Chapter Two

“Where did you find the body?” Marcus Evans asked. The clipped phrases and lengthened vowels of his Eton accent resonated through the cell phone.

It was a familiar question and one Kate Rowan had even looked forward to, while turning the pages of a book late at night. As the owner of Fortune’s Cove Books, she had a weakness for crime fiction and the means to indulge it. Now here was Marcus asking her that same question and she realized that all it took was two words to turn a man into an object, inanimate. The body.

“Sprawled at the bottom of the basement stairs.” She could feel a frisson of panic waiting, one moment ahead.

The body was lying across the last step like a rag doll on a shelf. Kate stood at the top, looking down, and clutched the phone to her ear. A draft of cool air brushed against the back of her neck from the open door behind her. The paperback she’d been holding was lying splayed open across the dead man’s chest where it had fallen. The pages riffled, a dry whisper of sound, stirred by the breeze. It could have almost been a final exhalation of breath. The words seemed to ripple across the paper, a flurry of black on white, as the page moved.

“What are you doing in the basement? Shouldn’t you be at work?”

“I wanted to bring my beanbag chair up from the storage room. I thought it would work well in the bookstore.” A fragment of glass gleamed in the shadows of the unlit hall.

“Isn’t that the dust-infested blob I carried downstairs for you last year, because it’s so hideous?”

“I thought I’d take another look at it.”

“As your best friend, I say this with the kindest intentions—it should be incinerated. Are you sure Mr. Wendell’s dead?”

“Yes.” Her eyes were diverted by folds of fabric, touched by the sunlight coming through the open door behind her. It was the little things she hadn’t noticed at first, that she couldn’t stop noticing now. Gray-cast skin. One claw-like hand clutching at his chest, calloused fingers stiff. Eyes torn wide. She met his gaze, resisting the urge to flinch. “Absolutely sure.” The purple bathrobe, dark in patches, twisted beneath Mr. Wendell’s legs.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know.” Taking a deep breath, Kate inched closer. She shifted, gripping the railing with her free hand for support, and peered cautiously down. Her sneaker slipped on the carpeted step. The next thing she knew, her knee connected painfully with the rough texture of the wall, her palm skidded off another surface and she was on the ground, her right hand planted in something sticky and wet. “Shit!” The word exploded on a breath.

She knelt face to face with Mr. Wendell and stared into his vacant eyes. Those filmed irises, with the barely visible lids and a feathering of pale lashes, seemed to take in everything and nothing at the same time. His lips were stretched tight in a grimace, an eerie imitation of a smile that shot a surge of pure terror through her. Not that she’d admit it for the world.

“Are you okay? What’s going on?” Marcus demanded anxiously.

Kate scrambled backward, away from the body. “I’m fine.” Her voice did sound fine. Strong. A line of blood trickled warmly down her leg from the tear in her jeans. “I slipped on something wet.”

“Was it Mr. Wendell’s blood?” He sounded a little too eager.

“No.” Kate raised her hand to her nose and the harsh scent of vinegar assaulted her nostrils. She gagged, a reflex reaction that was all shock, even though she knew exactly what was coating her fingers with a wet sheen, pearly in the half-light of the basement. “Pickle juice,” she managed.

“Oh, sure. Pickle juice.” A pause. “Why pickle juice?”

“He loved pickles. Looks like he’s crushed the jar beneath him.” Kate pulled herself slowly to her feet. She winced as her knee smarted with the movement. “Based on the descriptions in crime novels and a couple of different TV shows, I’d say he’s had a heart attack.”

“Isn’t it a bit risky, drawing conclusions on reality from fiction?” Marcus asked. “Oh, wait. That’s the way you live your life.”

“Thank you, Marcus.” She rolled her eyes, taking a shaky breath of the too still air. The acidic scent of decay and fermented pickles caught at her throat. “Books teach people about life, offering experiences you can’t have yourself.”

“It’s called entertainment, love.”

“I don’t have time to argue with you right now. Mr. Wendell wasn’t the nicest person, but he didn’t deserve to die like this.”

“You’re right.” Marcus sobered. “Did you call 999?”

“Of course I called 999.” Kate pressed a hand against her throbbing knee. “I’m not an idiot. It was the first thing I did.”

“And here I was thinking I was the first person you’d ring upon stumbling across a corpse. How foolish of me.”

“It’s that ego of yours. What if Mr. Wendell didn’t die of natural causes? What if someone killed him?” Her mind raced through the gruesome possibilities.

“Right.” Marcus snorted on a laugh, which was surprising since he was normally too elegant to make such a crude sound. “As though Mr. Wendell could irritate anyone enough that they would make the effort to bump him off. Besides, things like that don’t happen in neighborhoods like Willowsend. The most malicious thing anyone even thinks of doing is stealing someone’s newspaper off their porch. ‘Course, add twenty minutes travel time and it’s a different situation. Caulden isn’t exactly London, but statistically crime is more likely to occur in a city than in the suburbs.”

“You obviously have no concept of the dark deeds that go on behind the white-washed walls and polished doors of suburban homes.”

“The Victorian house you’re living in, with its cracked façade, fairy-tale tower and generally ethereal appearance, simply cannot, and I repeat, cannot be compared to the average suburban home.”

“That’s true.” In the years she had been away, the house had remained untouched. It had also been altered in details so subtle that the changes could startle her even now.

“How long has Mr. Wendell been down there?”

“It’s only eight now. Elaina must still be sleeping or else she’d be knee-deep in the action by now.” The basement, the house itself felt strangely empty. The only sounds were the repetitive high, thin notes of a goldcrest in the distance outside. “He must have been here a while. He’s already starting to get stiff.” Kate fought back a wave of faintness. “He isn’t exactly dressed for company. The bathrobe is ancient…and seems to have loosened in the throes of death.”

“That is too bloody much information.” Crackle, crunch.

“Are you eating?”

“Mm, yes. Toast. Delightful.”

“After I described Mr. Wendell’s prone frame to you, bathrobe and all? You are one sick man.”

“No, just hungry, and my imagination isn’t as vivid as yours. However, there are houses waiting to be sold and I need to leave my flat to do so. Give me a ring after to let me know how it went. Keep your chin up. Maybe some gorgeous hunk of a man will wander into your bookstore today. You’ll lock eyes over a tattered copy of Enduring Love and he’ll sweep you off your feet. That would be quite the distraction. Death in the morning, affairs of the heart in the afternoon.”

“That’s wholly unrealistic.”

“It would not be unrealistic if you looked more closely at the men around you instead of only swooning over the ones on paper.”

“Tell me you could resist a handsome inspector with a sense of humor and apologetic ways.” She looked down at the green and white cover of Artists in Crime lying open on Mr. Wendell’s chest. The 1949 edition was a tight copy, with a slight lean to the spine and signs of ageing. The imagery in that last chapter was still fresh in her mind, the little scarlet thread of blood and the glinting hilt of the dagger. Kate could smell the chalk from the drawing and the dust beneath the throne, feel that delicious thrill of foreboding as though she’d been in that artist’s studio herself. “Since Artists in Crime is on top of Mr. Wendell, I don’t think I’ll be finishing it.”

“It doesn’t seem fair that you’ve got the corpse, but not the inspector.”

“I don’t think we need a detective.”

“If he’s handsome—”

“Bye, Marcus.” Exasperated, she hung up the phone. A square of light fell through the open door behind her, illuminating the body in a startling wash of daylight. Her silhouette was a dark shadow over the twisted figure stretched at her feet. She could have used a few more words of motivation. Kate suddenly felt terribly alone. “‘Bollocks,’ as Marcus would say.”

Kate turned her back on the corpse and wiped clammy palms against her jeans. That was that, then. Vigilance be damned. She needed fresh air.

The outside door was heavy, a metal construction meant for safety. A residential door with a good lock. It felt as though she was sealing a tomb, when she closed it behind her.

Kate crossed the terrace and entered the house through the kitchen. Sunlight, deeply golden and belonging to summer, shone on red floor tiles and bruised corners with deep shadows. She steadied herself against the back of a chair, shut her eyes and tried to forget what she had seen.

The sound of heels clicking softly across wood, as though hesitant to disturb, came to her from the hall. Kate squared her shoulders, and turned to face Roselyn Marsh as the older woman entered the room.

“Oh! Good morning.” Her great-aunt froze in the doorway. “I thought you’d be out already.” She took in Kate’s torn pants and the gash in her knee. “Have you hurt yourself?”

Roselyn Marsh was the epitome of a lady, if Kate had ever met one. She was refined and eloquent, and never had a silver hair out of place. Her rose-colored silk pants and matching blouse concealed the fact that she had been a devoted widow for ten years. Her hair was pulled back and wound into a tight bun, offsetting delicate features lined by time and emotion.

It was almost impossible to believe they were related. Seventeen years ago, Roselyn Marsh had smiled beautifully, handed Kate a cookie as she sat on the counter and told her stories in exactly the right intonation to distract a young girl from the sting of disinfectant being applied to a cut. The time apart had turned them into strangers. Great-aunt Roselyn had become Mrs. Marsh.

“It’s nothing. I’ll take care of it in a second. I was on my way out, but—” Kate searched for words, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. Her earring was cold to the touch, chilled from the morning air. “Mr. Wendell…”

“Yes?”

“He’s—he’s dead.”

A thin hand fluttered, rested briefly upon the regal neck. She stumbled back a step. Kate moved to take her arm, but the other woman shook her head and raised a hand in warning. “Dead?” The word was barely more than a whisper. She cleared her throat before trying again, more firmly. “Dead?”

“He’s in the basement, but you don’t have to see him. I’ve already phoned. They’re sending someone over.”

Mrs. Marsh grasped at the counter for support. In a barely audible voice, though steely in its intensity, she forced between clenched teeth, “There will be no more death in this house.” Her carefully colored lips were a thin pink slash against white.

Unsure of how to react, not just to what Mrs. Marsh had said, but to the entire situation, Kate suggested, “I’ll go out and show them where”—she hesitated—“he is.”

Mrs. Marsh suddenly nodded decisively. “Yes.” She straightened. “I’ll get some coffee started.”

“Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine. There are more pressing matters at hand than a feeble old woman’s sensibilities.” She reached for the pot and began to systematically measure coffee. The metal spoon tapped against the edge of the plastic filter, a brisk, hard little sound.

Before she left the room, Kate glanced back. Maybe she had only imagined the desperation she had seen in her great-aunt’s eyes. The uncontrollable anger.

“Not again.” The fierce whisper pierced the air.

The door slid into the latch.