• fifteen •

But the morning passed just as usual … only, soon after breakfast, I heard some bustle in the neighborhood of Mr. Rochester’s chamber.… There were exclamations of “What a mercy master was not burnt in his bed!” …

To much confabulation succeeded a sound of scrubbing and setting to rights; and when I passed the room, in going down stairs to dinner, I saw through the open door that all was again restored to complete order.

—Jane Eyre

Emily arrived home just as Katie was putting lunch on the table for Marguerite.

“Alors, my wandering hostess returns at last,” Marguerite said with some asperity. “Is my visit so long already that you tire of my company?”

“You were asleep, for pity’s sake. And I really needed to go to church.”

“Ah, church…” Marguerite shrugged. She had enough Catholic in her to make her respect others going to church, though not enough to make her enter one herself for anything but a wedding or a funeral.

“Your sheriff came by while you were gone.”

“Luke? What for?” He’d better have come to apologize and assure her he’d stricken Katie from his suspect list.

“He wanted to, how you say, investigate the third floor. He was too fatigué, le pauvre, to do it properly last night. But when I told him you were not here, he said he would come back later.”

“The third floor? What does the third floor have to do with anything?” Luke’s behavior was getting stranger by the minute.

Marguerite gave an eloquent shrug. “In me he did not confide. You will call him yourself, non?”

Non. He could call her if he had something to say. She tore at her bread as if it were responsible for the rift between her and Luke.

Marguerite regarded her impassively. “You know that I must leave this afternoon, oui?”

“Yes, of course.” Clean Scene would be here in half an hour, and Emily did not care to linger in the house while they did their grisly work. “The weather’s cleared. It’s actually fairly nice outside. Want to walk on the beach after lunch and see what the storm blew in?”

Marguerite sipped her café au lait with a visible softening. “Pourquois pas? Your beach, it has always quelque-chose amusante to say.”

When they’d finished their mock turtle soup, left over from last night’s banquet, Emily changed into a sweater and chinos and made it back downstairs just in time to let the cleaners in. She’d sent Katie and Lizzie home to rest so they would be out of the way.

Clean Scene turned out to consist of a middle-aged man and a boy in his late teens, evidently father and son. They shared an unfortunate nose, but the boy’s abundant blond hair had gone sparse and muddy brown on his father. The boy was tongue-tied—Emily guessed from shyness rather than sullenness—but his fair skin flushed purple as his father shook Emily’s hand with a heartiness that would have been more appropriate in an after-party cleaner than an after-murder one. “Clean Scene on the scene, ‘We Erase All Trace.’ Just point us in the right direction and we’ll get that damned spot out in no time flat.” He winked to be sure she caught his veiled Shakespearean reference. He might have been one of the Bard’s buffoons himself, ready to bestow upon her all the tediousness of a king.

“This way.” The Beatrice in her wished she’d stayed in her church clothes so she could look more the part of the grande dame and less like someone with whom liberties might be taken. She ushered the pair into the library and opened the door to the concealed stairway, then plugged in the extension cord for the floodlights the crime scene people had left behind.

“It’s all contained in here. There’s no need for you to do anything outside this stairwell, but you will need to address the whole area.” She gestured to the brown stains that trailed up the wooden steps. “It’s an old house and quite a showplace, so please be as gentle as you can. But thorough.”

Clean Scene Senior clapped her on the back. She was glad she had on her thick Aran sweater to cushion the blow. “Don’t you worry, ma’am. In like a lion, out like a lamb, that’s our motto.”

Emily did not find that metaphor greatly comforting, but she let it pass. “How long do you think it’ll take?”

He shrugged. “Couple hours. This is a piece of cake. No carpet, no furniture, confined space—all our jobs should be so easy. Right, Fred Junior?” He elbowed his silent son, who managed a feeble grin, then rolled his eyes behind his father’s back.

Emily caught Fred Junior’s eye with a sympathetic quirk at the corner of her mouth. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours to write you a check.” She slipped out before Fred Senior could come up with a snappy reply.

*   *   *

Emily and Marguerite enjoyed a pleasant if breezy walk on the beach. Marguerite found several tiny but exquisite shells to take home, and Emily almost managed to forget what she’d be going back to. But return to the house was inevitable.

Freds Junior and Senior were lugging their equipment back out to their van as Emily and Marguerite approached across the lawn.

“Perfect timing,” Fred Senior called out. He shoved a large wet-dry vac into the van and produced a small clipboard from one capacious pocket. He scribbled on it and presented it to Emily.

She took it without looking and proceeded into the hall, then into the tiny office next to the front stairs where she kept her checkbook. Fred Senior followed, prattling away.

“Real quaint old place you got here. Beautiful workmanship. Used to be a contractor, so I know. And all those secret passages—what a hoot! You could have a terrific Halloween party here.”

Emily turned, check in hand. “Actually, we just did. A murder mystery party. Only the intended pretend victim got himself killed for real.”

Fred Senior whistled through his teeth. “Is that what happened! Straight out of a book, ain’t it?”

It could have been, actually, now that Emily thought about it—in fact, hadn’t Ngaio Marsh written a story exactly like that? The first Roderick Alleyn, if she recalled correctly—A Man Lay Dead. Maybe the murderer had read it, too. But no, Roman hardly seemed the reading type. Better stick with Brontë.

Emily waved Clean Scene off from the porch, then turned back to see Marguerite in the doorway, overnight bag in hand. “Margot, you’re leaving already? I thought you’d at least stay to tea.”

“Merci, but I wish to arrive in Portland before dark. I have papers to correct. Hélas, I am not yet a lady of leisure like yourself.” Marguerite had not yet given up on her dream of marrying a wealthy man and spending the rest of her life on the Riviera.

She kissed Emily on both cheeks. “You should come and stay with me for a while, chérie. This house, it is too gloomy just now. You need a change.”

Emily sighed. A change did sound wonderful. But how could she leave Katie? And the remodeling? And leave the investigation solely in Luke’s hands, when he was being so wrongheaded about it?

“I don’t know, Margot. I’ll think about it. It does sound nice, but … maybe when all this is over.”

Marguerite gave Emily one of her searching looks. She occasionally exhibited Miss Maud Silver’s trick of appearing to find the human race—or at least Emily—glass-fronted. “As long as you take the weight of the world on your shoulders, chérie, ‘all this’ will never be over.”

Emily swallowed, knowing Marguerite was right. “I will think about it. Really. I’ll call you.”

Marguerite nodded inscrutably and picked up her bag. “We will talk soon.”

Emily went in to find Katie just laying out her tea. “How are you, Katie?”

“Just fine, Mrs. C. Aren’t we, Lizzie-lou?” She turned her head to address the baby, who was perched in a backpack on her mother’s back, attempting to catch and eat Katie’s swinging ponytail. Lizzie gurgled in reply.

Emily scooped Levin off her favorite chair and planted him in her lap. He purred as she scratched his favorite spot behind his ear. Katie was fine; Lizzie was fine; the cats were fine. Why was she the only one who could not shake the feeling that an ill wind had blown into Windy Corner and was not giving any sign of blowing out?

She read the final pages of Wuthering Heights along with her tea, then carried the book over to the curved section of shelving that housed the fiction library—and opened onto the secret stairs. The door was firmly closed now, and Emily was resolved it should stay that way indefinitely. Yet she didn’t feel Jake’s shade had utterly departed. Perhaps he was waiting for justice. Though she would have said his death in itself had been justice, albeit carried out by an unofficial hand. Upon that thought she guiltily crossed herself. She should never rejoice in the death of a sinner who’d had no warning that death was upon him and hence no opportunity to repent.

She nerved herself and shoved Wuthering Heights back onto the shelf with a sense of relief. Maybe that book was partly responsible for the way she was feeling. Who could be cheerful in the presence of Heathcliff & Co.? She skimmed the lower shelves for something that might lift her mood. L. M. Montgomery? P. G. Wodehouse? But they seemed too cheerful. She wasn’t ready for that dramatic a change.

She straightened and spotted Jane Eyre right next to Wuthering Heights. It stood out a bit from the row as if beckoning to her. Jane Eyre wasn’t exactly cheery reading, but it did have glimmers of light—and a happy ending. Perhaps it could help her transition back to normal.

As she read the opening paragraph—There was no possibility of taking a walk that day … the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further outdoor exercise was now out of the question—the weather outside her window took a turn and followed suit. Emily sank into the world of the forlorn, misunderstood little Jane, with whom she had identified so strongly as a child, and welcomed melancholy as an old friend.

*   *   *

After his abortive visit to Windy Corner—which he didn’t dare invade in Emily’s absence, given her current mood—Luke spent Sunday alone at the office, reading through last night’s interview transcripts till he had them memorized, sifting through the crime scene reports, and staring at fingerprints until he could see them even in the texture of the paint on his office walls. Try as he might, the only clear prints he could match off the knife were Katie’s and, somewhat surprisingly, Jake’s. Some of the smudged partials looked consistent with Roman, but he couldn’t be sure; none of them matched up with any of the cast or guests. Anyway, Roman’s prints on the knife didn’t prove anything; they already knew the knife was his.

The absence of anyone else’s prints was more suggestive. That implied three possibilities for the culprit: Roman, Katie, or X wearing gloves. Luke played over the dinner scene in his mind: at least a third of the guests, including all the cast members, had come in wearing gloves as part of their costumes. They’d taken them off to eat but could easily have put them on again to kill. Holy cow, was he going to have to check for bloodstained gloves with every single one of the hundred guests? And the caterers had been wearing gloves, too. What were there, twenty of them?

No, no. Pull it together, Richards. He’d already ruled out most of those present due to their position at the time of the murder. Those unaccounted for included Abby, Matthew, and Devon—none of whom he could seriously imagine as a killer. But he didn’t dare dismiss them yet—not till he’d looked at their gloves. And gotten the results from those spots on Matthew’s shirtfront and Devon’s cuff.

He’d better interview them all again. But first he made a quick call to Windy Corner to make sure Emily was in. He’d go by there on the same trip. And maybe he’d be able to tell Emily he’d found something that would point away from Katie. Emily’s anger at him sat like a ten-pound rock in his gut. He had to get things right with her, and stat, or he’d never be able to gather his wits enough to solve this case.

He put on his hat and coat and opened the front door, only to see Jamie MacDougal standing on the doorstep, knuckles raised as if to knock. Jamie started back and his face went white under his freckles. “Lieutenant! I wasn’t sure you’d be in on a Sunday.”

“No such thing as a day off when there’s a murder to solve.” Luke backed up to let Jamie in, not sorry to be delayed in his current errand. “What can I do you for?”

Jamie took off his sou’wester and turned the brim in his hands. “I—think I may be able to help you with that mur—with your investigation.” His hands clenched, crumpling the hat. “You see—I did it.” He looked Luke full in the face. “I killed Jake Newhouse.”