It was Pete. He strode out to meet Gregory, who entered the house and walked toward him. They met in the middle of the room. Daphne and the two older ladies held their breaths.
“What possible reason could you have for coming here?” Pete demanded.
Daphne saw the way the two men looked at each other. There was an obvious, visceral hatred. But ... there was also something more.
Pete had once been a second father to Gregory.
Gregory had been the son he had never had, up to that time.
They glared at each other.
“I’ve come to apologize, Pete,” Gregory said.
Daphne’s heart leapt. “You see?” she whispered over her shoulder to Abigail and Louella.
“I’ve come to apologize,” Gregory repeated to a stunned Pete, “for asking your wife and your son’s governess to accompany me on a motorcycle ride. It was inappropriate, and I apologize. I just don’t want you blaming them for my lack of thinking, and especially Miss May, who only accepted the offer after I pressured her into doing so. I take full responsibility.”
Pete considered him, his yellow eyes taking Gregory in carefully.
“That is what you came up here to say?” he asked finally.
“I had to come up in person, since you don’t have a phone, and sure can’t get you on Facebook or Twitter.” Gregory smirked. “Other than that, everything else between us remains exactly the same.”
“Then get the hell out of my house,” Pete growled.
“With pleasure,” Gregory said, turning on his heel.
“And never come here again!” Pete shouted after him.
“Oh, I’ll be back”—Gregory spoke over his shoulder as he passed through the door Boris held open for him—“when I come here to take ownership of Witherswood!”
“Get out!” Pete rasped.
Gregory laughed, and was gone.
Behind Daphne, Abigail sniffed. “Coming to make up, was he?” The older woman huffed off, Louella following her, seeming unsure of what she had just witnessed.
Pete stormed back to the study. Daphne, full of despair, hurried upstairs to her room. She understood what Gregory was trying to do: absolve her from any responsibility for being seen with him. But his anger was so deep ... how could she possibly now continue to see him and work in this house? It was impossible. She wanted very much to see Gregory again, but she couldn’t go behind Pete’s back another time. She would have to make a choice at some point. She threw herself on her bed and closed her eyes.
She must have drifted off to sleep because when she opened her eyes again it was dark. Pitch dark. The wind had kicked up, too, and was howling through the eaves. Daphne flicked on the light. It was 9:49. Her stomach rumbled. She was hungry.
She was sitting on the edge of her bed, trying to work up the will to go downstairs and eat some dinner, when there was a light rapping on her door.
It was Ashlee.
“Did you catch Gregory’s performance?” the young mistress of the house asked, delightedly, as she came rushing into Daphne’s room. “Abigail, that miserable old bitch, told me you watched it with her from the corridor. How did he do?”
“You knew he was coming?”
“Of course I did! I called him. I explained what Donovan had done and we came up with the plan. Gregory was only too happy to do it, even if it meant seeming to humble himself in front of Pete, if it could in some way help you out.” She looked at Daphne deliberately. “He really cares about you.”
Daphne didn’t know what to say.
“Well, I’m happy to report it worked,” Ashlee said. “Pete came to me and said he forgave me—and he forgave you!”
“But don’t you see?” Daphne cried. “How can I possibly see Gregory again now?”
Ashlee looked at her kindly. “I think you should go to him. Leave here, sweetie, and go to Gregory. He’d take much better care of you than we can!”
Daphne laughed. “I’ve just met him! What are you talking about? You don’t just meet some guy and move in with him.”
Ashlee smirked. “Why not? I did.”
Daphne shook her head. “Well, I’m not you.” She sighed. “Look, I’m hungry. I missed dinner. Come downstairs with me and get a snack?”
“Sure,” Ashlee said. “Pete’s sound asleep. Usually is by eight thirty.” She winked at Daphne. “I’ll put it to you this way, sweetie. I think I might have to give up on the idea of Christopher ever having a baby brother or sister.”
They headed downstairs. The house was, as usual, as quiet as a tomb. Daphne knew Ben was out—back in Portland again. She suspected he may have met someone, and she hoped to hear the details soon. Pete, Abigail, and Louella were all in their rooms, as were Boris and Axel. Christopher was supposed to be in his room, but Daphne knew she could never be sure about Christopher. She had no idea where Donovan and Suzanne were, nor did she much care.
In the kitchen, they found some wrapped chicken-salad sandwiches in the refrigerator. Cook had prepared them before she’d left for the day in case anyone wanted a late-night snack.
“Listen,” Daphne said, after she took her first bite. “I need to tell you something.”
“Shoot,” Ashlee said.
“Donovan ...” She wasn’t sure how to say it. “Well, last night ... in the stable ...”
“Oh my God, Daphne,” Ashlee said, as if reading her mind. “Did he try something with you?”
She nodded. “Pushed me down into a haystack. Ripped my blouse and was going for my skirt when Suzanne walked in.”
Ashlee was horrified. Daphne related the whole sordid tale, including Suzanne’s threat. All the while, Ashlee was shaking her head.
“Now it all makes sense, why they said what they did to Pete.” Her eyes blazed with a rage that surprised Daphne. “Those dirty bastards.”
“I’m not sure what to do,” Daphne said. “I feel like reporting him to the sheriff, but after all that has happened... .”
“Of course, you should report him,” Ashlee said. “He tried to rape you. But sweetie, you know as well as I do, it would do no good. Their word against yours. And after what Pete’s just been through ...”
“I know.” Daphne had finished half of the sandwich and now felt full. “It just galls me that a man like that can get away with assaulting me.”
“Oh, he won’t get away,” Ashlee said.
“What do you mean?”
Ashlee grinned. “A guy like that always gets caught eventually. It catches up with him. Eventually he’ll be on the other end, getting what he deserves.”
“You sound so certain.”
“You forget I’ve been around a little more than you have. I’ve seen his type all my life. And I’ve seen what happens to guys like him.”
Daphne shuddered.
That’s when she heard the music.
From somewhere off in the distance ... a tinny sound. Far away, somewhere in the house, but it seemed to be coming closer.
All around the mulberry bush, the monkey chased the weasel....
“Oh my God,” Daphne muttered.
“What is it, honey?”
“Listen. Do you hear that?”
Ashlee listened. “Music,” she said. “It’s like ... a kid’s song.”
“ ‘Pop Goes the Weasel,’ ” Daphne breathed, and a terrible paroxysm of terror shook her to her core. “It’s what I heard that day in the village! When I saw the clown!”
“Maybe it’s Christopher... .”
“Believe me, Ashlee, that’s not the kind of music he listens to.”
The tune continued to lilt through the darkness, but just where it was coming from, they couldn’t tell.
“Maybe we should wake Mr. Witherspoon,” Daphne suggested.
“No,” Ashlee said. “I don’t want to disturb him. It’s probably nothing Daphne. It’s probably just a radio ... or a toy... .”
Daphne knew it was no such thing. She stepped out into the parlor. As far as she could tell, it was coming from across the foyer.
“The tower room,” she whispered to Daphne. “I can’t be sure, but I think it’s coming from behind the door that leads up to the tower room.”
“Well, let’s go see,” Ashlee said, grabbing a flashlight. “It’s dark going up those stairs.”
“You’re crazy,” Daphne said, grabbing her arm and stopping her. “I’m telling you, that’s the music that clown was playing that day on the street.”
“And I’m telling
you
, sweetie, that you imagined what you saw that day. Look, Daphne, this house has a foolproof security system. Nobody’s going to be able to get in here. That music we hear ... it’s no murderous clown ghost or whatever you think you saw.” Ashlee’s lips tightened. “But it just might be my stepson trying to scare us.”
“You ... you think it might be Christopher?”
“You said he overheard us talking the other day. This would be just like him.”
With that, Ashlee forged ahead toward the door to the tower room. Daphne followed, a few steps behind.
When they pulled open the door, however, the music stopped.
“Now I can’t be sure if it was coming from in here,” Ashlee said. “Damn it.”
“Let’s go back,” Daphne said.
“No way,” Ashlee said. “If Christopher is up there, there’s no way he can get back down and nowhere for him to hide. I’m going up.” She turned to look at Daphne. “Coming with me?”
“I ... I don’t know.”
“Come on, Daphne. I want to prove to you these things you think you see aren’t real, or that there are logical explanations. Besides, you’re Christopher’s governess, so you really should take charge of the situation.”
Daphne hesitated, then agreed to follow Ashlee up the iron stairs.
Their footsteps echoed in the darkness of the tower as they climbed. At the top, the little round room was in darkness. The light switch failed to illuminate the lamp. Either the bulb was out, or someone had taken it out.
“Christopher?” Ashlee called, swinging her flashlight through the darkness.
They both took a couple of tentative steps into the room.
Then the music started again.
All around the mulberry bush ...
They both gasped out loud. Ashlee swung the flashlight around to her right, and its beam spotlighted the laughing face of a clown—white face, red nose, blue mouth, sharp yellow teeth.
They screamed, but as they turned to run, they fell—tripping over a body on the floor. The flashlight’s beam provided enough illumination before it smashed on the floor to reveal who it was.
The body was Donovan—and his throat had been slit.
THIRTEEN
Screaming at the top of their lungs, Ashlee and Daphne practically leapt onto the stairs, tripping and falling over each other on the way down.
As they stumbled into the foyer, Ashlee had the sense to turn immediately around and bolt the door behind them, so the murderer couldn’t get out. Daphne was shuddering with terror. “He’s dead!” she kept screaming. “Donovan’s dead!”
Their screams awoke the house. Lights went on all around them, including the chandelier that hung in the center of the foyer’s ceiling. Once there was light, Daphne saw the bloody footprints she and Ashlee had tracked all across the marble floor.
Donovan’s blood.
“Oh, God, he’s dead!” Daphne screamed again, her hands in her hair. “Donovan’s dead!”
Boris was the first one on the scene, in his nightgown and nightcap, looking like a walking corpse. Then Axel came out of his room, rubbing his eyes. At the same time Abigail, her gray hair falling loose around her shoulders, came darting down the stairs, nose first, her eyes flashing. Behind her, Louella waddled uncertainly. On the landing, Christopher appeared, staring over the banister, proving once and for all that it had not been him in the tower. With some difficulty, Pete came down the stairs behind his sisters, puzzlement and fear appearing alternately on his face.
And finally, from the side hallway, Suzanne emerged, in a black nightgown. “Donovan?” she asked. “What are you saying about Donovan?”
“He’s dead!” Daphne screamed. “And that thing—that clown—is still up there!”
“Don’t be absurd—” Pete started to say.
“Pete, it’s true!” Ashlee shrieked. “I saw it, too! Oh, God, it’s terrible!”
“Donovan,” came the timid little voice of Louella, coming around Pete. “What do you mean that Donovan is dead?”
Daphne looked at her. Louella was Donovan’s mother. Her heart broke for the poor, confused woman.
“Well, if something’s happened to Donovan,” Suzanne said, “I’m going to find out.” She turned and pulled open the door to the tower room, ready to bolt up the stairs.
“No!” Ashlee shouted, jumping ahead of her and slamming the door shut again. “That thing is still up there! We need to keep the door bolted!”
“Why do we need to keep the door bolted?”
They all turned. This was a new voice. Gabriel was wheeling his chair into the foyer from the corridor, his eyes bleary from sleep. “All this commotion. What’s going on here?”
“It’s Donovan,” Daphne told him. “He’s ... he’s dead!”
On hearing this again, what they were saying seemed finally to sink in for Louella, and she began to cry. Abigail put her arm around her sister, though she seemed loath to do it.
“Where the hell is Ben?” Pete asked, looking around.
“He’s ... he’s in Portland,” Daphne managed to say.
“Well, we can’t just stand here!” Pete blustered.
“We’ve got to keep that door bolted and go get the sheriff,” Ashlee said, trying to keep her wits and act logically. “Axel, get in the car and speed like the devil into the village, tell the cops to get up here as fast as they can. And have them call Sheriff Patterson.”
“This is why we need a goddamn telephone in this place,” Gabriel grumbled under his breath, looking down as usual, shaking his head.
Daphne had backed up as far away from the tower entrance as possible. “There’s no way out of there except through that door?” she asked in a small voice.
Only Gabriel seemed to hear her. “None,” he assured her, and she caught a flash of his eyes as he shyly looked up at her. “Don’t worry, Daphne. You’re safe here.”
It was the first time the young man in the wheelchair had ever addressed her directly, and the first time he’d ever spoken her name. Daphne was touched that, even in a moment of crisis such as this, Gabriel would try to reassure her. Maybe he wasn’t so far gone in bitterness as she’d thought.
They all retreated into the parlor to wait for Axel to bring the police. Pete stood holding his hunting rifle, though the way his hands shook didn’t inspire much confidence. Louella sat in a chair looking dazed. Suzanne paced back and forth, insisting that Donovan might just have been wounded, and they were wasting valuable time in not going up to check on him. Ashlee told her to go into the tower would be to risk getting killed herself.
Christopher sat watching everyone, not saying a word. Daphne couldn’t tell if the boy was frightened or excited. Probably a mix of both. But Christopher wasn’t the only one who was silent. Except for Suzanne, who kept muttering and swearing, no one spoke much as they waited. The eleven minutes it took to hear sirens in the distance seemed to stretch into an eternity.
But then the flashing lights of police cars came shining through the windows, turning the night air electric blue. Abigail rushed to let the police in. They immediately ordered the family to stay in the parlor while a team of ten heavily armed men surrounded the door to the tower room. They shouted to whoever was inside to come out with his hands up. When no one emerged, they moved in, unbolting the door, and with guns pointing forward, moved nearly as one up the stairs. Sheriff Patterson followed.
Except for the echo of their boots, there was no sound.
After about five minutes the police came back down. Sheriff Patterson walked into the parlor with a somber face.
“I’m sorry, Louella, Suzanne,” he said. “But it’s true that Donovan is dead.”
“No!” Suzanne screamed.
Louella just wept silently in her chair.
“His killer?” Pete asked.
The sheriff looked at him, then moved his eyes over to Ashlee and Daphne, who stood closely together behind Pete.
“Did you girls say you saw someone up there?” the sheriff asked.
“It was a clown,” Daphne said. “It was the same clown I saw in the village! You see, I’m not crazy!”
“It’s true, Sheriff,” Ashlee said. “I saw a clown up there too.”
Sheriff Patterson’s mustache was doing its usual twitching. “Well, there’s no one up there now, no clown, nobody, except Donovan’s body. And there’s nowhere to hide. It’s practically an empty room.” He looked back at Pete. “Is there any other means of egress from the tower except those stairs?”
“There’s a hatch in the ceiling that leads to the roof, but I had that sealed over decades ago, because squirrels kept getting in,” Pete said.
The sheriff shouted to one of his deputies to get up on the roof and check the hatch. Meanwhile, Daphne could hear the squawk of the police-car radios. The coroner was on his way. For now, Donovan’s body would remain where it was, the sheriff insisted. Even Suzanne, despite her shrill demands, was not allowed up into the tower until the coroner could arrive.
Both Daphne and Ashlee gave statements. When the sheriff asked them how they could be sure it was someone dressed as a clown, they said the flashlight clearly revealed its features, and both described the clown exactly the same way. “Its teeth are the worst part,” Daphne said, shivering. “Pointed and yellow.”
Overhearing this, Pete grew distraught and had to sit down. Ashlee rushed over to console him. Abigail lamented how this was dredging up all the terrible past tragedies.
“Yes, indeed, it is,” the sheriff agreed, “and I’m afraid I can’t keep it from the press. They’ll be here soon, and there’s no way I can prevent the statements made by these young ladies from going public. We need to inform the community that we have a copycat killer on the loose. Someone obsessed with the case, or with your father, Pete.”
“But how could anyone get in here?” Abigail asked. “I set the security system myself.”
“Who knows the code to turn it off?” the sheriff asked.
“Only the family, and Boris,” Abigail replied.
“Even I don’t know it,” Daphne said.
“Is everyone in the family accounted for?” the sheriff asked. “Wait a minute. I don’t see Ben.”
“He’s in Portland tonight,” Daphne said. “But he’ll be home soon, I’d imagine.”
The sheriff made a note of it. “Any hostility between Ben and Donovan?”
“Are you accusing my brother of being the murderer?” Gabriel suddenly spoke up.
“I just have to ask questions, Gabe.”
“Well, to be honest, they were never the best of friends,” Gabriel said. “But then, I never liked him much either. He didn’t have many friends.”
“Shut up, you miserable cripple!” Suzanne bellowed from across the room. “Donovan had hundreds of friends.”
“So long as he was picking up the tab, I suppose everyone in the bars he frequented in town loved him,” Gabriel said. It was the most Daphne had ever heard him speak in the entire time she had been at Witherswood.
“Stop it, both of you,” Pete croaked. “I can’t stand bickering at the moment.”
“Sorry, Uncle Pete,” Gabriel said.
Daphne looked over at Louella. She seemed in a daze, hearing nothing, comprehending nothing.
A deputy came in to report that the hatch on the roof was secure. The boards nailed over it were still in place.
“Then how the hell did the killer get out?” the sheriff wondered.
“Maybe it was a ghost,” Christopher piped up, his round button eyes dancing.
Daphne saw the look that crossed Boris’s sunken face at the boy’s words. “He has returned,” he whispered. “The master ...”
“Stop it!” Pete shouted. “I won’t have such nonsense spoken in my house.”
“There has to be another way out of there,” the sheriff said, “or you girls were hallucinating when you thought you saw a clown.”
“Or maybe
she
killed him,” Suzanne charged, pointing at Daphne. “Maybe she killed Donovan, and Ashlee’s covering up for her.”
“How
dare
you?” Ashlee barked.
“You think
I
killed Donovan?” Daphne asked.
“She has a motive, Sheriff,” Suzanne said, talking fast and furious. “Last night, in the stable, Donovan made a pass at her. She resented it. She said she’d get even!”
“Is this true, Miss May?” Sheriff Patterson asked.
Daphne could barely speak, she was so outraged. “He didn’t just make a pass at me. He tried to
rape
me!” She felt the anger surge past any fear she might have been feeling. “Sure, I had a motive for killing him, and I don’t think any woman would blame me!” She glared over at Suzanne. “Any woman with a conscience and an ounce of self-respect, that is.”
“You little—”
“Ladies!” the sheriff shouted. “Okay, Miss May, you say you had a motive to kill him. Did you?”
“No,” Daphne said, horrified at the notion. “Of course not. It’s just as Ashlee and I told you. We went up there when we heard the music. We saw the clown and we found Donovan’s body.”
“Dear God, this is all too much,” Pete groaned, sitting in his chair, his face in his hands. Ashlee once again went over to stand beside him.
The coroner finally arrived and trooped up the tower stairs to examine the body. An hour later, it was brought downstairs on a stretcher, and Suzanne and Louella were allowed to see it. The body was draped with a sheet, so only Donovan’s face was showing; his slit throat was concealed. Suzanne collapsed in tears. “Is he just sleeping?” the dreamy-eyed Louella asked. “Wake up, Donovan. Wake up!”
As the corpse was being carried out the front door, Ben was walking in.
“What the hell is going on here?” he asked.
The sheriff told him, and asked if he could provide an alibi for his whereabouts tonight. He said of course he could. Did the sheriff suspect a family member of doing this? Only a family member knew the code to disarm the security system, the sheriff said. But the system was never disarmed, Abigail reminded the sheriff. Then, the law enforcer surmised, perhaps the killer had hidden himself in the house before the alarm was set. Perhaps, Sheriff Patterson realized with growing alarm, he was still in the house.
At one o’clock in the morning, cops and bloodhounds combed through every square foot of Witherswood.
No one was found.
Daphne saw the small, almost indiscernible smile of satisfaction that bloomed on Boris’s ghoulish face.
He believes Donovan’s murder is the work of a ghost
, she understood.
And at the moment, the theory seemed to fit better than any other.
By then, the press had arrived, though the police kept them well down the hill, away from the house, or else Pete would have them arrested for trespassing. But the lights of the television cameras could be seen from the windows.
“Dear God,” Pete groaned. He looked over at his son. “I tried to spare you all of this, Christopher, the horrors of your birthright.”
The boy only grinned. “I think it’s rather exciting.”
His father only shook his head, apparently defeated. Ashlee asked the sheriff if she couldn’t possibly take Pete upstairs to bed. The sheriff agreed.