Murder Takes the High Road(40)

“It seems not. But...” Mrs. Jamieson paused for dramatic effect.

“But?” prompted Yvonne.

“What happened to the fourth wife?” That was Nedda again.

“Ah,” Mrs. Jamieson said approvingly. She held up her artificial candlestick. It cast flickering light over the ring of watchful faces. “The fourth Mrs. Strathallan outlived her husband, who took a fatal tumble down the main staircase one summer’s eve. It is Strathallan’s ghost who is said to walk these halls.”

“Good for her!” Daya said. Roddy cleared his throat uneasily.

Mrs. Jamieson was on the move again, chirping cheerfully about death and destruction. The group trailed along behind her. I began to drop farther and farther behind. In the near total darkness, and absorbed by Mrs. Jamieson’s storytelling, no one paid any attention to me.

Eventually the ghost hunters turned a corner and I turned and sprinted quietly back the way we had come.

I have to admit I got lost a couple of times. All those austere portraits and faded brocade-papered halls looked alike, and there were a disconcerting number of stairs that seemingly led nowhere, or at least nowhere I wanted to go, but eventually I traced my steps back to the main dining room. I got a few strange looks from the row of gentlemen seated at the bar, so I must have looked somewhat desperate by then, but from there it was easy enough to find my room.

I unlocked the door and let myself in.

The room was dark, so John was not back, but there was still a hint of his aftershave in the gloom.

I felt for the light switch and snapped it on. A thin radiance illumined the worn carpet and battered old furniture. John’s belongings were spread out exactly as he’d left them. He hadn’t come and gone.

Had he said anything about staying away overnight? I didn’t think so, and we were leaving early the next morning. I hoped he hadn’t decided to bail on the tour. That was kind of funny, given how unenthusiastic I’d been at the start at the idea of a roommate.

I stepped out on the landing and had a look around. There was no one to be seen. The hotel seemed almost eerily quiet, but then this wing always felt cut off from the main part of the hotel. Because it was.

Sally said Rose had questioned Alison about that, about why our rooms were separate from the rest of the group, and Alison said there had been a mix-up with the reservations. The hotel had squeezed us into the wing that was generally only used during the height of tourist season—which this was not.

It was a plausible explanation, but standing there in the faded light, watching the dust motes floating through the air, I wondered.

On the other hand, it was really hard to believe the staff at the Ben Wyvis Manor House Hotel were obligingly going along with some nefarious scheme of Alison’s.

The grandfather clock in the passage below loudly, slowly ticked out the minutes.

Nothing happened.

Well, of course nothing happened. If something was going to happen, I would have to do it. That was the whole point.

And if I was doing this, I would probably never have a better opportunity than right now. The hotel staff was busy with the after-dinner cleanup and the hotel guests were either settling down for the evening or trudging along on the ghost walk.

I moved down the landing to Rose’s former room, and gently tried the handle.

The door was locked. As expected.

I had joked to John that a good hard wiggle would unlock the door, but several wiggles—and a couple of yanks—later, I was still on the outside of Rose’s room.

I stared at the door for a few more minutes, but that didn’t do the trick either.

I could always try breaking in with a credit card. These old slanted latch mechanisms were perfect—er, vulnerable—to that. Or at least, it always worked in books. Books. It occurred to me that in The Cure for Wellness QC Michael Patterson had had to get into one of the rooms in this very hotel, and he’d done it by finding a safety key hidden in a pot of artificial flowers in one of the hallways.

That was fiction for you. In real life that would be way too convenient.

Right?

I went down the stairs to the little glassed-in passageway that connected the annex from the main part of the hotel, and sure enough there was a large white pitcher of silk flowers sitting on a spindly antique table propped against the bottom of the staircase.

I emptied the silk flowers out and heard the chime as something metallic hit wood. I bent down and picked up the tarnished, silver key that had landed on the Oriental carpet.

I almost laughed. That was too easy. Suspiciously easy, really. This couldn’t really be a working master key.

Only one way to find out. Heart thumping in guilty excitement, I stuffed the flowers back in the pitcher and returned upstairs. A couple of twists and turns of the key, and the door to Rose’s room swung open with a creaky yawn.

I stepped into the room, closed the door and turned on the light.

The scene before me was almost suspiciously ordinary. The beds were tidily made, the armoire stood empty. The room smelled comfortingly of wood polish and lemons. I looked in the closet-sized bathroom. Gleaming white tub, white tile, white toilet. The fixtures shone brightly, but the hot water tap didn’t work and the toilet did not flush. In other words, everything perfectly normal for the Ben Wyvis Manor House Hotel.

It took less than two minutes to verify there was nowhere in the bath or bedroom to hide anything. No conveniently loose floorboards or secret panels in the wainscoting. The nightstand and dresser drawers were empty—there was not so much as a Bible or out-of-date guidebook.