Page 14 of Ghost in the Garden (Murder in Moonlight #3)

L enny Knox had found his first peace since the accident in the simplicity of hard work. Mrs. Silver—the elder Mrs. Silver—was a pleasant old bird, brought him lots of tea, and admired his work.

Once he would have valued that more than he did now. He had no one to work for without Cathy and little Kitty. But he wouldn’t think of that. Work had got him through the day. And the day before, the odd business of following Lambert’s wife with the friendly Janey had helped too.

He knew he should stop for the evening and go home, only home was that room full of people, half of them bereaved or injured or dying. At least the anger had come back. For the first couple of weeks after the accident there had only been shock, numbness alternating with the sheer impossibility of going on without his wife and daughter.

And then there had been Solomon Grey asking questions, and a spurt of anger had come back, along with curiosity. The man was actually trying to do something to make Lambert pay…

“Here, love, ain’t you worked enough for the day?” Mrs. Silver said, coming into the shop from the back. “You want to go home and get some dinner.”

He smiled perfunctorily. “Suppose I do. I can come back tomorrow, if you don’t mind me working on the sabbath.”

“I think I need you working on the sabbath, if it don’t offend you.”

She probably thought he needed to get the job finished in order to eat. In fact he didn’t, since Mr. Grey had paid him for following Lambert.

“Tell you what, duck, you go round to the Crown and bring back some hot dinner for us both. I could use the company.”

So could Lenny. It was an excuse not to go back for another hour.

He walked along to the Crown eagerly enough. He even had a quick pint first, which was when the anger surged back.

Vengeance was all he had left. He gazed at the public house door and imagined racing through it and running all the way to Lambert’s house. The bastard wouldn’t be expecting it there, not with Gregg already dead. He began to smile, flexing his fingers.

*

Solomon reached the lane behind the Lamberts’ house even earlier than usual. As before, he hid in a disused shed that smelled of things he didn’t want to think about, while the usual patrols of Lambert’s men passed him by, not even glancing in the cracked window.

They were not much use as watchmen. Which made him wonder again what their purpose was. Was it just Lambert’s warning to the criminal rivals of his past? Or did he really fear some kind of threat? If so, his men had grown lax. The ghost was not the only one who could get into Lambert’s garden. Or Lambert’s house.

After last night, and the way Constance had fled, Solomon would not have been surprised if she had waited until the last moment to let him into the garden. But oddly enough, shortly after the patrol of the footmen, he heard the sound of the gate opening once more and risked a glance out of the window.

A Constance-shaped figure emerged from the darkness. He eased out of the shed door. Its hinges did creak, and she swung to face him.

“Solomon,” she said lightly. She even took his arm immediately, and, warmed, he began to hope that he not made an irremediable misstep after all. “What news?”

“We have a new case, a gentleman whose jewels have been stolen. And the prospect of two other clients whom I have invited to call on us next week.”

“Well, that is good!” She was so clearly pleased that he knew she would not end their partnership. Not for the first time, he was overthinking personal matters. What had happened last night was not the huge anxiety he had made it into. Just a moment that got a little out of hand. Human nature. She understood that.

“And in the house?”

“In the house… I’m wondering if, perhaps, he is not quite as awful as we think. He might be more ignorant and struggling than totally evil. But that doesn’t really affect the matter in hand. Angela doesn’t think our ghost will show itself, but she accepts that we have to look. The trouble is, she doesn’t have cellar keys, and I’m not sure I can pick that lock so that we can lie in wait there for her.”

“Then we hide in the garden,” Solomon said, “and rush her as soon as she unlocks the door.”

“That’s what I was thinking. If we fail, and she leaves the key in the inside of the cellar door again, I can probably turn it again from the outside. But we should be able to hide easily enough in the shadows at that side of the house. There’s the boundary wall and bushes too. We’ll just have to be quick—and quiet, so we don’t attract the attention of the servants.”

“Or her ally or lover or whoever it is she meets there. Perhaps she’s just stealing Lambert’s wine, a couple of bottles at a time.”

“It takes her an awfully long time to select them, then. Shall we go?”

“Yes. Constance?” Perhaps he should leave it alone, since she so clearly had chosen to do so. But she was just a little too airy in her manner, and if he had learned anything in life, it was that one could never go back, only forward.

“Yes?” She increased her pace, already reaching for the garden door.

He caught her hand. “We will talk. When the case is done.”

“Of course we will. Hush.”

That was why she was in such a hurry. In the garden they could not talk in more than faint breaths for fear of being overheard. She did not want to talk.

Maddening woman. Was it not she who had first spoken to him of friendship and happiness?

They slipped into the garden, keeping to the shadows of trees and walls until they found the corner of the house. From there, in the darkness, it was almost impossible to tell where the cellar door was, still perfectly covered by its disguising tangle of ivy and creepers.

They stood side by side, close to the boundary wall, Constance almost squashed into the narrow space between it and the house. The light from the kitchen windows did not penetrate here, although as Solomon’s eyes grew used to this particular gloom, he began to make out the more worn and ravaged area of ivy covering the door. He suspected it had been knotted together several times, and thickened with bits of new growth from elsewhere. Someone had taken a lot of care to keep it hidden. And yet the ghost knew exactly how to find it.

One footman alone came out with his lantern and did another patrol around the garden. Solomon closed his fingers around Constance’s hand, and she did not pull away. But again, it was a cursory inspection, concentrated mainly on the fact that the garden door was still locked. The biggest danger was the light from the guard’s swinging lantern catching them by accident. In fact, it did sweep over them once, in a blinding flash, but the man did not notice. He was intent on returning to the warmth of the kitchen.

And two minutes after the kitchen door closed behind him, just as Constance had suspected, the garden door opened silently once more. Solomon almost missed it. The ghost did indeed wait for a patrol to pass before she entered. She used a key, and she locked the door behind her again before flitting across the garden. Veiled, slender, and graceful, she followed almost exactly the route he and Constance had taken.

Without the fog, there was little ghostly about her. Although she made no sound, she was quick and confident in her movements. Anyone glimpsing her would assume she had every right to be there.

Apart from the veil.

Only when out of sight of the kitchen window did the “ghost” veer away from the wall—and those hiding against it—and walk straight to the hidden cellar door.

She took another key from her coat. Constance tensed, releasing his hand.

The ghost was alarmingly quick. She had the door uncovered, unlocked, and open almost before they had begun to move. Solomon lengthened his stride, reaching her just as the door began to close.

He wrenched it from her hold, flinging it wide and catching it in his other hand. Constance ducked beneath his arm and strode inside before him.

Following, he could barely make out the ghost’s shape, falling back before Constance with a gasp of shock.

“C-Caleb?” she whispered.

Solomon remembered the barrel by the door and found the candle and matches by feel. He struck a match and lit the waiting candle, before turning and facing their ghost.

Iris Fraser stared back, white and frightened. “Who are you? Where is Caleb?”

“Eating his dinner, I should think,” Constance replied. “I’m afraid we work for Mrs. Lambert.”

A faint moaning sound issued from her. “It isn’t what you think. It’s over. I won’t ever see him again. I came to tell him. Please go away!”

“You’re frightened of him,” Constance said. “I think you’d better tell us everything, so we can decide how to protect you.”

“You don’t understand! My best—my only —protection is for you to bugger off. This’ll be hard enough without him finding you here. He’ll think I blabbed!”

“Then talk quickly,” Constance said. “You must know he has a house full of thugs.”

She moaned again. “At least they can’t come down here unless he calls ’em. Here, let me lock that door. You were too rough, you’ll have torn all the ivy…”

Brushing past both Constance and Solomon, she opened the door enough to reach her arm around it. Leaves rustled and the door closed silently. She locked it, leaving the key in the door.

Habit , thought Solomon. This was how Constance had got in before, turning the key from the other side of the lock. “What do you do here?”

She gave him an incredulous look, the candlelight exaggerating her expression almost grotesquely. “What d’you think? We have an arrangement. Twice a week. He gives me presents and Frank sells them.”

“Your husband knows about this arrangement?” Solomon said with distaste.

“It’s the only way to escape,” Iris said defensively.

“And one gets used to little bits of luxury,” Constance said. Unlike Solomon, she wasn’t judging. She understood desperation, the doubtful pleasure of having more than your neighbors did. And yet she could never be Iris. “So you’re his lover and he gives you presents. Every Thursday and Saturday.”

“It’s a secret,” Iris said, her eyes darting about. “Don’t tell her nibs, or she’ll have a go at him and he’ll blame me.”

“He doesn’t want her to know,” Solomon said impatiently. Most men would keep such arrangements from their wives.

“She loves him.”

“And he loves her,” Constance murmured.

“Maybe.” Iris’s voice was less certain now. “Not sure he’s capable of that, but she means more than anyone else. If he can love anyone, it’s her. He relies on her. And she on him.”

“The perfect marriage,” Solomon said wryly. “Does she not forgive his peccadillos? Forgive me, but you can’t imagine you’re the first or the last.”

“She forgives mostly ,” Iris said.

Solomon lifted the candle high. “What happened to Huxley Gregg?”

“Got done in in Devil’s Acre, didn’t he?”

“Actually, he got done in here,” Constance said, pointing to the door on the left, now closed. “Through there, in fact. Why would Lambert kill Gregg?”

“Christ, I don’t know. Why does he do anything? Maybe Gregg made a pass at his wife. Maybe he looked at him wrong. Maybe he was stealing. How would I know?”

“Aren’t you afraid of your arrangement with such a man?” Constance asked.

“Yes,” Iris said. “Not that he ever hurt me, mind, and the presents were nice. But I don’t want people to find out. I want to be a respectable woman, a proper wife.”

Constance’s breath caught. It might have been laughter, though Solomon couldn’t tell for sure. “It’s not exactly a cozy love nest, is it? Couldn’t he do better than a grimy cellar? Or is that what arouses him?”

“You’ve got a filthy mind, you have,” Iris said contemptuously.

“It takes all sorts to make a world,” Constance replied. “Which room did you use? Why did you not hear us blundering about in here on Thursday night when we found Gregg’s body? Or were you just hiding?”

“Thursday? I never heard anything. You don’t in there. It’s like a bloody great quilt around the walls.”

“Show us,” Solomon said.

Fear widened Iris’s eyes once more. “I can’t! He could come down any moment!”

“Not for another half-hour,” Constance said. “At the least, you’ve still time to make yourself beautiful for him.”

“I’ve come to end it,” Iris repeated. “Which’ll be hard enough without you two nosing about. What’d she send you after me for?”

“To find out if you were a ghost.”

Unexpectedly, Iris grinned. “He thought that were funny. Even when Mrs. Lambert saw me and she thought the same thing. Look, if I show you, will you go away and not tell Mrs. Lambert who I am?”

“We might leave it to Caleb to tell her that,” Constance said.

Iris hesitated only a moment more before turning and walking deeper into the cellar. Solomon held his candle higher to light the way. His skin prickled at the thought of Lambert’s thugs bursting out from behind all those closed doors.

Iris walked up the steps toward the main part of the house. A door stood closed at the top, and another to the right. She opened the one on the right—more smooth, well-oiled hinges—and walked in.

They followed her into a medium-sized chamber. The walls could indeed be described as quilted, like the padded cells of Bedlam, only more luxurious. Perhaps it had once been used for a similar purpose, to keep some poor soul safe and secure. Now it contained a framed bed, a luxurious carpet, and a wardrobe.

Just another love nest for another man who always wanted more than he had.

That was the trouble with striving, Solomon knew. One always wanted more. As he wanted more than Constance’s friendship. But this was entirely not the place to even think of such things.

Having swept the candle around the walls, ceiling, and floor, he brought it back to the bed and walked past the headboard. And that was when they all saw him.

A man’s head lay on the red-stained pillow, the covers drawn up to his chin. His eyes were open and staring, but he would never see anything again.

Iris let out a howl of pure fear that curdled the blood.

*

Caleb Lambert had been murdered. Blood sang in Constance’s ears at the enormity. She and Solomon had got everything wrong somehow and a man had died. Another man had died while they danced after ghosts and spoke self-righteously about bringing him to justice.

Well, it was God’s justice he faced now.

The three people staring at him in terrible fascination, however, would be facing justice of a different sort if Lambert’s thugs found them here, bending over the body. Constance swung fiercely on Iris, and the weird noise she was making cut off like a tap.

“Don’t touch anything,” Solomon said—quite unnecessarily. “Back out the way we came.”

Constance forced her mind to work again. “I have to tell Angela.”

“We have to tell the police,” Solomon retorted.

“Yes, but Angela will send someone. They won’t go if we tell them.”

“The police,” Iris squeaked with horror. “I’m not having anything to do with them! What would Frank say?”

“No one cares,” Solomon said brutally. “Go home, by all means, but the police may well want to speak to you.”

“Look on the bright side,” Constance said as flippancy reasserted itself. “You’re one of the three people in the world who couldn’t possibly have done it.” Who could have?

Giving up entirely on stealth, Iris flew across the cellar, out of the door, and down the garden path. By the time Constance and Solomon arrived at the kitchen, the garden door was already blowing open in the wind and there was no sign of Iris at all.

Goldie let them in, smirking. “Going to introduce us to your young man, Miss Silver?”

“It’s not a social call,” Constance said. “Where is Mrs. Lambert?”

Everyone was seated around the table, gawping at them.

“In the dining room, of course,” Goldie said. “She’s had her first course, but she’s waiting for his nibs before she wants the second. Gawd knows where he is.”

“And it’s none of your business,” Duggin growled.

Duggin, the only person apart from Lambert himself to have a key to the wine cellar and that padded room…

With difficulty, Constance prevented herself from grabbing Solomon’s hand as she hurried across the kitchen to the stairs. She was shaking, and every hair on the back of her neck stood up. But no one stopped them going.

“None of them look worried,” Solomon muttered when the baize door swung shut behind them. “They don’t know he’s dead.”

“Which leaves Angela, who doesn’t have a key.”

“Could she have followed him in? Like we did to Iris? Could anyone else?”

Constance didn’t answer. She knocked and walked into the dining room, where Angela sat alone at the table, somehow bereft in her splendid evening gown and pearls. There was not a mark on her, though her face was rigid, her lips compressed—whether with annoyance at her husband or with Constance and Solomon was not clear.

“Mrs. Lambert, we have terrible news,” Constance said in a rush. “Mr. Lambert is dead.”

“Nonsense. He’s fetching a bottle of wine that Duggin couldn’t find. And for want of it, the whole dinner is spoiling.”

“Oh, he’s in the cellar,” Solomon said. “In a room at the top of the stairs there, and he is quite, quite dead.”

Angela stared at him, the blood draining out of her face. Abruptly, she rose and reached behind her to pull the bell. She tugged it sharply three times.

“You saw him?” she flung at Solomon. “How did you get in?”

“Behind your ghost, who has a key to the outside cellar door.”

Angela blinked rapidly, perhaps to adjust from the huge fact of her husband’s death to the trivia of the ghost. “She’s here?”

The door opened and Duggin strode in, panting as though he had run all the way, and glaring at Solomon. “Wanting rid of anyone, ma’am?”

“No. Let me into the cellar.”

He blinked. “Ma’am, I really don’t advise—”

“ Now ,” she snapped.

Duggin inhaled sharply, turned on his heel, and stalked out. Angela followed, Constance and Solomon at her heels.

Pat and Robin stood either side of the baize door.

“Shift,” Duggin barked, and they did. Constance would not have been surprised if he’d simply marched back down to the kitchen, but he didn’t. He took the keys from his pocket, inserted one into the cellar door, and went in.

The padded room was open and visible from the stair light.

“Don’t come in!” Duggin shouted at Angela, but he was too late. She was in, and she saw. She fell to her knees with an inhuman cry, not entirely unlike Iris’s.

Duggin shut the door in their faces.

Constance’s heart ached. Not for Lambert, though he was beyond saving now, but for Angela, whose world, whose entire reason for living, was crumbling to nothing. She turned back to the baize door and walked out into the hall, Solomon silent beside her.

Pat and Robin were scowling at her. “What the hell’s going on?” Robin demanded.

Constance drew in her breath. “I’m afraid Mr. Lambert is dead.”

“Dead?” There was disbelief, almost incomprehension. If they were acting, it was very good. But then, they didn’t have the key to cellar either. Only Duggin had, and they had left him alone with Angela.

Constance clutched hard at Solomon’s arm. He glanced at her, but before they could speak, the baize door swung open again and Angela herself came through, white and stunned.

“Pat, go and fetch a policeman,” she said.

“A policeman ?” Pat repeated, as if she had asked him to fetch in the plague.

She nodded. “Go now.”

Pat closed his mouth and ran off to obey.

For a moment, Angela stood very still. Her face was rigid with some superhuman self-control. Constance focused on her hands, which grasped the folds of her elegant gown. They were trembling with shock. Much like her own.

“Go back to the kitchen with Duggin,” Angela said to Pat. “We’ll search the house, but not until the police have gone.”

Pat and Duggin vanished through the baize door in silence, and at last Angela regarded Constance, though her gaze flickered once to Solomon and back.

“Come with me,” she said abruptly.