Page 40 of All of Us Murderers

“Christ above,” Gideon said. “Right, well, the relevant part of all this—aside from Wynn being a very dangerous and entirely unhinged man—is that Wynn and Jessamine are in cahoots. We can’t doubt that.

That business the other night, Wynn selecting Bram while she accepted Hawley, was a masterstroke. It all but forced Bram to push—”

He stopped abruptly. There was a frozen silence.

“Are you saying—did you see—”

“No. No, I didn’t, Zeb. That was an assumption only. I’ve no evidence. But…it’s what I think.”

“He’s my brother. You’re saying he’s a murderer and Rachel says he’s a rapist—”

“Oh my God, what?” Gideon said, a man who couldn’t handle any more revelations.

Zeb hurriedly told him about Rachel and Florence.

“He admitted the whole thing about Florence. There’s a threatening message on his wall now, signed with her name, and he insists nobody else knew about her.

He’s in rather a bad way. But the thing is, with all that on his mind, he still denied having anything to do with Rachel, and I…

I wanted to believe him. I did believe him. But I believed her too.”

“But she’s one of Wynn’s staff, so you probably shouldn’t.”

“Are you serious?”

“I think we have to treat everyone in this house as the enemy, at this point. We have to assume they’re all playing Wynn’s game.”

“But what is his game?” Zeb demanded. “Elise thought he hated us because he didn’t want us to inherit his money, but he could have left it all to a cats’ home.

Instead, he brought us here. Why? And why are the staff joining in with this?

I thought the footman was going to shove me into the crypt by main force.

How much can Wynn possibly be paying them to do this?

Are they all escaped from Dartmoor Prison? ”

“I truly don’t know. All I know is that we have to get out, because I have no more desire to end up in a well than you do in a crypt. You mentioned scaling the wall: I think we might be reaching that point.”

“Right,” Zeb said. “Any idea how one does that?”

“I’ve walked the perimeter and there are no trees close to it, so we’ll need a ladder, and a rope to get down the other side, I suppose, unless we think we could jump safely?

Twelve feet—I’m not sure. I suppose one can hang off the side and drop, but if one of us were to sprain an ankle, that would be bad. ”

“A bedsheet would do at a pinch, and be easily found,” Zeb suggested. “And we need warm clothes—oh, and there was a compass in Dash’s room. I should get that. And a map. So we can navigate if we’re walking.”

“Suppose I look for a ladder, then,” Gideon said, in the very calm tones of a man dealing with a nightmare. “You see about the map and compass.”

“I’ll do that. Oh, and food. And gloves and things—”

“Map and compass first. Get those, stow them in your pockets right away, and don’t do anything else until you have them. And, Zeb?”

Zeb turned his head. Gideon kissed him, hard and desperate, and Zeb grabbed his shoulders and clung on, kissing him wildly with hungry, frightened, open-mouthed gulps that were close to sobs.

They held on to each other a moment longer in silence, shoulders heaving, until Gideon said, “We should go.”

“Yes.”

Gideon squeezed his hand. “We will get out of here. Together.”

“What about Dash? And Bram?”

“There’s damn all we can do about Dash now. If we come back with a pack of policemen, maybe they can search the place. Bram…ugh. Is there any chance at all of persuading him to scale a wall and walk twelve miles across a moor?”

“None. But if I leave him behind, what might happen to him?”

“I don’t know. But I don’t see what we can do to help him or anyone at all except get ourselves out and come back with the police.”

“No. No, I suppose you’re right.”

Gideon squeezed his hand again. They rose and shuffled their stooped way out of the folly.

***

Gideon headed off alone to look for a ladder.

That made sense, since Zeb didn’t know the servants’ areas, the outbuildings and places where the work happened, and had no reason to be there with him.

But he couldn’t help thinking of the chauffeur’s contemptuous face, and the nasty expression in the footman’s eyes, and wondering what would happen if they caught Gideon poking around.

Hopefully, nobody would be there to catch him. Gideon was sensible, so if he felt splitting up was the right way to proceed, it probably was, even if Zeb felt raw and exposed.

He strode into the house repeating Map and compass to himself, and hurried up the stairs.

Voices rose from the drawing room as he passed, including Bram’s, which was a relief.

If they’d trapped anyone in the crypt, it would be Hawley, who could probably do with a few hours locked away from whatever he was drinking.

Or maybe they had never intended to trap anyone in there at all, and Zeb had made an almighty, unforgivable fuss at what should have been a solemn moment.

He put that thought away with all the rest of the ones that said You’re making a fool of yourself and Imagination. He’d let those thoughts persuade him to do as Wynn asked too often. From now on, he was going to listen to his fears.

Map and compass. He made it to Dash’s room without seeing anyone. It was very cold and felt dead in the way of unused rooms, a film of dust settled on the mantel and the floor. The staff weren’t even troubling to clean. It was very much as though they didn’t expect him to come back.

Zeb went to the dressing table and stopped.

The compass was still there, a compact thing the size of a fob watch. So was a pocketknife, pearl-handled with Dash’s initials embossed in silver. There was also a gun.

Zeb was positive that hadn’t been there before. He’d have noticed. But there it was, an actual gun.

He didn’t know anything at all about guns beyond that you pointed them and pulled the little stubby thing. He thought this was probably a revolver, mainly because it wasn’t a rifle, but it might be a pistol, or an arquebus for all he knew. It was a gun.

Why the devil had Dash brought a gun to a house party?

How had Zeb missed it? Should he take it?

Was it loaded? He had no idea how one would check, and he wasn’t about to start playing with it in case he set it off.

He didn’t want to carry a loaded gun; he’d probably shoot himself in the foot.

An unloaded gun, on the other hand, which people didn’t know was unloaded and thus would be frightened of anyway, and which one might use to wave at the gatekeeper and threaten him into unlocking the gate…

Zeb stood for a moment, thoughts flickering. Then he took what he needed of Colonel Dash’s possessions, made himself pause to stow them carefully about his person, and hurried downstairs, his coat pockets heavy with stolen goods.

Map and compass, he reminded himself, and he had the compass, so now for the map.

He headed to the library, hoping for an Ordnance Survey map or suchlike.

Assuming Wynn had any such thing, and that he kept it in here rather than to hand in his study.

But Wynn had grown up here, not to mention he looked like he’d barely left the house in years: he wouldn’t need a map in his study.

Zeb would search the library, and he would find what he needed because Gideon had given him this task and he couldn’t fail.

He found atlases, but no local maps stuffed next to them or folded inside them, and no bound books with maps that could be torn out if one were a barbarian.

He checked the desk next, going through the drawers.

They held old account books and notebooks and bundles of paper that might have been Walter Wyckham’s original manuscripts or laundry bills, he didn’t care. No maps.

He had the sweaty feeling again, the one he got at work when there was a task with a deadline and it had started well but he’d gone wrong and lost time, and now everything was falling apart. He imagined Gideon outside, with an efficiently stolen ladder, waiting, waiting. Breathe.

There were plenty more drawers to check.

The bookshelves started a bit below hip height; below them were long rows of cupboards, each topped with a wide drawer.

The drawers looked like the kind of thing you pulled out in a museum to reveal pinned, dead insects.

Maybe Walter Wyckham had collected butterflies, or beetles, or spiders.

Zeb pulled out the first drawer. It was full of paper, and he ruffled through it with fingers that were quivery, if not quite shaky yet.

It was deeds, legal things, all unreadable writing, no damned maps.

He moved to the next drawer and pulled it open.

That took a bit more force because it contained a Bible.

The sheer magnificence of the book stopped him in his tracks.

It was a huge thing, fifteen inches by twenty at least, leather bound, very old, and its beauty put everything else out of his mind.

He opened it carefully, marvelling at the feel of the ancient paper, and noting the impenetrable blackletter type.

He wondered when it dated from. Was it Stuart? Might there be a date on the flyleaf?

He turned back to the beginning, feeling the soft weight of the oversized pages, and a piece of notepaper fluttered out. Zeb caught it and saw it was in Wynn’s hand.

It had the number 28 at the top, underlined several times.

Then there were a string of women’s names, five in all, each with a number by it, and then Wilfred–47, Mary–30, followed by Albert–49 and Catherine–36.

That was Wynn’s and Zeb’s fathers and their wives, along with, he very much suspected, their ages at their deaths.

Hawley’s parents were there too, and so was Laura, her name written with care, along with her age at death, 38.

So the first set of names were probably Walter’s five wives and their ages. Zeb glanced at the last name. Constance–26.

Twenty-six. The housemaid had been young when she married Walter, Zeb knew, but just nineteen? Had she lost her youth to that terrible room, scrawling on the walls?

Beneath that litany, Wynn had scribbled a lot more numbers. It looked like he’d added up all the ages, subtracted that total from 600, and divided what he got by 28 to reach a total of exactly 6. Under that he’d written, 6=1???

Zeb had no idea what that was about. He turned the paper over and saw another list of names. Bram–38. Elise–30. Hawley–34. Zebedee–28. That last had an arrow pointing to it and an exclamation mark, and then Zeb’s birthday, which was in January.

Wynn had added up those ages too, subtracted the sum from 200, divided the result by 6, and got a result of eleven and two thirds, after which he had written 61!! in heavy pen with angry underlining, and then added, Dash???

Maybe it made sense if you knew what he was on about.

Zeb put down the paper and looked back at the Bible’s flyleaf.

It bore a list of names and dates in various hands and inks, starting with Theophilus Wyckham, born 17th August 1698.

Toward the bottom of the list was Walter Wyckham, 2nd December 1777 to 28th December 1855.

It was the second of December today. Happy birthday, Walter.

Walter had written in his three sons with dates of birth.

Laura’s name had been added in Wynn’s hand to one side, as had Georgina’s, her daughter.

They were the only women’s names listed.

No wives or daughters allowed, and Zeb, Bram, and Hawley weren’t in there either, as mere progeny of the younger sons. This was a list of inheritors.

Wynn was duly there: born 12th June 1855. Six months to go, Zeb thought nastily, then remembered Wynn had probably been lying about his supposed death at fifty. Unless he really believed in the Wyckham curse.

The Wyckham curse.

Zeb stared at the flyleaf, with its spidery writing and its missing people, who didn’t matter because they were there only to feed the people who did matter, and at Walter’s dates of birth and death. He’d outlived the supposed curse by twenty-eight years.

Zeb picked up the stray paper again and looked at the side headed 28, and the answer bloomed in his thoughts, understanding far outpacing words.

“Oh my God,” he said aloud.

He needed to find Gideon. Wynn might be recreating their grandfather’s literary atrocities, but that was just the method, not the goal. Zeb knew the goal now, and it changed everything.

He shut the Bible, slammed the drawer, and ran from the room.