A Christmas Homecoming (13 page)

t was nearly half an hour later when Joshua returned. Caroline insisted on going down with him to the withdrawing room, where the rest of the company was gathered. All had dressed again, but hastily, and none of the women had bothered to pin up their hair. Everyone was clearly shocked and frightened. James and Mercy sat together on the couch, holding hands. Douglas stood behind the big armchair in which Alice was hunched up. Her face was white, and she was clearly distressed. Lydia sat alone, as did Vincent.

Eliza sat close to where her husband stood with his back to the fire, which had been stoked up again. The huge stained-glass window made the room look like a church.

Joshua and Caroline took places on the other sofa.

Netheridge cleared his throat. “It seems we have a very ugly tragedy in the house,” he said with deep unhappiness. “No doubt you all know by now that the stranger, Mr. Ballin, has met with a very sudden death.” He glared at Vincent, who had seemed about to interrupt him. “We don’t yet know what happened,
whether it was some sort of accident, or worse. If anybody has anything they can tell us about it, now would be the time to do so. Obviously we can’t call a doctor, or the police. We have no way of getting out to do it, and they have no way of coming to us until the weather improves. No doubt they will clear the roads as soon as they can.” He looked around the group.

No one said anything.

“Come now. Who was Ballin?” he demanded. “He appeared out of the night and asked for shelter. We gave it to him, as we would. Who knew where he came from? Did he talk to any of you? Did he say who he was going to visit here in Whitby? Why? What does he do? Where does he live? We don’t know anything about him!” His glance embraced Eliza, Alice, and Douglas.

“For heaven’s sake, we don’t know him, either,” James said heatedly. “We don’t even know anyone else in Whitby.”

“Well, why would anybody kill him, then?” Netheridge asked.

“He was an objectionable, interfering, and arrogant man.” Douglas pulled his mouth into a thin, hard line. “He was not difficult to dislike.”

Caroline lost her temper, which happened very rarely indeed, largely because she had been brought up to believe that ladies never did such a thing.

“Mr. Paterson, this man has been run through the chest with a broom handle. The fact that you did not care for him is irrelevant. Unless you are saying that your dislike was sufficiently intense for you to have murdered him? And I do not think that is what you mean. Somebody here obviously had a far deeper hatred or fear of him, beyond simple dislike. One does not take another human being’s life violently, in the middle of the night, without a passion that has slipped out of all control. Your resentment of his generosity in working with Alice, and his assistance in helping her believe in her ability, is surely not of that order, is it?”

There was a stunned silence.

Douglas was white to the lips. “Of course it isn’t!” he said savagely. “How dare you say such a thing? The man was arrogant, and probably a charlatan, but I didn’t do anything to him at all. Look at your fellow players. It has to be one of you.”

It was Vincent who answered, his eyes wide in disbelief.
“One of us? Why, for God’s sake? It was this house he came to. It is entirely conceivable that he had actually heard that Mr. Netheridge was entertaining his friends with a group of professional actors in his daughter’s drama, even though he claimed he had no idea. Maybe that was why he showed up. Even if it were not, how would Ballin know specifically who we were? One has to assume it was someone here he came for, someone he expected to find.”

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.