Castle & Key, page 21
Ah. Susan tapped a finger against her upper leg as she stepped into the room, catching sight of Mrs. Carmichael and Mr. Oswald by the windows and deep in discussion. It could be exactly what the master was counting on. In fact, if he framed it exactly right, giving Janet the key in this sort of a setting could only weigh it down with a feeling of expectation and cool formality. Exactly the sort of thing that might make her view it as less of a boon and more of a danger.
The question was, was the master that clever? Susan was inclined to think so.
“There you are!” said Mrs. Carmichael, turning sharply away from Mr. Oswald and taking Susan by surprise. “You can do light magic, can’t you?”
“Enough to avoid getting lost in the hallways,” she said pleasantly.
“Light won’t stop you getting lost in these halls, Miss Susan,” said the housekeeper. “So if that’s what you’re counting on to keep you safe, I’d suggest you think again. We’ll need about a dozen lights in here, all along the ceiling; make it bright and glittering, the master says. The gaslight is unreliable today, and heaven help us all if we don’t give him what he wants!”
“Of course,” said Susan, greatly amused.
So the master was planning on loading the key as heavily as he could to help prevent Janet from using it. It was an exercise in which she could undoubtedly help him, so she would do her best: in this marriage at least, it seemed as though the master was going to great lengths to keep his bride safe. She wondered if that would extend to letting go of the white-knuckled grip he had on the rules and their place in keeping them safe, and found that she couldn’t answer that question as easily.
Emmett, of course, would have done so without a second thought—and why she was thinking of Emmett, Susan realised in some irritation, was anyone’s guess! If they had been in the same situation as the bride and the master, no doubt they would have been loyal and dead. She pushed the thought away, looking around the room for the best ways to lay the kind of light spells that would continue without her presence, and noticed belatedly that the table hadn’t even been set.
“Where’s Helfer? Shouldn’t he be laying the table by—”
“You don’t need to worry about Helfer,” Mrs. Carmichael said. “He’ll worry about himself. The master wants a proper dinner here in the dining room, and we’re going to be busy enough with that without worrying about what everyone else is doing. You’ll have enough to do in making sure that all the candles don’t go out until it’s time for your lights, what with the horrid draughts we get around this place.”
“You don’t believe in ghosts, then, I see,” Susan said, following a natural grain in the wood that ran through the rafters above and could be used as a conduit.
Mrs. Carmichael huffed. “A lot of nonsense to distract the nervous ones. Just do as you’re told and nothing will harm you in this place.”
“So I hear,” said Susan, and went on with her work.
It was tricky work, and Susan had lost track of both Mrs. Carmichael and Mr. Oswald by the time she was more than halfway through the job. To the greenish darkness of a stormy evening was eventually added a growling darkness of night, split occasionally by lightning and cracks of thunder. She was very nearly finished when someone in green velvet walked by the door and sent a wave of relief through her.
Helfer—no doubt going about his duties—was not lost in the manor or hit on the head and left somewhere for someone to find. She had been letting her imagination run away with her, and while that might be sometimes useful in the way of solving puzzles, it had done nothing but cause unfounded anxiety in this case.
Susan finished her magic rather hastily, laying a less-than-straight trail of magic down by one of the rafters to keep it out of sight and easily accessible for repowering the lighting magic, and darted out of the room in hopes of catching Helfer before he disappeared again. Imagination or no, she wanted to see his face with her two eyes and make sure that he was quite well.
When she jogged lightly to the division of the hall and looked first toward the kitchen and then toward the front of the manor, Helfer was just disappearing between the double doors that led to the grand entrance of the house. The lighting around her quivered and fluttered, and thunder growled. Susan muttered beneath her breath and darted after Helfer as the doors swung shut on the black-and-white harlequin tiling of the foyer, glad for the patch of light that the doors left when the lights went out completely in the lower half of the manor.
The tiles seemed to glow in darkness as Susan emerged into the foyer, and even through rolls of thunder, she thought she heard Helfer’s feet on the stairs above as she came out beneath the landing. Exasperated at playing catch, she called his name as she jogged across the room and started up the stairs. She saw the brief movement of bottle-green velvet at the top of the stairs in a flash of lightning, but it vanished before she was two steps up the main staircase, taking two at a time.
By the time Susan was at the top of the stairs, the lighting there flickered at regular intervals as well, making a confusing nonsense of the patterned carpeting on the landing and forcing her to slow down. Despite that, she grinned: her quarry was in sight, just down the hallway and alternately appearing and disappearing as the lights flickered.
“Helfer!” she called, in the lull between two rolls of thunder.
This time, she was sure he heard her. He turned to face Susan, and she thought she saw for, a brief moment, the blankness of almost doll-like eyes and the loose jaw of a person sleepwalking. She narrowed her eyes against the alternating lightning and darkness, trying to see if he really was awake and if the cold whiteness of his cheeks was anything other than the blanching from sudden flashes of lightning through the open door to his left.
“Miss Susan!” called a sharp voice from below, while Susan, a soft glow of magic light beginning to emanate from her fingers, was still trying to make out what it was about Helfer that was so uncanny.
Helfer turned and went on. She would have tried to dart down the hallway too, but it was too late: at the top of the landing, Susan was in plain sight of that gimlet eye. She regretfully took her eyes off the retreating figure of Helfer and faced the housekeeper, leaning over the banisters to display an innocent face to the greenish shadows of the stormy evening below.
“Yes, Mrs. Carmichael?”
“I’ve told you before about going up those stairs! Get down here at once!”
“Yes, but if I do that, I’ll have to come back down them,” Susan said reasonably. “Shouldn’t I go back by the servants’—”
“The master,” said Mrs. Carmichael in murderous tones, “is coming down the hall! Come down here immediately!”
Susan did as she was told. As little as she was sure that Mrs. Carmichael could have her thrown out at this stage in the curse, she didn’t want to make waves when she ought to be blending in as much as possible. Mrs. Carmichael didn’t seize her by the ear at the bottom of the stairs as she had done with Regan earlier that week—she couldn’t, as Susan had earlier pointed out to Helfer, reach as high—but she managed to pinch a fold of Susan’s sleeve in something of the same manner and towed her grimly toward the lower hallway, with very nearly the same effect.
Through the glass partitions of the doors, Susan could already see the master approaching with Janet on his arm. The lights had steadied somewhat down on the lower level, leaving a mere flicker or two between grumbles of thunder, and she could also see Regan and Emmett trailing along in the wake of the couple of the house. Janet threw a worried sort of look over her shoulder at Emmett, and Susan felt her jaw tighten just slightly as the doors opened to admit the master, the bride, and Emmett and Regan in close proximity.
For a moment, nobody seemed to quite know what to say, or why it was that everybody was gathered here. The master, it was sure, knew Something Was Up, but didn’t seem to know quite how to broach the subject, which Susan found amusing and slightly irritating. She would have liked to have thought his presence was because he did know something was wrong and had a desire to help, but that was probably a bit too much—unless Janet had prompted him to it by her urging or her presence. From the way she was standing just a little bit in front of him, Susan would have guessed that the bride had been leading the way.
“An interesting place to hold a meeting,” said the master at last. “I suppose you’re trying to figure out what to do about the lights.”
“Although I don’t know why you find it necessary to be man-handling my maid,” Janet said, with a coolness that made Mrs. Carmichael drop her hand and even move away, much to Susan’s approval.
The housekeeper was made of stern enough stuff, however, to address only the master. “It’s not a meeting, sir; we were just discussing the Rules of the House so that Miss Susan knows not to go up the main staircase.”
“I must have lost my way in the dark,” Susan added helpfully.
“Yes, I do think I’d rather have the gaslight fixed than worry about the stairs right now,” the master said, his beard gleaming almost blue in the half light. “Mrs. Carmichael, I trust that the dining hall—”
“You know, sir,” said Mrs. Carmichael, very meaningfully and far too forcefully, “that I always recommend punishment for solecisms of this sort. I would hate to see the household in disarray, and you don’t know how pert the maids can be.”
“After finding this one in my private sitting room, I’ve got a pretty good idea,” the master said, meeting Susan’s eyes briefly. “I won’t have you punishing her.”
Susan was uncomfortably aware that every eye in the room was upon her, and that not many of them bore a felicitous sort of expression. Janet’s gaze left her first; she was stiff and cool in a way that both worried and comforted Susan. Emmett’s eyes remained on her, a frown between his brows and a slight flare to his nostrils that Susan would have liked to have soothed a great deal more than she at present wished to soothe Janet. Mrs. Carmichael’s look was pure poison, and Regan’s was speculative.
The master alone was cautiously, optimistically playful.
Susan couldn’t quite help responding in kind. She explained gravely, “I thought it my duty to remove the hound, since you seemed to be disturbed at finding her there.”
She lifted her eyes to the ceiling with perfectly timed saintliness; the hound, with just as well-timed accuracy, whined and pawed at the floor. Susan heard the master coughing a split-second later and, pleased, allowed her gaze to return limpidly to his face. He was trying to hide a grin. Emmett had folded his arms across his chest in massive, silent disapproval.
“Sorry about the dust,” she said solicitously to the master. “We must have missed a few spots when we dusted this afternoon. It does get in one’s throat, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it does,” he agreed.
Mrs. Carmichael sent another nasty look in Susan’s direction, and Regan turned her face away, presumably so that the housekeeper couldn’t see that she was grinning.
“I do try to keep order in the household for your convenience, master,” she said.
“I see,” said the master, looking around the room. It was obvious that he couldn’t see anything wrong and didn’t know what else he might do. “Carry on, then. I’ve a few things to prepare in the dining room, so I won’t want anyone in there for half an hour or so. My valet will help with anything else you need.”
Susan exchanged a glance with Janet and was pleased to see the unaffected smile of gratitude that she bestowed on the master. He might not know what was going on, but the master was making sure his bride was safe.
While the master was talking to Janet in a low voice—presumably to tell her when to come to him—she asked Regan softly, “What’s wrong with Helfer? I saw him going upstairs, and he didn’t look right.”
Regan may have turned her face even further toward the inky windows, but Susan could see the motion of her hands below her apron and knew the other girl was wringing those hands.
“I don’t know,” the maid said. “I wish I did! People not being where they ought to be and going off alone is bad news around here.”
Susan said, “I can cover for you if you want to see if you can find him.”
Regan’s tone grew stiffer. “It’s no use doing things like that,” she said. “Either he’s doing what he should be, or doing what he shouldn’t be—either way, we can’t help him.”
She marched away to stand by Mrs. Carmichael and the doors, waiting until the master got far enough up the hallway to follow him at a respectful distance. Susan knew that she would have no opportunity to do anything else.
Perhaps she could get a moment to whisper in Emmett’s ear and—
The lights went out on the lower floor, this time with finality.
“Oh, whatever now?” demanded Mrs. Carmichael’s put-out voice.
Thunder rolled, and a moment later, lightning tore through the room, glaring off every surface for a few seconds longer than should have been possible, and Susan saw a gash of dark green above the banisters.
She made a wordless protest and stepped forward, arms outstretched as if she could really do anything to stop the inevitable, and sensed rather than saw Emmett start across the room toward her.
It was too late, in so many ways. The rumble of thunder overlaid the sound of Helfer’s body hitting the marble, but it couldn’t disguise the fact that he was there, his body crumpled into a nonsense of limbs from the fall and his head split open.
Mrs. Carmichael gave a short, startled shriek and clutched the ruffles on her bodice in a convulsive grip, and Regan made a small, wailing noise and sank to the floor with her face averted. Susan, closest to the body, sent out a flicker of light to gleam off the chandelier crystals and crouched down to make sure Helfer was really dead. She could find no pulse.
There was very little blood; Helfer had possibly already been dead when he fell. He had been since just after she saw him last, Susan rather suspected. She wasn’t even sure he hadn’t been dead then—dead and walking, ready to slump over the banisters and make his final appearance in the manor with what the curse felt to be the best effect.
Silence, sticky with storm and fear, filled the room and curled around the marble floor in a cold breeze. Then the bell on the door tolled with crashing violence, splitting the sudden silence, and was followed by a tremendous clap of thunder.
Janet made a small, shrieking noise and caught at Emmett’s arm. Susan fancied that he angled himself so that he was facing the doors and between Janet and them—which left her, she noticed crankily, to go and see who was at the front doors in this sort of weather, just as they had a dead body on the floor to see to.
She rose and crossed the floor, aware of Brennan’s grumbling humming alongside the thunder, and threw open the smaller, inner door.
Thunder crashed; lightning lit the rectangle of cold, rainy outside and created a momentary silhouette of the two figures that filled the doorway, rain dripping in dark, inky drops from their tweed hats and glimmering on their boots.
“We’re here about the empty position,” said Gardener One triumphantly.
Twelve
“How did they know he was dead?”
It didn’t take the panicked quality of Janet’s voice in her ear to let Susan know that the other woman was completely rattled: she also grasped Susan’s arm with enough strength to leave nail marks through the wool of the tunic sleeve. Neither of them had left the suite for very long last night, and even now that the storm was over and the light of a new day had once again dawned on the manor, it felt more than ever like an unchancy and unsafe place.
“They’ve been watching through the windows for a while now,” Susan said in a low voice, and stopped outside the breakfast room. “Did you speak with the master last night?”
“I’ll tell him this morning,” Janet said, avoiding her eyes.
Susan only nodded. She had a different worry on her mind—one of several, actually, but it was the one uppermost at the moment. It was one thing for the gardeners to have arrived at exactly the time of Helfer’s death—or the discovery of the same. It was quite another for them to have arrived in the full expectation of a place within the house being vacant for them to assume. It didn’t help that the two of them had been up before anyone else in the manor, dressed exactly alike in boots and uniforms that didn’t fit anything like as well as they ought to have, stalking around the halls in tandem and dusting in slow, clumsy strokes.
“They make me shiver,” Janet said, vehemently.
Susan couldn’t disagree; out of all the uncomfortable things about the manor that ranged from mildly unnerving to utterly discomposing, the twin footmen-who-had-been-gardeners were a solid mid-of-the-range unpleasantness that had much the same effect as seeing a spider crawl sedately across the ceiling above the bed.
But that wasn’t Susan’s biggest concern.
It wasn’t even the fact that the master had disappeared just minutes before Helfer plunged over the banisters—thereby making it impossible for Susan to rule him out as the person who had either killed or tossed the boy over. The thought left her torn between what she really wanted to believe, but it wasn’t the worst of her thoughts.
No, the worst of her thoughts revolved around the one-in-three odds that had occurred to her shortly after Helfer’s death—the one-in-three odds that she was responsible for Helfer’s death.
Mr. Oswald had been watching when she talked with Helfer in the courtyard by the kitchen, drawing out information from him about the original owner of the manor. Mrs. Carmichael had possibly hit Susan on the head—and had certainly stopped her from going after Helfer when it might have prevented his death—when Susan discovered Helfer’s night-time sleeping arrangements. Then there was the master, who had been out of sight, and might possibly have murdered Helfer. It was the only option by which Susan couldn’t assign any blame to herself, and it was something of a relief when it occurred to her.
