Nooks & Crannies (25 page)

Slipping around the back of the motorcar, he lifted the lid of the attached luggage trunk. Plucking something from the depths, his two hands emerged, clutching a matching pair of Siamese cat statues, their blue-jeweled eyes glittering in the lamplight. “Horrid-looking, aren't they? Bunch of junk in here.” He closed the trunk and smiled at Tabitha. “Help me look around for another tool set, will you?”

Though sheltered from the wind, the building was exceedingly cold. Still, Tabitha thought there were
far worse things
than searching for escape tools with a new acquaintance who smiled at you. Worse things included:

• searching for escape tools with Barnaby Trundle

• having been snatched by a ghost

• having been snatched by something other than a ghost

• being a file folder in the Countess's secret drawer labeled “Crum, Tabitha”

Tabitha checked shelves and pulled out drawers but found nothing of use. Piles of blankets, extra furniture, old stalls filled with the lingering scent of horse and straw, stacks of books, bound boxes, ropes, and yard equipment. A large piece of canvas was draped over a dark corner of the barn. Tabitha lifted the heavy cloth and stumbled back.

“Oh my!”

“What is it?” Oliver called.

“It's paintings.” Tabitha had missed the gallery tour, but she was certain these belonged with the historical crime paintings in the manor. She sifted through the five frames, quickly wishing that she hadn't. “There's a tavern scene that's quite brutal-looking.” The oils depicted a tall figure in the foreground overlooking a setting of overturned tables, broken bottles, a blazing hearth fire, and a set of barmaids, identical in their positions, necks turned unnaturally, blood pooling at their sides.

Oliver grimaced. “That'll be the murders at The Buckled Duck. One of those was hanging in the gallery as well. Edward said that the medical examiners never figured out what killed them first, the broken neck or the stab wounds.”

Tabitha covered the paintings, tucking the canvas around the frames as though they might get up and try to sneak into her sleep to cause nightmares. “Well, I'm out of places to look. Shall I run out and check the shed?”

A noise at the back of the barn halted Oliver's reply.

A rather distinct noise.

A rather distinct noise that sounded exactly like a door opening.

On instinct, Tabitha blew out the oil lamps.

“Tabitha,” Oliver whispered in the very faintest of whispers. “Did you close the door very firmly behind you?”

“I think so.”

Their eyes met in fear, and Tabitha stabbed a finger toward another corner. They hurried behind a set of crates and huddled together. The door creaked open once more . . . and was that a long shadow moving into the stables? It was. The long shadow gave way to a long body with black shoes, a black uniform, and a formidable chin.

“
Phillips
,” Tabitha whispered. “What's he doing here?”

A long, taut chain in Phillips's hand indicated that he had Burgess in tow. He looked around the barn slowly. “Could have sworn I saw a glow in here, Burgess. Well, let's just have a quick check of things, old boy, and—” Phillips was jerked off his feet with a muffled thump as the dog ran off. “Burgess!” he called, standing and shouting into the storm. “Get back here!” Phillips waited a half minute before reappearing, cursing his dog and the cold. He lit the lamp that hung next to the entrance and closed the door behind him.

“What's he checking? I thought he was inside, looking for stolen goods,” Oliver muttered.

“Shh! He's probably searching for Barnaby and Frances.” Indeed, Phillips appeared to be doing just that. He gazed around the entire space, then checked the horse stalls. He poked his head into the motorcar's attached trunk, leaving it wide open as he continued his search.

Walking deliberately over to the canvas, Phillips tore off the cloth. Tabitha waited for his exclamation of shock when he saw the disturbing images. Instead he picked up a painting and studied it, brushing off a rogue piece of hay and tucking the frame under his arm. The frame dropped to the ground at the sound of Burgess, who was frantically barking somewhere in the distance.

“What is it now?” Phillips called. He put the painting back with the others and threw the canvas over them. “Good God, what are you barking about? Probably Her
Ladyship
, ready to order me around more,” he grumbled, walking back to the door. “I do believe that being a countess has gone to her head. She's gone mad with power. We don't want to get ourselves killed for talking back, though, do we? A nasty one with knives, that woman is . . . .” The door opened quickly, then slammed shut.

Tabitha and Oliver waited several minutes, but Phillips didn't return.

Oliver tapped her. “Is it all clear, do you think?”

Tabitha shivered but didn't answer. The light outside the barn's windows was growing less white and more gray. Evening was setting in. “Do you think the motorcar can be fixed?”

“Almost certainly.” He held up a finger. “But I still need a tool that isn't in that box.”

“Tell me about it. I'll check the garden shed while you keep working.”

Oliver nodded and described the wrench he needed. “Take a lamp,” he told her.

The shed door was quite sticky and Tabitha nearly gave up, finally forcing it open with a tremendous yank. Hoes, rakes, shovels, and other garden implements were stacked neatly in a row, and a series of watering cans lined a wall, just below a charming display of birdhouses. It was a large shed, full of pots and organized seeds and a metallic dresser of sorts. A chair in one corner was lumpy with something, covered with an embroidered picnic blanket.

When she had checked the tools in plain sight, Tabitha turned to the blanket.
Perhaps there's another box under there.

Instead of finding a box, she let out a short, piercing scream at the sight of something that was very much the opposite of what you might expect to find in a garden shed. She had found Mary Pettigrew's body, slumped with her hands crossed neatly over her frozen lap.

Backing away, Tabitha slammed into the watering cans and fell, her ankle twisting in an awful way. Tears of pain squeezed out, blurring the image of the missing dead maid. Poor Mary was still in the clothes she had worn only one night before.

Of course she's wearing the same clothes. Did you think she would get up and change for the weather?

Tabitha stared at the body. “Nobody should be treated this way. This goes beyond foul.”

Avoiding the dead woman's face, Tabitha fixed her attention on the carving on Mary's wooden bracelet. In her haste to remove the brass key at their last meeting, she hadn't taken care to really look at the carved creature.
Even the smallest items can be clues that give an indication of character,
Pensive lectured in her mind. Mary's dress sleeves were exposed enough to see a glimpse, but she would need to get closer.

Calm breath, calm thoughts, calm decisions,
she said, repeating Inspector Pensive's mantra for the most intense of discoveries. She took several deep breaths.

“First, a body cannot hurt you, and you've already been close to it once. It's her who's been hurt, so have compassion. Secondly, it's actually quite logical that she's here. She would have started to stink and rot. It's best for the sake of any family members who claim her that she stay frozen.” Tabitha wondered about that. Did Mary have any family? What was she doing, sneaking along passages? Had she suspected the Countess of foul play, and had she been in the midst of planning an escape when the first stroke hit?

With trembling fingers, Tabitha reached for the bracelet and turned it over. Staring back at her was something unexpected. The long, intertwined carving ended in two avian heads at the clasp. What she'd thought was a fantastical serpent was, in fact, a duo of swans, just like the wax seal on the invitation. Their heads were exactly the same size.
Friends, not a mated pair,
Tabitha thought, recalling Edward's words.

“Thirdly,” she said, grimacing and crying out when she tried to stand on her twisted ankle, “thirdly . . . if our Countess is a murderess and her maid was Mary Pettigrew, how did Mary come to have this bracelet?” Was Mary a thief like Frances?

“Hmm,” Tabitha said. A fresh theory was laid in her mind. She concentrated hard on every clue available, and the idea's shell began to crack.

“The Countess of Windermere has decided to take guardianship of her grandchild, having changed her mind about handing over the trust fund to the child's family. She has a drawing room with cigars, but despises smoke. She walks in a clipped manner in her high heels and uses a foot soak and wears gloves over her rough hands and has mean eyes. And she has a library full of the most magnificent books in the world and claims not to read much. As for Mary Pettigrew . . .”

Mary's hands were not those of a maid. Nor had her eyes been fraught with anything other than loneliness, panic, and pain. “Oh, dear God,” Tabitha whispered, touching the dead woman's hand. “Are
you
the mysterious, reclusive Countess of Windermere? And you were trying to tell us all along?”

Tabitha felt certain the woman before her was not a murderer.
But then why the horrific files, detailing murders?

“Think, Tabitha. What sort of person is interested in crime to the point of keeping a gallery of famous assassination paintings and keeping reference books about deviant behavior? To the point of having detailed files on horrendous criminal activity?” And, she thought, what sort of person signs a letter,
In glorious crime and justice
?

Inspector Pensive floated to the forefront of her mind, and as his imaginary self raised an imaginary pipe in the air and winked, the answer came.

“An investigator? No, that doesn't make any—”

Before any further conclusions could be made, the shed door burst open behind her.

“I admire you, Tibbs, do you know that?” The inspector puffed on his pipe thoughtfully inside the weathered walls of the seaside restaurant. He ordered another port for himself, and a third dish of pickled herring for his partner. “Though you, Timothy Tibbs, toil tirelessly beneath my fame, I am intimately acquainted with your worth. And secretly, in the back cupboards of your mind, old chap, I suspect you realize that you are the cleverest of us all. Yes, I daresay, Tibbs, I'd be nothing without you.”

—Inspector Percival Pensive,

The Case of the Maudlin Mariner

O
liver rushed into the crowded shed, his breath emerging in bursts of white. “Tabitha! Tabitha, are you all right? We have to go! Phillips came back into the barn and I barely got aw—” His mouth opened at the sight of the frozen body.

Tabitha spoke for him. “Yes, it's Mary. Or maybe not.”

Firmly grasping Tabitha's arm, he pulled them both back through the door and into the snow. “Hurry,
please
. Oh!” Shoving her to the ground, Oliver collapsed on top of her and rolled them around the small building. “Shh! He's
there
.”

The snowfall was now blessedly thick, and the wind spun it in erratic patterns, but Tabitha could still make out a tall figure standing outside the barn. Though she didn't see a dog or the butler's features through the world of white, she could see the man lift a hand to his brow, as though he was scanning the landscape. Tabitha tried to stand and gasped, sinking down again as the pain in her ankle returned with vigor. “Let's go around by the kitchen, Oliver.”

“Wait,” he urged. “If we can see
him
, surely he'll see
us
if we stand up.”

The two of them waited an impossibly long time until the obscured figure walked around the front of the manor, fully upright, marching as though the storm were nothing but a light breeze.