The Hellfire Club

'I'm also interested in the renovation that happened the year after that.'

'Who are you? What do you want?' Her voice trembled.

'I'm just an interested party.'

'What is this about?' Agnes looked back and forth between Dart and Nora.

'History,' Dart said. 'Flashlight into the past. What Honey House is supposed to be.' He grinned. 'Fess up now, did it ever look like that antique shop we saw today?'

Agnes was silent for a time. 'I went in and out of the cottages every day of my life, and the only one that ever had what you could call a lot of stuff in it was Mr Lincoln Chancel's Rapunzel, and he put all of it in there himself. If our guesthouses had been like that, some of these noble individuals would have waltzed off with whatever they could stuff into their suitcases. The trust people, they don't care, as long as it looks pretty.'

She turned her gaze to Nora. 'By and large, this was a fine, decent place. I won't say otherwise. And the things I think, I'm not going to say to any policeman, that's for sure.'

'We mentioned policemen?' Dart asked.

'Not at all.' Nora tried to communicate silently with Agnes and saw only anxiety in her eyes.

'I don't understand what's going on,' Agnes wailed.

Nora leaned forward. 'All I want to talk to you about is that summer. That's all. Okay?' She saw a looming panic. 'Whatever you have to do afterwards is fine. You can do whatever you want.' She waited a beat, and Dart turned his entire body in her direction. 'Call down and talk to Margaret. Call anyone you like. Do you understand?'

The dark eyes seemed to lose some of their confusion. 'Yes. But I don't know what to say.'

Nora remembered her conversation with Helen Day. 'I know this is difficult for you. Let me tell you what I think. I think you don't want to be disloyal, but at the same time you've been keeping something secret. It isn't pretty, and people like Marian Cullinan and Margaret Nolan wouldn't want it to come out. But they don't even know about it, do they?'

'They're too new,' Agnes said, looking at her in mingled wonder and suspicion.

'Lily knows part of it, but not as much as you do, isn't that right?'

Agnes nodded.

'And here come two people you never saw before. I think part of you wants to get this thing off your chest, but you don't see why you should tell it to us. I'd feel the same way. But I'm interested in what happened that year, and almost no one else is. I'm not a cop or a reporter, and I'm not writing a book.'

Agnes glared at Dart.

'He doesn't care what happened to Katherine Mannheim,' Nora said.

To indicate his indifference to the disappearances of female poets, Dart faked a yawn.

'I might be the only person you'll ever meet interested enough in this to talk to people who knew Bill Tidy and Creeley Monk.'

'Those poor men,' Agnes said. 'Mr Tidy was a good, honest soul, and Mr Monk, I liked him, too, because he could make you laugh like anything. Didn't matter to me if he was a…'

'A wagtail?' Dart said. 'A prancer? A tiptoe boy?'

Agnes gave him a disdainful glance. 'There's a lot of ways to be a good person.' She returned to Nora. 'Those two didn't know anything. They were here, that's all. Even if they heard anything, they wouldn't have thought twice about it.'

Nora remembered something Everett Tidy had told her. 'On the night Katherine Mannheim disappeared, Bill Tidy thought he heard poachers.'

Agnes shook her head. 'Wasn't a poacher in a hundred miles who'd risk his hide at Shorelands, not in those days. Monty Chandler gave one a load of bird shot and caught another in a mantrap, let him starve for two days, and that was it for poachers.'

'So he heard something else.'

Agnes pulled her robe closer to her neck. 'Guess he did.'

Almost against her will, Nora pushed forward. 'I have some ideas. What if I tell you about them, and you tell me if I'm right?'

Agnes squinted at her and nodded once. 'I could do that.' She took in a great breath and pushed it out. 'After all this time…' She began again. 'That girl had a little sister. Kept her picture on her desk. The sister came here. Fine young lady. If she's still alive, she deserves to know the truth.' She gave a flickering, almost frightened glance at Nora.

Nora tried to look as if she knew what she was doing. 'I don't think Katherine Mannheim ran away from Shorelands. I think she died. Is that right?'

'Yes.' Agnes's upper lip began to tremble.

'I think Hugo Driver had something to do with her death. Am I right?'

'What do you mean?'

'Didn't she come into Gingerbread and find Driver looking through her papers? Wasn't there a struggle?'

'No! That's all wrong.' Agnes's chin began to tremble.

Nora's impersonation of confident authority began to evaporate. Her favorite theory had just been destroyed. 'She died that night. Her body had to be hidden.'

A tear slipped from Agnes's right eye.

'She's buried somewhere on the estate.'

Agnes nodded.

'And you know where.'

'No, I don't. I'm glad I don't.' She glanced at Nora. 'I have to do tours, you see. Couldn't go where they put her.'

'Hugo Driver and Lincoln Chancel.'

'Did everything together, those two.'

'That's why you still hate Lincoln Chancel.'

Agnes shook her head with surprising vehemence. 'I hated Mr Chancel from the beginning. That man thought he had a right to touch you. Thought he could do anything he wanted and then make it all right with money.'

'He offered you money?'

'I told him he was trying his dirty tricks with the wrong girl. He laughed at me, but he kept his hands to himself after that.'

As interesting as this digression was, Nora wanted to get back to the main subject. She tried another approach. 'Georgina knew that Katherine Mannheim hadn't just disappeared, didn't she? When she led everyone up to Gingerbread after dinner the next night, she already knew that the girl was dead.'

'I hate to say it, but she did.'

'She knew the door was unlocked even before she opened it.'

'I wasn't there,' Agnes said miserably. 'But Miss Weatherall knew.'

'How did you know her door was unlocked? Did you tend to Gingerbread?'

She nodded. 'When I went to do the cleaning that morning, the door was unlocked and she wasn't inside. I hoped she was probably out in the gardens. At noon I put her box lunch in front of her door, because that was what we did, and it was still there the next morning.'

'You didn't know that she was never going to come back.'

'How could I? The mistress told me she'd run away. 'Climbed the wall,' she said. Made me feel funny. Especially after… after what happened.'

A hint of understanding came to Nora. The reason that Georgina Weatherall had known her troublesome guest was gone before she opened the door to Gingerbread was directly in front of her, becoming more troubled with every second. 'Did you say something to her, Agnes? Did you see something that disturbed you and tell Georgina about it?'

'I wish I never had.' She held herself stiffly for a moment, and then another bolt of emotion went through her, and she began to cry.

Perfectly at ease. Dart twisted his mouth into a smile.

Nora tried to work out what Agnes had seen and remembered that Creeley Monk had seen Driver and Lincoln