Chapter Twenty-One
TWENTY-ONE
I don’t catch up with Gray, and neither of us gets out of the house quickly. It’s not our home, and the only door we know of is the front one, which is all the way across the house. I get to it just as the butler appears, saying, “Miss?”
I ignore him and dart outside. Then I pause to let my eyes adjust. There is a nearby public gas lamp, and the Adlers have lamps mounted on their house.
I make out Gray zooming around the corner of the house.
I give chase, and the light quickly vanishes.
I’m soon around the back, where the parlor is, and it’s pitch black.
I can see the stable, and I’d expect some light from it, but if there are any lamps here, they haven’t been lit.
When a figure appears, I backpedal. It’s only Gray, who lifts his hands.
“There is no one here,” he says, his voice low. “It was like this when I arrived.”
I blink and peer into the night, but I really can’t make out anything more than shapes.
Gray strides to the window, where the guests have gathered to gape out. He raps on it sharply enough to make them jump. Then he impatiently motions for someone to open the window.
Parsons obeys, and before Gray can say a word, Isla is shouldering her way through with a lit lamp.
“Thank you,” Gray says as he takes it through the open window.
“I will be right there,” Freddie says, withdrawing.
“No!” I say. Then I find my Miss Mitchell voice. “That is very gallant of you, sir, but it will be best if no one joins us until Dr. Gray has examined the scene. We do not see anyone in distress, but perhaps someone could ask the staff if they heard or saw someone?”
“Of course,” Parsons cuts in over his brother-in-law. “We shall leave you to it and question the staff.”
Parsons disappears, but the others cluster around that window until Isla closes it and shuts the curtain. Then I turn to Gray. He’s pacing around the small rear yard with the lamp held out.
“There is no one obviously on the ground,” he says.
“Check the bushes, please,” I say. “And then we will need to widen the search. In case whoever we heard was injured nearby.”
We do that, combing all the shadows near the house and calling softly for anyone in need. One of the grooms comes out, and I ask whether he heard anything.
“No, miss. I was asleep. I need to be up at dawn.”
“Did you hear anything just now?”
“Only you and Dr. Gray. Something woke me about five minutes ago, and then I thought I heard voices.”
I press, but he doesn’t remember what woke him, and he’s the only person in the stable. There’s supposed to be a second groom, but he’s off “visiting his lady friend.”
I turn, scanning the small yard. Someone had been here. From inside, we’d heard a woman talking to someone. Then that shriek, cut short.
I look up and spot a lamppost by the stable. “That is unlit.”
“Yes, miss. Would you like it lit?”
“If you would,” Gray says.
“Is it supposed to be off right now?” I ask.
The groom hesitates. “Depends on what you mean, miss. It is usually on at night, to keep anyone from prowling about. But it was not supposed to be on tonight, on account of the séance.” He points at the windows. “They didn’t want any light shining inside.”
“Do you know who asked for it to be left out?”
“Mr. Loomis—the butler—came out and told us.”
I make a mental note to find out who requested this from Loomis. The Adlers? Or someone on Madame Paix’s team?
I’m about to ask something else when Freddie Home comes racing along the side of the house, with Isla striding behind him, telling him to stop.
He does stop, right at the corner, before he steps onto our potential crime scene.
“It is one of the maids, sir,” Freddie says, panting. “She has disappeared.”
We head inside after asking the groom to watch over the scene. On the way in, Freddie repeats that a maid is missing, and Isla says, “Rose. Her name is Rose.”
“The brown-haired one?” Freddie says, but Isla ignores him.
As we walk in, she says, “Rose does not appear to be in the house, though no one saw her leave it. They have checked her chambers and the kitchen and everywhere she might be. She was still on duty, to help with the séance, and she had been waiting in the library.”
“The room I was in earlier with Miss Emerson?”
“Yes.”
“Which also has a window overlooking the back.”
“Yes.”
“Do we know whether Rose was told to wait there?” Gray says.
Isla makes a face. “My sense is that she thought it a convenient place to linger.”
“And listen to the séance?” I say.
She passes me a smile. “I believe so. I have taken the liberty of checking the room, and the window was cracked open for the evening breeze.”
“No one saw her leave, you say?”
“Apparently not.” She leans toward us, lowering her voice. “You may wish to speak to the parlormaid, Polly.”
“Ah.”
We enter the house to find the séance party gathered in the foyer, as if waiting to pounce.
“I have assembled the staff in the drawing room,” Lady Adler declares. “They have been told to remain there until you are finished with them.” She turns to Gray. “I read that in a detective novel. We must gather all the witnesses.”
“Thank you,” Gray says. “That is very helpful.”
He waves for me to join him, and the others follow along in a pack at our heels, eager to see a detective in action. As soon as Gray walks into the parlor, little Polly shrinks deeper into the shadows.
“Thank you all for your forbearance,” Gray says. “I will begin the interviews with the staff, which will be conducted in private.” A momentary pause, but none of the guests move until Isla begins to gently shoo them out.
Gray continues, “I shall conduct the interviews with the Loomises myself, while Miss Mitchell will start at the other end, with the parlormaid, who I am certain needs to get to bed soon.”
Nicely done. Polly visibly relaxes, and I escort her out, past the still-hovering guests, and down to the library at the other end of the house.
When I close the door behind me, Polly says, “I don’t know anything, miss.”
“That’s fine.” I lower my voice conspiratorially. “I only need to keep you here for a few minutes, so it seems I have done my job. Will you help me with that? If we talk, all they will hear is our voices, and it will seem as if I am questioning you.”
She nods.
“I will start with some very general questions, as we need to understand where everyone was.”
Another nod.
“Did you hear anything outside?”
“No, miss.”
“Did you see Dr. Gray running out? Or me?”
“I saw you, miss. I heard footsteps and came out and saw you leave.”
“Where were you at the time you saw me?”
She hesitates, and I can see she’s considering a lie.
“We only need to know where everyone was,” I say. “If, perhaps, two people say they were in the kitchen, and they both claim to have been alone, that is a problem.”
More silence. Damn it. Time to play twenty questions.
“Were you on this level?”
“Yes, miss.”
“In the front of the house?”
Pause.
Okay, she was in the back of the house. In this section? Listening in on the séance?
“Séances are interesting, aren’t they?” I say.
She relaxes. “Yes, miss. Lily says you cannot speak to ghosts, but Rose says she has seen them. I know Madame Paix was trying to contact Nellie tonight, and we thought if we could hear her or see her—”
She stops short, eyes rounding as she realizes what she let slip.
“We could not make contact, sadly,” I say. “But it would have been interesting.”
She relaxes again, presuming I missed the slip. “Yes, miss.” She blinks, and her eyes well. “I liked Nellie a great deal, and I…” She shrugs her plump shoulders. “I didn’t know why she would leave without telling me, and now I realize she did not.”
“She did not,” I say softly. “Someone hurt her, and we are trying to find out who.”
She nibbles her lip. “You said Madame Paix couldn’t reach Nellie.”
“She could not.”
“Are you sure?”
“I am. I’m sorry.”
“But what if she … if Nellie was not in the room. What if she was…?”
Her gaze goes to the window, and the pebble drops.
“Rose thought she saw something, didn’t she?” I say. “That’s why she went outside.”
Polly hunches in on herself. “I do not know, miss.”
I exhale and look out the window. “Well, I hope someone does, because Rose is gone, and if no one knows why she went outside…”
Silence.
I look to see the young girl fidgeting. Is she afraid of being blamed?
This isn’t Isla’s household, a fact I’ve forgotten as I struggle to figure out why Polly is worried. Not about being blamed for Rose.
“I know Rose was in here during the séance,” I say. “I know she was listening, in hopes of hearing Nellie, which I completely understand.”
Polly watches me, unmoving.
“Did I mention I was a housemaid last year?” I lower my voice.
“Do you know how often I listened in on Dr. Gray and Detective McCreadie’s cases?
They were fascinating, but of course, I was not supposed to be listening.
It was not”—I roll my eyes—“my job. But it is now, because sometimes you need to listen to learn things that others have decided are not for the likes of us to know.”
She’s nodding as I talk.
“I don’t care that Rose was listening to the séance,” I say. “I will cover for her. That is what maids do for each other. When we are trying to learn something they consider above our station, we cover for each other.”
She’s watching me, wide-eyed now.
“I believe,” I muse, “if Rose was in here, it was to tidy up after Miss Emerson and I sat in here earlier. She was doing that, and she heard something through the window.”
Polly’s head bobs, eyes still on me, making sure.
“If anyone else was in here, that person was helping Rose.”
“I was,” Polly blurts. “We had to check the room after you and Miss Emerson sat in here. We were tidying up when…”
“When…?” I prompt.
“When Rose saw something in the yard. Something moving. A shadow, she said. We went to the window and looked out, and there was nothing there, but then we heard it.”
“You heard…?”