Death in Castle Dark, page 3
The Inspectors looked almost as excited about the torte as they did about the new information. We left them to their calculations, encouraging them to walk all around the castle. There weren’t that many clues left to find, but people loved the ambience. The doors to personal rooms on the second floor were locked, but others were labeled with character names, and props had been put inside.
I went to the kitchen and took one of the plates of presliced cake. While some Inspectors roamed, others asked us questions. I was actually eating the torte because it was good (Zana, the chef, had promised to teach me how to make it), and I was alone in the kitchen. Tim appeared and sat down next to me, holding his own plate. He concentrated on getting some dessert onto his fork, his blond head bent so that I couldn’t see his face. His hair was almost the same shade as Connie’s. “God, this is good,” he said. “The chef will make us fat, Nora.” He grinned at me, and I grinned back.
Then two Inspectors appeared, their notebooks closed. One of them was the thirteen-year-old girl, who showed surprising compassion when she looked at Tim and said, “Mr. Thompson, I’m placing you under arrest for the murder of your father, Harold Thompson.”
Tim put his fork down, scraped back his chair, and stood up. He looked at the little Inspector and then the taller Inspector, then smiled and said, “You win!
* * *
* * *
Of course, Tim won’t always be the killer,” Derek explained to me as I sat with the cast in the kitchen, eating popcorn and drinking water. I smirked at Connie, who had told me Derek was outrageously generous one moment and almost ridiculously frugal the next. She warned me that I would need my cell phone flashlight to get upstairs at night because Derek worried about his astronomical electric bill.
“Will he be the killer at our next event?” I asked.
Derek grinned. “Nope. You will.”
I must have looked surprised, because he patted my hand. “I have three alternating scripts with the same basic characters. That way we can run this way for a while but customers can’t come in and simply know the answer, assuming one of their friends told them. It’s written in our literature. See?”
He reached behind him to a stack of publicity postcards on the sideboard and handed me one, pointing to the line that read: No two solutions are the same!
“Not strictly true,” he said. “But it has kept the cheaters at bay so far.”
“But eventually, if you have die-hard fans, they will figure it out.”
“Yes. But I keep track of repeat customers. They wait a few months before returning—we’re expensive, don’t forget—and by then we have a whole new cast of characters. You’ll only be Nora Thompson for another month or so. I’m already working on the next story line. Then you’ll be Nora someone else.”
“Why don’t we have character names?”
He nodded, seemingly appreciative. “I started out that way two years ago. But one of my actors kept slipping and calling his colleagues by their real names. It was a tic he couldn’t overcome, but he was terrific in every other way—the visitors loved him.”
“You fired him?”
His mouth opened; I had shocked him. “Fired? No, of course not. He left—got a pretty great role in a movie. He lives in LA now.”
“Wow!”
“But I learned my lesson. Stick with the names we know and just adapt to different character types. Otherwise we risk looking unprofessional, forgetting names when I switch out the scripts every six weeks.”
I nodded. “That makes sense.”
Derek looked around the table. “Well, I know you’ve already been introduced to everyone here, and now you’ve done a performance with them. But maybe we could go around and say a few words about ourselves so Nora will get a better sense of us. You start, Nora.”
Curious faces looked at me, and they seemed benevolent.
“Okay—well, I’m from Chicago. My parents still live there with my teenage twin brothers, and I have an older sister in New York. She works in fashion, and she would love Elspeth’s costume room.”
The room, at the end of the dormitory hallway, was a glittering kaleidoscope of costume racks, masks, hats, boas, wigs, and tutus. Like Derek, Connie had said, Elspeth haunted the antiques shops for vintage clothing and occasionally found cheap accoutrements on Amazon. One whole wall of her space was a makeup table with a long utilitarian mirror, and the cast had sat there companionably earlier in the evening, waiting for a turn with Elspeth, who transformed them into other people. Elspeth herself looked like a cross between a hippie and an eccentric heiress; she had long gold brown hair on which she invariably wore some sort of headdress, often a tiara. There was one gray stripe in her hair, but her face was youngish; she was forty at most.
“And where did you train?” Derek asked me.
“I had a double major at Michigan State—drama and English. My senior year I starred in a production of A Streetcar Named Desire, and that got me an audition for a play at the Goodman.” Some appreciative sounds from the group. “I didn’t get the part, but I did get into the cast, a bit part, and I’ve been doing the Chicago theater scene ever since, with varying degrees of success.”
“We’re lucky to have you,” Derek said. “Connie, your turn.”
Connie smiled her winsome smile. “I’m Constance Lancaster. I know that name makes me sound like I’m from Boston or London or somewhere, but I’m from South Bend, Indiana. I didn’t major in drama the way Nora did, but I was in all my school plays. I was doing office work when I saw Derek’s ad about a year ago, and I guess my audition went well, because here I am.”
“And your family?” Derek prompted.
“Oh, yeah—well, my mom is a kindergarten teacher and my dad sells farm equipment. I have three big brothers.” She gave us all a thumbs-up.
We looked expectantly at Tim, who sat beside Connie. He smiled, revealing dimples I hadn’t noticed before. “I’m Tim. I got as far as off Broadway before I realized I missed the Midwest. I came here, got onto a cast at a dinner theater, then was recruited by Derek. In the script we had back then, I had to play his son, even though we’re essentially the same age,” he said, and we laughed. “Anyway, my dad died, but my mom lives nearby and I get to see her a lot. I’m an only child, I love cycling, and I have a girlfriend named Amy.”
“Thanks, Tim. Elspeth?” Derek said, like a suave game-show host.
Elspeth smoothed her long hair. “I’m Elspeth. I’m from Cincinnati originally. I majored in theater production and design, with a focus on costuming. I’ve done costumes for about forty productions, and they were all fun. But having my own costume room in an actual castle—it’s kind of a dream come true.” She looked up and saw that we were waiting for more. “Oh, uh—divorced, no kids, two parents and a sister in Ohio.”
We looked at Garrett, who said in a quiet voice that he was a retired drama teacher and that he had greatly enjoyed being a part of the Castle Dark team for the last two years. “Really the best of both worlds,” he said. “So much free time and scenery to explore, but some challenging acting and a regular paycheck. An actor’s dream.” He nodded, looking at his own folded hands. “I’ve been dating someone in town, so I divide my time between here and her place. I still think of the castle as home, though. I get to be an actor on the main floor, but up in my tower room, I feel rather like an author in a garret. Or more of an artist, I suppose. I like to sketch up there. And of course I have that amazing view of the grounds.”
I nodded at this, remembering the wonder-filled drive I had made on the day of my second interview, now two weeks in the past.
Next came Renata, who with her noble bearing looked like a queen in her scarlet robes. She held up her handsome head. “I am Renata Hesse. My parents were German immigrants; they, too, were interested in drama, but it took the form of a puppet show that they put on at a children’s theater in our town in Minnesota. It was quite popular and lucrative, as well. I followed in their footsteps, in my way. I studied Shakespeare and Shakespearean drama. I’ve been lucky enough to play several of Shakespeare’s women, and one of his men, in a gender-blind Macbeth.”
“Ooooh,” I said, and everyone clapped a bit.
“My parents have died,” Renata said. “I have one sister, Una. Like Elspeth I am divorced, no children. I suppose I am married to the stage.”
More clapping. Something about Renata made even the simplest words feel like a performance.
Finally there was Bethany, who had short red hair, freckles, and a sweet smile. “I can’t top Renata’s story. I’m from Bloomington, and I went to ISU because I’m lazy and I didn’t want to leave town.” We laughed, and she said, “I married my husband, Tyler, last year, and we’re enjoying living in Wood Glen. He’s an EMT, and I work here, playing a spoiled daughter of a rich man. Tyler and I auditioned at the castle together—we were both drama majors—but right now his job takes most of his time. People say we’re both super dramatic, though. We still feel like newlyweds, and we’re utterly devoted to each other.” She smiled at Garrett, who sat across from her, and he nodded in his quiet way. He was sketching something with pen on his paper napkin—some sort of beautiful tree. He had said he liked sketching, and I could see that Garrett was even a talented doodler.
Her introduction completed, Bethany took some popcorn and looked back at Derek; we all swung our attention to him, and he nodded. “Okay, fair enough. You all know I’m Derek Corby. Until four years ago I was the vice president of a bank in Chicago. My brother, Paul, is also in finance, and my sister, Erin, is a nurse. When our uncle Calder died, he left the three of us this building in his will, but he had run out of money at the end, and the castle ended up in foreclosure. Erin had no interest in maintaining the place, and she sold her share to us. Paul and I put together our resources so that we could buy it back at a tiny fraction of what it was worth, and then we devised a plan: we would make it a working castle. As you know, we hold weddings and parties here, along with the regular murder-mystery nights and weekends. Paul routinely negotiates through an agent to have movies made here—so far there has been one feature film and one series filmed on our lot, but we’re looking to increase that number. Meanwhile, it’s the movie people who have helped the most in paying our bills—electricity, water, gas, and general castle upkeep. It takes a crazy amount of money, frankly, but Paul and I have grown to love this building, and we couldn’t bear to lose it. And all of you are essentially our family.”
We clapped again, and I raised my hand. “Derek, may I ask—how did this castle get here?”
He laughed. “Oh, yes—it’s beautiful but entirely unlikely. And Calder himself inherited it. It was actually constructed by his great-grandfather, who had seen a similar castle when he was in Europe during the First World War. His name was Philip Corby. Philip had come home from the war and gotten himself a job at a steel corporation, and he rose through the ranks quickly. Steel was booming, and he made shrewd decisions that got him promoted; eventually he was a CEO, and he made crazy money before CEOs were really making crazy money. He had also inherited some money from his father, and he made a very lucky investment that paid off. And suddenly, at the age of twenty-nine, he was a megamillionaire with money still flowing in.”
“A tough problem to have,” Tim said, smiling at the table.
“I’d be willing to try it out,” Garrett said, and we laughed.
Derek grinned. “Philip never forgot about that castle he saw. He kept wanting to visit it, but then he had another idea: he would reconstruct it and live in it.”
“This land was probably cheap then,” Bethany said.
“Bingo. He got the land for a song, and he imported some of the stone from France or England—we’re not exactly sure where his original castle is located—so that it would look like the European original. It took seven years to build it.” Derek shook his head. “It’s entirely pointless. This is not a country, or an era, that requires castles. Yet here we are. It’s kind of like living in a museum within a museum.”
“It’s amazing,” I said. “Even the dorms upstairs are just gorgeous.”
“We love it. Paul still has his job in Indianapolis, but eventually he plans to quit and move out here, help me run the place full-time. As it is, he returns every few weeks to catch up with his paperwork. We divide the office tasks between us.”
“I look forward to meeting him,” I said.
Derek pointed at my face and turned to Elspeth. “Whatever you did with her makeup, El, keep doing it. She looks perfect—just the way I pictured the secretary: prim but sultry and sexy.”
This made me blush, but no one seemed to notice. Connie smiled at me and said, “Nora, you’ll soon find that Derek is always thinking about the story—either he’s writing one in his head or thinking about how he’ll direct it or what he needs to produce it. He’s the whole Hollywood package.”
For a moment there was a curious expression on Derek’s face, but it morphed into a smile so quickly, I couldn’t identify what it had been.
We said our good nights soon afterward, and Connie and I used our cell phone lights to ascend two unlit gargantuan staircases. “It’s still surreal,” I told her outside my bedroom door. “I can’t believe I live here or that we spent the evening telling lies to people who paid to hear them.”
Connie’s giggle helped to alleviate the gloom “You get used to it. And it’s fun.” There was a pause, and she added, “It’s almost everything I wanted.” Her words, and her voice, made me feel suddenly sad.
We lingered outside of our doors in the long, ink-black hall. “My brother joked about me going back in time, but look at this.” I pointed into the gloom. “I half expect Henry VIII to come stomping toward us, wearing his Tudor nightshirt.”
“Yeah, that feeling fades eventually,” Connie said. “Then it just kind of feels like home.”
She turned to unlock her door, then sent me a little smile. “Good night, Nora. Welcome to Castle Dark.”
3
A Murder at the Murder
On Sunday morning I went down for breakfast, which was laid out on the sideboard as though we lived in Downton Abbey. I helped myself to eggs, bacon, toast, and a cup of tea and sat down at the table, where Derek had left a pile of scripts that were labeled Scenario II. We had been instructed to study these and rehearse them with one another so that we were ready for the next performance, which was scheduled for Monday night. I read through the script while I ate and saw that I was indeed the perpetrator; I had grown quite possessive of Harry’s collections and felt that I valued their history more than he did. But I was a hypocrite, because I also wanted to sell them—a betrayal that I would try to pin on Derek.
“What a conniver I am,” I murmured.
Zana came in with some more scrambled eggs, which she added to the chafing dish. She was a small woman with dark hair and dark-rimmed glasses.
“This is delicious,” I said. “And are you still going to show me how to make the torte today?”
“Sure,” she said. She didn’t smile much with her mouth, but her eyes were very friendly. “I’ll have breakfast cleaned up around eleven if you want to peek in then.”
“I would love it. Meanwhile, I’m going to take a hike. Tim recommended some trails to me.”
“Oh, yeah, it’s beautiful around here, and you barely see another human soul.”
“I kind of like it that way,” I said. “I’m a classic introvert.”
“You and me both,” she said, and this time I got a full smile.
* * *
* * *
I descended the stone steps in front of Castle Dark and spied the gardener. I had noticed him a few times over the last week as he toiled away, looking fit. Today he wore a navy blue tank top and a pair of jeans. I tried not to look directly at him as I moved toward the flower bed he was weeding. The only information I could get out of Connie was that his name was “maybe John.”
“That’s it? It might be John?” I complained.
“I don’t know! He’s just some gardener.”
It was true; he was some gardener.
“Hey,” he said to me as I walked past.
I stopped. “Hello. Are you in charge of this whole place? It seems like a lot of work for one person.”
He stood up and wiped his hands on his jeans. “I’m John,” he said, offering his hand.
I shook it. “I’m Nora. I’m one of the actors.” I used my head to point back at the castle.
“Ah. You look like an actress. Like you could be in the movies.”
“Well, thanks.”
He lifted a water bottle from the ground and took a few healthy swigs. It was going to be a warm day, and it was already a bit muggy. He set the bottle down and said, “And no, I’m not the only one on staff, but I work when I can, so the others might be around at different times.”
“We all have odd hours,” I said. “This is like a place outside of time, anyway.”
“Agreed,” said John. He considered me with intriguing hazel eyes. His brown hair looked as though it could have used a trim, and he needed a shave; the stubble on his cheeks gave him a slightly primitive aura, but not a sinister one.
On a wild impulse, I said, “I was just going to hike a bit through the forest. I don’t suppose you’d like to go with me and give me the gardener’s tour.”
His expression said that he would, in fact, like very much to go with me into the woods, and something fluttered inside my chest. But then a sense of duty clamped down on him, and I watched him become disappointed by his own decision. “That sounds fun. Unfortunately I have to finish weeding these beds and then hop on the riding mower so that the lawn is finished by one, when Derek will be inspecting.”
