A Christmas Homecoming Read online

  Netheridge’s face flushed dark. “I’ve never seen the man before, or heard of him!” he protested. “Neither has anyone in my family, and that includes Douglas.” He was clearly horrified, but also afraid. His big hands clenched at his sides and he started to take a step forward, before changing his mind.

  “There is no point in trying to lay blame on one another,” Caroline said as levelly as she could. “We would all rather it be a crime committed by someone who broke in from outside, a random act that had nothing to do with any of us, but that would be childish and naïve. No one has come or left. Either it was a sudden quarrel so violent that it ended in death, or else he already knew someone here—who either lives here or is visiting—and an old quarrel was renewed. It doesn’t matter. I doubt anyone is going to admit to either.”

  “Maybe he attacked someone, and they had to defend themselves?” Eliza said shakily. “That would mean it wasn’t their fault, wouldn’t it?”

  Caroline slowly looked around at them all. For a moment her heart was pounding and her mouth dry with the hope that that could be true. Then the dead man, beyond all further hurt, would be to blame. Even as she thought that, she knew it was likely a false hope, but one she could not give up on easily.

  “No one looks to be hurt,” she said at last. “No one is dirty or torn, as if they had been in a fight for their lives. And surely if that were the case, the party would now admit it?”

  “One of the servants?” Mercy said immediately.

  Caroline gave a little shrug. “Why would Mr. Ballin be in the corridor to the theater in the middle of the night, attacking one of the servants with a broken-off and sharpened broom handle?”

  “How do you know it was sharpened?” Douglas challenged her.

  “Because it wouldn’t have speared him if it were blunt,” she said with weary patience. “This is not a play, this is real. It has to make sense; we have to look at facts to figure out what’s true.”

  “We must wait for the police,” Netheridge said, taking command again. “Until then there’s nothing we can do. Please, everyone, go back to bed, and get whatever rest you can. Douglas and I will go and move the poor man so that none of the servants find him. They’re a sensible lot, but this will distress them, naturally. I think it would be a good idea if we merely say that Mr. Ballin was taken violently ill and died. We can amend that when the police come.”

  Caroline rose to her feet. “You can’t do that!”

  “I beg your pardon?” It was a rebuke, not a request.

  “Of course he can,” Douglas said sharply. “You’ve had a shock, Mrs. Fielding. Let your husband take you upstairs and perhaps you have a headache powder you can take … or something …” He trailed off lamely.

  Caroline remained where she was. “You can tell the servants whatever you think is best to keep some sort of calm in the house,” she said to Netheridge, ignoring Douglas. “But Mr. Ballin was murdered. I quite see that you have to put his body somewhere more suitable than where it is, but not tonight in the dark. If you bolt the door to that part of the house it can be done in daylight, but it would be most unwise to do it alone …”

  “My dear Mrs. Fielding, it will be unpleasant, but there is absolutely no danger whatever, I assure you,” Netheridge said patiently. “He is a perfectly ordinary man of flesh and blood, and the dead do not hear us. There are no such things as vampires, or the undead—”

  “Of course there aren’t!” she cut him off angrily. “But he was murdered. Anyone moving him before the police get here may be accused of altering the evidence …”

  “What evidence? We can’t leave him there, woman! He’ll … smell! The natural—”

  “I’m not suggesting we leave him there,” she corrected him. She was beginning to tremble. “But we need to be there, all of us, or at least several of us, when we move him. One of us did that to him. We don’t want the police to accuse any of us of tampering with evidence that would have indicated guilt …”

  “Such as what, for heaven’s sake?” Netheridge pretended to be outraged, but understanding was already beginning to show in his eyes.

  “Such as proof that Ballin knew his attacker on a more personal level, or that there was some quarrel that took place between them,” she answered. “Something on his clothes or his person that would indicate who was the last one to see him alive. All sorts of objects are possible to discover at a crime scene, either because they were left accidentally, or because they were left on purpose by someone wishing to implicate someone else; or, conversely, not to discover, because they have been purposely removed.”

  “She’s right,” Mercy said incredulously. “But how on earth do you know these things? Who are you?”

  “I am Joshua’s wife,” Caroline replied. “But I have a son-in-law who is a policeman, and he has solved dozens of murders—scores. Please … let us use sense as well as compassion. We’ll all go together, in the daylight, when we can see the body, the floor around, anything that can tell us what happened. We need to protect ourselves from unjust suspicion by the police, as well as anything else.” She stopped, swallowing hard, her mouth dry.

  “You are quite right, of course,” Netheridge agreed more calmly. “Thank you. Fielding, perhaps you would come with me while I lock the door from the hall to the corridor. As Mrs. Fielding points out, we need to take the proper care to be above suspicion. I shall see the rest of you at breakfast at the usual hour. Until then, please take whatever rest you can.”

  Caroline sat up in bed waiting for Joshua to return. It seemed like ages, although it was probably little more than five minutes before he came in and closed the door. He looked very shaken.

  “The corridor has been locked,” he said quietly. “Are you going to be all right?” He looked at her anxiously, trying to read beyond the calm words she was saying.

  “Did you look at him?” she asked.

  He sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “Only briefly. I suppose Netheridge wanted to make sure you hadn’t had a nightmare or something. I’m afraid it’s definitely Ballin, and as you said, someone killed him. That sort of thing couldn’t have happened by accident.” He touched her hair, then her face. “I wish I could have protected you from this. I knew there’d be difficulties, quarrels in the cast, but I never imagined it could end in violence.”

  “Of course you didn’t,” she said, surprised at how calm she sounded. “It’s probably to do with Netheridge, not us, but we must be prepared to deal with whatever happens.” She smiled bleakly. “You know, I’m really very angry. We had finally made a decent play of it, and now we can hardly perform it, given the circumstances. Added to which, I very much liked Mr. Ballin, odd as he was.”

  hey were all present at breakfast, which was a silent and unhappy meal. It was clear that no one had slept well. When it was completed, Mr. Netheridge announced that it was time to move Ballin’s body. There was an appropriately cold room on the outside wall of the house, he said, that was often used for storing meat, at times when the icehouse would have been too cold.

  Obediently they rose and followed him across the hall to the corridor door. He turned the lock, swung the door open, and then—after taking a deep breath—set off at a brisk pace. They followed obediently, Mercy and Lydia a step or two behind the rest. For the first time that Caroline had observed it, they seemed to cling to each other as if they were the friends that Mina and Lucy were in the play.

  They rounded the last corner and saw the stretch of linoleum floor ahead of them; the pool of dark blood on the floor; the long shaft of the broom handle, sharp, scarlet-ended; but no corpse.

  Netheridge stopped abruptly.

  Douglas Paterson swore.

  Mercy screamed, loud and piercingly sharp.

  Lydia quietly slid to the floor in an awkward heap.

  Douglas swiveled around, saw her, and went to her anxiously, calling her name and trying to raise her in his arms.

  James went to Mercy, catching her hands, wh
ich she was waving around. “Stop it!” he said loudly. “It’s all right! He’s not here. There’s no danger at all.”

  “No danger?” she shrieked. “He was dead, someone murdered him, with a stake through the heart, and now he’s not there anymore, and you say there’s no danger? Are you mad, or stupid? I told you there was something wrong with him, terribly wrong. He came here out of the night and during a storm just like the one that brought Dracula’s coffin ashore.” Her voice was getting louder and more high-pitched. “He knew everything about vampires, more than we did, more than Bram Stoker did. He was dead and locked in, and still he escaped. He wasn’t dead, you fool! You can’t kill him, he is the ‘undead.’ ”

  White-faced, Eliza turned to Caroline.

  Caroline stepped forward. “Mercy!” she said abruptly. “You are not helping anyone by being hysterical. If you really want to step out of reality into Mr. Stoker’s book, then for goodness sake live up to the character you chose to play. Mina Harker would never have been so peevish and cowardly, and she was faced by a real vampire who was determined to kill her. Mr. Ballin, poor man, is dead and can do you no possible harm, even if he wanted to. Take hold of your emotions and stop making such an exhibition of yourself. We need to think very clearly what to do if we are to defeat whatever evil is lurking here.”

  “Evil!” Mercy repeated the word with a loud wail.

  “Stop shrieking!” Caroline commanded. “I would be delighted to have an excuse to slap your face. If you insist on giving it to me, I shall take it, I warn you.”

  Mercy fell instantly silent.

  “Thank you.” Caroline’s voice was tart. She turned to Netheridge. “There is no point in our standing here. Clearly the body has been moved. Since there is no one in the house except us and the servants, you had better find out if one or two of them came here and found him and, perhaps out of decency, felt obliged to move him somewhere else. One thing is absolutely certain: He did not remove himself, either as a man, or as a bat or a wolf, or anything else supernatural. If you don’t want all the maids in hysterics, and possibly the footmen as well—or, worst of all, the cook—then you had better be very circumspect as to how you do it.”

  “Yes,” he agreed, as if he had thought of it himself. “Of course.” He turned to Joshua. “I’m sorry, but under the circumstances I don’t believe there is any point in your continuing to practice for the play. I …” He shook his head. “Just at the moment I hardly know what decisions to make about anything. Please … look after yourselves. Do as you please. I’m sorry, but as such it is quite impossible for you to leave, or even to walk outside. The snow must be a couple of feet deep, and it is bitterly cold. There are books in the library, quite a good billiard table …” He did not bother to finish.

  Caroline felt sorry for him. The party he had planned with such care for his daughter had collapsed in a tragedy no one could have foreseen. Now instead of celebration he had a crime, and a group of strangers in his home without a purpose, one of them possibly a killer.

  She stared at Joshua, then at Netheridge. “Mr. Netheridge.”

  He turned toward her, simply out of good manners. His face was weary, and he looked ten years older than he had when he welcomed them to his home. “Yes, Mrs. Fielding?”

  “Alice has written a play that we have all worked extremely hard on, particularly she. We will perform it one day; if not here, then somewhere else. Possibly even in London, at the very least in the provinces. Considering how much he contributed to it, we could do it in memory of Mr. Ballin. Our time and her efforts have not been wasted.”

  He swallowed, sudden emotion filling his face. It was a moment or two before he could master his voice.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Fielding. You are a generous woman, and brave. I hope one day that will indeed be possible.” Then, before he embarrassed himself by a display of his vulnerability, he made his excuses and left.

  One by one they all went: either to their bedrooms, the billiard room, the library, or the room set apart for letter writing with desks, inkwells, and ample supplies of paper.

  Caroline walked away from the corridor and up the stairs to go back to her bedroom. Then she changed her mind and went to the window seat in the long gallery from which she could see across the snowbound countryside. The hill fell away, covered by trees bending under the weight of last night’s new fall. Some of them looked precariously close to breaking. There was no mark on the landscape of human passing: no wheel tracks, no footprints. It was impossible to tell how deep the snow lay, except that all the smaller features—rocks, low walls, and fences—had disappeared. They were alone.

  Far out toward the sea more clouds were piled up, ominous and heavy gray. There was worse weather to come.

  She realized as she sat there that they must solve the crime themselves. They could not remain here day after day knowing nothing, doing nothing. One of them had killed Anton Ballin. They had to find out which one of them it was, and be strong enough to deal with the answer together, whatever that answer was. Of course, it must also be done with caution and care. They could not risk anyone else being killed. A person who would spear Ballin to death might not hesitate to do the same to anyone else who threatened him or her.

  How had this happened? It seemed unimaginable that it was one of them, from the slight vanities and squabbles they had, no more than pinpricks to the self-esteem: The play made no difference to any one individual’s career. It was a lesser part on the small stage, no money involved, nor any critical review to care about.

  And yet someone had cared about or feared something so intensely that they had driven a broom handle through a man’s body. Why? What was it that lay below a surface that appeared so normal? They had all been deceived, ignorant, walking a razor’s edge across an abyss, and never thinking to look down.

  She shivered, although it was warm in the house. Fires burned in every room. Candles blazed. Food was plentiful and excellent. There were servants to attend to every physical need. What lay hidden behind such apparent ease?

  How could she find out, and so discreetly that she did not get herself killed in the process? If she had any sense at all, she would take very great care indeed. For a start, she would tell no one what she was doing, and that included Joshua. In fact, more than anyone else, she absolutely mustn’t tell Joshua.

  She was speaking to herself as if she had accepted that identifying the murderer was her responsibility. But who else was there who could possibly do it? None of them had any experience of murder, except herself. Douglas Paterson was possibly guilty! He had loathed Ballin, and made no secret of the fact that he thought Ballin was deluding Alice that she had talent when she did not. And even if she did, it was not a talent Douglas was willing for her to use. It would mean her leaving Whitby, where his future lay. If she did not marry him, then perhaps he did not have a future—not in the way he had imagined, and intended. Charles Netheridge was a very wealthy man indeed. The house more than attested to that, quite apart from his frequent and large investments in the London theater. Alice was his only child. That was why he had been willing to invite an actor of Joshua’s fame and quality up to Yorkshire for the whole Christmas period, and pay his expenses and those of his company, on the understanding that he, Netheridge, would stake them next London season.

  But could Douglas have hated Ballin so much for helping Alice? Or could anyone in the company have hated Ballin so much? He was a stranger to all of them. What danger could he present? Surely nothing in the four days since he arrived had given birth to a passion so violent it had ended in that terrible act in the corridor?

  He must have known one of them before. Had he come intending to seek revenge for some old wrong?

  Caroline watched the sky. The dark clouds over the sea were closer now, and heavier. A gust of wind stirred the bare branches, sending piles of snow falling off into the deep drifts beneath.

  Was it possible that Ballin had not been the intended victim? In the uncertain light of the c
orridor could the killer have mistaken Ballin for someone else? He was tall, but so were Vincent and James. With his back to the candlelight, would such a mistake be possible? If so, they must not have spoken; Ballin’s voice was too distinctive.

  Netheridge was of average height, and broader than any other man here. He walked quite differently. Douglas Paterson was a good height, but he had not the practiced grace or elegance of Ballin.

  No. She could not believe there had been such a mistake.

  The sharpened broom handle was a very carefully prepared weapon. It had been created, not used in any spur-of-the-moment anger or self-defense. Nobody possessed such a weapon offhand, never mind carried it around with them in the middle of the night, unless they had an attack in mind.

  Was it possible someone really did believe in vampires? Was anyone so crazy? Surely not? They were actors; they played all sorts of parts, real and fantastic. They could take up roles as they stepped onto the stage, and discard them again as they left it. She had seen Joshua as every character imaginable, from a pensive hero like Hamlet to a blood-soaked tyrant like Tamburlaine; as philosopher, cynic, and wit in the works of Oscar Wilde; and the lover Antony to Mercy’s Cleopatra. None of them was the real Joshua, the man she knew.

  Had Ballin known his killer? Had they intended to meet there in the middle of the night? It was ridiculously unlikely that the meeting was purely a chance encounter, surely? Which meant that Ballin knew his attacker at least well enough to be willing to keep a midnight tryst.

  Why was the body moved?

  She thought of Mercy’s fear of the “undead,” which she had dismissed as a vain woman’s pretense to get attention. But the fact that the body had apparently disappeared now made her fancies seem less ridiculous. Was it likely that someone had hidden the body to cause and heighten that very fear?