The upstairs hallway was wide and badly lit, the floor covered by a threadbare red carpet, doors disappearing in the distance. I grabbed the knob on the second door on the right, and opened it. Rebecca walked through, and I followed. For a bedroom, it was a very masculine room. All wood paneling and dark wallpaper, heavy furniture, deep red drapes matching the bedspread and pillows. Framed prints of English hunting scenes circa the eighteenth century hung on the walls, and a brown hobnailed leather chair was pulled up to the dressing table.

  “This is rather … dark,” Rebecca said.

  “It is,” I replied. This was obviously a man’s bedroom. I glanced toward a door that almost certainly led to the adjoining suite. The wife’s boudoir in a house in which the married couple slept apart.

  Rebecca turned to me and gave me the first smile I’d seen on her. “Thank you. I’m sorry, but I didn’t get your name.”

  I had told her, but I told her again. “I’m Gemma Doyle. I’m here to help organize the weekend.”

  “Oh, yes.” She threw her purse on the bed. “This dratted weekend. I didn’t want David to come, you know. Why on earth, I said, would he go all the way to Cape Cod when our house in the Hamptons would be perfectly adequate to host his friends, plus of course there we have the staff at hand. We haven’t been to the Hamptons all season and it would be nice to go before winter arrives. Renovations, you know how it is, they simply dragged on and on, far over budget and far over time, but David said the work’s almost finished.” Her face settled into a deep frown. “No, that would never do, not for David. He wanted to play at being an English country gentleman, and the cost was no object. You’re English, I see. I’m sure that impressed him no end.”

  “Not that I noticed.”

  She studied my face. What she was looking for I didn’t know, and finally she turned away and crossed the room to pull the drapes open. The room faced west, and the dying light of the day flooded in. I stood beside her and looked out. Below us, the lawn and gardens stretched to the line of woods, the trees proudly displaying their colors. In the far distance the azure sea sparkled in the sunlight. “What a lovely view,” Rebecca said.

  I didn’t mention the sight of a group of police officers walking slowly, examining the property line for signs of an intruder, or searching for an abandoned blowgun.

  We turned at the sound of heavy grunting and the thud-thud-thud of a solid object being dragged up the stairs, step by laborious step. “Here you go.” Donald wrestled a hard-sided pink suitcase into the bedroom, and I helped him hoist it onto the bed. I refrained from saying “What do you have in here, rocks?” Annie followed with a small square case of a matching color and an over-the-shoulder pink leather bag.

  “Thank you,” Rebecca said to Donald. For a moment I thought she was about to tip him. But she didn’t.

  “My pleasure,” he said. “Please accept my condolences on your loss.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Drawing room at seven thirty,” I reminded her. “Anyone will show you the way. You wouldn’t want to confuse the drawing room with the library or the parlor or the music room or the morning room. I’ll let Detective Estrada know you’re here. She’ll want to speak to you.”

  She waved her hand in the air, shooing us all out. “Yes, yes. Tell her to call ahead and arrange a time. I need to freshen up before dinner.”

  “I don’t think it works that way,” I said.

  “Everything works that way, for Rebecca,” Annie said in a low voice as she passed me on her way out.

  * * *

  But this time, it didn’t work that way for Rebecca. When I got downstairs Estrada was opening the front door to Ryan. “Louise tells me Mrs. Masterson has shown up here,” he said. “When I spoke to her to give her the news, I asked her to go to the police station in West London as soon as she arrived.”

  “I get the feeling she doesn’t take instruction terribly well,” I said. “She’s upstairs. She plans to stay, at least for tonight. The autopsy can’t be finished yet?”

  “It’s not. Hasn’t even started, there’s been a delay. I left Officer Johnson cooling her heels at the hospital. I want to talk to the dead man’s wife as soon as possible.”

  “Shall I get Mrs. Masterson for you?”

  “No. I don’t want you interfering, Gemma. Although it sometimes doesn’t seem to matter what I want, this time I mean it.”

  “That,” I said, “often can’t be helped.” I lowered my voice. “What are you doing with the information about David’s cause of death? You’ve kept us inside today but people will be wanting to go out tomorrow. You can’t have someone absentmindedly picking up a discarded dart they see lying on the ground.”

  “Yeah,” Ryan said. “I know. I’d like to keep it under wraps, but that won’t be possible. Among other background checks, I’m trying to find out if anyone here might be their local darts champion.”

  Estrada raised one sculpted eyebrow. “Aren’t the English championship darts players?”

  “Most amusing,” I said.

  “I want to keep that detail restricted at least until after the autopsy. Can you do that, Gemma?” Ryan asked.

  “Have you ever known me to gossip about police information?”

  “Once or twice,” he said.

  Estrada might have muttered something along the lines of “every single time.”

  “Rebecca Masterson?” I reminded him.

  “I’ll get her,” Estrada said. “Which room’s she in?”

  I told her, and Ryan said, “Bring her to the dining room. We’ll talk there.”

  As Estrada headed for the stairs, I said, “You can’t use the dining room.”

  “Why not?” Ryan asked.

  “We’re having dinner at eight. I’ve already set the table.”

  “Your dinner, Gemma, can wait. The dining room, Detective Estrada. Now.”

  Estrada nodded and ran lightly up the stairs.

  “Gemma, please don’t listen at the window,” Ryan said.

  “If you are referring to what happened earlier, I wasn’t listening. I was thinking and I just happened to be doing my thinking under that window.”

  Ryan rolled his eyes. I stepped toward him and lowered my voice. “Do you think you’ll be coming back later? I mean, tonight? We can save you some dinner.”

  He gave me a wicked grin. “As much as I’d like to, probably not. I’ve got lots of work ahead of me, unless one of these people confesses at your dinner. You’ll let me know if that happens?”

  “I’ll try not to forget to tell you.” I gave him a smile and, hard as it was, refrained from running my fingers across the rough stubble on his cheek. I heard voices in the upstairs hallway and stepped back.

  “I am, however,” he said, “going to suggest Louise stay tonight. I want someone here.”

  “I’ll have you know, I have only just arrived, Detective, and I’m very tired,” came an imperious voice from above. Ryan and I looked up to see Rebecca slowly descending the stairs, one hand trailing along the banister, as though she were starring in a Cecil B. DeMille movie. Estrada, usually so strong and confident, scurried along behind her like a movie extra playing the poor relative.

  “I appreciate you giving so freely of your time,” Ryan said. “Seeing as how I’m trying to determine what happened to cause your husband’s death.”

  Rebecca didn’t take offense at his tone. She stopped on the second step from the bottom, still shorter than Ryan but not by too much, and said, “At least they sent me a young and handsome one.”

  Estrada choked. I bolted for the safety of the kitchen.

  * * *

  “Mrs. Masterson is what I believe is called a man-eater,” I said to Jayne.

  “I can think of other words.” Annie said. “Not suitable for use in polite company.”

  The preparation of Jayne’s dinner was well underway. The kitchen was fragrant with the scent of lamb, rosemary, and mint. The salad rested in a huge wooden bowl, waiting to be dressed, and delicate curls of smoked salmon were laid out next to capers, thin slices of red onion, and toasted hunks of baguette. The delicate pieces of shortbread had been brought from the tea room, and the trifle was finished and waiting in the fridge. To my intense disappointment, Jayne had already whipped the cream to decorate the top.

  “What’s the story with her and their marriage?” I asked.

  Annie sighed. “I’ll be honest and say that anything I have to tell you about her is clouded by the simple fact that I can’t stand her.”

  “I got that impression.”

  “Uncle David was fifty-two, but he’d never been married before. He and Rebecca had only been married a little over a year. She arrived on the scene after I moved out of his place, so I don’t know her all that well. Her background’s in theater. She has more than a minor amount of talent, from what I’ve heard, but she’s so short she didn’t have much of a chance of making it as an actress, certainly not on stage. She hung around the edges of the Broadway scene for years, always wanting the big break, waiting tables like all the rest of the wannabes. Which, I’m honest enough to say, includes me. She did some commercials and had bit parts in soaps, playing the cute bouncy housewife or the cute bouncy best friend, but that’s about it for her career. I’ve never understood what she and David saw in each other. They’re total and complete opposites.”

  “No accounting for taste,” I said.

  “Money on her part maybe,” Jayne said. “He was rich.”

  Annie grinned. “I’m sure that had something to do with it. About three years ago, Rebecca’s first husband died. They were divorced, but he had no family and was apparently completely friendless. He’d made a fair amount of money since they’d been married, and he left it all to her for lack of anyone else. Not one to carefully invest her inheritance so it would last into her old age, Rebecca immediately went about getting herself a place in the social stratosphere, with all the expense that involves. She quit trying to act, and definitely quit waiting tables, and hit the Manhattan party scene hard. Where she met my Uncle David.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought of him as the party-scene type,” I said. “Except for board games around the table in the library with whiskey and cigars.”

  “And Doritos,” Jayne said. “Can’t have a game night without Doritos and bowls of peanuts.”

  “He’s not,” Annie said. “They were introduced by Miranda at a fundraising function for an orchestra that his mother had been a prominent sponsor of.”

  My research had shown that David discontinued his family’s generous donations to classical music organizations in New York City about a year ago. I wondered if that had anything to do with the interests of his new wife. “Interesting. Miranda didn’t have intentions in that regard herself?”

  “What?”

  Jayne interpreted. “Gemma means did Miranda have her eye on David?”

  Annie’s grin was not friendly. “She was overheard saying to one of her friends that if she’d known David was, after all these years, on the marriage market, she’d have made a play herself.”

  That caught my attention: had Miranda come here this weekend in order to “make a play”? “How would you say the marriage has been doing?” I asked.

  “I haven’t seen Uncle David much since their wedding. I’ve been busy with the waiting-on-tables gig and trying to get auditions.” Annie sighed. “And going to auditions and never being called back. Never mind that, even when I was living with Uncle David he didn’t talk about his feelings or stuff like that. But I’ve picked up a few things here and there. Rebecca’s time was just about over, and I don’t think she has a whole lot left of her inheritance to go back to.”

  I was about to ask what that meant when Annie’s phone rang. She pulled it out of the pocket of her housedress and checked the display quickly, almost eagerly, as though she’d been waiting for the call. Her eyes lit up and she sucked in a breath. “Oh, my gosh. I have to take this. Hi, Joshua, did I get—” She ran out of the kitchen.

  I was prevented from wondering what that had been about by a loud rap on the kitchen door. My assistant Ashleigh waved at me. I let her in, and she staggered in under a load of games and puzzles. I’d called her earlier and asked her to bring some things after the store closed to replace what was trapped behind the police tape in the library. As long as we were pretending to carry on with our weekend, might as well keep the guests entertained.

  “Fancy house,” she said. “Nice kitchen. Hi, Jayne.”

  Jayne waved a big wooden spoon at her.

  “Is that what you wore to work today?” I said.

  Ashleigh looked down at herself. “Sure. Why?”

  “You look … normal.”

  And she did, dressed in clean dark jeans, a pink knit sweater and gray over-sweater, small gold earrings, and flat black shoes. Ashleigh’s clothes were usually more … elaborate.

  “There’s a cop at the gate,” she said. “He called up to Detective Estrada to ask if I could come in. Everyone in town is talking about nothing else, Gemma. I’m surprised the police have let you stay.”

  “That’s because—” Jayne began.

  “Did you remember to write in the log that you took these pieces out?” I asked quickly. I didn’t know what facts and rumors were spreading through town, and I didn’t want to add to anything.

  “Of course I did,” Ashleigh said. “Come on, Jayne, what’s happening?”

  Jayne clamped her lips tightly together.

  “What are they saying in town?” I asked.

  “A lot of nothing,” Ashleigh admitted. “Someone died here and the police are investigating. The Star’s Twitter feed said they were withholding the name of the deceased pending notification of next of kin. You can tell me, Gemma, was it murder?”

  I shook my head.

  Her face fell. “You mean it wasn’t?”

  “I mean I’m not saying. Thanks for bringing these. Don’t let us keep you.”

  “No problem. I’ve nothing planned for tonight. Jocelyn told me it’s an inside job. This house is for sale and the owners are getting desperate because they can’t unload it, so they killed one of the renters so as to get the insurance.”

  “That makes absolutely no sense,” Jayne said. “If they wanted the insurance, they’d have to burn the house to the ground.”

  Ashleigh gasped. “Oh, my gosh. That’s it. The would-be-arsonist was caught in the act and killed trying to get away. Was it you, Gemma? Did you save Suffolk Gardens House?”

  “It was the resident ghost,” I said. “Trying to protect her home. Now, we’ve a busy night ahead of us. If you’ve nothing planned, take off your sweater and put on an apron. You’ll find one behind that door. Those dishes need to be washed and the garbage taken out, and then—”

  “I didn’t mean I have nothing planned, Gemma. I meant nothing I can’t be late for. But now it’s getting late. Bye. Will you be at the store tomorrow?”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  “Okay, bye. I wonder if the police will want to search me when I leave. The cop at the gate was kinda cute.”

  “Bye,” I said.

  The door slammed behind her.

  “You shouldn’t have said that, Gemma, about the ghost. It will be all over town by suppertime. Which,” Jayne glanced at the clock on the stove, “is about now.”

  “No one will believe that. Houses built in the 1960s don’t have ghosts.” I picked up the stack of boxes Ashleigh had brought. “I’ll lay these out in the drawing room for after-dinner entertainment. Can your dinner keep if it has to? I don’t know how long Ryan’s going to use the dining room.”

  “For a while, yes. If necessary I suppose we can serve in here and they can eat in another room.”

  “Holmes,” I said, “would not approve. On that note, I’m running upstairs to change.”

  * * *

  I’d given a lot of thought, and spent a lot of time, on my outfit for tonight. I wanted to be suitably dressed for a dinner party in 1898, but not look as though I was in a theatrical costume. The dress I eventually found (the dress Jayne eventually dragged off the rack at the secondhand shop and made me try on, I should say) was a sleeveless, ankle-length, raspberry chiffon number with ruffles draped across the bodice and running down one side. I topped it with a dark gray fascinator adorned with gray lace and a fountain of raspberry-colored feathers, slipped my feet into soft gray flats, and added the diamond earrings that had been a birthday gift from my parents many years ago.

  In a total breach of Victorian etiquette, I would be not only a dinner guest but helping serve as well. Shocking, I know.

  I decided I might as well enjoy playing the lady guest, and so I took the main staircase rather than using the dark, enclosed servants’ stairs. As I passed, I checked out the “ancestor” portraits on the landing. More mass-produced prints. I can’t say I was surprised; the owners wouldn’t want to leave valuable art and antiques lying around a rental house, but they still wanted the house to have the air of elegant, refined (read: rich) country living. Before coming here, I’d checked out the cost of renting the house for a week and it was, to say the least, eye-popping. Feeling quite the grand lady in my fancy clothes, I descended the stairs. To make the scene even more perfect, I was accompanied by a recording of a mezzo-soprano singing to the accompaniment of a single piano as the sound drifted through the closed doors of the music room.

  Unlike a lady guest, I carried on down the hallway to the kitchen, where I found Jayne and Louise Estrada enjoying a break. A blue china teapot sat in the middle of the island, and the women had proper teacups in front of them. Jayne had brought the pots along with fine china cups and saucers and side plates for the serving of afternoon tea. Which, because of David’s death, had not happened.

  Jayne clapped her hands together. “You look great! I told you that dress was perfect for you.”

  “Who are you?” Estrada asked. “And what have you done with Gemma Doyle?”

  I decided to take that comment as a compliment and I said, “Thanks. Where’s Ryan?”

  “We’re finished with Mrs. Masterson, for now. He’s gone back to town,” Estrada said. “A couple of leads to follow up on.”

 

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