An Inquiry Into Love and Death (11 page)

“Ah, well,” he said, his voice tired, “I’ve told you, you mustn’t question the police. We always know what we’re doing.”

“And what does that mean?”

“It means I’m going to London, just as they tell me to. But I have a partner, a man named Easterbrook. I think he might see things my way. I have a few ideas, and there are loose ends I want to look into if I can.”

I had gone cold, listening to him. “You didn’t tell me you had a theory. You didn’t tell me.”

“I don’t. Just a hunch or two.”

“You have to tell me,” I said, not believing him. “Please.”

“Jillian.” He leaned over the table toward me. In his face I could see sympathy, but also the usual steely determination. “I’m the police here, not you. You have to trust me.”

“Trust you? And what do I do while you’re gone?” I asked. “Wait for whoever it is to come after me next?”

“Just do what you came to do,” he said. “Pack your uncle’s things. Keep your eyes open. Use common sense and that big brain of yours. Don’t trust anyone. Don’t take risks. And wait for me to come back.”

“That’s a tall order,” I breathed.

“I know.”

I opened my mouth to say something else, but suddenly it was gone from my mind. The hair prickled on the back of my neck. And something, loud and hollow, thumped in the library.

O
ur eyes met only briefly before Drew was out of his chair, moving quietly down the hall toward the library. I followed, keeping behind him.

In the library, nothing moved. The fire still flickered in the fireplace, and the lamps I had lit cast their own yellowed light. I glanced uneasily toward the window, but it didn’t look like the curtains had been disturbed.

Drew pivoted, his gaze traveling the room. “What was it? Do you see anything?”

“No.” It had been a distinct sound. A thump like a book being dropped or a drawer slammed closed.

“Maybe it was the cat,” he said, but Sultana lay just where we’d left her, licking her matted fur with unconcern. Whatever it was, it hadn’t frightened her.

I looked at the desk, and froze. “Look,” I managed.

The needle of the galvanoscope had moved all the way to the upper end of its scale; as we watched, it lowered slowly, as if whatever had set it off were receding. Next to it, the thermometer had gone down.

Drew bent close to the galvanoscope and watched it. He put his hand on the desk next to the thermometer. “It’s cold.”

But my eyes were on the notebook. I had left Toby’s journal on the edge of the desk, open to the last page. The book had been rotated ninety degrees, and now it was closed, facedown on the desk. This, then, was the sound we had heard, the thump of the journal closing. I reached out and touched the book with my fingertips. It was cold as ice.

“Oh,” I said.

A dim sort of electricity was going through me, as if I were on the edge of a lightning storm: the charge that the galvanoscope was picking up. My heart thumped slow and hard in my chest. It was a curious feeling, frightening, yet strangely alive. Drew reached around from behind me and touched the journal himself, and we froze there for a long moment, his body behind mine, his arm coming ’round me, his breath in my ear.

His hand was large and wide next to mine, the knuckles strong. I could see his forearm flex under the sleeve of his sweater.

With slow deliberation he lifted his other hand and touched it to the back of my neck, under the ends of my hair. His warm fingers slid up the line of my spine, as if tracing something he’d looked at closely again and again. He was feeling the same electricity I was, I thought, the same breathless charge, and it made him reckless. I couldn’t speak as pleasure moved through my whole body at that single touch.

I turned in place. He didn’t move. We were face-to-face now, my body against his. His hand was still on the back of my neck. I looked up at him. His eyes were dark and wild.

“Oh, hell,” he said, and kissed me.

I had been waiting for it. He kissed me deeply, unapologetically, attempting to be considerate, though his touch was rough. I leaned into him, lost my balance, put my hands on his chest; it burned under my fingers through the wool. I slid my hands down, exploring, as I pressed further into him, up on my toes. His hand on my jaw guided me gently, and he opened my mouth.

Something urgent and hot flushed through me as he ran his tongue expertly along the inside of my upper lip. This was Drew, then, when he gave up his precious control; this was the man underneath the careful exterior. Passionate, insistent. I was utterly out of my depth, and I didn’t care. All I wanted was to taste him.

His hand left my jaw and moved down my back, as his other arm came around my waist, pressing me hard into him. I put my arms around his neck and pulled him closer. He obliged; he had me pushed into the desk now, his body covering mine, and he aligned me flush to him and kissed me more deeply with his tongue.

I let him do it. I more than let him—I kissed him back, inexpert perhaps, but greedy and eager to learn. I realized now that part of me had wanted to kiss him since the first time I saw him. And now I reveled in it, his stubbled skin rough against me, his arms holding me up. I made some sort of sound deep in my throat and he broke the kiss, leaving me raw and wanting.

“My God.” He was hoarse.

“Do that again,” I said, mindless.

He leaned close to me again, and again his hand came up and brushed my cheek, his thumb along my lower lip. He brushed his lips against me, a feather touch, and every part of me burned.

“Drew,” I said.

He dropped his hands from me and braced himself on the edge of the desk, his hands on either side of my body. He closed his eyes briefly, his arms humming with tension, and I saw his control begin to fall back into place. “We need to stop this. Now.”

I had forgotten about the cold book, the cold desk. I had forgotten everything but the smell of him, spicy and woolly and a little like bergamot. “I don’t see—”

“Sssh.”

His eyes had opened again, and he turned his head, distracted. Suddenly he wore the expression I was beginning to recognize, the one of a dog on the hunt.

“Do you hear something?” he asked.

We listened, his arms still braced on the desk around me.

Upstairs, something moved.

He straightened, and we separated. The thing upstairs thumped again, a furtive sound. He pushed me behind him.

“What is it?” I hissed.

Before he could answer, the thump came from the top of the stairs. Standing in the library, we had no view of the staircase; we stood in the only light in the house, for as night had fallen, I’d lit lamps only in the library, and the rest of the house was dark.

Drew turned to the desk to grab one of the torches from the ghost-hunting kit; that was when we both noticed that the torches were gone. And at the same time, the sound from the stairs came again, distinctly metallic.

It was too quick to calculate, but somehow I knew. Drew grabbed one of the oil lamps and, motioning me behind him again, walked toward the stairs. “Come out,” he said in a voice clear and even. “Police. Come out.”

Something was rolling down the stairs now. I followed him and looked past him and saw none other than one of the missing torches, rolling down step by step in the dim lamplight. It came to the bottom of the stairs and rested.

Drew stooped and picked it up. We glanced at each other. He handed me the oil lamp, then moved the switch and turned on the beam of light.

With a cold breath of air, the lamp blew out.

Drew moved the torch; for a moment, as my eyes adjusted, I saw only glimpses of the floor, the wall, the steps in the circle of the beam. The light moved up the staircase, showing the worn runner, the cracked baseboards, the dust in the creases and seams. The beam came to the top of the steps and landed on thin air, motes of dust spinning in nothingness.

“Stay here,” said Drew, and before I could stop him he moved up the steps.

I felt beside me for a hallway table and put down the dark lamp. My eyes began to adjust, and there was low, yellow light coming from the fireplace, which was still lit in the library. I could see gray, humped shapes, the square of the doorway, a glow on the floor of the hall. With a stab of panic I realized that, even with my adjusted sight, I wouldn’t know until it was too late if something—if anything—came toward me. I followed Drew’s dark shape up the stairs.

Drew turned as he heard my steps, and spoke over his shoulder. “I told you to stay there.”

“I’m coming.”

I couldn’t see his face in the dark, but I imagined his jaw clenched. But perhaps he realized that I was no safer at the bottom of the stairs, for he turned away again without a word.

Upstairs, the beam of Drew’s torch was the only beacon. I followed it, tentative, as we reached the landing.

“Is anyone here?” Drew’s voice never quavered. “If you’re here, you must come out. I’m the police.”

The words fell into the answering silence like stones.

Rooms opened off the cramped hall: my little bedroom to the right, Toby’s to the left. Farther down was the linen cupboard, the lavatory, and a spare room I had opened only briefly before closing the door on its dusty emptiness. As Drew turned the light on this last door, I could see it was ajar.

“Were you in here?” he asked me.

“No,” I said, cold with dread.

“All right. Stay here.”

He went through the door. I hugged myself; I was suddenly freezing. The cold came down my back, as if I were backed into an icebox. Icy, bone-chilling cold.

I knew I should turn.

I didn’t want to. But somehow, slowly, I did. Perhaps it was the soft sound I heard that made me do it, one I recognized well: the padding sound of a cat’s paws.

I turned. The cold crept over my face now, down my neck, over the tops of my arms. My blood roared in my ears.

There was only dark hallway behind me. But on the landing, where I had just come up, Sultana sat in the gloom. She was sitting on the floor, her tail curled over her feet, her head up, her ears perked. She wasn’t looking at me, but at the empty space at the head of the hallway, her big eyes staring intently into the darkness. She cocked her head and moved her ears, as if following something. Her gaze moved; her focus stayed intent, fascinated.

Where she looked I saw nothing but darkness, a floor and the corner of two empty walls. Utter blackness.

I stood a long moment, not daring to breathe.

Behind me, I heard Drew come out of the spare room. The light of his torch shone over my shoulder. “There’s nothing in there. What is it?”

“There’s something here,” I managed, my voice a rasp.

He moved the beam over the space at the top of the stairs. I nearly flinched; I realized in a flash that I didn’t want to see whatever it was, whatever it looked like. But the light only illuminated Sultana, who flattened her ears and turned to pad back down the stairs.

“There’s nothing,” said Drew. “It’s just the cat.”

“No.” The cold was dispersing, my face and neck tingling as it receded. “There was something—just now. Something was
there
.”

“Jillian, it’s all right. There’s nothing.”

I was shaking. Something was in the house. I had thought myself safe in here, fool that I had been. But there was something here, inside with us.

“I didn’t see anything in the other room,” Drew was saying. “It looks unused. Hard to tell in this light if anything’s been disturbed, but I don’t think so. I wonder where that other torch has gotten to.”

He stopped. There came a creaking sound from outside. From the doorway to my little bedroom, I moved like a sleepwalker to the window I’d covered and pulled aside the blanket. I looked out into the garden below.

The garden gate was creaking open, slowly and deliberately, on its own.

“Drew,” I said, for he had followed me and watched over my shoulder out the window. “That isn’t the wind.”

“What the hell,” he said softly.

“Walking John,” I whispered.

He didn’t answer. The gate finished its slow arc and stood open. It didn’t move again. The garden was still.

“What the bloody hell,” he said again, and his voice sounded a little strangled. After a moment, he added: “The hinge could be broken.”

“It isn’t.”

“It could be. There could be something jamming it. I’ll just go down and check it out.”

My throat closed. “Drew, you mustn’t!”

“Of course I must. Look, it’s a little eerie; I admit that. It isn’t so strange that you got frightened, and the missing torch bothers me. But you can’t assume ghosts are everywhere you look, when there could be an easy explanation. I’ll check out this hinge and we’ll see—”

The overturned flowerpot in the garden exploded as if hit with a rifle shot. The shutter over the library windows began to rattle. At the same time, there came a sharp rapping on the kitchen door.

We stared down at the empty expanse of the garden. The tapping on the door below came again—
rap, rap, rap.

I jolted backward into Drew, who grasped my shoulders. He hesitated only the briefest instant. “All right, then,” I thought I heard him say through my panic. “All right.” He dropped his hands from me and left the room, shining the torch.

I stumbled down the stairs after him, as the shutters continued to rattle on a windless night. The knocking had not come again, and the kitchen was still. I saw the bursting flowerpot again before my eyes, the bits of pottery showering upward, the dirt spilling onto the stones. I grabbed Drew’s arm as he headed for the kitchen door. “Please! Don’t go out there.”

He turned to me. Again I found it hard to see his face in the dark. He may have seen mine, though, for he only said softly, “I won’t open the door—all right? Just let me try something.”

I released my grip. He approached the kitchen door on quiet feet, leaned toward it, pressed his ear to the wood. No sound came from the other side, though from the library the shutter continued to make its unnerving noise. Drew listened for a long second; then he straightened and knocked on the door himself—
rap, rap, rap
.

A long moment of silence. Then a response:
Rap, rap, RAP!

I may have screamed a little. My brain thought wildly of the words in Toby’s journal:
Come out, come out.
Drew stood back, his face pale.

There was a workmanlike thump on the door, followed by a scrabbling sound that shot straight into my brain and skittered down my spine in jangling terror. The sound seemed to move across the wall toward the library window, like the clicking of a bird’s feet but deep and heavy.

Drew and I moved in tandem. We dashed from the kitchen as one and down the hall to the library. There was a groaning sound from the window, and a high creaking; it sounded as if one of the shutters had come off its hinges. The fire was still lit in there, and Sultana was long gone, hiding somewhere, no doubt, her fur on end. She knew Walking John as well as I did.

I reached out to one of the heavy curtains I’d closed over the window, and paused. “I don’t think I can do this.”

“You have to,” he said.

I sweated, and my hand shook. My arm felt like vibrating wire. All I would have to do was just lean in and open the curtain—like so—

One of the shutters was indeed off its hinge. It dangled and banged. Past it was the empty dark garden, the opened gate, the ruined flowerpot.