That American chap Jeffrey must be the only man alive who could read this scrawl. Albert doubted even his father could read these days what he had written, between his poor eyesight and fading health. The lines ran up and down the page like a printout from an EKG. Albert threw down the papers in disgust, then carefully gathered them again. He had a feeling whatever they were about, they were important. And he hesitated to ask Jeffrey for help.
No, he felt altogether it was not safe to ask Jeffrey.
But this was ridiculous; he’d never be able to sort the mess out himself. And he was beginning to worry that his father would sooner or later discover the manuscript was gone. For the first time, he wondered how his father had ever managed the cellar stairs to hide it in the first place. In any event, Albert felt he’d better put it back for now where he’d found it.
Then he had an idea, slapping his knees at the thought. Maybe he could enlist the aid of-what was her name? Mrs. Pepper? Mrs. Muffin? Something like that-a former secretary who was among the droves who had quit the job as fast as their legs could carry them. One had resigned, from a safe distance, by mail. But his father had often declared regretfully, for him, that Mrs. What’s-her-name had had a genius for being able to transcribe his handwriting (while never admitting he’d had anything to do with her abrupt departure).
Albert crept to his door and peeked out, knotting his silk gown more tightly about him. His room was one of four ranged along the corridor, at the end of which was a servant’s staircase leading to the attic and down to the kitchen. He thought for a moment he saw the door to the staircase closing-just the merest sliver of light that disappeared before he could be sure it had been there at all. He listened, straining, but could only hear the wind in the trees outside his own window, the eaves of the old building seeming to creak in response.
It is a truism that the more one tries to move stealthily, the more noise one seems to make. Every stair tread leading down from the first floor squeaked almost musically, each tread hitting a different register. In the darkness of the landing, he had a nearly fatal collision with a statue of Aphrodite, making a grab for her marble hips just before she could plunge from her pedestal. He inched along the downstairs halclass="underline" almost there now. He felt for the handle to the cellar door and braced himself for the whine of the old hinges.
The cellar stairs were worse; after groping for the light, he made his way down with aching slowness, pausing now and again to listen for sounds from overhead. Nothing.
As he approached the stack of crates from which he’d earlier retrieved the manuscript, he experienced a sudden, inexplicable tremble of apprehension: Something about the room was just that bit askew. Something was here or something had been taken away since his earlier visit.
He turned around, searching the shadows for whatever it was that was set to pounce. Maybe Agnes and her friendly ghost were starting to get to him.
So it was that he didn’t see Ruthven so much as sense that there was a shape huddled inside one of the glass-walled, walk-in cabinets. A dark round shape among the square boxes that hadn’t been there before, and that had no business being there now. Albert walked closer, cautiously, straining to see. A pile of laundry. No, not unless the laundry happened to be wearing bedroom slippers.
It was Ruthven and Ruthven was as dead as Dickens’ Marley. There was no doubt whatever about that. If the dark circle staining the floor around his head were not sign enough, there was also the odd angle at which his slippered feet were splayed in impossible directions.
Something splattered like dark paint across one side of the cabinet, something cascading down the glass in drying rivulets. Something that could only be blood, no matter how Albert’s mind scrambled for a different explanation.
Then there were the eyes. Most of all, the dark eyes-staring, accusatory, and quite, quite devoid of light, death having dried them of tears.
Albert, who had nearly tripped over many a seemingly lifeless corpse, but only on the stage, told himself that this was the real thing. Since it wasn’t in the script, he had no idea what to do. Fleetingly, he wondered if he should check for a pulse, before he realized he had not the least idea how to do so correctly, and no desire whatsoever to touch… it… him. He was shaking so much, anyway, he doubted he could have felt anything but his own heart, thudding madly against his ribs.
Worse, the sight of Ruthven, the thing that used to be Ruthven, was pathetic as much as frightening. He longed to at least straighten out the legs-Ruthven looked so uncomfortable there, against the cold stone floor in his climate-controlled cage.
Albert ran, the now-forgotten manuscript still in his pocket.
11. ST. JUST IS DELAYED
THE 999 CALL, MADE by an incoherent Albert, came into the Cambridgeshire Constabulary minutes later, which enterprise gauged Albert as a probable nuisance drunk and reacted accordingly.
Nonetheless, minutes later the Parkside Police Station dispatched one Constable Porter of Newton Coombe, a member of the Special Constabulary whose day job was pastry chef for the St. Germaine restaurant on Silver Street.
As Porter drove up to the imposing Gothic gate and saw the brass plaque announcing Waverley Court, he began to think he might be out of his depth. Wanting a break from the monotony of petits fours, Porter had been finding police work met the bill. Until now. There was such a thing as too much excitement. Careening up the long drive to the house, he had time to think that if some nob really had got himself killed, he, Porter, didn’t want to be the first and only man on the scene.
A surly, olive-complexioned man admitted him at the front door. As Porter reluctantly entered the armored hall, gazing about him in wonder, a blonde man tumbled out of a nearby door, collapsing into his arms as he gasped, “Murder! Cellar! Murder!”
Albert, grabbing the constable by the lapels, nearly dragged him to the top of the cellar stairs. Porter hesitated, reluctant to go down and muck up a crime scene, and instead tried to calm Albert, who reached ever more hysterical pitches with each passing minute. Eventually wrenching himself free, Porter called for backup. A higher layer of law-and-order appeared twenty minutes later in the form of Detective Chief Inspector St. Just and Detective Sergeant Fear of the Cambridgeshire Constabulary.
“What’s all this then?” the larger detective asked as he stomped in, brushing past Paulo, precisely as if he were there to break up a pub fight. A barrel-chested man with legs like tree trunks, St. Just was the same height as his subordinate but gave the appearance of being twice the size.
Constable Porter made sure Albert was safely propped against the wall before leaving him to come forward.
“Bloke says it’s a murder. In the cellar, he says. Says it’s his brother. That’s about all I can get out of him.”
“You’ve not gone down to look?”
“I did not want to disturb a crime scene. No, Sir.”
“Let’s hope the poor bugger really is dead, then.”
The poor bugger really was dead, and he’d been dead awhile. St. Just thought it was little wonder the man who said he was his brother was in such sad shape. The body in the wine refrigerator or whatever it was called was a mess, the skull thoroughly crushed in. The face itself, however, was intact: In profile, it retained the aristocratic, pampered visage of what the coroner would undoubtedly describe as a well-nourished, middle-aged man. The corpse wore a satin dressing gown, the legs of striped pajamas visible beneath.
“Look at that, Sir,” said Fear.
St. Just looked where Fear pointed, following the trail of splattered blood, to a dark, round, spiked object, apparently thrown into the nearest corner of the enclosed cabinet, with no attempt made at concealment. What in hell was it?