Someone to Love (19 page)

K
elly called at seven and said she couldn’t get away, but that Emma Carew knew “everything.”

“What does that mean?” Nigh asked.

“I don’t know. George said that Clive and your Montgomery had their heads together for nearly an hour one night and they were talking very seriously about something.”

“What led up to their getting together?” Nigh asked.

“George said he couldn’t remember, but you know George, if it isn’t politics, he isn’t interested. He said Emma and Clive were in some argument, then Montgomery dragged Clive off into a corner. George said to talk to Emma.”

“I hope you didn’t tell them it was me who wanted to know.”

“Certainly not! I told them I hadn’t seen you. Sorry, but I have to live here and your name is mud right now.”

Nigh hung up the phone, wondering why she had left the relative peace of the Middle East.

She’d made a list of all she knew about Jace Montgomery’s activities since he arrived, and was trying to figure out the real reason he’d bought Priory House. She was certain of two things. One was that he hadn’t bought the house because he loved it and wanted to live there forever. The second was that he wasn’t there for the ghosts. For him, the ghosts were a means to something else, the something that had made him say he was “close to death.”

She made an outline of where he’d been and who he’d met, as best she could. Jace had told her some things and she’d heard the others. She’d been told that he had met “the three,” Mrses. Browne, Wheeler, and Parsons. Growing up, the children of the village had outdone themselves in adding to the names. Terrible Three. Horrible Three, etc. Kelly won by calling them the Three Gorgons.

Whatever their names, the women thought they were the rulers of Margate. They had known each other since they were children and had been fast friends, equally involved in telling everything there was to know about everybody else—all while keeping their own lives secret. Not that they had much that people wanted to know about, but what there was was private. Mrs. Browne’s husband had been killed in some war—some people said it was WWI—and she’d come back with a baby and needed a job. She’d been at Priory House ever since. Her daughter had fled the town when she was eighteen and had never been seen or heard from again.

Mrs. Parsons’s husband had died only last year, and he had the reputation of being the most henpecked man on earth. She used to boss him about in the stationer’s shop as though he were a slave. Mrs. Wheeler had been born in Margate as Agnes Harkens. She’d left with her parents when she was sixteen and returned when she was twenty-three with the title of Mrs. Wheeler. She had no parents, no husband, no children, but she did have enough money that she bought a house on the main street and opened what she called a “historical library.” She was as formidable at twenty-three as she was at her present age, and no one had dared ask her what had happened to her parents or her husband.

The three women had renewed their childhood friendship and had reigned over Margate for half a century. There wasn’t anything that went on that they didn’t tell each other and the town about.

Nigh found out that Jace had been subjected to the New House Treatment by the three. He’d been sold a lot of expensive notebooks and pens by Mrs. Parsons and had been lent the Priory House box by Mrs. Wheeler.

As Nigh looked at her list, she had an idea that maybe Jace had seen something disturbing at the library.

Yawning, she went to bed. For a while she lay awake, fearful that she’d see Danny Longstreet again, but all was quiet and she closed her eyes. She dreamed of Jace, saw him laughing as he pulled vines away from the stone round. She seemed to see him laughing everywhere.

When she awoke it was 8:00 a.m. and the sun was out. Her energy had returned and she was more determined than ever to find out what Jace Montgomery was hiding.

She drove her Mini around the back of Margate, not wanting to drive down the high street, and parked behind the library. She knew that it wasn’t open until nine, but she also knew that Mrs. Wheeler was there at seven. She knocked on the back door.

“I’m not open yet,” Mrs. Wheeler said in her imperious voice as she opened the door, ready to tell the person what she thought of him. “Oh, it’s you.”

“Yes, it’s me. Do you mind if I do a little private research? I won’t bother you.” Subservience often worked with Mrs. Wheeler.

“All right,” she said grudgingly, but Nigh could see that she was pleased. After all, Nigh was the local celebrity. “I don’t have much on the Middle East, if that’s what you want.” She lowered her voice. “I do have some things on Cornwall.”

Nigh was puzzled, then she looked at her in conspiracy. “Are they smuggling down there again?”

“That’s not for me to say,” Mrs. Wheeler said, but she let Nigh know that she knew something no one else did.

“Is that where you lived in those years you were away from Margate?” Nigh asked innocently as she got her pad and pen out of her bag, as though she was going to record whatever the woman revealed to her.

As she knew she would, Mrs. Wheeler backed off. “What can I help you with?” she asked coldly.

“I’m researching our newest resident, Mr. Montgomery.”

“Ah,” Mrs. Wheeler said, and began to warm up. “Now there is an odd man. Not that I carry tales, but Mrs. Browne tells me of the very strangest things that go on with him.” She looked Nigh up and down. “But then you should know. You’ve spent a great deal of time with him.”

“A true reporter must make sacrifices,” Nigh said.

“Ah, yes, I see what you mean.”

Nigh worked to keep from grimacing. She knew that yet another gossip story would soon be all over town. Would it be told that Nigh had just been trying to get a story out of Jace? “What I want to know is if Mr. Montgomery looked at anything besides information about Priory House when he was in here last week.”

“Actually, he did,” Mrs. Wheeler said. “As you well know, for years, that man Hatch has refused to enter anything from Priory House in the annual garden competition. Mrs. Browne and I, as well as Mrs. Parsons, think it’s irresponsible of him. Mr. Montgomery seems to want to change that.”

“Change the garden contest?”

“At least make Priory House enter it. I know that the entire village is tired of hearing how Hatch’s plants would win over everyone else’s. I think there should be a fair competition and—”

“Could I see the article Mr. Montgomery was looking at?” Nigh asked, interrupting what was sure to be an hours-long tirade. She didn’t know what Jace had been reading, but she’d put money on it that it wasn’t about the local garden contest.

“Here it is,” Mrs. Wheeler said, handing Nigh the roll of microfilm.

There was a lot on one roll of film and since Nigh didn’t know what she was looking for, it took her nearly two hours to find it. It was a small article that took up little space compared to the pages of news about the coming garden contest, which was the biggest event of the year in Margate.

It was a report of a suicide of a beautiful young American woman. Had it been the suicide of a local, it would have been given the front page. But the people of Margate didn’t like to think that an outsider would come to their village and use it for unpleasant purposes. There was a time when Margate wasn’t as clean and “pure” as it was now, and people wanted to forget that time. The old pub, with its unsavory characters, was gone. The Carews had bought the pub and made it for families. Everyone was embarrassed that such an awful thing had happened in their village.

Nigh punched the buttons to make copies of both entries about the suicide, then paid Mrs. Wheeler for them and left the library. She had to promise to talk to Mr. Montgomery about making Hatch enter the contest. “He can make Hatch do things about as well as he can make Mrs. Browne do them,” Nigh muttered as she went to her car and left the articles. Then she walked to the pub.

As she hoped, Emma Carew was there alone, getting ready to open for lunch at eleven. When she saw Nigh, she unlocked the door and put the kettle on.

“I know this couldn’t be a social call, so how can I help you?” Emma asked.

“Am I that transparent?”

“The whole town has been abuzz with your running off with that gorgeous Montgomery. So how is he in bed? Fantastic, right?”

“I haven’t been to bed with him.”

Emma looked at Nigh in disbelief. “But everyone said—”

“What do they know? He’s been doing some research and I’ve been helping him. It’s all business.”

“Too bad. And I’m disappointed in you. A big-city girl like you, I would have thought that you…” She trailed off, then shrugged. “Sometimes my imagination gets the better of me. So what can I help you with?”

“Is this between us?” Nigh asked.

“Sure. I like to hear the gossip, but I don’t spread it. For instance, I won’t disappoint all the women in this town and tell them you haven’t been to bed with that beautiful man. They wanted to hear details.”

Nigh smiled. “It’s kind of you to keep my secret. I was told that Mr. Montgomery and Clive Sefton spent some time together here talking. Do you know what it was about?”

Emma looked over her shoulder to see if anyone was behind her, then leaned toward Nigh and lowered her voice. “I can’t let George hear me because he’ll go ballistic. He’s threatened to ban Clive if he mentions the incident again. Well, not incident, but the death.”

“The suicide,” Nigh said.

“Exactly. Clive thinks it was murder, but that’s impossible. We were here in the pub, working, and the woman took sleeping pills and killed herself. I told Clive that she’d been crying and I think she was miserable. Besides, her mother and sister came here and showed us papers about the girl. She’d had a lot of mental problems.”

“So why does Clive think she didn’t commit suicide?”

“Two things,” Emma said in disgust as she poured two cups of tea. “One is that she looked happy as a corpse, and second, she tripped on the stairs.”

“Tripped on the stairs?”

Emma told Nigh Clive’s theory about how the stairs had been changed, so he knew that the young woman had been to the pub before.

“What if she had been here before?” Nigh asked. “Maybe she was unhappy, wanted to die, and this was a familiar place.”

“That’s exactly what I said!” Emma said.

“But Clive didn’t believe you.”

“Hardheaded, he is. And I think he deeply disliked the girl’s mother and sister, who came over from the States. He didn’t like that they showed up with papers saying the girl was mentally unwell, but I thought that was wise of them. It took away any doubts the rest of us had about why she’d done it.”

“The newspapers said she’d had a fight with her boyfriend. Did you meet him?”

“He didn’t show up at all. I heard he was in London. Couldn’t have cared too much about her, could he? He was in London but didn’t bother to come to Margate, but her mother and sister flew in from the States. That told me what he was like. She should have put pills in
his
drink, not her own.”

Emma sipped her tea. “Why this sudden interest in this? Clive has never stopped talking about it, then this man Montgomery comes in here and says he wants to write English murder mysteries and did we know any. Clive starts on the suicide and they move to a booth and talk for an hour. Is it true that Montgomery wants to write?”

“Yes, I think so.” Nigh was thinking about the suicide and wondering what else she could find out about it.

“He should write about the lady highwayman,” Emma said. “Did you know that when that movie came out it was the most watched movie in English history?”

“No, I didn’t know that,” Nigh said, uninterested. She cared as much about Lady Grace as Jace did, which was not at all.

“So how is he?”

“Who?” Nigh asked.

“Mr. Montgomery. The man who is the topic of all conversation in the village. Him. You know, the man you spent days with but didn’t bed. That man.”

“I haven’t seen him in days.”

“The greengrocer’s son said he brought you back from the station late yesterday afternoon.”

“He’s grown, hasn’t he?”

“His mouth has grown. I can see that you don’t plan to tell me anything.”

“Sorry, Emma, but I have a lot on my mind. I have to go.”

“If I were you, I’d hide out for a while. People in town are a bit angry with you over the Ghost Center thing.”

“Big mistake on my part. Sorry. Thanks for the tea.”

Nigh left the pub and went to the parking lot behind the library. She sat in her car for a while, looking at her notebook, reading what she’d written. She reread the copies she’d made of the facts about the suicide.

She wasn’t sure and had no proof, but she felt sure that Jace was the boyfriend mentioned in the article. Is that what he was so sad about, that he’d caused a woman to commit suicide? Or had he tried to save her and failed? Had he tried to save her even though she’d had a history of mental problems?

Nigh leaned her head back and closed her eyes. She remembered how Jace had taken care of her after she’d found out she’d been talking to a ghost. He’d taken charge and known exactly what to do. She knew that he’d spent the night with her. She was sedated but she knew she hadn’t dreamed him beside her.