Page 8 of Ghost in the Garden (Murder in Moonlight #3)

A t first it seemed to be just a shifting of the mist, thick and rolling. But then she realized this particular shape wasn’t moving. It stood perfectly still while the fog swirled around it. Light and silvery, not quite part of the fog that clung to it, it was undoubtedly the shape of a veiled woman.

With one hand, Constance caught Solomon’s face and pushed it to the right angle. She felt his slightest nod against her palm. He saw it too.

The ghostly figure began to glide, perhaps a foot toward the house, and then it vanished into the opaque fog.

Solomon took her hand, and together they crept in the direction they had last seen it. Though her heart beat with excitement and her skin prickled in response to the unworldly thing she had seen, she wasn’t afraid. Not with her hand in Solomon’s. Chiefly, she was aware of curiosity.

Were they about to solve Silver and Grey’s first case?

Not easily, it seemed. No sounds reached her, no further sight of the ghostly figure through the mist. Frustration grew as they reached the wall of the house and peered hopelessly in all directions. The faint glow from the kitchen was marginally brighter from here, but it revealed nothing.

Constance began to feel her way along the wall, remembering her curiosity about that walled-off side of the house. A secret way into the house would surely explain the ghostly vanishing.

She felt occasional patches of brick, but mostly, she touched the damp tendrils of dense ivy and other creepers that covered it. Solomon followed, also running his fingers along the wall but higher up.

The corner of the building almost took her by surprise. She turned to follow the line of the house and bumped her shoulder against the boundary wall that extended from the garden. Constance was not a large person, but she could certainly not walk through that space. She peered down the narrow alley, making out only mist and blank wall. She could probably squeeze in sideways to investigate further, but her clothing would scrape and rustle against the stone.

Solomon’s hand on her arm drew her back the way they had come. This time he bent low, feeling along the wall at about her waist height. She could sense his vexation that they had lost the ghost so soon after finding her, but he had not yet given up.

Constance shivered, beginning to wonder if they should seriously consider the alternative explanation—the unquiet ghost vanishing into the ether or through the solid wall into the home of the man responsible for the death of her child. After all, Angela herself couldn’t quite shake off that fear…

Constance walked into the solidness that was Solomon. He had come to a halt. She caught her breath, listening intently for whatever threat he had sensed. His fingers, surprisingly warm compared to hers, caught her hand and drew her closer, not with tenderness, but some other excitement.

He placed her hand flat against the wall of the house. As always, there was plant and brick…and a crack in the stone. And beneath it, wood.

Her gaze flew to his. But already he was lifting the creepers. They came so easily that they must have been hanging loose over the hidden door. Excitedly, she crouched down, but she could find no handle to the door. Nor was there space around it to insert more than her fingernails. Then she found the keyhole. Thrusting her little finger into it, she felt something with her nail—surely the end of a key on the other side of the door.

She cast Solomon a quick grin, then shoved her hand into the left pocket of her gown to find the little tool she needed. She had lockpicks in her other pocket, though she was not terribly adept with them. The narrow pliers were simpler.

Inserting them into the lock, she managed to grip the end of the key and turn. They slipped off twice before she got the right hold and turned the key with the faintest click.

Solomon hauled her upright and behind him, wary, no doubt, of some kind of attack from within. But the door did not fly open. No sound came from inside. After several moments, Solomon took a penknife from his pocket and inserted it into the crack around the door. Soundlessly, it opened.

Both lock and hinges were clearly well oiled and smooth. Well used.

Solomon bent low and went in. Constance followed, with a quick glance behind her into the fog. As she drew the door closed behind her, she was sure she heard the whisper of the ivy falling back over it.

Inside was pitch black.

Solomon struck a match, and the light flared, showing a large, cavernous room, and a small wooden barrel just inside the door, the stump of a candle sitting on top. Solomon, who seemed to have thought of everything she hadn’t, drew his own candle from his pocket, lit it, and blew out the match. At their feet, a steep wooden ramp led down into a large cellar, surely beneath the kitchen. Various old barrels covered in dust lined the left-hand wall.

As they crept forward and down, still listening intently, she saw that the room was L-shaped. A closed door stood on her right, and around the corner shortly afterward they came upon more barrels, full ones this time, and shelves full of wine bottles. And there, sure enough, were the rough stairs that surely led up behind the kitchen to the door she had asked Duggin about.

This, clearly, was Lambert’s wine cellar. But the whole complex of cellars must have stretched at least the length and breadth of the house, with several doors leading to different rooms. Some were closed, others ajar.

A bump on the ceiling above made her start. A faint voice drifted downward, a muffled laugh. The sounds echoed eerily around the stone walls of the cellar, making it impossible to place them.

If the ghost had come in here…why?

The door to the main house above was always locked. Unless the ghost had obtained a key to that one too. Or there were others.

Solomon moved away from her, peering through the doors that were left ajar. Without a word, he took out another candle, lit it from the first, and held it out to Constance.

She took it and moved back the way she had come. That first closed door in the cellar had caught her attention. She took the precaution of putting her ear to the wood first, then, hearing nothing within, she pushed it. It was locked. And this time, when she thrust her finger and then a lockpick into it, there was no key on the other side. Only a faint whiff of dead rat that made her uneasy enough to raise her candle and glance around the walls and the floors for any signs of glaring eyes. Nothing scuttled.

She took the other pick from her pocket, considering that she might as well try. But her hand closed first around the key to the garden door. On impulse, she tried the key in the lock before her, and it turned smoothly.

Catching her breath, she rose to her feet, picked up her candle, and pushed open the door. The smell was strong enough here to make her gag, but no dead rodents were obvious, only a rolled-up carpet.

If the rats were living—or dying—in there, she didn’t want to know. She turned her back on the carpet, but there was nothing else to see except an axe propped up in the far corner.

Why keep one rolled-up carpet in a dank cellar behind a locked door?

Her mouth went dry.

Forcing herself, she put one foot in front of the other until she could reach out with the tip of her toe and touch the carpet. Something solid was wrapped in its depths. Most of the way along.

A slight movement in the corner of her eye made her jerk her head around in fright. Solomon stood there, filling the doorway, his nostrils wrinkling. Their eyes met.

He came in and crouched down, grasping the loose end of the carpet before raising his gaze to hers once more. He jerked his head toward the door.

Though she moved out of the way of whatever might roll out, she did not leave. Solomon tugged, hard, and the carpet rolled and unfurled until its innards were revealed.

A man with staring eyes and blood in his hair.

“Dear God,” she whispered, her hand over her mouth. It was what she had feared, but the smell… She raised her candle with one shaking hand. “Who is he?”

“Huxley Gregg,” Solomon said. “No wonder he’s never at home.”

He bent and turned the head. Constance did not want to see the wound. She had seen others in the past. Instead, she walked over to the axe in the far corner. Even in the dim candlelight, the brown, dried bloodstains were obvious. Fragments she didn’t want to think about clung to the blade.

“Time for you to come out,” Solomon said grimly. He no longer troubled to lower his voice. “We have to report this to the police. Inspector Harris?”

She licked her lips, unsure why this seemed wrong. “Not yet. We should tell Angela first. She’s our client.”

“And her husband probably did this.”

“Yes, but… Ten minutes, Sol. I owe her that much.”

He straightened, staring at her. “I don’t see why.”

“Please,” she said shakily.

He hesitated, his mouth tightening, and then he took her arm and walked briskly to the door. “You’re not going back into that house alone.”

“Come with me, then.”

She was almost surprised when he agreed. But then, he was determined she should leave in one way or another.

Ida opened the kitchen door to her knock. “What you doing out there?” she demanded. “And who the hell’s this?”

A quick glance showed Constance that the kitchen was otherwise empty. The servants must have been upstairs, clearing the dining room. “A friend. We need to speak to Mrs. Lambert. For her sake. Don’t tell the others, not yet.”

Ida stared at her, then stood back from the door to let them in. “Hurry up. She’s in the parlor. He’s in his office.”

As soon as she pushed back the baize door, Constance could hear the laughter and a certain amount of flirting coming from the dining room. Ignoring it, she hurried straight across the hall, past Lambert’s office to Angela’s parlor. She entered after only the most cursory of knocks, Solomon directly behind her.

Angela had been busily writing at her desk, but at the interruption, she jerked her head up, frowning sharply.

“We need to talk to you,” Constance said when Solomon had closed the door. “We saw your ghost. And we followed it into the cellar—at least, we think we did. But I’m afraid something else is more important. There’s a dead body in the cellar. We believe it’s Huxley Gregg.”

Angela shot to her feet. “What? Nonsense.”

“It isn’t, ma’am,” Solomon said. “And we have to report it to the police.”

“I don’t believe you,” Angela said calmly.

“We’ll show you,” Constance said. “If you’re up to it,” she added, for the woman had turned very white.

“Of course I’m up to it,” Angela snapped.

She swung away, took a couple of rapid paces, then turned back and strode past them to the door. “Wait here. Give me a few minutes to clear the way, then you can take me there.”

“Clear what way?” Solomon said, already grasping the door handle.

“She doesn’t want Lambert or his bodyguards to know. She’s afraid. Wouldn’t you be?” Constance asked.

“She doesn’t look afraid to me.”

“Neither do I.”

“Are you?”

“Not at this moment. I understand her, that’s all.”

Solomon said nothing, but she could sense his impatience, his frustration. She walked to the window and pulled back the curtains, peering out into the fog. Seeing nothing, she let the curtain fall back.

“This will hit her hard,” she said. “She is a good woman, doing her best… She really thought he was leaving the criminal life behind. I think that’s the real reason she hired us to find who the ghost is before Lambert caught him and returned to his old ways. I don’t believe he ever left them.”

“Neither do I.”

“Women fool themselves all the time.”

Again, he said nothing.

Constance paced some more. The clock ticked loudly on the mantelpiece.

Abruptly, she halted. “What is she doing ?” She met Solomon’s gaze, saw the suspicion there, and felt it seep into her too.

“We need to—”

The parlor door flew open, and they swung together to face it.

Not Lambert, but Angela stood there. “Show me.”

There was no sound now in the hallway. Angela led them directly to the baize door and downstairs without even pausing at the wine cellar door. She knew it was locked. She led them downstairs to the empty kitchen. Not even Ida sat there now, and Duggin was nowhere in sight.

Angela unlocked the back door, swiped up a lantern, and sailed out into the dank fog without even a coat on. Solomon strode past her to the cellar door, opened it, and waited until she shined the lantern inside before he bent and walked in. Angela followed, with Constance bringing up the rear. Again, she checked behind her, but she could not see nor hear anything in the dense mist.

She hurried after the others to the left-hand door, which lay open as they’d left it. But as they walked in, Angela’s lantern clearly showed them an empty room. No carpet, no body. No bloody axe in the corner.

*

For an instant, Solomon met Constance’s bewildered gaze.

“There’s nothing here,” Angela said flatly. “Why do you waste my time?”

Before Solomon could speak, Constance did. “You told him, didn’t you? He’s already taken the body away.”

“I don’t know what you mean. The police will not thank you to be called out for nothing.”

Solomon regarded her, trying to see her through Constance’s eyes. He did not trust Angela, certainly not after what she had just done. But wherever Lambert and his minions had taken the body, they could not be far away. They hadn’t had long.

“Constance,” he said.

“I believe it’s my evening off,” Constance said to Angela. “We’ll talk later.”

As they crossed the garden toward the door in the back wall, they heard Angela locking the cellar door, and a moment later, the sound of the kitchen door closing.

“She’s still protecting him,” Constance said bitterly. “Even from that. Damn it, Sol, why did she hire us?”

“To find a ghost, not to find evidence of her husband’s crimes.”

“We haven’t even found the damned ghost.”

The fog seemed to be lighter, making the door in the wall visible through thick tendrils. Constance shoved the key into the lock too forcefully, and Solomon had to hold her back to make sure Lambert’s men were not waiting in the lane.

His mind was racing. What would Lambert do to get rid of a body of a hurry? There hadn’t been time to get out a horse and cart, even if the Lamberts kept them in this lane. But he could have slung the carpet over a horse’s back, or even a donkey’s, and already have vanished out of the lane.

Or would he have hidden it here, in one of the mews buildings?

He stopped dead, his heart leaping into his throat. “It’s still in the cellar. In one of the other rooms. She’s played us again. There’s been no real time for anything else. All she needed to do in the short term was stop us going to the police tonight. By morning, it really will be gone.”

Constance gave a frustrated little groan. “You don’t know that, Sol. Do you really want to go to Harris with this before we’re sure? Come on, let’s see what’s at the end of the lane. Hurry.”

He allowed himself to be persuaded, not least because she was right. In the time it would take them to go to Scotland Yard, locate Inspector Harris—or even Inspector Omand—and drag him back here, the body really would vanish. In the meantime, they’d have lost their chance to find it if it really had been removed from the premises already. Why hadn’t he thought to look through the other cellars before storming out?

Until they reached the main road, an ambling, empty cart was the only vehicle they saw. Constance hurried up to a crossing sweeper, a small, thin lad who could have been anything between eight and twelve years old.

“Evening,” she said, slipping a coin into his grubby mitt. “By chance, have you seen a horse or a donkey pass this way with a rolled-up carpet on its back?”

“Can’t see anything in this pea soup,” the boy said disgustedly. “Take me life in me hands every time I cross. You going over, missus, or what?”

“We’ll both go over, and pay you twice, too, if you answer the question.”

“Did I see a donkey? Yes. I like donkeys. They smile at you and like their chins scratched.”

“Was it pulling anything?” Constance asked. “Carrying anything?”

The boy thought. “Had something on its back, sticking out on either side. Might have been a carpet rolled up, or a big roll of cloth, I don’t know. Didn’t look.”

“Who was with it?” Solomon asked.

“Old woman,” the boy said.

Constance’s jaw dropped. She knew who that was. It seemed he was wrong about the cellar. Unless this was a false trail laid to fool them?

“Which way did it go?” Solomon asked.

The boy nodded across the road. “Down into the Acre.”

“Good lad,” Constance said. “We’ll cross now.”

The boy took them over, sweeping the muck aside as he went. No vehicles passed them in the still-dense fog.

“No,” Solomon said firmly. “We’re not going into Devil’s Acre at this time of night. If the body’s really with that donkey, it’ll be to dump it in the river. Well go around the Acre. Who is the old woman? The one who let us into the kitchen?”

Constance nodded. “It might be. Ida Feathers, the cook. She’s devoted to Angela. Angela took her in when she was at her lowest, and keeps her on though she drinks like a fish.”

“Could she dump a body in the river?”

“She’s got strong arms. But she’s just as likely to dump it in the Acre. Another body would barely be noticed there, and the police rarely go in. Besides, not many would weep for Huxley Gregg.”

It was a fair point, and one that made him uneasy. He had been so determined to keep Constance out of Devil’s Acre that he grasped at any excuse. Had he been on his own, without her to worry about and protect, what would he have done?

It was a question he kept coming back to over the next couple of hours. None of the characters they spoke to along the fog-shrouded riverbanks and stairs claimed to have seen an old woman with a donkey and a carpet.

“We’ve lost her,” Constance said, clearly as frustrated as he. “Even if she’s already dumped him in Devil’s Acre, we’ll have no proof it was her. No one there will speak to the police or to strangers. In fact, if the police even go there, it’s an excuse for a riot. Let’s hope the donkey was a false trail laid for our benefit. Shall we go back and break into the cellar again, as you suggested in the first place?”

Solomon had the feeling that even if the body had still been in the cellar when they left the garden, it would be gone by now. They had given Lambert a decent length of time to remove his evidence.

“Perhaps,” he said. “Though I don’t fancy running into Lambert’s thugs in the cellar.”

“I can go back into the house first and find out who is where. If we hurry, we’ll catch them before bedtime.”

He stared at her. She didn’t actually mean to go back there, did she? Not with a recent murder in the house and Angela Lambert making it clear where her first loyalties lay. He supposed Constance still had to collect her things, and bit back his rejection of her idea. She would have to be straight in and out again, though—would it be long enough to gather useful information? And would she be watched? If so, they couldn’t break into the cellar.

It was a lowering thought that they had made a mess of this between them. Their trivial ghost case had turned into a murder, and they had lost the evidence of the body, the weapon, and the scene of the crime.

Lambert had walked away from every crime he had ever committed. He must not be allowed to continue.

“Why would he kill Gregg?” Solomon said suddenly as they hurried back toward the Lamberts’ house. “Gregg was a useful public scapegoat and clearly hadn’t implicated him.”

“Maybe Gregg threatened to tell everything to the inquiry. Maybe Lambert was just afraid he would.”

“No crime has ever stuck to Lambert. Other people do his dirty work and pay the price while he continues on his way. Yet he killed Gregg on his own premises—or one of his minions did—and left the body there for days. Why would he risk that?”

“It wasn’t much of a risk,” Constance said. “No one goes into the wine cellar except Lambert and Duggin. And, possibly, our ghost.”

In spite of himself, Solomon shivered. “Gregg wasn’t married, was he? Did he have a sweetheart, a mistress who met the same fate?”

She turned her head to look at him. The mist was slightly less dense here, and her eyes glittered with both curiosity and doubt. “You’re giving serious thought to the supernatural explanation?”

“The Tizsas warned me not to rule it out. Apparently they had some sort of…encounter in Scotland.”

“Angela’s afraid it’s Cathy Knox,” Constance said. “She met her at the tenement before it fell, and Cathy begged for her help, to get Lambert to do something about the state of the building.”

“Did she?” Solomon said softly. “Then everyone knew how dangerous that place was. And everyone seems to know Lambert was involved. Perhaps I should speak to Knox again.”

The crossing sweeper had gone. A few people melted in and out of the mist, some of them the worse for drink. Solomon and Constance negotiated their way back to the mews behind Lambert’s house. His unease returned, more intense with every step.

He opened his mouth to say he would go with her, just as a familiar, ghostly figure glided through a high wall and into the lane.