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Chapter Thirteen

T he suit of armour topped out at more than six and a half feet.

It was wide and broad– the dude who used it back in the seventeenth century must’ve been a giant– and a perfect place to hide.

Eden rested her back against the wall, her shoulder touching the arm plate.

Her hiding place wasn’t that far from the kitchen, and she could still hear Mick fretting about returning to her patients.

The kids were both home because of a head lice outbreak at the school and Justin was looking after them for the afternoon.

Justin had asked Mick, twice in ten minutes, whether they were bug-free.

Down the passage, she could see Troyden standing in the entry hall with the Bancrofts, still entreating them to stay.

As they talked, Eden wondered how the investigation was going.

With her phone on silent, she sent a message to the detective in charge, asking for an update, then jumped when her phone vibrated with his almost instant reply.

Still reviewing the evidence. Interviewed the Bancroft bookkeeper, she confirmed some dodgy transactions but didn’t want to rock the boat. They are coming in for an interview later this afternoon.

Right, that was why they couldn’t stay for lunch. Since he was being chatty, she risked asking another question. Well, two.

Has the search warrant been served? And when will you press charges or not?

She stared at the phone, but nothing appeared on her screen. Dammit. She considered running up the stairs and trying to call him but knew he probably wouldn’t answer. Ugh , she hated feeling small and insignificant and unimportant.

‘We really must go,’ Vince said, and Eden heard the hint of impatience in his voice. ‘We have a meeting back in the city.’

A meeting? That was a hell of a euphemism for an interview with the police.

‘It’s been lovely seeing you,’ Troyden said, opening the front door and ushering them out. Thank God. ‘Jed will be sorry to have missed you.’

Please stay in the kitchen, Jed. Please assume Troyden is talking them into staying for lunch, don’t come out.

Annoyed, Eden shifted, and her arm clanked against the suit of armour, and it released a loud squeak. Eden immediately plastered herself against the wall and held her breath. Shit, shit, shit. Why did this house have to have such amazing acoustics?

‘What on earth was that?’ Tara demanded from outside the front door.

‘That’s Elspeth, our resident ghost,’ Troyden replied, without missing a beat.

Tara’s oh-so-familiar laugh sounded a little strained. ‘Oh, really, what nonsense. You know I don’t believe in ghosts.’

‘You should,’ Troyden told her. ‘As you know, I’ve seen Elspeth many times, and she sometimes moves things. That suit of armour is her favourite thing to play with.’

Through the open door, she watched the trio disappear from view. Car doors slammed and an engine purred. They were on their way, thank God.

Her phone vibrated against her hand and she looked down to see the number of the Metropolitan Police on her screen. What? They never called her unless it was an emergency.

She swiped, lifted the phone to her ear and whispered a hello. Detective Gosling’s voice boomed in her ear. ‘Gosling here. Battery on my cell died. Working on the warrant.’

He never spoke in full sentences and Eden blinked. ‘Okay. Do you know when this will be over? When they will… you know?’

‘Be arrested or acquitted? Not sure. Keep your head down.’

‘Okay, but—’ Eden heard the phone beep and knew she was talking to dead air. Dammit. Would it hurt him to give her a little more information? An end date? Something more to keep her from climbing the walls?

Desperate to scratch an itch on her ankle, she placed her hand on the suit’s shoulder to keep her balance, smiling as Jed stepped into the hallway from the kitchen, at the same time as Troyden walked back into the hall.

She felt herself beginning to teeter. She recovered only to watch, horrified, as the suit of armour toppled sideways and crashed against the hardwood floor, the sound bouncing off the walls.

The various plates fell apart and skittered away.

Oh, shit. Why did these things keep happening to her?

The door to the kitchen widened, with Mick, Alistair and Justin standing on the other side, looking astonished. Gemma and Liam pushed past the adults, expressions of horror on their faces.

‘ Oh, oh ,’ Gemma said, slapping her hands on her cheeks.

That didn’t sound good.

‘Was it Elspeth?’ Mick asked, jamming her hands into the pockets of her doctor’s coat.

The ghost? Was she taking the piss? Eden pushed her shoulders back and shook her head. ‘No, it was me. I bumped it.’

‘Why were you hiding?’ Mick asked. ‘Why didn’t you come back into the kitchen?’

Now there was a question she didn’t want to answer. Ignoring Mick, she forced herself to look at Troyden. ‘I am so sorry,’ she quietly stated. ‘I wasn’t thinking. I’ll pay for it to be fixed or put together, or whatever they need to do.’

And how much would that cost? A thousand pounds? Two? Ten? How would she raise that much cash?

Troyden looked at the pieces and pushed a breast plate to the side with his foot. ‘If I had a dollar for every time this thing fell apart… I really should move it.’

‘You really should, Grandpa,’ Gemma told him, looking serious. ‘Besides, Elspeth doesn’t like this one either. She says you should put it in the attic. And that the man who wore the other one wasn’t nice at all.’

Instead of telling Gemma not to talk nonsense, Troyden tipped his head to the side. ‘Really? Did she tell you who he was?’

‘Someone from a long time ago,’ Gemma replied. ‘Elspeth says he speaks with a funny voice. But Elspeth isn’t good at talking either, because she called the man a “night”. She’s confusing sometimes.’

Troyden smiled. ‘He speaks with a funny accent because the man who wore it came from Germany. And he was a knight, someone who protected the king, and they wore this to save themselves from being stabbed by long spears. And by all accounts, no, he wasn’t a nice man.’

Nobody but Eden seemed surprised to hear that Gemma spoke to a ghost and that her information seemed startlingly accurate. Come on, this had to be a set-up, right? They were pulling a prank on her. Because, hell, everyone knew that there wasn’t any scientific, definitive proof that ghosts existed.

‘I didn’t know you still talked to Elspeth, Gemma,’ Mick said, sounding a little too nonchalant for someone whose career was based on science.

‘Not that much anymore,’ she said, shrugging. ‘She’s been busy.’

With what, Eden wanted to scream. What the hell did ghosts do that took up time? Mick put her hand on Gemma’s shoulder. ‘Go get some lunch, guys.’ she said.

Eden watched the kids scamper away, trying to make sense of the last five minutes. Her uncle didn’t seem to be mad about the armour toppling over, and nobody was fazed that the second youngest member of their family had the occasional conversation with a spirit.

She looked at the dismembered suit of armour and bit down hard on her lip. ‘I’m so sorry, Troyden. I’ll pay to have it fixed.’ It was armour. Surely it could be fixed, right? It was, after all, built to take knocks.

Mick wrinkled her nose. ‘Sixteen something, E. That’s four hundred years of history scattered on the floor.’

Oh, Jesus. She felt awful. Eden dropped to her haunches and picked up a piece of the breastplate, surprised it wasn’t heavier.

She reached for another piece and looked up when Justin cleared his throat.

She caught his grimace. ‘The restorer said that if anything happened to it again, he wouldn’t put it back together again.

He wasn’t going to condone such ill treatment of a museum-quality piece. ’

Ah, come on! Seriously?

‘You guys are such pricks,’ Jed said, moving to stand next to her.

Justin shot him a grin. ‘Sure. But teasing her is fun.’

She was being teased? Jed reached down, curled his arm around her bicep and gently lifted her to her feet. He sent her a small smile as he stroked her from shoulder to her hand. He linked his fingers with hers and squeezed.

‘It’s a copy, Eden. Troyden had it commissioned about thirty years ago and moved the original suit of armour into storage.

’ He nudged a piece with his foot. ‘This dude has been shot with paper-pea guns, had cricket balls tossed at his head, has been knocked down more times than we can count. He can be put back together in ten minutes.’

So she hadn’t destroyed a vital piece of the country’s cultural heritage? ‘So you were all in on the joke?’ she asked, unsure.

‘Oh, E, teasing is our love language,’ Mick told her.

‘Yeah, they are jerks,’ Jed muttered, glowering at his siblings. ‘A lot of what you see in the house, the treasures, are fakes?—’

‘Copies of the original, to be accurate,’ Troyden interjected. ‘I only make copies when I own the real thing.’

Right, she was having difficulty following their conversation. The suit of armour was a fake? The house was full of copies? ‘But why ? Why wouldn’t you want to look at the originals?’

‘Oh, I regularly do,’ Troyden assured her, ‘but in the safety of my undisclosed, super safe warehouse-museum.’ He looked around and smiled.

‘But this is a family home, and I had a choice between allowing my kids, and grandkids, to run free without worrying about breaking anything or making them tiptoe around the house. A good thing I did, because Alistair broke a copy of a Ming vase because he wasn’t looking where he was going, and Jedson smacked a cricket ball through the window and split the canvas of the Monet copy in the library. ’

He owned a Monet? Holy shit! Jed snorted. ‘You made me pay for the restoration of the fake painting,’ he muttered, still sounding annoyed.