Page 27 of All of Us Murderers

Zeb paused on that thought, kipper congealing on his plate as the waters of panic lapped his metaphorical ankles.

It would not do to overreact, he told himself. Wynn was clearly on the far side of eccentric, his practical jokes malicious and frightening, but there was no reason to suppose he would actually harm anyone, especially his old friend and cousin.

All the same, Zeb would drop in on Dash, just to put his mind at rest.

That turned out to be easier said than done.

Dash had mentioned he was lodged in the corridor round the corner from Hawley’s.

Zeb wandered up and down, listening for the sounds of a man suffering from malarial fever, or sleeping, or talking to a nursemaid, or anything at all.

There seemed to be absolutely nobody about, and it felt not just quiet but uninhabited. Was he in the wrong place?

Damn and blast. He made his way up the corridor again, this time trying door handles. The first three rooms he opened were empty, with dusty floors, furniture shrouded in holland covers, and a lot of cobwebs; he shut the doors with speed.

The fourth door opened on an obviously occupied room, with things on the dresser and chair. The bed had the covers pulled back but didn’t look as though it had been slept in.

“Hello?” Zeb said. His voice echoed flatly.

He edged in, feeling like the trespasser he was.

The room was cold, the solid cold that came when nobody had lit the fire in a while.

He noted water in the jug, shaving things on the dresser, a nightshirt over the back of a chair, a book on the bedside table.

It looked like a very dull military memoir.

He opened it and saw Wyckham Dash written on the flyleaf.

So this was Dash’s room, but not his sickroom.

They must have moved him to a different, more convenient location.

And since a man in the grip of a malarial attack wouldn’t need a book, or consider shaving, they had left his bits and pieces behind, and it hadn’t been considered urgent to make up his room.

He glanced at the dresser again. It bore the usual sort of clutter out of pockets, and some less usual items such as a pocket compass and a penknife.

Dash was clearly a practical sort. There was also a toothbrush and a pot of tooth powder.

He might have thought Dash would want those, at least. He looked again at the nightshirt on the back of the chair.

Zeb was not a particularly logical thinker, at least in the commonly accepted sense.

His train of thought didn’t generally chug from station to station in an orderly manner, taking him from A to B to C on the rails that other people would use.

What he could do, now and then, was leap halfway down the alphabet, reaching conclusions in a single intuitive bound he often couldn’t explain, and as he stood in Dash’s empty room, that was exactly what he did.

“Shit,” he said quietly.

He had to look. Feeling both intrusive and alarmed, he opened the wardrobe, and at that moment, a floorboard creaked outside the room.

Zeb froze dead. If Dash was about to walk in, this would be unbelievably embarrassing. He stood, heart thumping. There was another creak, and then the sound of footsteps.

Zeb instantly forgot that he was trespassing, took two long strides to the door, and stuck his head out. The footsteps were clearly audible as they passed, but there was nobody in the corridor. Nobody at all.

To blazes with this pestilential house and its phantom feet.

He was going to finish what he was about, and quickly, before he got caught.

So he searched the wardrobe, the suitcase, every drawer, looking through it all, with the panic that had been lapping his ankles steadily rising as he failed to find what he sought.

His heart was thumping in a way he didn’t like, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that, while he was delving into Dash’s wardrobe, someone might silently open the door and creep in, and he would turn and they’d be there…

He left the room at last, shutting the door behind him with peculiar care, although there was nobody around to hear, and headed downstairs. He needed to talk to Gideon.

As ever, finding anyone in this blasted house was impossible. He might be in Wynn’s study, but Zeb did not want to go there if he could avoid it. He tried the library instead and came across Jessamine. She was staring out of the window, into the grey drifts of mist.

“Good morning,” Zeb said. “Have you seen Mr. Grey, at all?”

Jessamine turned, startled. “Oh! Zeb. No, I have not.”

“Bother. Thanks. Actually, have you seen Dash?”

“He’s ill. A malarial attack.”

“Yes, but he’s not in his room. Was he moved somewhere else, for nursing?”

“Why, no. I shouldn’t think a sick man ought to be moved.”

“Nor would I, but he isn’t there,” Zeb said. “Who would know where he is? Who’s in charge of caring for him?”

“I don’t know. I have not seen him since he was taken ill.” Her brows came together. “Is something wrong?”

“He’s not in his room, that’s all. What is it?”

Jessamine’s hand had gone to her mouth. She stared at Zeb with stricken eyes. “Do you think—do you think something has happened to him?”

In another house, that would have seemed something of an overreaction. As it was, Zeb was deeply grateful that someone else seemed to be noticing. “Why? Do you think something’s wrong?”

Jessamine bit her lip. “Do you know how old he is?”

“Late forties? Oh Lord, you’re not going to talk about the Wyckham curse, are you? I just want to know where he is.”

“But it might matter,” Jessamine said. “Will you come with me?”

“Where?”

“Just come. I can’t explain. Please?”

“Is this important?” Zeb said. “Because I have things to do, and if it’s about curses and ghosts—”

“Cousin Zeb.” Jessamine dropped her voice low. “There is nobody else I can speak to. Wynn doesn’t want to know. If you don’t think it’s anything once you’ve seen, you may decide never to listen to me again. But come now, please.”

“All right,” Zeb said reluctantly. “But can we make it quick?”

It was not quick. It was a trudge outside, through the clinging mists. Cold, damp tendrils brushed Zeb’s face and he batted them away.

“It’s sticky, isn’t it? I always think the mist is like cobwebs,” Jessamine said. “As if a great spider was crouched over the house, spinning and spinning.”

Zeb had not needed that mental image. He slapped at a finger of mist that twined in his hair. “Could you tell me what we’re doing?”

“I will tell you, but you have to promise me to listen to me without interrupting and saying it’s nonsense. Do you promise?”

“No,” Zeb said. “I’ll do my best to hear you out, though.”

“Then listen. You know the Wyckham curse: that Walter sold the lives of his wives and children, exchanging their futures for his—”

“I’m interrupting, and this is nonsense. I don’t want to hear it.” He needed to find Gideon and go home, not be wandering in the fog, listening to doom-laden gibbering. And they weren’t even wandering, he realised. Jessamine was leading them purposefully through the mist; Zeb recognised the path.

“Very well,” Jessamine said. “Then you may just hear what I saw.”

Zeb sighed. “What was that?”

“You know my room is on the west side of the house. I heard a sound last night, very faint. It was awfully eerie, and I thought it might be the wind or someone singing in the house. It was all on one note, and then it went up and down.” She sang a few notes, just la la, that resembled plainsong.

She had an excellent voice. “And I looked out of the window and I saw light. Flames. As if a line of people were carrying torches.”

“Good heavens. What did you do?”

“I shut the curtains at once, went to bed, and pulled the covers over my head,” Jessamine said, which struck Zeb as the most sensible thing he’d heard from her in some time.

“But I got up early this morning and came out, and…well.” She gestured ahead, to where the stone circle loomed out of the mist, every bit as ominous as Walter could have hoped.

“Look,” she said, heading up to the altar stone. “Come.”

Zeb approached cautiously. The stones loomed out of the drifts of mist, grey and ancient and forbidding. The altar stone—

“What the devil?” he yelped. “What?”

“It’s been like this before,” Jessamine said, with terrible simplicity. “I have seen it several times. But I’ve never seen so much.”

There was blood, pints of it, pooling on the top of the altar stone, in the dip where Zeb had put his hand what felt like months ago. It was dripping over the top, spilling down the sides, droplets splashing darkly on the grass. He stared, speechless.

“I thought—I don’t know what I thought,” she said, voice sounding rather fuzzy through the ringing in his ears.

“I have seen blood on the stone before, but I told myself it was foxes, or a hawk killing a pigeon, or some such thing. It was never so much. But now, this—and the chanting—and you say Colonel Dash is missing.”

“You cannot think—” The words stuck in Zeb’s throat. He stared at the bloody sacrificial stone, the steady dripping. Eight pints in a human body, he vaguely thought. That was a bit more than a jeroboam.

Jessamine’s mouth turned down at the corners, like a child about to cry. “I don’t know. Zeb, I’m frightened.”

“We need to get inside. Right now. Now, Jessamine.” Not that inside felt a great deal safer, but he did not want to be out here, in the mist, unable to see more than a few feet, with God knew who lurking, listening, following them. “Come on. Quick.”

“You believe me,” Jessamine said on a breath. “You do, don’t you?”

“I believe there’s a man whose whereabouts are currently unaccounted for,” Zeb said grimly. “He may be perfectly well—apart from the malaria, of course—but I should like to assure myself by seeing him. And, beyond that…”