Chapter 13
Tom
They drew to a halt at the basement alcove where the carpet was. Tom couldn’t see anything out of place, though he didn’t want to turn on any overhead lights.
“No sign of a struggle,” he said, doing a three-sixty as Amelia shone the torch from his phone. “So how did the hair come to be down here?”
“Could be they brought the rug down here because they planned to carry everything out through the tunnel but weren’t able to open the hatch? Or maybe they panicked. People do weird things when they panic. And they were arguing, so…”
He shoved open a low wooden door on the other side of the basement and switched on a light in the little gun room, his boot crunching. Broken glass was sprayed over the floor, next to a discarded cricket bat.
“Oh my God!” Amelia whispered. “Is this where it happened?”
“Uh, no.” Tom crossed to a trio of steel gun cabinets lining the far wall. “This is where my mother happened.”
“Your mother?”
“She showed up unannounced a couple of days ago to ‘say goodbye’ to the house, which I did think was odd, because she always hated this place. She hadn’t been back since Eddie’s aneurysm.
She took him to London, and that was that.
But it all made sense when she asked where the whiskey decanter was—boxed up in here with some of my grandfather’s personal things.
She grabbed the cricket bat from upstairs, marched down here, and smashed it, along with the matching glasses.
He loved that decanter, used to boast that generations of earls had used it, but I think she saw it as a symbol of her subjugation.
He could be a bitter drunk.” Tom tried the lock code for the first cabinet, then swore.
“The code doesn’t work?”
“No, but I haven’t fired a weapon in years. Duncan’s probably updated the codes since then. We’re supposed to do it regularly. I don’t even know what’s left in here. We sold most of our hunting equipment to the Pritchard boys.”
“The Pritchard boys?”
“Our neighbors—Rhys and Griffin. The ones who now poach in our wood.”
“Did your mother hate the house because of what happened to your brother?”
“That didn’t help, but it went much further back. If it were up to her, she’d douse the place with petrol and watch it burn.” He moved to the next safe.
“That bad?”
“She didn’t realize marrying the heir to an earldom would involve baking four hundred cupcakes for the village fair, holding the ladder while her husband fixed the guttering, and cooking and keeping house for a demanding old-school father-in-law.
While trying to prevent two wild little boys from plummeting off a turret.
Now it involves being a caregiver for the current earl.
So yes, her romantic illusions swiftly soured, and she never did become a countess. Damn, this code’s not working either.”
“Maybe we won’t need a gun.”
“I very much hope we don’t. There’s an older gun safe in my grandfather’s study. No idea what’s in it, but we need to go up there to get the key anyway.”
They left the room, Amelia picking her way around the debris. “Your mother must still feel very strongly.”
“I honestly had no idea,” he whispered as they climbed the stone steps to the ground floor.
“She keeps things to herself. It’s lucky for her she did get a divorce—means her finances are no longer tied to the estate, and Eddie is well cared for.
She did better out of it than my father, in hindsight.
She spent a good deal of the settlement on an ultra-modern apartment in London with all the latest tech and appliances.
If anything even threatens to slip out of place she gets it fixed immediately, and she replaces her car with a new one every few years.
While we’re here, let’s quickly check if the landline is working. ”
They crept along the servants’ hallway, stopping at the laundry so Tom could grab another jumper and then at the butler’s room to check the phone and modem.
Both dead. He pointed out the clump of gray hair still sitting beside the robot vac, and Amelia nodded, her lips tightly pursed.
As they left, he swiped the paperweight from the desk and tossed and caught it.
“Lucky charm?” she said.
“Something like that. It’s a chunk of glass from the fire of 1876. Found in the ashes, probably from a melted vase or ornament.”
“Yes, you told me that last night! Not sure how lucky it’s proving today. It’s so creepy, knowing what might have been happening while we were merrily tripping.”
“We’re still here, aren’t we?” He tossed and caught it again. “It helps me think. Some of my earliest memories are of sitting on the rug in my grandfather’s study, holding it in a ray of sunlight and watching the path the light took through it.”
He dropped it into his coat pocket and led Amelia into the antechamber that separated the grand entrance hall from the servants’ corridor.
He inhaled as they passed through—a habit since childhood.
It had never lost the tobacco-and-dog smell from his grandfather’s coats, though they’d long since gone to the village charity shop.
He opened and closed the doors extra gently—the entire ground floor was a wind tunnel, even on a still day.
Open a door too quickly, and another would slam.
If you propped all the doors open in a light summer easterly, you could funnel a jasmine-scented breeze from the kitchen garden all the way to the library. He frowned. Not next summer.
As they crossed the grand entrance to the staircase, a deep groan murmured across the ceiling, far above their heads, and the chandelier’s crystal pendants tinkled. Amelia met his gaze, with a question. “Miss Havisham,” he confirmed. “Keeping an eye on things.”
He was keeping an intense eye on their surroundings too, but he had the distinct feeling there was nothing in the house that didn’t belong. It was a big estate, and as far as their pursuers knew, they were still outside.
At the first-floor landing, Amelia halted and took in the old tapestry. “I stared at this for ages last night, convinced there was something incredibly significant about it.”
“Not sure a three-hundred-year-old tapestry will provide the answers we’re seeking.”
She tipped her head to one side. “It was probably an epiphany about the style of weave. Or perhaps I imagined I found a hidden door.”
“Northanger Abbey,” he said, picking up on the Austen reference. “Like the sergeant said, if this ever got to court, we would be the worst witnesses ever.”
They crossed the landing and silently walked through the rooms that led to the ballroom. As they entered the mezzanine, Amelia pressed her back against a wall, inhaling deeply.
“Amelia?”
She closed her eyes tightly for a second. “I can’t shake the feeling we’re being watched.”
He took a spot on the wall beside her. A single ray of sunlight cut through the windows, spotlighting dust billowing in competing draughts. “I’ve been keeping an eye out, and I’m pretty sure we’re not. The fact we’re not being shot at right now is a good sign.”
“I guess.”
“Come on,” he said, pushing off. “One more room and then we make our escape.”
As they entered the study, Tom’s eye was drawn to a desk drawer that was yawning open.
Probably Connor, yesterday morning—or the upcycler.
It was the drawer his grandfather had kept stationery in, a habit his father never bothered to change.
The bookcase that spanned one wall was jammed full, as it had been for Tom’s entire life.
He scanned it for the family book, but it wasn’t there.
“This isn’t the same rug as in the photo,” Amelia said, bending to lift a corner. “A cheap imitation Persian. Look, it’s backed with polypropylene.”
“Well, it didn’t get replaced overnight,” Tom said, quietly opening and closing drawers, trying to remember where he’d seen the spare car key. “That rug has been here for years. Look at the dust in the corners that the robot vacs can’t get to.”
“Is this you?” she said, walking to the sideboard and picking up a gilt frame. It was a photo taken at Sandhurst: his graduation as second lieutenant.
“It is. With my father and grandfather.”
“They look very proud.”
“They needn’t have been. Military service is a family tradition, but I wasn’t a great soldier.
I mean, I could shoot straight, but I don’t like taking orders, and I just wanted to go to university and design houses.
I served my time and got out as soon as I could.
Eddie would have been better suited, but…
” He yanked open one of the middle drawers and pulled out a set of keys on a miniature Eiffel Tower keyring. “Keys to your carriage, my lady.”
“You have a carriage?”
“The remains of one, yes. But I’m speaking metaphorically. The Land Rover?”
She rolled her eyes at her own guilelessness.
As Tom pocketed them, he looked at the rug, screwing up his face. “Remember I told you I played with the paperweight in here, as a kid? I remember looking at the colors through the glass—a vivid blue, with a sunburst pattern.”
“The Axminster. So it was here then. Could it have been moved into another room at some point, and that’s our murder scene? I don’t remember seeing it when we were wandering around yesterday, but we didn’t go into all the rooms.”
Tom crossed to the old gun cabinet. “My mother used to move things around from time to time, though my grandfather would usually insist they were put back the way they were. There are rolled-up rugs in some of the rooms, but I’ve never looked closely. I guess the valuers would have.”
“Do you have a copy of the chattels list?”
“Connor emailed it, but I haven’t looked at it.
And now there’s no wi-fi.” He entered the old safe code—his grandmother’s birthday—via the dial.
The safe unlatched with a click and he opened it.
He drew out the sole gun—an old double-barreled shotgun—and examined it.
“This probably hasn’t been fired since fox hunting with dogs was banned two decades ago.
It’s old but it should fire. Bit of dust, but no rust. If our objective was to buy time… ”
Amelia picked up a frame from the desk—the photo that the influencer had zoomed in on.
“Your paperweight is in this photo. Hey,” she said, peering closer, “the hat that woman is wearing—you tried it on last night in one of the attics! A black toque—a silk base with netting and swirled raffia panels and—”
“Black feathers,” he finished. “That thing was itchy! We can remember that, but we can’t remember the faces of the bloody killers?”
“Sex!” she said suddenly, and then flinched at how loudly she’d spoken. “Sex,” she repeated in a whisper, in case he hadn’t heard it the first time around, which he absolutely had.
“What?”
“We should have sex. That could trigger more memories.”
“Blimey,” he said, opening the gun. The chambers were empty, but there were eight shells in the safe, which all looked okay.
It was only slightly better than nothing.
“That is the most blatant come-on I’ve ever heard.
” But just the prospect of it ignited a reaction right up and down his body.
That brandy had to still be in his system.
Maybe once they were safe, once they knew Duncan was okay and this was all some bad trip, they could…
“Not right this minute,” she said hurriedly. “I mean, that would just be… Just saying… In theory… I just feel like the brandy is still… It’s like being possessed.”
It really was. Tom planted the gun on the desk and crossed the room, pulling Amelia to him and kissing her before logic and good sense could talk him out of it.
She melted into him, slipping her hands under his coat and T-shirt and driving them up his spine.
He walked her backwards until she was pressed against the wall, then hoisted her so she could wrap her legs around him.
Abruptly, he pulled away, staring at her.
“You’re right, you’re right,” she said. “We must stop letting a long-dead salamander make our decisions for—”
“Shh,” he said, quietly lowering her. “It’s not that. I heard something.”
Her eyes widened. “What?”
“Not sure. Something out of place.” A door opened and closed, and not by the wind—one of the doors to the floor of the ballroom. “We need to get out of here.” He grabbed the gun. “Stay close behind me.”
The second he nudged the door, a gunshot cracked, close by.
Very close. He kicked the door shut, just as another blast came.
A bullet splintered the middle panel of the door.
He pushed Amelia away. “Get under the desk!” He put his weight behind a cabinet beside the door and shoved it.
It didn’t budge. Probably hadn’t moved in decades.
He shoved again. Footsteps were crossing the ballroom.
Still the cabinet wouldn’t move. He swore and tried again.
After a second, it gave, with a loud scrape—Amelia was pushing too.
Together they managed to slide it across the door.
“Thanks,” he said.
He was a right muppet for letting his guard down, and to kiss her! Some Regency hero he was.
“Could we climb out the window?” she said.
“We’re two floors up and it’s smooth stone all the way down to a gravel path.”
“So we sit tight and hope that help arrives?”
Another gunshot boomed, and the door shredded some more. Tom pulled Amelia to a crouch behind the desk. The door and the cabinet would be a pile of kindling in minutes, and their attacker had a real weapon, not a museum piece. Tom backtracked to the sash window and heaved it up.
“I see what you mean,” Amelia said, at his shoulder. “There are no footholds in that at all.”
A volley of shots tore up the door, sending splinters flying. “I don’t think we have a choice.”