Chapter 42

Almost everyone they saw had something to say and at least half an hour had passed before Spike and Ellie ducked under the rope that ran from a railing at the end of the gallery to a tree close to the boundary with Serenity House. Hand-lettered Private signs hung at intervals.

Spike expected to run into rule-breakers on the other side but, apart from two teenagers huddled together against a wall, didn’t see any. “Can you tell me what’s on your mind now?” he asked Ellie.

She looked at the ground and walked on.

He caught her by the arm and waited until she turned her face up to his. She didn’t make a sound but tears ran down her cheeks.

“Ellie,” he said gently. “Tell me. Let me help you now.”

“I’m a coward,” she told him. “I don’t know what’s happening, but please God I haven’t put someone else at risk by saving myself.”

Completely in the dark, Spike bowed his head to look at her more closely. She shook her arm free and took off, hurrying past the conservatory and toward the side of the north wing. He caught up with her and let her keep moving to the partially cleared but ruined gardens behind Rosebank.

“He told me to take you back here.”

“And he is?”

She shook her head, whipping her curly hair back and forth. “I didn’t see him. He came up behind me in the dark last night. My head…I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Well, you’ve done as he asked.” There were situations in which pressing questions went nowhere. “Now what?”

“I don’t know,” she murmured and the tears flowed faster. “Why didn’t I get in touch with you last night?”

“Do you want to tell me?”

“He threatened me. He would have killed me, I know he would.”

Frustration made Spike’s nerves crawl but he had to let her go at her own pace.

“He would.” Ellie sounded as if she were trying to convince herself.

“It’ll be okay,” he told her, with no idea what he was talking about. “You were told to bring me back here. That’s all?”

She put a hand over her mouth and looked past him. He glanced over his shoulder but saw nothing but the same scene from moments earlier: the gardens, pieces of equipment and the empty pool.

She spoke and Spike had to lean close to hear. “He said to take you to the pool.”

Spike studied the pale stone rectangle more closely. At the far end, steps led down into the drained interior. Empty flower urns stood high at each corner.

“So we can go back now?” Ellie said.

He wanted to agree but figured he ought to take a closer look first. “Stay here,” he told her and scrunched over weed-dotted gravel to the closest end of the pool.

Even through his hat, the sun beat on his head. His mouth grew dry and he thought about cold water—like the water that once filled the old Rosebank pool.

At the raised wall he stopped and squinted toward the opposite end. Small, wet pools glinted in the sunlight. He hadn’t known they’d been testing the plumbing.

Bright pools, or narrow drizzles and drops, he guessed. In the glare they looked more like oil than water.

Planting a boot on the wall, he leaned over to see the shallow end.

The naked corpse, its hands tied behind its back, sprawled, chest down, where the poolside joined the bottom. The head rested on its side. A white rose bloom peeped coyly from beneath a shoulder. The obscene kiss shone sticky bright.

Shaded from the sun, blood didn’t resemble oil at all.