Someone to Love Read online

  “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.

  If Jace was such a caring man, may