your business. Let’s just say it had to do with… sex. Tommy can be fairly forceful when he wants to be.”
Jamie stared into Banyon’s eyes but saw no lie in them. He was telling the truth. His embarrassment was enough to convince Jamie of that.
He was suddenly aware that not only the storm but the approach of evening had begun to infiltrate the house with shadows. Where had the day gone? He twisted the switch on a Tiffany-style floor lamp that stood at the edge of the unlit fireplace. A myriad of colored lights brightened the room, bringing it some much-needed cheer.
As if the subject of Tommy’s possible deceit had brought it to mind, both men turned mute attention toward the body on the daybed. Jamie saw for the first time that blood had seeped through the blanket they had wrapped around Mr. Jupp’s battered head. He thought back to the long fall between the landing and the floor below and gave a shudder.
“Someone under this roof is a murderer,” Banyon said with sadness in his voice. “None of us is safe.”
“No,” Jamie said, tearing his eyes from the corpse to stare at a sprinkling of cold ashes in the fireplace grate. “We aren’t. But what the hell can we do about it?”
DEREK FOUND Jamie in the dining room, rummaging through the leftovers from breakfast, trying to make a meal since the cook still seemed to be secluded in her rooms. Not that anyone could blame her, being suddenly widowed and all.
They stood companionably next to each other at the sideboard, creating sandwiches from half-stale scones and cold sausage links. The platter of leftover scrambled eggs looked like it had been sitting on a sand dune
in the Sahara Desert for a week or two, so they ignored that.
They were talking about Tommy and Banyon.
“Why are they turning on each other? Do you think they are both in on the murders?”
Derek stared at Jamie. It was a thought that had not occurred to him before. “Why? Do you?”
Jamie thought about it for three seconds. Maybe less. “No. I don’t believe that at all.”
“Neither do I,” Derek said, for some reason immensely relieved. “But I wouldn’t put it past one of them to be the killer.”
“What about the scratch on Banyon’s arm? Do you think it’s true what he said about Tommy inflicting the wound during an argument over sex? Or do you think he got it scuffling with Jupp on the stairs?”
“Nothing about having sex with young Master Stevens would surprise me,” Derek said, not bothering to mention what had taken place in the basement because he knew Jamie would be upset that Tommy had come on to him.
Jamie nodded. “Yeah, he’s a real piece of work, that one.”
Derek snorted back a laugh. You have no idea.
With their sandwiches eaten, Derek motioned Jamie to follow. “Let’s go talk to the little bastard.”
A sneaky grin lit Jamie’s face. “Yes. Let’s.”
They found Tommy Stevens on the front porch. He was wrapped in his leather jacket with the collar turned up to protect him from the wind. Or to look cool. Who knew what the hell his motivations were? Oliver Banyon was nowhere around. The storm beyond the eaves of the porch roof was gearing up for another hissy fit. Already the wind was whipping past the house like a typhoon, making the pine trees flail in the distance, splattering raindrops on Tommy’s leather jacket even though he was four feet from the edge of the porch, and making Jamie and Derek huddle close together and squint against the spray.
The first thing Jamie noticed were the cuts on Tommy’s knuckles.
“When you guys fight, you really fight,” Jamie said, tossing it casually out there.
Tommy saw where he was staring and stuffed his hands in his jacket pockets. “Yeah. We do. So what do you want? I was trying to get two minutes alone.”
If he was wondering whether Derek had told Jamie about the pass he made in the basement, he didn’t allow himself to look worried about it. He’s a cool one, Derek thought. But is he a killer?
“When Jupp fell,” Derek began, “you said you were back by the old servants’ quarters on the first floor.”
Tommy eyed each of them in turn, finally settling his gaze on Derek. They had all turned their backs to the rain. Derek’s and Jamie’s hair thrashed about in the wind, while Tommy’s Brylcreemed locks didn’t move an inch. They had to raise their voices to be heard above the storm. “That’s right. What about it?”
Derek edged closer to Jamie, but his eyes never left Tommy’s face. “What if someone says they saw you coming down the stairs at the back of the house at that time?”
“What stairs?” Tommy asked.
“There’s another flight that comes down from the second floor. Past our rooms, the hallway we use on the second floor turns right and leads around to the other smaller staircase which leads back down to the first floor and also up to the attic. It’s nothing as grand as the main staircase in the foyer. This one was probably used by servants.”
“I didn’t know about it,” Tommy said. “These old houses are sometimes a labyrinth of hidden passages and rooms and walkways and stairs. With a murderer running around, I haven’t been exactly comfortable exploring on my own.” He ran a thumb over the scratches on his knuckles. “Who told you they saw me upstairs?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Derek said. “They must have been mistaken.”
“They were.”
Jamie cleared his throat. He ducked as deep into his collar as he could to avoid the spray of rain peppering their heads. “What were you doing out here?”
Tommy turned and, shielding his eyes against the elements with his hand, nodded toward the automobiles in the distance. “I was wondering if I could get one of the cars running, but I suppose it’s pointless with the tires cut and the bridge out.” His face brightened. “Did either of you find your phones?”
Jamie and Derek both shook their heads. “No,” Derek said, and Tommy instantly deflated. Then he took another stab at looking hopeful. “It’s almost time for dinner. You think the old woman will cook for us? I’m starving.”
“If she won’t,” Derek said, “I’m sure we can whip something up ourselves. We can’t expect Mrs. Jupp to work when she’s just lost her husband.”
“Is she still in her room?” Tommy asked.
It was Jamie who answered. “As far as I know, she hasn’t left it all day. Maybe we should be the ones to take some food up to her. She must be hungry as well.”
Again Tommy asked, “Who was it who told you I was upstairs when Mr. Jupp was killed? I want to know.”
Neither Derek nor Jamie answered.
A moment later, a scream tore through the house. It was so loud it penetrated not only the outer wall, but the storm as well, outvoicing the wind. The shrill cry bled out into the trees like a banshee’s dwindling wail until the storm at last swallowed it whole.
Chapter Nine
DEREK, WITH Jamie and Tommy Stevens racing behind, barreled through the front door and into the foyer. Jamie slammed the door behind them, shutting out the storm. To their left, entering the foyer at the back, past the stairs and beyond the little door beneath it, they spotted Banyon rushing into the hall as well. He wore a dish towel tucked into the waistband of his trousers and clutched a large wooden spoon in his hand. He looked stunned, as if he carried inside himself a massive fear that was trying desperately to get the better of him.
“I was fixing dinner!” he cried, spotting the three men at the door. “Who was that? What’s happened now?”
Derek opened his mouth to speak, when the scream suddenly repeated itself. It was a long, ululating howl of pure terror that sent goose bumps crawling up Derek’s neck like a line of ants. The scream came from upstairs. All eyes flew to the landing above, but there was no one there.
“Oh shit,” Tommy muttered under his breath. “This can’t be good.”
All four men raced to converge on the staircase at once, plowing into each other as they clambered up the steps. Jamie clutched at the back of Derek’s shirt, and feeling him there, Derek reached around and clasped Jamie’s hand, hoping to comfort him, wanting to keep him close. They stampeded up the stairs. The house came alive under the racket they made.
From the top of the steps, they had an unimpeded view along the second-floor hallway. Several doors down, almost lost in the gloaming light of a stormy evening, they spotted what looked like a body on the floor. It lay crumpled just outside the door leading into Mr. and Mrs. Jupps’ suite of rooms. The door stood open, and a feeble yellow light flickered out into the hall. The warm light seemed to caress the woman on the floor.
For it was a woman, Derek suddenly realized, and more, from a glimpse of straw-colored hair, he knew it was Cleeta-Gayle Jones. She had to be the one who screamed. Then she must have passed out.
A haze of woodsmoke filled the hall. On it wafted the reek of tainted meat. And something else.
“Oh God,” Derek mumbled as his nostrils flared. “What’s that smell?”
Jamie turned bulging, frightened eyes in his direction. “I don’t know.”
Derek and the others moved warily now, uncertain how to proceed. Since it always seemed to fall to him anyway, Derek took the lead and proceeded cautiously down the hall. He kept expecting Mrs. Jupp to show herself at the door, but the only sounds he could hear now came from the storm. The lashing of rain on panes of glass. The driving wind whistling through the eaves. Somewhere off to his left, a loosened shutter banged against the side of the house. A flash of lightning strobed the hallway, bringing everything into sharp relief for the space of a single heartbeat. Then, as thunder grumbled in the distance, marking the lightning’s end
, the hallway fell into shadow once more.
At the last minute, Jamie edged past Derek and knelt beside the woman on the floor. He gently eased her head around to look at her face. Derek watched over Jamie’s shoulder as Cleeta-Gayle’s eyelashes flicked and her eyes slowly opened. A smile almost appeared on the woman’s face, but then she seemed to remember where she was. And what she had seen. A sudden wrench of terror twisted her features.
Before she could speak, Tommy uttered the words everybody was afraid they’d hear. He stood at the door leading into the Jupps’ suite and spoke in a hollow voice, as if all emotion had been stripped from his throat.
“We’ve got another one,” Tommy said, his young face lit by firelight. His shoulders slumped, and he turned away from the door. To everyone’s surprise, heaving a sob, he edged forward and pressed his face to Banyon’s chest. Banyon, in turn, wrapped his arms around the boy and held him tight. Nevertheless, his gaze traveled to the open door.
The stench was stronger here, and it was Derek and Jamie, hand in hand, who finally moved toward the oblong of golden light spilling out into the hall. And closer to the source of the smell.
Cleeta-Gayle, tears spilling from her eyes now, reached out as if to stop them, but they were already out of reach. As if remembering what they were about to see, she uttered a muffled groan and folded herself back into a miserable ball on the hallway floor.
Derek, with Jamie at his side, poked his head around the frame of the door and beheld what lay inside. The room was gray with smoke. The acrid reek of singed hair lay so heavy on the air he could taste it on his tongue. Bile surged up his throat. He swallowed hard, trying not to gag.
For a moment, Derek had the sensation that his heart had suddenly ceased to pump life through his veins. It was as if a stillness—an emptiness—had settled over him like a cloak. The only movement before him was in the dance of the flames on the hearth. But it was not the flames that held the eye.