by Agatha Frost
“It’ll be fine,” Julia said, pulling Sue forward. “We just need to watch our step.”
“What are we even doing out here?”
“Looking for someone.”
They carefully walked down the gravel slope towards the bridge, taking small baby steps as the cool fog consumed them. Julia looked back at the castle, but it was nothing more than a dark smudge in a chalky sea of white.
Instead of taking the bridge across the loch, they stepped down onto a small winding path that circled the edge of the tiny island. Julia gulped hard as she looked down into the murky surface of the water, which would swallow her up without a second thought if she took one wrong step. The bank sloped up towards the base of the castle, heather and lumpy rock covering its surface. The earthy tones of the spiky plant didn’t smell as delightful since her dream.
“I don’t like this,” Sue whispered, her fingers tightening around Julia’s. “I don’t like this one bit.”
The path curved and Julia suspected they were walking around the back of the castle. She looked up at the bank and kept her eyes peeled for a hut, but she wasn’t sure she would see it even if it was right in front of her. She looked back, but the bridge had vanished from sight.
The path suddenly took a sharp incline away from the water, relaxing Julia a little. Through the fog, she could see that they were walking back towards the castle. When the ground levelled out, the path suddenly cut off, joining in with the bumpy land. Despite Sue dragging her heels, Julia pressed forward, heading towards the blur of the castle. When they finally reached it, she pressed her hands against the cool stone, reassured that she was going the right way.
They followed the castle walls and came to the dining room. Julia peered through the windows, but it was dark and empty. She had hoped Blair was there so she could somehow call her over so they didn’t have to go any further.
They hurried past the tall windows and followed the building around. A thumping sound pierced through the fog like a cracking whip, startling them both. Sue pulled back, but Julia pulled her towards the sound. She was surprised when she came out into a clear stone courtyard. They stepped inside, turning back to watch as the thick fog rolled by.
She let out a thankful breath when she saw Benjamin chopping logs of firewood against an old tree stump. Despite the chilly morning, he had forgone a shirt so that his sweat-glistening and lightly haired chest was on display. To Julia’s surprise, he was chopping the logs of wood with the sheer force of his left arm, his right tucked neatly behind his back.
“Wow,” Sue whispered. “That’s strength.”
Benjamin looked up, the axe swinging and missing the log. It buried into the tree stump. He wiped the sweat from his forehead before picking up his shirt and pulling it on.
“It’s sweaty work,” he said with a twinkling smile. “You ladies are braver than me to venture into that fog. I’m waiting for it to clear.”
Sue gave Julia an ‘I told you so’ look, but Julia pursed her lips, telling her not to bother saying anything. She let go of her sister’s hand and walked towards Benjamin, looking up at the castle as she did. Tall walls rose high on all sides, the different parts of the castle joining together. Julia tried to work out where she was in relation to the rest of the building, but she couldn’t quite figure out where they had walked in the fog. At the end of the courtyard, she spotted the stone hut Benjamin had told her about.
“We were actually coming to find you,” Julia said with a soft smile. “I hope we’re not interrupting.”
“Not at all,” he said as he swung the axe down again. “This is my last log. What can I do for you?”
“I was wondering if you could pass a message on to Blair?” Julia asked as she retrieved the handwritten note from her pocket. “I’ve been banished from the kitchen, and I really wanted to talk to her.”
“Couldn’t you just wait for one of her breaks?”
“I want to talk to her away from the castle,” Julia whispered, looking around, suddenly becoming aware of all of the windows. “I think she knows something that might help unlock the secret to Henry’s murder, and I think Charlotte knows that and she’s trying to keep us apart.”
Benjamin took the note and opened it, his brows curiously pinching together. He quickly read the note that asked Blair to meet Julia in a café in Aberfoyle after she had finished for the day, along with Julia’s phone number.
“I thought you were a baker?” he asked with a little smirk as he pocketed the paper. “You’re acting like some kind of detective.”
“She is a baker,” Sue said, joining Julia by her side. “She just seems to forget that every time a murder happens near her, which is happening increasingly more often than I would like to admit. Gran thinks she’s the harbinger of death.”
“She does?” Julia exclaimed, turning to her sister.
“Well, she’s not going to say that to your face, is she?” Sue mumbled with a shrug.
“I’ll pass on the note,” he said with a wink. “You don’t think my sister is in danger, do you?”
“I don’t know,” Julia admitted, not wanting to lie to the man. “But Charlotte appears to think it’s crucial to keep us apart.”
“Or it is just the insurance?” Sue whispered.
“Or that,” Julia said with a sigh. “But it’s all just a little suspicious.”
“I’ll keep an eye on her and an ear to the ground,” Benjamin said as he started tossing the logs into a wheelbarrow. “If you want to get back into the castle, there’s a door that leads to the drawing room. It’s not really for guests, but I’m sure I can make an exception with the fog. I wouldn’t feel right letting you walk along that path. It’s not safe at the best of times.”
Sue rolled her eyes and pouted before linking arms with Julia and following Benjamin across the courtyard. Julia looked up at the many windows to her right, suddenly realising they were part of the family’s quarters above the entrance hall. She gulped, hoping she had been quiet enough to not betray herself.
Benjamin walked them to a stone wall, forcing Julia and Sue to look questioningly at each other. To their equal surprise, Benjamin pulled on the bricks, and a piece of the wall the exact size of a door opened onto a dark corridor.
“Follow that down to the bottom, and you’ll come out in the drawing room,” he said as he held the heavy stone door open.
“A secret passageway?” Sue asked, her face lighting up. “I knew it!”
“The castle is full of them,” Benjamin said with a smirk. “Makes my job a lot easier. There’s a peephole in the door at the other side. Just make sure nobody is watching when you slip through.”
Sue clenched her hand around Julia’s once more, and they stepped into the dark. With one final goodbye, Benjamin pushed the door shut, concealing them within the walls of the castle. Just like when walking through the fog, they took tiny steps through the stuffy and narrow corridor. Mildew and decay tickled her nostrils.
“This is so cool,” Sue whispered. “I told you there would be secret passages.”
“Explains how Charlotte managed to get across the castle so quickly if she did kill her father.”
“If?” Sue mumbled. “I thought you were certain it was her?”
“I’m certain of nothing until I have all of the facts,” she whispered back, turning pointlessly to her sister in the pitch black. “It’s just a hunch.”
A narrow stream of light illuminated the dusty air, letting them know they had reached the door into the drawing room. Julia let go of Sue’s hand and pushed her eye up against the tiny circle in the wall.
She saw an explosion of mahogany through the tiny gap. A grand banqueting table stretched out down the centre of the room, a crystal chandelier as big as Julia’s car dangling over it. The walls were lined high with dark bookshelves, which were crammed with thick leather-bound volumes. On the other side of the room, she spotted the giant ornate doors, which would lead them back to the safety of the castle.
&nbs
p; “Looks clear,” she whispered back to Sue. “Try to be quiet.”
Julia pushed carefully on the door. It felt heavy under her hands, but it eased forward, flooding the darkness with light. She held it open enough for Sue to slip through, before squeezing through herself. She closed the door, surprised to see it was a bookshelf on the other side. She smiled to herself, feeling like she was fulfilling some kind of childhood fantasy to have her own bookcase door that led to a secret room.
“Get down,” Sue whispered, yanking Julia to the ground and behind a red Chesterfield sofa. “We’re not alone.”
She pointed over the top of the sofa to the large bay window looking out over the loch. Julia peered over the edge, instantly bobbing back down when she saw a flash of red hair over the top of a high-backed leather armchair pointed in the direction of the foggy view.
“Charlotte,” Julia mouthed to Sue. “Stay here.”
Julia wriggled free of Sue’s grasp and crawled out from behind the couch. On her hands and knees, she scurried forward like a cat, pausing behind a side table. She peered around the corner of the mahogany unit, instantly ducking back when she saw the profile of the person sitting in the other chair. Julia looked around and spotted another Chesterfield sofa positioned behind them. Without a second thought, she hurried forward and pushed her back up against the hard sofa. She strained her ears, but she needn’t have bothered. Charlotte wasn’t concealing her conversation behind a whisper.
“I need you to get rid of her,” she said firmly, no doubt staring out into the fog. “She’s trouble.”
“I’m done wi’ this,” the thick Scottish accent of Andrew replied. “I’ve done yer dirty work, lassie. Find somebody else to use.”
“Don’t act like you’re not being paid for your services, Mr McCracken,” Charlotte said, the chair creaking under her. “Seirbigh Castle will be mine in a matter of days if you have done what you said, and you will get what was promised to you.”
“’Course I did what I said,” he growled back. “But you told me that was the last thing.”
“You’ve come this far, Mr McCracken,” Charlotte replied as she stood up. “Don’t stumble at the final hurdle. The girl is trouble and you know it’s going to be difficult to legally fire her considering the circumstances. Besides, she knows too much. She could speak out. I want her out of Seirbigh Castle before all of the paperwork is official. Now that Mary is gone, she’s the final thorn in my side. Do what you have to do, Mr McCracken, and welcome back to the family. You should never have been disposed of in the first place.”
Footsteps clicked on the polished wood floors, sending Julia scurrying back behind the side table. She caught Sue’s eyes, who was desperately waving for Julia to come back. Julia waited until she heard the door close before dashing back to her sister.
“Have you gone crazy?” Sue whispered angrily. “I hope that was worth it.”
“It was,” Julia replied. “Let’s get out of here.”
Julia grabbed Sue’s hand and still keeping low to the ground, they hurried towards the doors on the other side of the room. Before she reached it, she glanced over to Andrew as he reached around the side of the chair to top up his whisky from the glass decanter.
They slipped through the door, coming out facing the dining room. It was still dark and empty, but Rory was now sitting at the closest table with his back to them, hunched over something. Julia stopped in her tracks and tried to peer around him to see what he was doing, but all she could conclude was that he was writing something.
“Ah! There you are!” the voice of DI Fletcher made them both spin around. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Can you gather in the entrance hall with the other guests, please?”
“Why?” Julia asked as Rory turned to see what was happening.
“Now, Miss South,” he ordered as he stepped to the side and motioned towards the double doors leading through to the reception area. “Rory, do you know where your sister is? I need to speak with you both in private.”
Julia reluctantly let Sue drag her down the corridor, without taking her eyes away from DI Fletcher. Just from the look on his face, she could tell he wasn’t gathering them to give them good news. She wondered if he could have possibly cracked the case and have a suspect in custody. It seemed unlikely, but it would be a relief to put an end to the whole affair.
They joined their gran by the reception desk, where she was staring sternly at the new guests, still in her white robe and bright green facemask.
“Where have you two been?” she snapped when she noticed them.
“We went for a walk,” Julia said, hoping the truthful part of that statement made up for the fact she was keeping quiet about the outcome of that walk. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” she said with a sigh. “But it’s keeping me from my depleting spa time. DI CryBaby gathered us all here to tell us something important. I wonder if he’s just got his first chest hair and wants to share the news.”
The two new couples both snickered at Dot’s joke, but she stared at them sternly, letting them know they didn’t have permission. Julia smiled reassuringly at the two young couples. Just from their confusion and lack of interest in the collapsed bannister above them, she could tell they had no idea that they were standing directly on the scene of a man’s murder.
The double doors opened, and DI Fletcher walked in, followed by Rory and Charlotte. Charlotte was sobbing heavily, her face buried in her brother’s chest, and Rory was trying his best to comfort her, his expression solemn and his eyes vacant. Julia’s stomach turned uncomfortably.
“A car was found crashed an hour ago on the road to Aberfoyle,” DI Fletcher announced. “The driver, Mary McLaughlin, the manager of this hotel, was found dead behind the wheel.”
A gasp ricocheted through the small crowd, but Charlotte’s increased sobs drowned it out. Rory wrapped his arms around his sister and pulled her in.
“I saw her drive away this morning!” one of the new men explained. “She was screeching outside. It woke us up!”
“Me too!” the woman in the other couple said with a nod. “Drove off like a madwoman.”
“We saw her too,” Dot volunteered. “Didn’t we girls? Julia even went down and spoke to her.”
Guilt consumed Julia. She looked down at the ground, unable to look the young DI in the eyes. Why hadn’t she tried harder to stop Mary from driving off? She tried to think of what could have caused the woman to crash, but Charlotte’s cries were distracting her.
“I’m going to need to take statements from each of you,” he said, already pulling a notepad out of his pocket. “Since you can’t seem to stay out of things, why don’t we start with you, Miss South?”
10
Julia followed DI Fletcher back into the dining room. He pulled up a seat at the table Rory had been sitting at, but the paperwork he had been working on had already vanished.
“You know they’re faking that grief?” Julia asked as she sat uninvited across the table from DI Fletcher. “Neither of them showed that much emotion when their own father was shot down. Find the gun yet?”
“We’re doing our best to find the murder weapon,” he said as he flicked through his notepad to a fresh page. “Why don’t you start at the beginning?”
“Your best isn’t good enough.” Julia clung onto the edge of the table, leant through the dim light, and looked the DI dead in the eyes. “A woman has unnecessarily died.”
The DI arched a brow, a slight smirk pricking the corners of his lips. He pulled the lid off his pen, but he didn’t write anything down. Instead, he just continued to stare at Julia as though he was a mixture of amused and irritated by her behaviour. It reminded her of the way Barker had looked at her when they had first met, but she doubted the young DI in front of her contained any of the same humility when he clocked off at the end of the day. Her chest tightened just thinking of Barker; she wanted nothing more than to see his face at that moment.
“We h
ave no reason to believe it was anything but a tragic accident,” he said, turning the pen upside down to tap furiously on the table surface. “Those roads are dangerous at the best of times without the added difficulty of driving through fog. Mary McLaughlin wouldn’t be the first woman to succumb to those roads.”
“Woman?”
“Turn of phrase, Miss South,” he replied through a strained smile. “I assure you I meant nothing by it, but the point still stands. Mary skidded off the road on a tricky turn and crashed through the barrier wall.”
“If you analyse the car, I’m sure you’ll find some tampering,” Julia said firmly as she sat up and turned to the thick fog outside. “Cut brakes, perhaps?”
“There wasn’t much left of the car,” he said as he tugged at his collar. “Or of Mary. On a road that quiet, there’s no telling how long the fire raged for.”
Julia closed her eyes and forced back the tears. Why hadn’t she insisted Mary stay behind? She tried to reassure herself that she couldn’t have known this would happen, but after everything she had heard so far today, a second murder wasn’t as surprising as she would have liked to have believed.
“Charlotte is involved,” Julia said. “I heard her talking to the ex-groundskeeper, Andrew McCracken, moments before we bumped into you. If fact, I’m sure Andrew is still there. I haven’t seen him leave yet, have you?”
Julia jumped up and hurried across the dining hall to the drawing room. She pushed confidently on the heavy double doors, but she didn’t need to take a step into the room to know the chair was empty. She rushed over, but the only evidence Andrew had even been there was the drained whisky tumbler and the almost empty decanter.
“I can’t see anybody, Miss South,” he said as he followed her into the room, wincing as he scratched at the side of his head with his pen. “Why don’t you sit down and tell me about this conversation?”
“Charlotte was asking Andrew to get rid of somebody, and she alluded to the fact he had already done it once. She mentioned Mary was now gone to leave her to take control of the castle.” Julia turned to the bookcase she had slipped through, and a light bulb sparked above her head. “The secret passage!”