Chapter Six

 

Had he said that last too casually? I wasn’t sure. In fairness, I was the one who’d brought up the subject of smoking and pipe tobacco.

I studied him doubtfully. He studied me back.

“How do you take your coffee?” he asked finally, when the conversation continued stuck in idle.

“Coffee? Oh. Black.”

“Me too.” He winked as though that was some kind of in-joke and motioned to the blue and white flowered sofa. “Have a seat. I’ll get the coffee.”

He stepped into the kitchenette, and I walked over to the row of windows. Seamus had a perfect view of the back of the main house—including Ogden’s study—from his own easy chair. I considered that for a moment or two, absently listening to a yellow bird singing sweetly in the branches of the nearby apple tree.

“It’s so quiet out here,” I said. “Do you mind being this far from the house?”

“I like it.” Seamus returned with two fat, red cappuccino cups of steaming black coffee. He handed one to me. “Anyway, it’s not that far away. Did you want to sit down?”

I glanced at him and then moved over to take a seat on the sofa. I swallowed a mouthful of coffee. It was very hot and very good. I took another appreciative sip. The world began to seem less sinister.

“Sorry if I seem like I’m being forward here, Artemus”—Seamus folded into one of the club chairs opposite the sofa—“but it seems like maybe there’s something you need to get off your chest.”

“You could say that.” And he just had. “Can I ask you something?”

His brows rose. “Sure. Anything.”

Anything? Probably not. But I intended to start small and build up.

“Why exactly did you take this job?”

Seamus looked surprised. “Because I needed it.”

“I see.”

He smiled quizzically. “Why? Is there something wrong with the job? Something I should know about?”

“No. Well… No.”

He laughed. “That’s reassuring.”

Smart-ass. I decided to be forthright. “I hope I’m not being forward either, but you don’t really seem like any gardeners I’ve known.”

“You don’t seem like any theater critics I’ve known,” he retorted.

“See? That comment right there.” I pointed at him. “That is not the way gardeners talk. Not even gardeners from New York.”

“I’m not from New York.”

“Still.”

Seamus shrugged. “I can’t help it if your experience with gardeners has been limited up to now. Mrs. Bancroft-Hyde didn’t seem to have any problem with my references.”

He was still smiling, but as he delivered that line—gazing right into my eyes—I knew without a doubt that he knew Auntie H. had not checked his references. How? How could he possibly know that—unless his references were faked?

I smiled back at him. “As a matter of fact, she hasn’t checked your references yet. I was going to do that today.”

His smile grew slightly less pleasant. “Check away,” he said.

“Anything you’d like to declare for customs?”

He gave a funny laugh. “Nothing to declare. You’ll find my papers are in order.”

“Ha.” I tilted my head consideringly. “I wonder. How do you sleep at night?”

At that, he looked taken aback. “Sorry?”

“We had a prowler last night. But maybe on second thought, it wasn’t a prowler after all. Tell me, Seamus, do you enjoy long walks in the moonlight?”

“A prowler,” he repeated slowly.

I knew I wasn’t imagining the guarded look that crossed his face.

“That’s right. Last night, around midnight, maybe a little after, I was in my—the late Mr. Hyde’s—study when I spotted a man peering through the windows.”

“You did?” He set his cup on the coffee table between us. When he glanced up, his expression was rueful, his smile winning. “I’m embarrassed to admit it, but that was me.”

“No!”

He threw me a doubtful look, but Seamus wasn’t the only one with experience at playacting. I blinked at him in astonishment.

He said, “Um, yes. Sorry if I startled you. I didn’t realize anyone was up at that hour.”

To be honest, I’d been prepared for evasion, defensiveness, even denial. Frank admission sort of threw me. It took me a moment or two to recalculate.

Seamus said into my silence, “It never occurred to me anyone saw me.” He sank back into the chair. I could practically see his nimble hands working the loom as he spun another web of lies. “By coincidence, I did have trouble sleeping last night, so I decided to go for a walk in the garden. And while I was strolling around, falling over rakes and wheelbarrows, I happened to spot a light go on downstairs.”

“I see.” That first light would have been the drawing-room chandelier.

He nodded absently, as though gazing inward at some memory. “A minute or two later, I spotted another light go on two rooms over.”

That would have been when I turned on the lamp in Ogden’s study. He had certainly memorized the layout of the house. How? No, more to the point, why?

Seamus was still blithely running along, telling his tall tales. “Of course, I know the Tarrants occupy the other wing of the house, and it was hard to imagine the old ladies running around in their nighties at that hour.” He gave me an apologetic smile. “I’d forgotten all about you.”

That was payback for dodging his kiss. I smiled blandly, as though nothing pleased me more than to be instantly forgettable.

“Naturally, the first thought that popped into my head was a burglar.”

“Naturally,” I said. “Because the first thing burglars do is turn the lights on.”

“Since I happened to be standing right next to the terrace, I ran up and had a look in the window. I recognized you, of course, but then the light went out. I felt like an ass racing around peering through windows in the dead of night, so I took myself home to bed.”

“Yeah, of course,” I said. “What else could you do?”

Seamus gave me a narrow look.

I said, “You didn’t go inside the house for any reason?”

“No.”

“If you were chasing burglars—”

He said shortly, “I didn’t go inside the house. Not for any reason. Not at any time.”

“Hm.”

I believed him, but I pretended not to be convinced. Seamus retorted, “Anyway, if you saw me, why didn’t you wave or yell or send smoke signals or something?”

Again with the smoke.

“I was otherwise preoccupied.”

“With what?”

“Chasing a ghost.”

He stared at me. “A ghost? Whose ghost?”

“Now that’s a very interesting question. According to local gossip, my aunt’s late husband. He died about a year ago. You may have heard something about it.”

“Right. A fatal car crash.”

“Yes.”

He was looking at me as though he couldn’t quite make his mind up about something. “What happened? Last night, I mean.”

“Last night? Not much.” I gave him the whole story, from the thump on my door to the dead end—no pun intended—of Ogden’s study. Seamus heard me out in silence, his alert gaze never leaving my face.

When I finished, he said casually, “You don’t believe in ghosts, then?”

“No. Even if I did, I don’t believe in pipe-smoking ghosts who apparently have enough earthly body left to make stairs squeak.”

He smiled faintly. “I see your point. You never actually got a good look at him—or her?”

“No. I was never close enough to know for sure whether I was chasing a man or a woman.”

“Any guesses as to who your haunt might be?”

“I assume it’s supposed to be Ogden. As to who it really is floating around after-hours? No. There’s a limited cast of suspects.”

He grinned. “Including me.”

“Including you.” Even as I said it, I knew it was unlikely. I believed him when he said he hadn’t gone inside the house the night before. And I believed the friendly mockery of that grin. He found the idea of himself as lead ghost highly amusing.

“What would be the point, though?”

Good question. The question I kept coming back to.

I said, “I don’t know. If the ghost is Tarrant—and I have to say, that seems a bit Scooby-Doo-ish—I guess he could be pretending to haunt Green Lanterns in order to sabotage Aunt H.’s idea of running an inn. No more inn means he and Betty have a lot less work to do. But then again, the inn is all but officially closed now anyway. And Tarrant and Betty would have less work if we could keep more staff, so from that perspective, pretending to haunt the place is the last thing he’d want to do.”

“It does seem illogical.”

“Same lack of motive applies to Betty. Plus, she’s genuinely afraid. Which, come to think of it, is another reason against Tarrant being behind the haunting. If there’s one person in this world he cares for, it’s his daughter. I can’t see him deliberately frightening her.”

“True. Who does that leave?”

It left Liana, who was behaving so weirdly these days, I didn’t put anything past her. Even so, the idea of Liana floating around the halls of Green Lanterns seemed a stretch. But then the idea of anyone floating around the halls of Green Lanterns was a stretch.

I glanced at Seamus, who was regarding me with that bright, attentive gaze. He raised his brows in inquiry.

It occurred to me that I was sitting there confiding in him like we were friends—or at least on the same team. And the truth was, we were neither of those things. Which didn’t change the fact that Seamus Cassidy was surprisingly easy to talk to. Surprising, because I really did not trust him. Was quite certain he was up to something. Probably not flitting around the halls of Green Lanterns pretending to be Ogden, but…something.

I gave him my best party smile and rose. “It leaves you,” I said. “And I shall do the same.”