Page 14 of All of Us Murderers

Eight

Zeb returned to Lackaday House alone, with sodden feet.

He wasn’t sure if he was glad they’d talked.

No, he was: more than anything, he didn’t want Gideon to hate him.

All the same, he felt even worse than he had before at the realisation his stupidity was still causing so much pain a year later.

Although maybe that shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

Gideon’s absence had hurt Zeb on a daily basis for months.

But they had talked, and resolved a misunderstanding. Maybe, if he stayed, they could talk about what had gone wrong. Maybe Zeb could explain—

Explain what? Remember when you asked me for forever, and I said ‘I dare say I could give you the evening’? And then the next day I pulled you into a stockroom at work, and we were caught and sacked for gross misconduct and damned lucky not to be gaoled? Well, about that…

He was a damned fool to think Gideon wanted explanations a year too late, and a damneder one, if that was a word, to imagine that anything he could say would change matters.

What did he think: that Gideon would say, Oh, well, now I understand, it was all perfectly reasonable? That he might give Zeb another chance?

The most likely outcome of all this wasn’t reunion, or even forgiveness: it was him ruining Gideon’s life by accident for a second time. He did not want to do that. Therefore he had to get a grip on the situation.

The walk had taken up much of the morning.

(Two and a half days down, he found himself thinking, eleven and a half to go.) He took himself up to his room, changed his stockings and trousers, and wondered where best he could put his sodden shoes to dry, ending up propping them by the unlit fireplace.

He had no other shoes except his dress shoes, but he’d brought slippers with him, being a man who lived in slippers, given the chance.

They were a long-loved pair, tartan and extremely down-at-heel, and Bram would doubtless have plenty to say if he turned up for lunch in them, but there wasn’t much choice.

He should have some laundry done while he was here, or he’d be down to slippers and a nightgown.

He glanced ruefully at his muddy trousers, which he’d slung over the back of a chair, and saw a stain on the grey fabric that he was sure hadn’t been there before.

They’d been clean on three days ago, and he’d worn them yesterday, and…

oh yes, he’d put his hand into a pool of something on the altar of the stone circle, wiped it on his trousers, and had been walking around with a stain on his arse ever since. For heaven’s sake.

He squinted at the stain. It was dark red, oddly hard to the touch where it had dried, and he remembered the liquid’s cold, viscous feel with a shudder. What the blazes had he put his hand into?

He donned his only pair of clean trousers with a vow to be more careful and went down to luncheon.

There he found Dash, Jessamine, and Bram making stilted conversation, and Gideon sitting in silence over a spread of cold chicken, cheese, and bread that looked identical to yesterday’s cold chicken, cheese, and bread.

“What on earth have you on your feet?” Bram demanded.

“Slippers,” Zeb said. “Good day to you too.”

“Why are you—”

“Because my shoes are wet. Because I went for a walk,” he added, anticipating the next question.

“You have only one pair of shoes with you?” Bram demanded. “Really, your irresponsibility—”

“Where did you walk, Cousin Zeb?” Jessamine asked over him. Possibly she’d had her fill of Bram too.

“Round the grounds. I’m not sure how one walks anywhere else. Could we go into the moorland? I’d love to see a bit of Dartmoor. Who else would like a long walk?”

“Energetic fellow, aren’t you?” Dash said. “Hopping around the place like a squirrel. Perhaps tomorrow. I should like to put my feet up this afternoon.”

Apparently neither Bram nor Jessamine felt the urge to get out from under the encompassing walls either.

Zeb helped himself to chicken, cheese, and bread, feet twitching under the table.

Jessamine offered to have his shoes brought down and properly dried.

Dash said that in his view, the weather was liable to close in, and Dartmoor weather was not to be sneezed at.

Gideon said nothing at all. Bram launched into an analysis of the paintings in the dining room, none of which seemed to Zeb to have any artistic merit, and his monologue was still going strong when the door banged open.

Hawley marched in, red-faced. “What the devil is happening in this house?”

“Just luncheon, Cousin Hawley,” Jessamine said, startled. “Would you care—”

“There is graffiti outside my room!”

“There’s what?” Zeb said.

“Graffiti,” Bram said in a very foreign-sounding sort of way. “A term from the Italian, referring to the common Roman practice of writing on walls—”

“The wall outside my room, you pompous arse!” Hawley spluttered. “Letters a foot high, and a damned offensive bit of spite with it. I want to know who did it, and I want it removed!”

“Writing on the walls?” Jessamine said. “Inside the house?”

“In the corridor!”

“That seems extremely unlikely,” Bram remarked. “Have you been drinking?”

“It’s there!” Hawley snarled. “And I won’t have it! Who did this?”

Everyone exchanged glances. “I’ll go and look,” Jessamine said.

“No!” Hawley snapped. “That is, it is not fit for your eyes, Jessamine. You are above such spite and vulgarity.”

“Then I shall look,” Colonel Dash said, with a touch of annoyance. “Lead the way.”

“I’ll come with you,” Zeb offered, since it was a fast exit from the table and Bram and Gideon.

Hawley was lodged on the opposite side of the house to Zeb. With so few staff in evidence, he really would have thought they would put all the guests together. He followed his cousins upstairs and along several corridors until Hawley stopped dead.

They were in a corridor very like Zeb’s but without any paintings.

That, unfortunately, meant they had an uninterrupted view of the extremely ugly wallpaper with its aggressively repeated pattern.

Zeb had read a surprising number of stories featuring haunted patterns (well, two, but that seemed a lot) and was of the opinion that Lackaday House’s walls could inspire another.

There was nothing else at all to see.

“Hawley?” Dash asked.

“But—it was here. What the—” Hawley took a few intemperate strides forward and ran his hands over the wallpaper. “There was writing here! Damn great letters, painted on the wall!”

“There’s nothing there now,” Zeb observed.

“I can see that, you bloody fool!”

Zeb put his own hand to the wallpaper. It was dry and a little dusty. “What did this writing say?”

“Offensive nonsense. A slanderous allegation.”

“Personal?” Dash asked.

“Of course personal. It could hardly be slanderous otherwise.”

“So, you had a vision—”

“It was not a vision!”

“You ‘saw’ abusive words written on the wall,” Dash said, the quotation marks around the verb very clear. “But there is nothing there. Do you often see things that aren’t there?”

Hawley indicated his opinion of that question in an explosive manner, added a few reflections on the intelligence of his companions, and stamped off into what was presumably his bedroom, letting a reek of stale-scented smoke and a distinct whiff of spirits into the corridor.

Zeb and Dash turned as one and headed back to the main hall.

Once they were at a safe distance, Dash remarked, “Well, they do say that absinthe stuff gives a chap visions.”

“But it makes the heart grow fonder.”

Dash gave a moustache-ruffling snort. “What do you make of all that? Is he off his rocker?”

“He’s playing the fool in some way. No idea what.”

Dash frowned slightly. “You sound sure of that.”

“Last night someone dressed up as the family ghost in an attempt to scare me,” Zeb said. “You were playing billiards with Bram and Mr. Grey at the time, and I’d heard Wynn and the women talking downstairs. That leaves Hawley.”

“Well,” Dash said. “Is that so? Well, well. Someone dressed as a monk, was that?”

“In my corridor. You don’t sound surprised.”

“Saw it too.”

Zeb turned to face him. Dash gave a mildly embarrassed shrug. “Late last night, going to bed. Ghostly grey hooded form, you know. Assumed it was my imagination or a servant or some such. Rotten low light here: I must say, I thought acetylene would be better. Hawley, you think?”

“Everyone else was accounted for when I saw my ghost.”

“Hmph. Let’s you and I keep an eye on Mr. Hawley Wyckham, shall we?”

“Let’s do that,” Zeb said.

***

Zeb headed down to the library with his satchel that afternoon, in the hope of getting some use out of the day, and found Jessamine. He would have retreated, but she looked up and smiled. “Good afternoon, Cousin Zeb.”

“Well, good-ish. The weather’s closing in a bit.” It was decidedly grey outside now; he was glad he’d gone out that morning. “What are you up to?”

“I am going over the housekeeping accounts,” Jessamine said composedly. “Learning how to manage Lackaday House, since I will be its mistress one day.”

It was something to do, he supposed. He couldn’t help noticing she seemed very confident about the success of the marriage plan. “I imagine there’s a great deal to the running of a place this size, and such a remote one,” he offered. “It must be difficult to keep it supplied?”

“The grocer sends a cart from town once a week. I hope you don’t find the food monotonous? I don’t think Bram is very happy. He’s a gourmet, isn’t he? He must be finding our plain fare very tiresome.”

“It’ll do him good,” Zeb said without sympathy.

“I hope so, but he often seems in a bad temper at meals. He was quite angry about the book, wasn’t he? I am enjoying it a great deal.”

“The Monastery? Are you really? Where have you got to?”

“The second volume.”

“You, uh, didn’t find the end of the first volume a bit much?”

“Oh, it was terrible.”

“It is, isn’t it?”