Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter
Twenty-Four
It might seem an obvious statement, but it’s bloody dark in the dungeon.
There’s one measly barred window set right into the top of the wall, and it lets in so little daylight that it serves very little purpose.
I’m getting horrible flashbacks to being shut in the cellar on our last job by the creepy twins.
Marina sandwiches herself against me and mutters in my ear. “Why don’t they ever put lights in places like this?” She fishes her phone out of her blouse and swears under her breath when she finds the battery dead.
Suddenly we’re bathed in a weak circle of light and I look toward the source and find Artie grinning toothily at me.
“It’s on my house keys. My mum bought it for me so I can always find the keyhole in the dark.”
“Good thinking, Artie.”
Even in the dim light, I see appreciation of my praise in his eyes.
“Can you sweep it slowly around the room please? Let’s try to get ourselves a measure of this place.
” All I really want to do is find out if Dino is in here, but if I say that he’ll probably flit away before I can spot him.
Of the Maplemead ghosts, he is the least communicative, with me at least. He made a damn fine job of communicating his feelings to Lois and Barty earlier in the week.
Britannia’s advice that he’s an actions-rather-than-words man rings loud in my head.
I’m hyperaware of a couple of things: one, he’s quite skilled at moving things when he wants to, and two, we’re in the dungeon again.
I walk slowly backward until I reach the wall, my arms outstretched, touching Marina and Artie either side of me to signal they should do the same.
Artie sweeps the low light around, and although it’s really not strong enough to see properly, I see enough to know Dino’s not standing anywhere in this dungeon with us.
I can also make out the shapes of the bulky torture equipment bolted onto the walls, and I have to work really hard to chase Fifty Shades of Grey thoughts out of my mind with Lois and Barty cast in the starring roles.
Sexy, it isn’t. But what if it was Fletch down here with his sea-green eyes and his low-slung jeans?
Would I let him lash me to the wall and tickle me with a feather?
It’s not an instant no. Where was I? Dino.
Dino the Dynamo is a no-show in the dungeon, as far as I can see.
And then I realize I need to look up.
“I need to check around the ceiling,” I murmur as I pull my phone out of my back pocket and click the flashlight. Yes, I know I could have done that earlier, but Artie was so puffed up about his key ring light I didn’t want to burst his bubble.
The strong white beam bounces around the dark room and I direct it upward and swipe it methodically from corner to corner. I’m about to give up when I see him perched on a high ledge.
“He’s there,” I say under my breath, and then I step forward a couple of steps and smile pleasantly up at him.
“Hi, Dino.”
“You again with your magic eyes,” he says, sounding thoroughly bored by me already.
I file his phrase away. I’ve never thought of myself as having magic eyes before, and actually, I quite like it, even though he meant it disdainfully.
I’m just a normal girl with magic eyes. That could work on the dating apps.
I’m not even on any dating apps, but if I was, I think they’d all be swiping left so fast they’d break their fingers. Or swiping right. I have no clue.
“Do you think you could come down here and talk to me please?”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because I’d find it pretty difficult to come up there and talk to you?”
He makes a point of sighing heavily to display how unimpressed he is by my lack of athleticism. We can’t all be Bendy bloody Wendys, can we, I think, but I don’t say it because I don’t think sarcasm is going to entice him from his ledge.
“Please?”
His old-school manners get the better of him and he grumpily executes a graceful double somersault and lands not far from us on the bare earth floor of the dungeon.
I track his movement with my flashlight.
I’m not enjoying this shaky-white-light interview style; it’s all a bit too Blair Witch for my liking.
“Would it bother you if we stepped out into the light?” I ask, gesturing toward the doorway.
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
“I take it we’re staying in here, then?” Marina murmurs, and I nod.
“What do you want with me? I’m busy.”
I decide that, as with Bohemia, it’s going to be best just to be quite direct.
“When I watched you and Britannia perform in the ballroom, it looked to me as if someone had deliberately cut the ropes.”
“Are you investigatore? Polizia?”
I don’t know if he’s throwing Italian words in to wind me up, but I check in with my Sicilian sidekick quickly before I reply.
“No. I’m not police or an official detective. I’m just an inquisitive woman with magic eyes who tries to help ghosts.”
He folds his arms across his broad chest, making his biceps pop. “I don’t need your aiuto.”
Help, Marina reliably informs me.
“So what do you need, Dino?”
“Only one thing.” His dark eyes blaze with passion. “To be in the ballroom this evening to catch her when she falls. And again at midnight. And again in the morning. It’s all I do, same every day.”
“But…you never catch her, Dino,” I say quietly, trying to understand.
“Ancora,” he replies.
Marina translates for me again. Yet. Ancora means yet.
“But I will. One of these times will be the time she finally chooses me, and then I will win.”
I stare at him, incredulous.
“You’ve been repeating your final performance for all of these years and you still think you’re going to save her one day?”
It’s mind-blowing, really. He’s such a fiery, impatient man, and yet three times a day every day for the last God knows how many years he’s taken his part in the vain hope that the outcome will be different.
“I will save her. She will live, so I will live, and we will be flesh and bone here again.”
He speaks with such certainty, as if he really believes it’s true, and I know in that moment that there is very little I can do for Dino right now. He’s held here by his undying love for Britannia Lovell, and she is the only person with the power to release him. Just not the way he imagines.
“You didn’t cut those ropes, did you?”
I ask because I’d like to hear him confirm it, but in my heart, I already know he didn’t. Fletch would have a field day with me relying so heavily on my gut instinct again, but I have a good ear for liars, and of all the things Dino is, a liar isn’t one of them.
“I have her blood on my hands because I let go of the trapeze, but it was not I who cut the ropes. Every time, I try to hold tighter to the bar, but still it flies from my fingers, and every time, she dies. I die too.”
“How did you die, Dino?”
His face shutters, as if the memory physically pains him. “Il leone mi ha ucciso.”
I repeat it to Marina and she winces. “The lion killed him.”
We sit in a line out on a bench in the garden, each of us holding a strong cup of coffee and glad to be out in the daylight.
“So we’ve narrowed it down to either Britannia or Bohemia who cut the ropes,” I say, working through the findings from today’s investigations.
“And we also know that Goliath killed Dino and Dino didn’t kill Britannia,” Marina says.
I nod slowly, trying to formulate their timeline in my head. “So the order of their deaths is Britannia falls, the lion mauls Dino, Bohemia shoots the lion, and then…hang on, what happened to Bohemia?”
Artie pauses from scribbling to look up and make a suggestion. “Shot himself?”
I can’t see many other possibilities. What a sorry, sorry state of affairs.
“Unless someone else shot him.” Marina picks up a stick and tosses it for Lestat to chase. He’s lolling on the grass not far from us, legs akimbo and balls out, and he looks at her with pity in his beady eyes.
God. Every truth we uncover reveals a new question waiting in line behind it. I couldn’t be an actual policewoman or a real detective; it’s mentally exhausting.
“Can we go and play Cinderella with Britannia’s dresses now?” Marina asks.
Artie yelps. “Oh no!”
We both look sideways at him.
“What do I have to wear for the ball?” he asks. The look in his eyes is pure horror.
“Black tie,” Marina says. “Dinner jacket?”
“I only have my old school blazer.” He looks thoroughly downcast. “And the black tie I bought for my dad’s funeral.”
I’m overwhelmed by the urge to throw my arms around him and hug the life out of him.
School was one long round of loneliness and bullying for Artie, and the loss of his dad in a freak beer barrel accident is the worst thing that’s ever happened to him.
I know all of this because Arthur Elliott Senior paid me a visit after he died to plead with me to give Artie a job in the first place.
I was dubious at the time, but it’s turned out to be one of the best business decisions I’ve made.
“We’ll help you,” I say. “Won’t we, Marina?”
She looks thoughtful. “You know, my nonno was quite the man about town in his day; he was about your height. I’m pretty sure we still have some of his handmade Italian suits in his wardrobe at home.”
Artie brightens. “Really?”
When Marina says her nonno was quite the man about town, what she actually means is that her grandpa was pretty much a Sicilian gangster.
I have no doubt that his suits will be the finest money could buy, that they probably didn’t cost him a penny, and that Artie has just unknowingly struck sartorial gold.
“I’ll bring some to work for you to try tomorrow.” She nods. “You’ll need to get your hands on a mask though.”
He falls silent while he thinks. “I’ve got a Chewbacca one somewhere.”
Marina looks to me with sharp alarm, but I just shrug. “People only take them off as soon as they get there anyway. Chewbacca will be perfect.”