drawing room.
Tichborne's terrified eyes fixed on him.
“Burton! Please! Please!”
Lady Mabella levelled her black eyes at the king's agent, and he heard in his mind an accented female voice command: “Do not interfere!”
He stumbled and clutched his head, feeling as if a spear had jabbed into his brain. The pain passed in an instant. When he looked up again, the ghost and Tichborne had vanished through the door leading to the main parlour.
“Are you all right?” Swinburne asked, catching up with him.
“Yes! Come on!”
They burst into the parlour, paced across it, and tumbled into the manor's entrance hall.
The two wraiths, led by Lady Mabella, were pulling Sir Alfred up the main staircase. He screamed and pleaded hysterically.
A gun boomed and plaster exploded from the wall beside him. Burton looked around and saw Lushington with a pistol in his raised hand.
“Don't shoot, you fool!” he shouted. “You'll hit the baronet!”
He started up the stairs.
Sir Alfred was dragged around a corner, his cries echoing through the house.
Burton, Swinburne, and the others followed the fast-moving wraiths down the hallway leading to the rear of the mansion, through the morning room, into a small sitting room, then to a dressing room, and into the large bedchamber beyond.
Burton stumbled into it just as Lady Mabella gripped Tichborne around the waist and disappeared with him through the closed window. His body passed through the glass without shattering it. A short scream of terror from outside ended abruptly.
The two wraiths hovered before the glass. One of them turned, reached up, and raised its phantom top hat. The figures dissipated.
Stepping to the window, Burton slid it up and looked out. About three feet below, swells of impenetrable white mist rose and fell like liquid.
“Jankyn!” he bellowed, spinning on his heel. “Follow me! The patio! Quickly, man!”
The physician, who'd been lagging behind the others and had only just entered the room, found himself being tugged along, back down the stairs, and through the house to its rear. The rest of them followed.
“What's happening?” Lushington demanded. “Where's Sir Alfred?”
“Come!” Burton called.
They entered the hunting room and the king's agent pulled open the door to the patio. Dense mist enveloped the men as they stepped outside.
“I can't see a thing!” said Jankyn.
“Over here.”
Burton knelt beside Sir Alfred Tichborne, who lay broken upon the pavement, blood pooling from the back of his head.
Jankyn joined them.
“He was thrown from the window,” Burton explained.
Tichborne looked up at them, blinked, coughed, and whispered: “It hurts, Doctor Jankyn.”
“Lie still,” the physician ordered.
Sir Alfred's eyes held Burton's. “There's something-” He winced and groaned. “There's something I want-I want you to-do.”
“What is it, Sir Alfred?”
A tear slid from the baronet's eye. “No matter who claims this-this estate tomorrow, my brother-my real brother-he and I were the last Tichbornes. Don't allow anyone else to-to take the name.”
He closed his eyes and emitted a deep sigh.
Jankyn leaned over him. He looked back at Burton.
“Sir Alfred has joined his mother.”
Even though it was near enough midnight, Burton took a horse and trap and galloped to Alresford, where he hammered on the door of the post office until the inhabitants opened a window and demanded to know what in blue blazes he thought he was bally well doing. Displaying the credentials granted to him by the prime minister, he quickly gained access to the aviary and gave one of the parakeets a message for the attention of Scotland Yard.
Early the next morning, an irregular ribbon of steam appeared high over the eastern horizon and arced down toward the estate. It was generated by a rotorchair, which landed with a thump and a bounce and skidded over the gravel on the carriageway in front of Tichborne House.
A burly figure clambered out of it, pulled leather-bound goggles from his eyes, and was mounting the steps to the portico when the front door opened and Burton emerged.
“Hello, Trounce. Glad to see you!”
They shook hands.
“Captain, please tell me the parakeet was joking!”
“Joking?”
“It told me murder had been done-by ghosts!”
“As bizarre as it sounds, I'm afraid it's true; I saw it with my own eyes.”
Trounce sighed and ran his fingers through his short, bristly hair.
“Ye gods, how the devil am I supposed to report that to Commissioner Mayne?”
“Come through to the parlour, I'll give you a full account.”
Some little time later, Detective Inspector Trounce had been introduced to Colonel Lushington, Henry Hawkins, and Doctor Jankyn, and had taken a statement from each of them. He then examined Sir Alfred's body, which lay in a small bedroom, awaiting the arrival of the county coroner.
Trounce settled in the smoking room with Burton and Swinburne.
“It's plain enough that he was killed by the fall,” he muttered. “But how am I to begin the investigation? Ghosts, by Jove! It's absurd! First Brundleweed and now Tichborne!”
“That's a very interesting point,” Burton said. “We can at least establish that the two crimes are linked- beyond the presence of a ghost, I mean.”
“How so?”
“We dismissed Brundleweed's spook as either imagination or a gas-induced hallucination. However, last night I witnessed ghosts pulling poor Sir Alfred straight through solid matter. It strikes me that if they can do that with a man, then they can certainly do it with diamonds.”
“You mean to suggest that, some little time before Brunel's clockwork raiding party arrived, Brundleweed's ghost reached into his safe and pulled the Francois Garnier gems right out, replacing them with onyx stones, all without even opening the door?”
“Yes. Exactly that.”
“And was it the Tichborne ghost, Captain? This Lady Mabella?”
“It would be fair to assume so. The motive appears to be the same; she has an interest in black diamonds. There's rumoured to be one, of the same variety as the Choir Stones, concealed somewhere on this estate. Lady Mabella has spent night after night knocking on the walls around the house. What does that suggest to you?”
“That she's been searching for a secret hiding place?”
“Precisely-although it's strange that she should knock on walls when she has the ability to walk right through them. That aside, we appear to have a diamond-hungry spook on our hands. I propose that our priority should be to discover the stone before she does; perhaps then we can find out why it's so important to her.”
Trounce rubbed his hands over his face, his expression a picture of exasperation. “Fine! Fine! But it beats me why a diamond should be of any blessed use to a ghost!”
“As I say, my friend, that is the crux of the matter.”
“And why murder Sir Alfred?”
“Perhaps to make way for the Claimant?”
