Page 29 of All of Us Murderers

Sixteen

They returned to Gideon’s room, in which Zeb discovered his suitcases, neatly packed with the rest of his things. Gideon shut the door behind them, locked it, put his back against it as if holding off a siege, and said, “This is bad.”

“What’s happened?”

“I tried offering the chauffeur money to drive you to the station. He—I’d say laughed in my face except he doesn’t laugh.

He frog-marched me out of there and dragged me straight to Wynn, who gave me a very nasty ten minutes, with a great deal of hinting about the difficulties I’ll find in obtaining another post and how I should consider where my loyalty lies. He absolutely knows about us.”

“Oh God. I’m sorry.”

Zeb reached for him; Gideon’s fingers wrapped around his. “Not your fault. I shall worry about my employment when I’m well out of this bedlam.”

“About that,” Zeb said. “It is my fault, as we both know, even if you’re being awfully good about it. And it’s going to be rotten for you finding another job if Wynn gives you a bad reference, so—could I help?”

Gideon pulled him over and kissed his forehead.

Zeb wrapped his arms round him, thrilling in the touch.

He liked touch. Gideon was not an effusive man, and he had schooled himself to be more physically affectionate for Zeb’s happiness.

He hadn’t forgotten, and he was doing it again, and Zeb melted into him with the pleasure of it.

“I really would like to help,” he said into Gideon’s chest. “Let me?”

“Sweetheart, that is very much appreciated, but it really can wait. What’s the issue with Colonel Dash?”

“He’s gone.”

“Gone where?”

“I don’t know. I last saw him the other night, when Elise saw the ghost. He was wearing evening dress, with the tie off as if he’d been starting to get ready for bed, and seemed perfectly well. We spoke, and he went off to confront Hawley.”

“I recall.”

“But he never reached Hawley, and Wynn said the next morning he’d been taken ill.

I went in his room, and he’s not there. I found his toothbrush and things, including two nightgowns, one laid out over a chair.

Would you bring more than two nightgowns for a fortnight’s stay?

But what I didn’t find was his evening clothes.

His other clothes are hanging up, or at least what looks like a reasonable wardrobe for two weeks, but I looked everywhere and his dinner things aren’t there. Do you see?”

Gideon did not look like he saw at first. His lips and fingers moved slightly as he tracked through Zeb’s argument. “You mean, this malarial attack came on so suddenly that he was taken to a sickroom still wearing his dinner jacket?”

“And yet, since then, nobody has brought him his nightclothes or hairbrush or toothbrush. And Jessamine doesn’t know where he is, and Wynn won’t tell me, and last night she heard monks chanting, and now there’s blood on the altar stone.”

Gideon stilled, then leaned back to examine his face. “Go over that part again.”

Zeb explained Jessamine’s night-time experience. “The altar stone is covered in blood, pints of it. Jessamine says there’s been blood on it before—in fact, I put my hand in some when we were speaking, a few days back—but nothing like these quantities.”

“Monks and blood,” Gideon said blankly. “But—are you suggesting—”

“I’m not suggesting anything. I’m just telling you the facts as I know them.”

“Or have been presented with them. Do you believe in the monks?”

“I’m quite prepared to believe someone dressed people up in robes and sent them marching around the house,” Zeb said.

“Wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest. As to the blood, I dare say having a guest vanish mysteriously, followed by dark hints of human sacrifice, would be a lovely effect if you were trying to scare people out of their wits. ”

“Quite.”

“Only, the problem is, Dash hasn’t gone missing in a frightening sort of way.

Wynn gave a good explanation for his absence, and I don’t suppose anyone else has given him a thought since.

If you were using his disappearance to alarm people, would you really just hope someone might start asking questions eventually?

Especially people as self-centred as the Wyckhams?

Would you count on me searching his room and wondering where his dinner clothes are?

Even Jessamine didn’t put his absence together with the blood on the stone until I asked her about him.

What I mean is, the altar stone is intended to be very frightening and noticeable, but Dash has been quietly removed, and those things don’t fit. ”

“No,” Gideon said slowly. “No. That is true. And… So far, Wynn can deny having anything to do with the strange goings-on. He’s made sure he’s downstairs when the ghost appears upstairs, that sort of thing.

But he told everyone Dash had malaria, and that would be a very easy lie to catch him in.

As you say, it doesn’t fit.” He scowled.

“But why would Wynn want to remove Dash if not to frighten people? What’s the point? ”

“He’s the only man of action in the house. I was going to talk to him about all this. Now I can’t, and nor can anyone else.”

Gideon’s lips parted. “Right. I could wish you hadn’t said that.”

“Sorry. And I could be completely wrong. Maybe he does have malaria, and it does come on in the course of a three-minute walk. On the face of it, that’s still more plausible than Wynn’s staff helping him kidnap someone.”

Gideon frowned. “Would he need help? There are a lot of unused corridors, and rooms one could lock someone in, and Wynn could do that without assistance. Come with me a moment, old friend; there’s something I want you to look at in the attic, and then shove him in and turn the key.”

“If he was locked in a room, we’d surely have heard him shouting and banging. I’d break a window and yell out of it.”

“And he hasn’t. So either he’s not locked in a room at all, or he is not in a position to protest about it, which rather brings us back to where we started. Mother of God.”

He sat down on the bed with a thump. Zeb sat next to him. Gideon put an arm over him and pulled him close, and they sat like that for a moment because silent proximity was a lot better than anything they had to talk about.

“I don’t like to say this,” Gideon said after a while. “But Wynn is currently refusing to let you leave, with the mist as an excuse. What happens when it lifts?”

“Well, he’ll have to let me go. Won’t he?”

“I’m not sure what’s going to make him. He can order the gate to stay locked, and forbid the motor to be taken out—”

“He can’t do that forever!”

“I don’t suppose he wants to,” Gideon said. “The question is how long he does need to keep you here, and what he’s trying to achieve by it.”

Zeb grabbed a couple of handfuls of hair, tugging at it as if that would relieve his feelings. “Suppose I confront him? Push him into a corner where he has to stop pretending to be a genial host?”

“Do we want him to stop pretending that?”

“Then what are we going to do?” Zeb demanded. “Because I’ve got to do something. Get Jessamine out of here, for a start, and warn the others, and what about the staff? We can’t just leave everyone to fester in this madhouse, and especially not if Dash is locked in a room.”

“We don’t know he’s anything of the kind,” Gideon said.

“He may be assisting Wynn’s little game and have his feet up in perfect safety.

That’s very much the problem: we don’t know who, if anyone, we can trust. Honestly, I think our urgent problem is to get you out of this mess, and we should not be worrying about anyone else. ”

“Dash is missing. Jessamine is a child.”

“I very much doubt Wynn will harm Jessamine. Zeb, now is not the time for your absurdly generous nature. Please promise—” He stopped himself sharply.

“Gideon—”

“Let me rephrase that,” Gideon said, voice steady. “I don’t give a damn for anyone else in this house. I realise you do, and that you are a better man than me for it, but I nevertheless beg you will look after yourself first. Because there is something dreadfully wrong here and I’m afraid for you.”

“Noted,” Zeb said. His mouth felt oddly dry. “I do want to go, don’t think otherwise. It’s just—I’m tired of walking away from messes. I walked away from you—”

“I sent you away.”

“I let you do it. If I had fought for you a year ago, if I had faced the difficult things instead of scurrying away, we would neither of us be in this ghastly house right now.”

“You didn’t make this mess, though, and I doubt you can mend it.”

“But I’m neck deep in it. So I am going to—” What was he going to do? “Talk to Elise,” he decided. “That would be a start.”

“Do you think she’ll listen?”

“She’s got nobody else on her side. And she’s got plenty of character, and is exhibiting more sense than Bram or Hawley right now. If we had her on our side, that might do something.”

“All right. And I’ll see if I can come up with anything useful among the staff.” He stood, pulled Zeb up by the hand, and kissed him, swift and firm. “Just, please, take care.”

***

Zeb headed directly to Elise’s room, on the grounds that she had yet to leave it before two in the afternoon. He hoped she’d got a good book.

He knocked. She answered the door herself with the expression of a woman who was not used to answering doors, or pleased about it, and Zeb blurted, “Did Wynn not let you bring a maid?”

“He claimed there would be staff to assist me, by which he seems to have meant one sulky, incompetent woman. What do you want?”

“May I come in?”

She gave him the thinnest possible smile. “That would hardly be proper.”

Zeb glanced up and down the corridor: there was nobody in sight. “I’ll stand out here if you’d rather. I wanted to talk about what’s going on in this house.”

“Meaning?”