Page 20 of All of Us Murderers

Twelve

The next morning was, as predicted, thick with mist. Zeb, rousing himself at seven having lain awake, alone, and miserable until four, could see nothing from his window but vague shapes where trees once were.

It was very cold. He dressed quickly and shoved his abused dinner clothes into his suitcase.

His shoes were outside his door, dried rather badly in front of a fire so they felt baked on his feet, and he went downstairs to breakfast with a sense of discomfort that wasn’t improved when he saw Bram was there.

He gave Zeb a look of loathing. Fine. Zeb ignored him right back and went to pile his plate from the chafing dishes, trying to disregard the lump in his gut.

His brother had unquestionably wronged him, whereas he hadn’t actually wronged Bram, therefore he wasn’t the one who should be feeling bad.

Anyway, Zeb had to break a promise, get out of the house before Hawley woke, and leave Gideon again. He didn’t have the energy for Bram.

He forced down his food in stubborn silence and went to find Wynn, who was sitting in the drawing room with a book.

“Good morning,” Zeb said. “I hope you’re well? You looked rather rough last night.”

“Very well, thank you. Last night—well, the less said the better. I hope we can put all that unpleasantness behind us. What can I do for you, Zeb?” Wynn beamed like a Dickens character, all jolly benevolence. “I trust you have changed your mind as to your rash statement last night?”

“No, I haven’t. I will be going home today.”

Wynn’s face was transformed by heavy disappointment. “I hesitate to remind you, but you made me a promise.”

“I did promise to stay, yes. And you said you weren’t going to push me to marry Jessamine, and then you all but ordered me to propose to her.”

“You exaggerate a little, I think.”

His cousin had an immensely reasonable manner that gave Zeb a constant nagging feeling he was overreacting.

“You put me in a position where I had to tell her I didn’t want to marry her,” he insisted.

“That wasn’t fair to anyone. And—no, please let me finish—and I also don’t think this is in any way the family reconciliation you described.

I appreciate your intentions, but the effect has been to set us all at one another’s throats. ”

“I fear you may be right,” Wynn said heavily. “I am deeply concerned by both Bram’s and Hawley’s behaviour.”

“I’m not sure how you expected them to react. Thank you for your hospitality. I’ll ask Mr. Grey to order the motor.”

Wynn sighed. “You must do as you see fit, though I am sadly disappointed. But not today.”

“Yes, today. As soon as possible. I’m sorry to be disobliging.”

“Dear boy, it is not a matter of choice. You cannot leave. Look at the weather.”

Zeb glanced at the window. “It’s misty.”

“Dartmoor mist. It would be far too dangerous to take the motor out.”

“Dangerous?”

“The mists render the moors a treacherous place. Every year, unwary travellers wander and are lost, never to be seen again. The road has sharp bends, sharp drops, mires, and bogs on each side. You cannot leave until the weather lifts. None of us can.”

“Are you seriously telling me that a bit of fog confines you to the house?” Zeb demanded. “Are you joking? We have fog in London too, you know.”

“Not like Dartmoor mist,” Wynn said. “You must take my assurance that it would be quite wrong of me to call for the motor. You have the right to risk your own life; you may not risk my chauffeur’s.”

“But—!”

“No,” Wynn said with finality. “I lost my father to the mist. He went out alone, believing that he knew his path too well to miss it, and drowned in the mire; his body was not found for days. I will not lose another life that way.”

Zeb cringed: he should have recalled that. “Of course. I’m awfully sorry. I didn’t think.”

“You meant no harm,” Wynn said kindly. “But let us have no more talk of leaving until the air clears. Good morning.”

Zeb found himself in the hall, uncomfortably flustered.

He knew that Dartmoor mists were bad—or at least, he’d read The Hound of the Baskervilles, which came to the same thing—and if it was genuinely dangerous to take a motor out, that would be something he’d have to live with, but if Hawley rose from his slumbers breathing vengeance, things were liable to get nasty.

He stuck his head out of the front door, in case Gideon might have the machine waiting anyway.

There was no sign of life in any form. The mist was fairly thick, moving in slow drifts across the grounds. He wouldn’t have said impassable: it looked no more oppressive and distinctly less filthy than a standard London pea-souper, but clearly Wynn had reason for his caution.

What in blazes was he to do if he couldn’t leave? It was nearly nine; Hawley would be up by eleven.

This was absurd. Surely people on Dartmoor dealt with the weather all the time.

He needed to talk to Gideon, who would doubtless have the authority to sort some form of transport out for him.

He wandered the house for the next twenty minutes, looking for him in a state of rising alarm he couldn’t suppress, and yelped, “Thank goodness!” when he finally saw him in the hall. “Could you order the motor, at all?”

“Unfortunately, I am unable to oblige,” Gideon said, voice tight and formal. “Your cousin has given strict instructions that the gates should remain closed for the time being.”

Zeb blinked at him. “But I need to leave. You know I need to leave.”

“It simply isn’t possible, Cousin Zeb,” Jessamine said from behind him, making him jump. “The mist is treacherous. The paths betray.”

“Then how am I supposed to get home?”

“You can’t,” Jessamine said. “We all have to wait for the mists to rise. Pray for the mists to rise.”

Zeb gaped at her. Gideon said, “Perhaps the weather may lift in half an hour or so. Maybe read a good book while you wait.” He put his hand on Zeb’s back as he spoke, turning him in the direction of the library, and Zeb felt a finger draw an extremely firm circle on his back.

“Half an hour?” Jessamine said. “Goodness me, Mr. Grey, it will be days before it lifts. Three or four, I should think.”

“Well, we may hope for half an hour”—Gideon’s finger circled on Zeb’s back a second time—“but you are doubtless right, Miss Jessamine.”

He turned and left without a further word. Zeb stared after him, speechless.

What the devil. Days, trapped here? And why hadn’t Gideon been more help, and what on earth had he meant with that peculiar touch? It hadn’t been connection, or affection. It had felt more like…

…instruction.

He stood a moment longer in the hall, wondering if he was going mad or if that was everyone else, and then, for lack of better ideas, went to the library.

Bram was sitting in there, smoking one of the unpleasant perfumed cigarettes, with a half-full ashtray in front of him. He glared. “Perhaps you would have the goodness to leave me be.”

“I didn’t seek you out,” Zeb assured him.

“But since I’m here, I did not intentionally slander your wife to Wynn.

He drew an inference I didn’t intend from a throwaway remark, and I’m very sorry about that, but I did not set out to make him think ill of her or undermine you.

If I wanted to do that, I would tell him exactly what you promised Father on his deathbed, and the thousand ways you have broken that promise since. ”

Bram gazed up at him. He looked twitchy, as if he hadn’t slept well. “Why should I believe you?”

Zeb wanted to say, I don’t care if you believe me, and was irritated it wasn’t quite true.

“I don’t suppose you will, because your inflated self-esteem depends on telling yourself I deserve the shabby trick you played on me.

But Wynn clearly doesn’t like Elise and he didn’t need my help to reach that conclusion. ”

“Is that his reason for changing his will? His sole reason?”

“I don’t know. I don’t care.”

Bram shook his head, in dismay rather than denial. “I was promised this. I am the heir. To have it snatched from me because of her.” The pronoun hissed out with venom. “That succubus has taken this from me as she has taken everything from me. She has drained me dry. Even you, even my own brother—”

“That was you,” Zeb said. “You made a promise, and you broke it. Don’t you dare blame Elise.”

“She made me do it!” Bram shouted. “You don’t understand how I loved her! It was an obsession, an enchantment.”

“Oh, for—”

“I was under her influence! And look what I have gained by it. My inheritance exhausted, my brother estranged, my marriage a laughing stock. She did this to me. And I am irrevocably chained to her malice, her spending, her infidelity and spite.”

Zeb shifted uncomfortably. He didn’t know his sister-in-law well, or like what he knew, but nobody ought to be talking with such thick hatred about their spouse. “Then get a separation. A divorce, even.”

“I can’t. She would contest it, and the scandal would be intolerable.”

“How could she possibly contest it?”

“Oh, she will make me out to be the villain in court. A roué, destroying his innocent wife. Ha.”

“Innocent?” Zeb said incredulously, since Elise’s adulteries were notorious, and realised too late that he’d been more accurate than polite. “I mean—”

Bram stubbed out his cigarette and reached for another. His hands were trembling a little. “It was before our marriage. I was in a fever before the wedding, consumed by anticipation of my wedding night.”

“I don’t want to know,” Zeb said firmly.

“I needed a way to relieve my natural urges—”

“I don’t want to know.”