Murder Takes the High Road(38)
“She’s another conspiracy theorist. She told mother a friend of hers was on that previous trip—the one Rose kept talking about—and that, according to this friend, someone did die suddenly. I don’t know if it was mysterious or not.”
“Are you serious?” I put down the bone china teacup and stared at him. “How did they die? Who was this person? I couldn’t find anything about it when I was searching the internet this morning.”
He looked startled. “You searched the internet?”
Was it that weird? John hadn’t seemed to find it strange. Then again, consider the source. I said, “I’m a librarian. Research is what I do.”
“I don’t know any details. Some woman drowned in her bath.” He threw it out dismissively, but a sense of foreboding crawled down my spine.
“Was this friend of Daya’s a credible witness?”
“Who knows? Mother told Daya the whole thing was ridiculous, and Daya shut up about it. At least to Mother. I saw her whispering away with Rose last night—and then this morning at breakfast she was talking to the Poe girls and anyone else who would listen. That’s probably what set your friend Sally off.”
“Maybe.” I almost told him Sally’s suggestion that I search Rose’s room, but the fewer people who knew about that, the better.
At least until I decided whether I was going to do it or not...
Chapter Thirteen
There was no sign of John when I returned to the hotel after lunch, pleasantly tired and, amazingly, slightly sunburned.
And, not counting Rose, John was the only one of our tour group who didn’t turn up for the really delicious dinner of three cheese tart followed by cold roast fillet of beef with crème fraiche, horseradish and mushroom sauce. Since the Scherfs and Rices were back, it seemed John’s absence had nothing to do with them.
At this rate I would have to turn in my junior detective decoder ring. To comfort myself—and fortify my nerve for the evening ahead—I had a third whisky with my dessert of spiced bramble fudge crumble.
By “evening ahead,” I don’t mean the planned ghost walk, although that was certainly what the rest of the group had in mind. From the moment Ben had inadvertently confirmed Rose’s story of a mysterious death on the previous trip, I’d been unable to get the idea of that missing journal out of my mind.
I still believed what I’d told Sally that morning: not finding the journal proved nothing one way or the other. Rose could have mislaid the journal or the journal could have been packed up, unnoticed, with the rest of her things. But if Rose had hidden it, and if it did contain something...well, maybe not damaging, but at least enlightening, that would certainly be of interest.
To put it mildly.
So, yes, I had not only caught the amateur sleuth bug, I was in full fever. I was as bad as all the rest of them. Maybe worse, given that I knew better. All the same, the whole time we were at dinner I was considering how and when I could most safely get inside Rose’s former room.
I figured my best bet would be during the ghost walk, which was set to take place at nine o’clock. If I lost my nerve or the tour turned out to be really fascinating, I could always scrub my plans for B&E and just stick with hunting ghosts. There ought to be enough of them. In addition to the usual White Lady and Crying Child specters that no decent British manor house would be without, the building had been commandeered as a hospital for wounded soldiers during the First World War. After the war, it had been largely abandoned—the original family had died out, by then—but by World War Two, the building had again seen action, this time as a prison for captured enemy officers.
In other words, lots of opportunity for tormented spirits in every generation. What all these spirits had to say to each other when they passed in the night was anyone’s guess.
John was still not back when I locked our room and started downstairs to join the tour in the bar. I ran into Trevor coming out of one of the guest toilets on the second floor. His face tightened at the sight of me.
“Why have you been ignoring me?” he demanded.
I stopped walking. “Huh? I’m not ignoring you.”
“What do you call this morning? I told you we needed to talk.”
Not exactly news that Trevor was self-absorbed, but this seemed a bit much even for him. “There was a lot happening this morning, plus I just don’t see what there’s left to talk about.” Uneasily, I glanced around for Vance. I didn’t want to tempt him into shoving me down the staircase.
“What ‘a lot was happening’ are you talking about?” Trevor’s stormy eyes grew even darker with suspicion and distrust. What the hell did he think I meant? What did he think was going on?
“You phoned right after we learned about Rose—”
“We?” he barked out, like Sherlock Holmes when poor old Doctor Watson was being particularly dense.
“Me and John. Er, John and I.”
Trevor jumped on my words, like this was the opening he’d been waiting for. “What the hell is going on between you and that guy? Supposedly you only just met. Isn’t that the story?”
The story?
Okay. Now I got it. And it was almost—almost—funny. Except not really. Not given our own history. I drew myself to my full height, which okay, is average, and straightened my shoulders—if I’d been any more strictly aligned, I could have swallowed a sword without damage.