CHARLIE CALLED ON CHRISTMAS DAY MORNING. CASSIE HAD been sitting around with nothing better to do than channel-hop old holiday movies, so she arranged to meet him at a pub on the outskirts of the city. When she arrived, she found him nursing a pint of beer in the cold of the empty garden out back.
“Can’t we go inside?” Cassie asked, shivering. She was wrapped in her duffel coat and scarf, but her fingertips were almost numb from the winter cold.
Charlie shook his head, glancing anxiously around. “This, you don’t want anyone to hear.”
Cassie’s heart clenched. She’d almost given up on hearing from Charlie. After two weeks of silence, she wondered if he’d been avoiding her request, or he was just too busy with his regular life to take the time to check into Rose’s death.
“It took me long enough to get to the files,” he began. “I said you were a researcher doing a story on student suicides, and I didn’t think it would be a problem; we get requests like that all the time. So I filled in the paperwork like usual.” He paused, his blue eyes searching hers. “The next morning, I get called in to see the inspector. He grills me for half an hour. Wants to know who you are, why those files. He tried to play it off like confidentiality, you know, respect for the families, but he was rattled. So I told him it was no skin off my nose. I dropped it.”
Cassie tried to hide her disappointment. “Thanks all the same,” she said, already wondering how she could get access to those suicide files.
“Wait a minute,” Charlie corrected her. “I’m not done. I told the inspector it was finished, and then I waited. I didn’t have a chance to get near the files for a while, everything’s kept on-site, you see, in a fancy new storage wing. People all over the place. But this week, it thinned out. Lots of sick days, people phoning it in for the holidays. I was able to get in there and have a good dig around.”
“And?” Cassie’s hopes rose. The cold was forgotten, and the discomfort of the wooden bench. All that mattered was the sheaf of photocopied pages Charlie ceremoniously withdrew from his inside coat pocket.
“And you’re right. Something’s off.” He fanned the pages out on the table, and Cassie grabbed the nearest one. “There wasn’t much on your friend Evie. The coroner’s report was straightforward. Asphyxiation by hanging, no foul play. But Rose Smith . . .” He sighed. “I read the investigation report back to front, and it just doesn’t add up. They said suicide, right? But nobody even saw her by the river that day. They found her coat on the bridge, and a note back in her room, but that’s it. Now, suicide is plausible, don’t get me wrong. But they didn’t even declare her a missing person. Just announced it, case closed. It was too clean.”
“What do you mean?”
“I know how to read a report. The subtext, the stuff between the lines, and this . . . They wanted it tied up with a fucking ribbon, quick too. They dredged the river, found her things, and that was it. Usually an investigation will go on for months if they don’t have a body, but they closed this in a couple of days. And that wasn’t all.” Charlie took a breath. “It got me thinking, the reason they were all so quick to jump to conclusions about the suicide was there had been a whole rash of them that year. Five deaths in the previous couple of months. Stands to reason, right? If all those other kids topped themselves from stress and whatever, this girl must have done the same. So I looked into them, the other deaths.” Charlie reached out and pushed the other papers toward Cassie, a thick wedge. “They were just the beginning. In the years nineteen ninety to ninety-five, there were sixteen suicides reported at the university.”
“Is that a lot?” Cassie asked, trying to understand this new direction.
Charlie gave a grim nod. “Double the national average.”
“But Oxford is a stressful environment,” Cassie said slowly, repeating what Thessaly had told her in their counseling session.
“Sure, but then you’d expect the rates to stay steady,” Charlie argued. “Instead, look.” He pulled a piece of paper from his coat pocket, neatly folded. It was a rough timeline with Xs marked along the years. “You get clusters. And going back too—I searched the records for all mentions of suicide going back as far as I could. It’s the same. The rate is steady, a few people every year, then every twenty-five years or so, a big new cluster. In the midsixties, they had ten bodies show up in the space of five months.”
“Why didn’t anyone notice?” Cassie asked, her mind racing.
Charlie shrugged. “Who’s going to connect the dots?” he asked. “The deaths don’t get investigated on our end: once it’s a suicide, that pretty much wraps it up. The families are too focused on their own grief. Occasionally, you’d get a researcher or someone talking about the epidemic of tragedy, so the colleges would launch a mental health campaign, or some kind of help line, but that’s it. People move on, you see: students, staff—nobody stays in the same place here for long. They leave, a new crop of students arrives, and everyone forgets what happened before.”
Cassie stared at the diagram, the tiny crosses marking so many lost lives. “These are all students?”
“Mostly.” Charlie nodded. “Some locals too. But they didn’t get such a fuss. Not so high profile.”
“And you’re sure it’s not just a coincidence,” Cassie tried. This wasn’t just two deaths that didn’t add up, but dozens, stretching back half a century at least. This was way over her head. “College attracts brilliant, unstable people. They get fixated on the work; any kind of failure can set them over the edge.”
“Look at it,” Charlie said, tapping the paper. “Does that look like a coincidence to you?”
The timeline was impossible to ignore. Cassie traced the line, trying to imagine all those unexplained deaths, how anyone could turn his head and look the other way for so long. “What do you think it is?” she asked. “A serial killer? More than one?”
Charlie shook his head slowly. “The timeline is too spread out. Most killers will strike within ten or twenty years. This goes back to the nineteenth century, at least.”
“So it’s bigger than just one person.” She shivered. “What do we do next?”
Charlie pulled his coat closed. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I need to get home. My mum’s got a Christmas roast in the oven, and if I’m not back to peel the spuds, there’ll be hell to pay.”
Cassie blinked in disbelief. He’d delivered her proof that there were dozens of unexplained deaths at Oxford, and now he was talking about holiday meals? He must have caught her anxious expression because he sighed. “Look, there’s something here. I believe you. We need to figure out what’s been going on. But there’s nothing we can do today. It’s Christmas. Go home, relax, we’ll pick this up next week.”
“Home,” Cassie echoed. As if she could simply put this aside now, when it was so much bigger than she’d ever imagined. “Sure. Right.”
She got up to leave, but Charlie paused. “Where are you celebrating, anyway?”
Cassie was still thinking about the cluster of Xs and stumbled out her response. “Um, nowhere. I don’t really do the holidays.”
“You don’t do . . . ? Right, come on.” Charlie beckoned. “My mum would string me up if she knew there was a stray wandering around.”
“I’m not a stray!” Cassie protested. “And I’m fine, really. I’ll get takeout and watch It’s a Wonderful Life. Fine, see?” She forced a smile, but Charlie just rolled his eyes.
“You’ll sit around obsessing over this lot, you mean. Come on,” he said again, softer this time. “What’s the harm? We’re a loud, obnoxious bunch, but it’s Christmas. Everyone should be with family, even if it’s not your own.”
Cassie felt a pang. Her last Christmas with her mother had been a good year, her mom stable enough to remember presents and a tree. She’d baked cinnamon cookies and played Christmas songs while Cassie watched from the kitchen counter and tried desperately to remember this: the safety, the comfort and joy. She’d known she might not get another Christmas like that; she just hadn’t known she would never get another at all.
Something in her twisted with a lonely ache. She found herself nodding. “Okay,” she told Charlie, self-conscious. “Thank you. I’ll come.”
Charlie’s family lived on the outskirts of the city, in a residential cul-de-sac full of redbrick houses and overgrown front yards. Several of the houses were strewn with gaudy Christmas lights, but none were as elaborate as the plastic Santa and snowmen propped on the roof of Charlie’s house, flashing a rainbow of lights even in the bright of midday. “Now, you might want to brace yourself,” he warned her, slamming the car door of his beat-up blue Honda. “They were just breaking into the Baileys when I left, so it’s probably bedlam by now.”
Cassie followed him up the walk, curious. Even from here she could hear noise from inside the house, and when he unlocked the front door, it burst out in a chorus of chaos.
“Mum! Kirsty took my new skirt from Topshop and you know she’ll stretch it out!” A teenage girl was thundering down the stairs, closely followed by another girl around sixteen dressed in a tight vest and red miniskirt.
“Will not, you’re the one who needs to stop eating all my Ferrero Rocher!” They pushed past Charlie and Cassie without slowing for breath, racing to the back of the house.
Charlie gave Cassie a grin. “Welcome to the madness.”
Another girl backed out of the living room, juggling a baby on her hip. “Liam! Liam, put that plug down! What have I told you, sockets aren’t toys!” She turned, seeing them in the hallway. “Charlie, there you are. Can you keep your nephew from electrocuting the cat? If he blows the fuse, we’ll never get dinner cooked.”
“Cassie, my sister Rhiannon,” Charlie introduced.
Rhiannon gave Cassie a brief look. “Can you take her?” she asked, thrusting the baby at her.
“I, what?” Cassie didn’t have time to argue; the infant was already in her arms.
“Just for a sec, I’ve got to go give her dad a bollocking. Charlie, the plug!” she ordered, before marching outside.
“Duty calls,” Charlie grinned, heading into the living room.
Cassie caught her breath, alone for a moment in the hallway with a baby in her arms. When Charlie had said his family was a handful, she hadn’t realized what he meant. For a second, she thought about making her excuses and a quick exit, but then Charlie poked his head back around the door with a friendly grin. “Well, don’t just stand there.”
“Sure. Sorry.” Cassie followed him into the living room, crammed with old faded sofas, a big-screen TV, and a huge, gaudily decorated tree. Charlie was on his knees, tickling a toddler who shrieked in delight. He looked up. “Sorry about Rhiannon. These are her brats.”
“Oh.” Cassie blinked, wondering how old she was. Not more than eighteen, at most.
Charlie caught her look and chuckled. “Yeah, that about sums it up. You should have seen Mum’s face when she came home from school and told us she was pregnant with this one.” He attacked the toddler again. “Should’ve known he’d turn out to be a terror. That one’s Daisy,” he added, nodding to the baby Cassie was holding awkwardly. “And those two whining girls you saw tearing through here before are my youngest sisters, Kirsty and Laura.”
“Wow.” Cassie swallowed. “Big family.”
“Yup.” Charlie swung Liam over his head to sit on his shoulders. “And Uncle Fred and Aunt Trudy are here too. Don’t worry,” he added. “They’re too busy not speaking to each other to pay any attention to you.”
Charlie was right. As the various members of the Day clan wandered in and out of the room, Cassie found she could sit unnoticed in the corner, bouncing the placid baby on her lap as the noise continued around her, Charlie and his sisters bickering over half a dozen different things. She found it hard to keep up, but Cassie didn’t mind: it was relaxing to simply watch the madness whirl around her, the loud, affectionate hustle of family life. Nobody asked her about her own family or plans, they just set her to work peeling potatoes in the overpacked kitchen, while Charlie’s mother kept a watchful eye on five different pans of food and his sisters flipped through gossip magazines and texted their friends.
“So how long have you known our Charlie?” his mother, Maureen, asked when Charlie had been sent up on the roof to adjust the TV aerial. She was a loud, blousy women in her fifties with a feathery cut of dyed blond hair and the kind of sharp gaze that left nothing unnoticed.
“A couple of months,” Cassie replied. “But I don’t know him all that well.”
“So you’re not his girlfriend?” one of the sisters, Laura, Cassie thought, piped up.
“No, it’s not her,” the other teenage girl answered for Cassie. “He dumped her the other week, remember? She was getting too clingy.”
“They always get too clingy. He’s such a man-whore.” Laura rolled her eyes.
“Don’t talk like that about your brother,” Maureen scolded. “He’s just looking for the right girl, that’s all.” She turned back to Cassie with a worrying gleam in her eye. “And you’re a student at one of the colleges, are you? Clever girl.”
“Just for the year,” Cassie explained quickly, lest Maureen get the impression that Cassie was that right girl Charlie needed. “Then I go back to America.”
“Hmm.” Maureen paused. “Well, shame.” She turned back to stirring the gravy. “It’s hard for him to meet a nice girl; all he does is work.”
“And get drunk down at the pub,” Kirsty muttered.
“I don’t suppose you have any friends . . . ?” Maureen was asking when Charlie came back in.
“What did I miss?” He looked around.
“I was hearing all about your love life,” Cassie told him, with a teasing grin.
Charlie groaned. “Mum! What have you been telling her?”
“Nothing bad,” Maureen protested. “Just I can’t understand why a boy like you can’t find a nice girl. You’re a real catch, you know.”
“I’m too young to settle down.” Charlie pretended to act annoyed, but Cassie could tell he didn’t mind. “I’ve got another ten years of bachelor kicks in me, at least.” He winked at Cassie.
Maureen beamed at him, clearly adoring. “That’s just what your dad said before he met me. You mark my words, when you meet the right girl, you won’t know what hit you.”
Cassie watched them. She could see they’d had this exchange a hundred times and would probably have it another hundred more. She felt a tightness in her chest, a familiar ache. The love between Charlie and his family was so casual, they probably didn’t even realize how lucky they were: the way they dipped into each other’s conversations, entering and exiting rooms mid-thought; even the way they all moved through the house was a ballet, an unconscious but constant motion.
“You all right?” Maureen asked, looking over.
“It’s just . . . the onions.” Cassie pointed to the freshly chopped pile with relief. “I’m going to get some air.” She put down her peeler and headed for the back door. There was a small patio outside the kitchen, and a thin strip of lawn, browned and overgrown in the winter. A children’s play slide was set up at the end, and Cassie went to perch on the step, gulping in deep breaths of chilled winter air.
It was the holidays, she told herself, fighting back tears. This time of year brought up memories for everyone, and now all the things Cassie had worked so hard to push down were bubbling to the surface again, brought on by the memories of cinnamon and nutmeg in the steamy kitchen air. It would pass, it always did.
“Hey.”
She looked up, quickly wiping her eyes. Charlie was coming down the garden toward her. “Don’t tell me they drove you away already. I was thinking you’d make it through lunch, at least.”
“No, it’s not that.” Cassie forced a smile as he reached her. “I’m fine. I just needed—”
“Some air,” he finished for her. Charlie studied her carefully, then shrugged off his jacket and draped it over her shoulders. “You’ll catch your death out here.”
“Thanks.” Cassie swallowed, feeling self-conscious.
“Sure you’re okay?” he asked again.
She nodded. “It’s just the holidays.”
“You miss your folks?” Charlie lowered himself onto the step beside her and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. “Don’t tell her indoors,” he added. “I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“Your secret’s safe with me,” Cassie replied.
Charlie lit a cigarette and inhaled a long breath. “What about yours?” he asked, turning to look at her with a searching stare.
“What?” Cassie blinked.
“Your secrets.” Charlie took another drag. “What’s all this research really about?”
Cassie paused, her old lie to Elliot sticking in her throat. It shouldn’t have been hard to explain, again, about the family friend, and her natural curiosity. But for some reason the lie wouldn’t come. Maybe it was because of the loud chatter and music drifting from the house, the home Charlie had invited her into without a second thought, as if revealing his life to her was the most natural thing in the world.
Cassie reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out her slim wallet. She slowly unfolded the picture of her mother and Rose she kept there and passed it to Charlie.
“The dead girl,” he said, recognizing her.
“And that’s my mother.” Cassie pointed to Margaret’s face. “After Rose died, she dropped out. Changed her name, moved to America. She’s dead now; she killed herself too, ten years ago. But she never once told me she’d even studied at Oxford. That’s how I know there’s something rotten going on here,” she added, meeting Charlie’s steady blue eyes. “She ran. She ran from something, and I need to know what it was.”
Charlie held her gaze, thoughtful. Then he slowly folded the picture and caught sight of the writing on the back. “‘Black is the badge of hell, the hue of dungeons, and the school of night,’” he read.
“Someone put that in my mail,” Cassie explained. “It’s a reference to a secret society at Raleigh. At least, I think it is. Rose wrote a paper on the society,” she added. “And Evie checked it out just a week before she died.”
“Curious and curiouser.” Charlie took another long drag on his cigarette, then ground the stub out under his heel and stood up. “We’ll figure it out,” he said quietly, holding out his hand to help her up. “We’ll find the answers you’re looking for.”
He sounded so certain, Cassie couldn’t help but believe him. Then his face crinkled into a familiar grin. “But right now, there’s a roast turkey and five kinds of vegetables waiting on that table. Murder and mayhem can wait. First, we eat.”
Christmas lunch was a boozy, drawn-out affair with traditional crackers and paper crowns. Cassie let herself get swept along in the flow of conversation and laughter, savoring the brief glimpse of happily dysfunctional family life. After the dishes were finally cleared, Charlie’s sisters disappeared to go hang out with their friends, and the remainder of them retired to the living room to watch TV.
“Okay to stay for a bit?” Charlie asked, looking over from where he was sprawled beside Cassie on the couch. “I ate so much I can’t move an inch right now. I’ll drive you back after the movie.”
“Sure,” Cassie agreed, glad of an excuse to stay longer, wrapped in the warmth of a woolly throw and his family’s friendship.
“Hold on starting the movie,” Maureen called from the kitchen. “I’m just making a pot of tea.”
Charlie began channel-hopping, until his uncle spoke up. “Pause there. Let me take a look at the news.” Charlie turned the volume up. It was a story about the upcoming election, shots of the contending politicians out greeting constituents and posing with Santa Claus. Cassie watched carefully when Richard Mandeville came on-screen, a handsome man in his late forties with salt-and-pepper hair and an engaging smile.
“What do you think of him?” she asked Charlie, nodding at the TV.
He shrugged. “They’re all the same. They like to talk tough on law and order, but you can bet whoever gets elected, they’ll be slashing our budgets before the year is out.”
“I know his family,” she said, still watching the news conference on-screen. Mandeville was speaking at some event, looking confident and sincere in front of the crowd. “His daughter’s at Raleigh.”
“Of course she is.” Charlie gave a laugh. “All that lot went to Oxford. The kids you’re there with now will be running the country in twenty years’ time.”
Cassie was about to reply when she caught something on-screen that made her heart stop. It was footage from a previous occasion, Mandeville shaking hands with someone, but the people weren’t what caught her attention. It was where they were standing that made her breath catch. “Charlie,” she whispered, pulling the photo back out of her wallet. “Look.” She showed him the picture of her mother and Rose, sitting at a table in front of a wall of portraits.
On-screen, Richard Mandeville was shown chatting with some business leader or politician. In front of the same wall of portraits, the very same dining room.
Gravestone Manor. The Mandeville family estate.
Charlie looked back at Cassie, his eyes searching her face. “No,” he said, before she had a chance to even say a word. “You can’t.”
“I have to get in there,” she declared.
“You can’t just go waltzing in,” Charlie said, shaking his head. “He’s about to get elected prime minister; there’ll be security for miles. And even if you found a way in, they’ll throw you out on your ass the minute you start digging around.”
“No, they won’t.” Cassie realized her chance. “I have an invitation.”