Footsteps in the Dark

by Josh Lanyon

  He hadn’t meant it to come out sounding so sharpish. Linley’s eyes narrowed as though he didn’t quite understand the note of hostility.

  “You don’t enjoy it?”

  “I enjoy it all right. I think I’m a decent teacher. It wasn’t my life’s dream.”

  He saw the light go on behind Linley’s bright blue gaze. Had the bastard really forgotten until now? Did he not understand how devastating their last encounter had been for Miles? What a complete self-centered asshole.

  “Right. Of course,” Linley said. It was the only time Miles had ever heard him sound uncomfortable. “You wanted to be a painter.”

  “Oh, I am a painter,” Miles said. “I just couldn’t earn a living at it. But now, thanks to Aunt Capucine, I don’t have to. I can spend the rest of my life doing art, and that’s exactly what I intend.”

  It seemed he was angrier and more hurt than he’d ever acknowledged, because the words smacked down between them, flat and hard.

  “Uh, okay,” Lin said politely after a moment. “May it be a long and happy one.”

  Chapter Six

  It was not in Miles’s character to hold a grudge.

  By the time the coffee was ready, he regretted his outburst. After all, he had asked Linley for his honest opinion. How fair was it to blame him for giving it? And it was all such a long time ago.

  He turned off the machine, poured two cups of coffee, and asked Linley how he liked his.

  “Black. Two sugars.” Linley had been studying—in fact, had it been anyone but Linley, Miles would have said pretending to study—the cover of the latest issue of Chatelaine lying atop the pile of unopened mail on the long wooden table.

  Miles doctored the coffee, handed Linley his cup. Linley took a swallow. His eyes widened. He said admiringly, “That is truly terrible coffee, Miles.”

  “I know,” Miles admitted.

  “Possibly the worst cup of coffee I’ve ever had.”

  “Thank you.” Miles made a face. “I prefer tea.”

  Linley laughed. “I’ll fix us a pot of tea, shall I?”

  “Please,” Miles said, and Linley laughed again.

  He prepared the tea in short order. When he opened the fridge to look for milk, he found the half-empty bottle of wine Miles had had for dinner. His brows shot up.

  “Clos la Neore. Good choice.”

  “Is it expensive?” Miles asked uneasily.

  Linley seemed amused. He repeated, “It’s a good choice.”

  He found an unopened box of Petit Beurre biscuits hidden in the rear of the pantry, and they sat down at the farm table. It felt surprisingly companionable.

  Miles opened the biscuits and dunked one in his tea.

  “How old are you now?” Linley asked.

  “Twenty-six.”

  Linley nodded. Following his own thoughts, he said, “You should sell off the cars first thing. The Daimler would fetch eighty grand or so, at a guess.”

  Miles managed not to gasp. He’d entirely forgotten about the small fleet of classic cars garaged on the estate.

  “You’ll want to keep something to drive around in, of course.”

  “Of course. But I don’t need a vintage car to run my errands.”

  “No. The Austin-Healey would probably suit you.”

  The Austin-Healey? Miles managed not to choke on his biscuit. He was thinking more along the lines of shipping his own Kia Rio to Montreal, although it would probably cost as much as the car was worth.

  Linley was still thinking aloud. “There’s a lot of rubbish here, but there are valuable pieces as well. If you were to unload an heirloom or two each month, you could probably stay afloat for a few years.”

  He was perfectly serious—also, it seemed, a born organizer. Who would have guessed?

  “I can take care of myself. You don’t have to worry about me,” Miles said.

  “No,” agreed Linley. “And yet, that’s the very thing I find myself doing. This is not a small thing you’re planning.”

  Miles snorted. “You never struck me as the type to worry about other people.”

  Linley’s expression changed imperceptibly. “But then you don’t actually know me.”

  His tone was chilly, and Miles realized he had managed to offend him.

  “True.”

  “The occasional summer visit decades ago hardly makes you an expert on me or this family.”

  Yes, he was definitely pissed off.

  Miles said, “You’re right. I apologize.”

  Some of the hauteur faded from Linley’s face. He made a sound of exasperation. “And now I feel I’m being unfair. You know, it wasn’t my intention to hurt you all those years ago. I didn’t—”

  When it was clear he wasn’t going to continue, Miles said, “It’s all right. Your opinion shouldn’t have meant so much to me.”

  Linley opened his mouth, closed it, said at last, “That’s true, but I find myself reluctant to admit it.” His smile was unexpected and rueful. “I’m sure I could have been kinder.”

  Miles shrugged.

  After a moment, Linley said seemingly at random, “And you don’t… There’s no… You’re really going to make this move all on your own?”

  Might as well get this out of the way. “Yes. I don’t have a partner or even a boyfriend.”

  Linley’s alert blue gaze rested on him. He nodded slowly. “I see.”

  As Miles stared into Linley’s eyes—it seemed suddenly impossible to look anywhere else—his heart picked up tempo. His face warmed, his body felt flushed.

  He had to be misreading that look, right? Because another time, another place…

  His thoughts—confusion was probably more accurate—were interrupted by a horrendous scream, followed by a crash from down the hall.

  “Jesus Christ,” Linley exclaimed.

  They were both instantly on their feet.

  “What was that?” Miles demanded, though obviously Linley had no more idea than himself. It sounded as though part of the roof had fallen in.

  Linley was already moving toward where the sound emanated from. The dining room? The foyer? Miles followed on shaking legs.

  They burst out of the doorway and into the hall. Miles could hear Agathe calling out in fright behind them.

  The silence that followed the crash had a terrifying quality.

  Linley glanced toward the foyer, started across to the dining room, and did a double take. “Oh, fuck.” He started back to the front doors—no, not the front doors.

  Miles, on Linley’s heels, saw what had stopped Linley in his tracks. It took willpower to keep his own feet moving forward.

  A man lay sprawled at the foot of the marble staircase. The heavy bronze replica of Botero’s fat-horse sculpture lay half on top of him.

  How? Where the hell had he come from? Who was he?

  Impossible that the sculpture could have fallen over the iron railing.

  Which meant…what? Miles was having trouble processing.

  Beneath the fallen man’s lolling head, a pool of sticky bright red began to spread. Miles’s stomach lurched. He couldn’t seem to look away as those wet red rivulets seemed to stretch into fingers crawling across the white tiles. He felt a little light-headed.

  That was a lot of blood.

  He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen so much blood.

  Still swearing with quiet ferocity, Linley dropped on his knees beside the intruder and checked for a pulse. Miles watched, feeling rooted in place. Though Linley mostly blocked his view, he could see that the man was about forty, tall and spindly—or maybe that was the way he had fallen, like a broken stork—with gaunt, sharp-hewn features and a tuft of gingery-gray hair.

  “Is he dead?” Miles asked. He was afraid to hear the answer, but Linley didn’t reply.

  Miles said, “Was he trying to carry that sculpture from the landing?”

  Again, Linley did not seem to have an answer.

  Though not as large as the original, the replica sculpture pro
bably weighed nearly two hundred pounds. One man trying to hurriedly carry it on his own down those slippery steps was pretty much a suicide mission.

  “Que s’est-il passé? What has happened? Quelqu’un me répond?”

  Agathe’s frightened shrieks grew louder as she rushed down the hall toward them. She wore a quilted pink and green flowered bathrobe, a full head of curlers, and an expression of utter dread. Linley said urgently, “Miles, don’t let her see this.”

  Miles moved to intercept Agathe, who tried to push past him.

  “Erwan? Mon Dieu! Est-ce lui?”

  It had not occurred to Miles that she was French-Canadian. It also had not occurred to him that this intruder or burglar or whatever he was might not be a stranger.

  “Stop. Don’t look. It’s better if you wait—”

  She swung a punch, but years of teaching Southland high school stood Miles in good stead. He blocked her, grabbed her arms, and said, “Hey. Don’t try that again!”

  Agathe unleashed a stream of invective the likes of which he’d never heard, especially out of a dignified middle-aged lady who favored cardigans and pearls.

  “Erwan? Erwan?”

  Miles remembered Oliver saying that Erwan was Agathe’s ne’er-do-well son. The ex–con, who Linley had forbidden access to the house. Was this his intruder?

  Linley rose. His face was pale. He joined Miles and Agathe, and spoke gravely to her in French. The one word Miles caught was mort.

  Oh hell.

  Agathe let out a blood-curdling scream and put her hands over her face. She began to sob.

  Miles met Linley’s gaze, and Linley shook his head.

  Miles swallowed. That expression was the same in any language.

  “We have to call the Emergency Centre,” Linley said.

  “Yes.” God. He didn’t even know what that number was. “Was he…? What was he doing?” Now Miles’s uncomfortable feeling of not being alone in the house made sense. Someone had been there, lurking just out of sight, watching and waiting for him to go to bed.

  “It seems pretty obvious.” Linley took charge of Agathe with brisk but not unkind efficiency, guiding her back down the hall. They disappeared into the kitchen.

  Miles hesitated. He turned to study the dead man, ignoring the queasy dip of his stomach as he took in Dube’s gray complexion and sunken cheeks.

  The long face of the bronze horse was flattened against the marble floor, indicating the force with which they had landed.

  Even if Dube hadn’t had that heavy sculpture crash down on his chest, the fall could easily have killed him. It had killed Capucine.

  Two deaths on that staircase within the space of a month?

  It seemed like a lot.

  ***

  Constable MacGrath of PDQ12 or Service de Police Ville de Westmount appeared to think it was a lot as well.

  An ambulance and three police cars—sirens wailing, lights flashing—pulled into the grand courtyard within five minutes of Linley’s phoning emergency services. MacGrath seemed to be the officer in charge. He was a short, squat, grizzled black man, his stature and demeanor reminding Miles of a suspicious Scottie dog.

  “Two deaths on that staircase, and you here visiting both times, Mr. Palmer,” MacGrath said to Linley once the preliminaries were out of the way.

  “If you’ll recall, I wasn’t home when my mother had her accident, Constable. I arrived at the house some hours later.” Linley’s tone was flat, unemotional.

  “I believe you gave a statement to that effect.”

  Was MacGrath intimating that Capucine’s death was not an accident? It sure sounded that way to Miles.

  Miles said, “We were talking in the kitchen when we heard Dube scream. There’s no way Mr. Palmer could have had anything to do with the man’s death, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”

  Linley shot him a quick, surprised look.

  Constable MacGrath’s broom-handle mustache seemed to bristle. “Only stating the facts, sir.”

  “Well, this is another fact. We were together when Dube fell.”

  “If he did fall,” MacGrath said.

  After that, Miles and Linley were separated and interviewed on their own.

  Miles told MacGrath about finding the front gate open after Oliver left and his disquieted feeling all evening that someone was in the house.

  “Dube wouldn’t need the gate unlocked,” MacGrath pointed out. “He’s a professional criminal and his mother works here.”

  “True.”

  “Granted, your suspicion was probably correct. He probably was here the whole time.”

  That reminded Miles of his weird experience Friday night—he had almost forgotten about the face in the upstairs window and the phone call where someone in the house had identified themselves as Miles Tuesday.

  He told MacGrath all of it. The constable, predictably, took a dim view of Miles’s semi-trespassing, but acknowledged that it had probably been Dube in the window and on the phone.

  “He’d have to conceal his presence. Mr. Palmer had forbidden him access to the house after the last time.”

  “After the last time what?” Miles asked.

  “After the last time he beat his mother up.”

  Okay, so not a nice man, Erwan Dube. And MacGrath’s theory made sense, although the voice that had answered the phone on Friday had sounded younger than forty.

  But then what did forty sound like?

  MacGrath said, “I’m guessing Dube was trying to get away with whatever he could before you took possession of the house on Monday. One last score.” He gave a humorless laugh. “It ended up that, all right.”

  “I suppose so,” Miles said.

  “That statue must be worth a few thousand dollars.”

  “Yes. I’m sure it is.”

  “You’ll want to go over the inventory list of the house’s contents with Mrs. Martel’s lawyer. Who knows how long Dube has been helping himself to the family valuables.”

  “How long has he been out of prison?” Miles asked.

  “Just over a month, according to his mother.” MacGrath added, “She swears she had no idea he was on the premises.”

  Well, maybe not. But Agathe had certainly jumped to the right conclusion when she’d heard the crash. She had been screaming for Erwan before she ever saw him lying at the foot of the stairs.

  By the end of Miles’s interview with Constable MacGrath, it was clear that the police did not really believe Dube’s death was anything but an accident or that there was any real connection to Capucine’s death. It was equally clear that something about Linley put MacGrath’s back up. It wasn’t hard to figure what. Linley came across as aloof and slightly supercilious. And he probably was both those things, but there had been a few moments in the kitchen when Miles felt he was seeing the real Linley.

  “You know, it wasn’t my intention to hurt you all those years ago.”

  Linley had seemed sincere, and his sincerity had assuaged some of the old hurt. Plus, there had been the way he looked at Miles—as though seeing him for the first time—that had started Miles wondering if maybe…just maybe…

  If they had been about to have a moment, the moment had passed. When MacGrath finished interviewing them, he regretfully—more sorry not sorry—informed them they would have to find other accommodations for what was left of the night. Though preliminary findings indicated accidental death, the official ruling would not come for a day or two. At that time, the case would be transferred to the Coroner’s Office.

  Miles wasn’t sure what that meant. He only had two weeks of vacation before he had to return home to finish out the school year, and he did not want to waste that time waiting for the house to be cleared as a possible crime scene.

  Linley received a curt reminder that 13 Place Braeside was no longer his home—he kept silent, but clearly that did not go over well—and Miles got a little lecture on waiting to speak to M. Thibault on Monday.

  “Thank you for your help,” Miles
said to MacGrath before they were ushered out of the house, and Linley threw him a look of disbelief.

  “He’s just doing his job,” Miles told him as they walked across the strobe-lit courtyard.

  “Not very well,” Linley snapped.

  Linley would have been perfect as Lord Whatshisface on Downton Abbey or maybe one of those Masterpiece Theatre dramas Larry had been so fond of.

  Miles didn’t say that, of course, but Linley still directed a narrow glance his way. “Are you laughing at me, Miles?” He sounded astonished and slightly offended, which nearly made Miles laugh aloud.

  “Sort of.”

  “I’m glad you find our situation amusing.”

  “Not the part about having nowhere to go,” Miles admitted. Being turfed out of Braeside was disappointing for a number of reasons, not least being he would probably not get another chance to spend so much time with Linley.

  Linley digested that and apparently decided not to be offended. He sighed. “I just made the drive from Gore. I don’t feel like doing it again. Let’s go knock on Oliver’s door.”

  Miles hesitated. “I have a feeling Oliver probably had enough of me for one day.”

  “Ce n’est pas possible,” Linley exclaimed, and that time Miles didn’t bother to hide his laugh.

  Linley’s mouth quirked in faint response.

  “I think I’ll try my hotel,” Miles said. “Chateau Versailles on Sherbrooke Street. Technically I still have my room until Monday. I paid for it, anyway.”

  “I see. All right.”

  If he hadn’t known better, Miles would have sworn that Linley was maybe just a little disappointed.

  For the second time in his life—and for the second time with Linley—Miles did something completely out of character.

  “We could spend the night together,” he suggested.

  Linley stopped walking; his expression was guarded. “Together?”

  It was tempting to qualify, give himself an out if the answer was no, clarify that he simply meant they could share the room. But Miles did not mean that, and he did not want to modify his invitation. He had made it on impulse, but he did want to spend the night with Linley. In fact, the thought of it made his mouth dry with longing and his knees weak.

  “Yes,” Miles said. “I’d like to.”