will provide me the explanation for the mysterious events that have occurred here.’
‘But what?’
He smiled. ‘It is precisely to determine this that I have tracked you down.’ He pulled a gold watch from his vest pocket, glanced at it, frowned, and looked at me. ‘Now, Miss Turner, I would be very grateful if you will tell me everything that has happened to you since you arrived at Maplewhite.’
And, Evy, finally, I did so. I told him everything, including the tale of the two ghosts at the mill. I hadn’t told anyone of this, not Mrs Corneille, not Mr Beaumont, and certainly not the imperious Inspector Marsh. I felt that I should be unable to convince them of the first ghost’s identity if I complicated the story by mentioning a second ghost, and then a third. One truth, I felt, would have blemished the other. And, as I said, I had honestly begun to doubt their existence.
I nearly did mention them to Inspector Marsh. But the man was so accusatory, so vain and self-satisfied, so prissily officious- how he ever managed to become a police officer I cannot imagine. The London underworld and its denizens must be a good deal less robust than the press accounts suggest. Inspector Marsh would survive for perhaps five minutes in Sidmouth.
Mr Houdini possesses a certain smugness of his own, but he listened carefully to everything, paying especial attention to my chronicle of the mother and the young boy. He asked countless questions, nodding thoughtfully all the while, and then asked to hear the rest of my tale.
I gave it to him, eliminating only the story of Cecily and Mr Beaumont, which is no one’s business, I think, but theirs. At the end, he began asking me a series of really quite remarkable questions. From the gist of them-no, I can’t tell you even that,
Evy. I’m not being coy, honestly. I promised him; I swore I would tell no one what he asked me.
‘And what shall I tell Inspector Marsh,’ I asked him, ‘if he asks about the ghosts?’
He raised his head, like a Caesar. ‘Then you must tell him. Houdini always plays fair.’
And with that, he stood up, thanked me, and set off quickly back into the house.
I really don’t know what to do, Evy. This is all extremely distressing. If the ghastly things that Mr Houdini suspects are true, then-
I cannot.
I shall post this. And then I shall sit down and think everything out.
All my love, Jane
Chapter Thirty-four
Mrs. Blandings was a tall thin woman with a narrow mouth and a narrow chin and permanently narrowed brown eyes glinting from either side of a curved, narrow nose. She had been a handsome woman once, but time and care had deepened the hollows of her face and hardened the edges. Her hair was white and it was curled so tightly that patches of pink scalp glistened between the coils. She wore a long black cotton dress so heavily starched that it rustled like dead leaves whenever she breathed.
She kept her hands on the kitchen table, her fingers interlaced. The hands were thin and almost elegant but her knuckles were red, as though she’d been pounding them against bricks.
“I will not dally,” she told Inspector Marsh grimly. “I am incapable of dallying. Constitutionally.”
“We won’t take much of your time, Mrs. Blandings,” Marsh assured her. He hadn’t been doing much dallying himself. We’d come down here at nearly a run and he hadn’t quoted Shakespeare once.
We were sitting down at a table in the comer of the kitchen. It was a huge room, maybe thirty feet high. Fireplaces and ovens were built into the stone walls. There were five or six big wooden cupboards and six or seven long wooden shelves sagging beneath rows of heavy porcelain canisters. Four big sinks were built into the marble counter. Hanging on the walls were pots and pans and saucers and colanders and bowls and caldrons. There was a big metal drain in the floor, so you could hose everything down after you butchered your whale.
“Lady Purleigh tells me,” said Marsh, “that the two of you were together yesterday when you heard the rifle shot.”
“Poachers,” she said. “No respect at all these days.”
“And where were you, exactly, when you heard the shot?”
“In the conservatory. Discussing dinner with her ladyship.”
“How long have you been employed here, Mrs. Blandings?”
“All my life.”
“So, doubtless, you know the family well.”
“Yes.”
“Would you say it was a happy family?”
“Certainly.”
“No arguments, no dissension?”
“None.”
“But even in the best of families, surely-”
“It isn’t my place to speak of other families. You asked about this one. Was it happy. Yes, I said.”
Marsh nodded. “So you did. Are you prepared to speak about ghosts, Mrs. Blandings?”
She eyed him skeptically. “Ghosts?”
“Were you aware that one of the guests, a Miss Turner, claims to have been visited by a ghost on Friday night?”
“Nonsense. The woman must be hysterical.”
“You don’t believe in ghosts.”
“Of course not. But what I believe is hardly your concern, is it?”
Marsh smiled. “Do you believe, Mrs. Blandings, that the late Earl committed suicide?”
“I have no opinion on the matter.”
“None?”
“None.”
“The Earl had been infirm for some time,” said Marsh.
“For three years.”
“Had you been given any reason to believe that his condition might have been improving?”
“Improving? He was paralyzed.”
Marsh nodded.
Mrs. Blandings glanced impatiently around the room, looked back at Marsh. “Are we finished? I’ve things to do.”
“Yes. For the moment. But I should like to speak to one of the kitchen maids. A young woman named Darleen.”
“The O’Brien girl? Why?”
Marsh smiled. “Forgive me, Mrs. Blandings, but that s hardly your concern, is it?”
She blinked, and then she pursed her lips and stood. “I’ll send her in,” she said, and left.
Marsh turned to me and smiled. “Not exactly forthcoming, was she?”
“Maybe Darleen will be different.”
Darleen was different. She wore black patent leather shoes and white cotton stockings and a black button-up cotton dress printed with tiny pink fleurs de lis. It was a conservative outfit, or it was supposed to be, and probably she’d worn it to church this morning. I felt sorry for the minister.
She was in her early twenties and her body was so lush and ripe beneath the dress that she might as well be naked, and she knew it. She swept into the kitchen flickering like a colt and she tossed back her thick red hair and grinned at us. “And what’ve you done to poor Mrs. Blandings, you two? The poor old dear is givin’ off more steam than an express train.”
Both Marsh and I had stood. “Miss O’Brien?” he said.
“That’s me,” she said, and she cocked her head and smiled. Her eyes were green and bright and her cheeks
