Page 65 of Murder Most Haunted

Inside Noah’s pantry dark room, several strips of film had developed. Noah brought them out into the kitchen one by one, and held them up for the others to see against the light of the window above the Belfast sink.

It didn’t take them all long to get the general gist.

The negatives were of Rona, alone in her room, in various states of undress.

‘Oh my God!’ Rona said, holding her head. ‘What the actual . . .’ She flung the negative strip she had been grasping down on to the table, where it disturbed a cloud of flour left over from Noah’s baking. Midge dusted it away.

‘You fucking pervert, Noah,’ shouted Rona, trying to reach across the table to grab him. Bridie pushed her arm back, coughing with the effort. ‘You’re my stalker, aren’t you?’

‘Hey . . . hold on!’ he said, his voice rising. ‘You think it was me that took the photos? I didn’t take these. What are you talking about – a stalker?’

‘What don’t you understand?’ snapped Rona. ‘That you are a sad little boy who gets his kicks photographing women? Asexual, my arse.’

‘Why would I steal my own camera?’ said Noah. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

Midge frowned at the flour on her fingers and brushed it off. The action jogged something in her mind, throwing up another flour-dusted memory. At that moment, everything started to fall into place.

‘It was the doctor.’

Everyone looked at her. ‘Dr Mortimer was stalking Rona?’

‘Don’t be so ridiculous,’ said Rona, but her voice sounded unsteady.

‘It was the doctor who stole the camera from Noah’s room.

Earlier, I found some flour on his jumper.

’ Midge considered them all. ‘When the doctor came into Noah’s room after the theft, he was brushing something from his jumper.

It was flour. Noah had just been baking, and the flour must have transferred when the doctor attacked him. ’

‘Are you saying the doctor was the intruder?’ frowned Bridie.

‘No ghosts?’ asked Noah, disappointedly.

Midge shook her head, ordering her thoughts as excitement coursed through her.

‘The only real explanation is that the doctor was in your room, took the camera and lashed out when you caught him. He then knocked me over on his way out, then had to double back to make it look like he had just arrived, but only after he had hidden the evidence.’

‘But why? Are you saying he was the one secretly taking pictures of me?’

‘I found a card in his pocket that said, “I HAVE PHOTOS”,’ said Midge, frowning.

‘This may explain it.’ Noah, trying his best to avoid eye contact with Rona, shuffled through the rest of the negatives, holding them up to the light as they all gathered round.

They were all of Dr Mortimer and Rona, talking together inside her room, taken from the same camera angle as the others.

Rona’s eyes widened. ‘What the hell!’ She tried to snatch them away, but Midge stopped her.

‘I think Rona and the doctor may have been having an affair,’ muttered Noah, edging away from the pop star. ‘And whoever took these pictures was blackmailing him.’

‘Don’t be so gross,’ said Rona, dry retching. ‘As if I’d touch a wrinkly old man . . .’ She paused before slurring slightly, ‘No offence, Harold.’

‘None taken,’ replied Harold uncertainly.

Midge leaned in and took a closer look at something in the doctor’s hands. ‘I don’t think it was an affair.’ She pointed at what the doctor was holding before looking at Rona. ‘He was giving you pills, wasn’t he?’

Rona swayed before slumping into a chair. She put her head in her hands and moaned slightly. ‘I was buying them. I have been since we got here.’

‘I told you,’ said Bridie.

‘You can shut up,’ shouted Rona, lifting her head. ‘Always sticking your beak in. He approached me. He’s clearly done it before.’

Selling illegal prescriptions. Midge cast her mind back to the prescription pad inside his medical bag. The pad had been taken from a different doctor. An ideal way to avoid detection.

‘Please don’t look at me like that, Midge.’ Rona started to sniffle. ‘I can’t bear it.’

‘You told me he refused to give them to you,’ said Midge, unsure why Rona’s duplicity should bother her so much, but she knew that it wasn’t just the thought of Bridie’s unbearable smugness that was nettling her.

‘He did . . . after he had already given me some. He freaked out.’

Noah’s mouth was hanging open.

‘But who was using the photographs of the drug dealing to blackmail the doctor?’ asked Bridie, coughing harder this time.

‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ Rona rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t be so dramatic. There’s no need to make it sound like we’re on the frontline.’

‘The same person who had been collecting photos of Rona in secret.’ Midge looked at Harold, who had been very quiet during the exchange. Harold and his press clippings.

‘It was you, wasn’t it?’

He bit his lip for a second before nodding.

Rona’s head swung round. ‘What the hell?’

‘You were using my equipment to take photos?’ shouted Noah.

‘You got me,’ said Harold, holding out his hands. ‘Look, the important thing to remember in all of this is that the photos are back, OK. No damage done. And the camera has been returned, safe and sound.’

‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ said Noah, shaking his head. ‘Some of this stuff is very sensitive. You can’t just go and operate this kit as an amateur, you know.’

‘For Christ’s sake, I was taking photographs of people while you were still trying to work out your first Tamagotchi,’ snapped Harold.

‘Are you my fucking stalker?’ shouted Rona, throwing herself across the table to hit him. Midge pulled her back. ‘Did you murder Rendell and the doctor?’

‘I’m afraid it’s far worse than that,’ announced Midge, pouring herself a cup of tea from the pot. ‘Harold is paparazzi.’

‘Tamagotchis were before my time,’ muttered Noah.

‘Will you focus, Noah!’ exclaimed Bridie.

‘Right, well,’ coughed Harold. ‘I suppose the game’s up. She’s right. I work for one of the tabloids, on and off, alongside the driving. Rendell tipped me off that you were coming here.’ He nodded at Rona. ‘We worked together in the past, when he was in the police.’

‘So, you were always meant to get stranded here?’ Midge said, a thought occurring to her. ‘It was you who slashed the tyres, wasn’t it?’

He nodded. ‘Anyway, I was just hoping to get a few topless pictures, you know . . . it’s all a bit harmless.’

‘Harmless!’ Rona was pacing backwards and forwards, trying to light a cigarette. ‘Have you any idea what it’s like for me, Harold? Not being able to trust anyone . . .’ She faltered and took a drag to calm herself. ‘I thought we were all friends here.’

Harold ignored her. ‘I was going to split some of the money with Rendell. Said pictures of Rona’s bits was going to solve his financial problems.’

‘And people would have paid for that?’ asked Bridie.

‘Of course they would have paid for it, my bits are top-notch,’ huffed Rona.

‘Depends on how graphic the photos are, really,’ said Harold. ‘If you’re talking full frontals and lots of bare—’

‘Oh my God, have you got no shame? You really are a full-on deviant.’ Rona inhaled deeply, dropping more ash on to the floor. Midge hoped that Noah wasn’t going to bring up the deposit again.

‘Anyway.’ Harold cleared his throat. ‘I thought it was my lucky day when I caught the doctor and her.’

‘So, you’ve been blackmailing him?’ said Noah.

‘He thought I was in on it,’ slurred Rona, suddenly. ‘He didn’t want to give me any more pills because he thought I was going to tell someone.’

‘You wrote on the mirror? And fixed the tarot cards?’ said Midge.

Harold frowned. ‘I don’t know nothing about the mirror, I just thought that was Rendell messing about. But yeah, I fixed the tarot cards to put the wind up him.’

‘And the card in his pocket?’

Harold nodded. ‘I slipped it into his pocket when the lights went out during the power cut. He must have worked out it was me and trashed my room, looking for the photos.’

‘And when he couldn’t find them, he must have realized that the only other place they could be was on Noah’s camera,’ said Midge.

‘Rendell was supposed to give me my phone back to take the pictures, but he went and died beforehand. So I had to improvise . . .’ Harold shrugged.

‘I had to leave the camera with Noah, so he wouldn’t realize I was using it.

I was going to grab the film back just before we left.

When the doctor said he was going to get help the next morning, I panicked.

I told him to meet me near the engine house that evening to try and come to an arrangement, but he never turned up. ’

‘When you were meant to be getting the snow for Rendell?’ Midge said, thoughtfully.

Harold nodded. ‘I swear I didn’t kill him.’

‘Wait a moment,’ said Noah. ‘The power cut. You just said the doctor was in the drawing room when the lights went out, so he couldn’t have been the one who disconnected the fuse and trashed your room.’

‘He was standing next to the light switch.’ Midge thought back to the events of that evening.

‘It’s possible that he turned off the drawing room lights, convincing us all that there was a fault, and then made his way out of the French windows.

’ Midge remembered the shadowy figure bumping into her right next to them, but decided not to reveal she’d actually been in the room all along.

‘From there, he would have been able to access Harold’s room before returning to tamper with the hall fuse, making it look like a regular power cut. ’

‘I told you I thought I was being watched.’ Rona turned her back to Harold and spoke instead to Midge. ‘You just thought I was being a narco pop star.’

‘Narcissistic,’ replied Midge, automatically.

‘I think she meant narcotic,’ said Bridie. ‘Although either would fit.’

Rona glared at her. ‘You can fuck off too.’