H bats his eyes and promises that no one will know that he’s there.
I spin around, searching the room for Edward’s tall form, but he is nowhere to be seen. I must have missed his departure. Once again, I let Mathilde pull me onto the dance floor. I’m hyper-focused on getting this 1920s footwork right, so I notice nothing is awry until I hear Mathilde gasp.
My head snaps up, eyes scanning the room to find out what happened. Nothing seems out of place, but then I hear the woman next to me say, “Is that a cat hanging from the chandelier?”
I raise my gaze in time to catch H swing from the chandelier like a trapeze bar before somersaulting through the air and swan-diving to land in the middle of the dance floor. He snaps his talons at the bandleader, and the band jumps into action.
“Are they playing Beastie Boys?” Mathilde and I squeal in unison.
A spotlight appears from out of nowhere, casting H in a pool of sunshine and leaving the rest of us in shadow. Fist in the air, wings flapping in time to the music, he abandons all pretence of being a cat.
Head held high, H sings in unison with the lead singer, “We gotta fight… fer my right… ta parrrrrrrrrrtayyyyyyy.”
Mathilde and I shout Kate’s name in vain, desperate to make sure she doesn’t miss the scene before us. Between the air guitar and spinning himself around everyone’s ankles, H is in rare form. But no matter how loud we yell, we’re too far away for Kate to hear us over the Beastie Boy lyrics, and neither of us want to turn our heads away for even a moment.
“Are you sure the magic will make the gala guests accept H’s performance as boringly normal?” I ask Mathilde, biting my lip to hold back the laughter.
Mathilde waves an arm around the room. What better proof could we find than the group of oblivious people still dancing away around the dance floor?
H unleashes a fiery shout, turning a nearby woman’s glittering gown to ashes. She barely has time to feel a blast of cool air on her bum before the magic replaces the dress. Tablecloths disappear and reappear, coat tails get singed, and ashy dust floats in the air. Before long, Mathilde and I fall down into nearby chairs, holding our stomachs from all the laughter.
When the song ends, a group of Eternals rushes onto the floor, lifting H onto their shoulders and carrying him out of the room before he can get up to anything else.
❖
Hours later, all the guests and staff finally leave for the night. Kate, Mathilde and I are sprawled across the sofas in an alcove, our heels and sparkly shawls abandoned on the floor.
“How come you never mentioned how handsome Bartie is?” Kate asks, sending Mathilde into a fit of giggles.
“He’s my colleague. My Eternal colleague. The first time we met, my hand slipped right through his. I honestly never looked at him that way.”
“Really?” asks Mathilde. “They all seemed fairly solid to me tonight. The gala did exactly as we hoped.”
Kate chimes in, “I could see the magic getting stronger as the night went on.”
“Did you notice that before or after Bartie kissed your hand goodnight?” Mathilde asks a blushing Kate.
I snicker, “We really need to sign you up for a dating app, Kate, if you’re lusting after a man who’s been dead for the last half century.”
Kate pops up and points the finger at me. “Look who’s talking! I saw you getting cosy with St Margaret’s star professor, one Dr Edward Thomas, when he arrived. I do not understand why you two pretend to dislike one another. I could sense the attraction from across the room.”
Now it’s my turn to blush. “That’s absurd. I was getting his initial impression of the event. Nothing romantic about that at all.”
Somehow, neither Kate nor Mathilde looks convinced.
“Fine,” I confess, “we spent some time together while trying to identify Chef Smythe’s murderer, but I’ve barely seen him since then.”
Mathilde perks up at the mention of the murder investigation. “You never told us how you figured out it was the woman from the dining hall. How did you do it?”
Leaning back, I explain, “Edward and I were close to solving it with our trip out to the Cotswolds. We each had an inkling that the Johnston family had to be involved, but neither of us realised we had a family member living right here at St Margaret. If I hadn’t gone out running and accidentally locked myself out, we might still be trying to solve the case. I never thought I’d be grateful to get caught in a downpour, but my soggy state reminded the security guard of young Beatrice’s fateful run on the morning of the murder. When he told me her parents were the veg vendors, I knew she had to be the killer.”
Kate grimaces, “I’m glad you got to the bottom of it in time to save the gala from being cancelled, but I imagine her family must be devastated.”
I shudder at the memory. “I spotted her mother in the main building a few days later. She looked like she’d aged a decade overnight. But Dr Radcliffe has been doing her best to help the Johnstons, and it looks like Beatrice will end up in a mental hospital instead of prison.”
“That’s good,” says Mathilde. “She’s so young, hopefully they can help her salvage some of her life.” She leans over to scoop a dessert from the platter on the coffee table. “These scones are to die for, Nat. Where did you find a caterer? If I didn’t know better, I’d swear Chef Smythe herself made these.”
“Um,” I cough, “Funny you should say that… because… well, I needed a chef who
