Someone to Love Read online

  Clive finished his fourth chicken wing. “The last owner told me he saw the outline of a woman sitting around his seven-year-old son. The boy was inside the ghost and they were playing Xbox together.”

  “Xbox?” Jace asked.

  “Xbox. She reads over people’s shoulders and when they go too slow, she turns the pages. The eldest son of two owners back said he heard her ride a horse up the stairs, but I think that kid smoked things he shouldn’t.”

  “What about ‘her’ tree?” Jace asked.

  “That’s from long ago,” Clive continued. “It’s said that she hanged a man there. He betrayed her, so she ordered her men to hang him. Get Mr. Hatch to show you the place where the rope used to be. The rope was kept there until about ten years ago, when the owner before last cut it down.

  “There’s another story that she buried her loot under that tree. Mr. Hatch has spent more than one night sleeping under it with a shotgun across his lap. The lads around here are always saying they’re going to chop the tree down and see what’s under it, so Hatch protects the tree.”

  “Interesting,” Jace said, looking at his beer, then blurted, “are there any unsolved murders in this village?”

  Emma smiled. “I see. You want to write about murder in an English village, don’t you?”

  “It’s the only kind of murder mystery that sells.” Jace took a drink of his beer. “Has anyone ever done a study of the population of England versus the number of people supposedly killed in clever ways in remote English villages?”

  “Can’t say I’ve heard of it,” George said, smiling. “But if somebody proposed it, I’m sure the government would pay for the study.”

  “My opinion,” Emma said quickly, before her husband started on politics, “is that remote English villages are so boring that people think about murder just to liven up the place.” She was looking at her husband pointedly.

  “Emma wants George to take her to London for a night out,” Clive explained.

  “If he doesn’t, you’ll have a murder to investigate here in Margate.”

  “So nothing has happened here other than the ghost and the Xbox?”

  “That’s a good book title for you,” George said. “The Ghost and the Xbox.”

  Clive was looking at Jace in speculation. “Any particular crime you’re interested in?”

  Jace looked away. He’d had too much to drink and there were too many ears listening. He was glad when half a dozen men, off from work, came into the pub. Music was turned on and everyone dispersed.

  In the end, Jace stayed at the pub until 2:00 a.m. He laughed and talked with people and did his best to forget what he’d seen in the morning and read in the afternoon. Some man with red hair and freckles drove him home.

  4

  The next morning Jace decided to spend the day at home. He wasn’t much of a drinker, but he’d had two days of falling into bed and that was enough. At breakfast, Mrs. Browne asked after his liver. Jace didn’t reply, but in the next moment, Mrs. Browne was asking him what he’d researched other than the ghost. Jace knew he had to say something or the rumors would create their own explanation.

  He looked down at the French toast—à la Jamie Oliver—and acted as though there was something he was trying not to say. She was cleaning the big Belfast sink and waiting.

  Jace gave her some time, then said, “Why wasn’t my garden in the local garden show?”

  Mrs. Browne immediately launched into a diatribe against her favorite subject: Mr. Hatch. He never entered the village contest because he thought it wouldn’t be fair to the other entrants. After all, he was a professional. Mrs. Browne told Jace what she thought of Mr. Hatch’s gardening skills.

  Smiling, feeling as though he’d distracted the watchdogs, Jace went up to his bedroom, where someone had put the box of books the librarian had lent him. Might as well get started on them, he thought.

  Last night he’d slept in the big oak bed in the master bedroom, but even asleep it had felt too big and too empty. A door had been cut into the wall so the previous owners could use the room on the west end as a closet, so Jace went to the east into what was becoming his favorite room, where he’d slept the first night. He smiled as soon as he entered it.

  One wall contained a beautiful, carved marble fireplace; another wall had floor-to-ceiling windows that looked over the gardens. The wall before him had a deep bay with enormous windows all around it and a window seat below. The bed was against the fourth wall, as was the door into the bath.

  He sat on the window seat and looked out at the parkland, across rolling fields of grass, dotted with…He really must ask Mr. Hatch if those sheep were his or not.

  He turned back to the room. There was little furniture, just the bed, or rather a mattress and springs set on a frame, and a single chair by the fireplace. He knew that downstairs he had several huge rooms with sofas in them and if he had any sense he’d go down there with his books, but he wanted to stay in the bedroom. For one thing it was the only room that didn’t feel empty. Even Mrs. Browne’s kitchen, filled to the brim as it was, had a feeling of loneliness in it. But here, in this bedroom…

  “Keep on, Montgomery,” Jace said aloud, “and they’ll lock you away.” He told himself that the light in the room was good, there was the window seat, and that was all he needed.

  He stretched out on the bed, the box on the floor beside him. The first thing he read was a small blue book published in 1947, about the wicked Barbara Caswell, Lady Grace. Born in 1660 to an impoverished family, she had been a beautiful woman who was bored and restless. When she was eighteen, she’d married the rich man who owned Priory House, and had assumed that her life would be one long round of parties. But her husband hated London, hated all social life. Bored to the point of insanity, the young wife sneaked out of the “chintz room,” up a secret staircase to one of the four tower rooms, donned men’s clothes, then went down the staircase to the ground. She whistled to her favorite horse, then set off to rob people, not for the money, but for the excitement of it.

  After a few months of this, Lady Grace met another highwayman, Gentleman Jack, and had an affair with him. For years, they robbed people together. But eventually, the woman’s boredom got the better of her and in her quest for more excitement, she began killing people. She shot a boy she’d seen grow up, and when an old servant found out about her, she poisoned him. When she found Gentleman Jack in bed with another woman, she gave his name to the sheriff. The highwayman was arrested, tried, and hanged. Barbara Caswell’s only worry was that he might expose her when he was on the gallows. But he was true to his name and didn’t give her away.

  Two-thirds of the way through the book, Jace could hardly read any more. The story made no sense to him, yet it was supposed to be true. Barbara Caswell had gone out night after night for years. Didn’t anyone notice that she was gone? Wasn’t there even one thing that happened at night that caused people to have to get out of bed so they discovered she was missing?

  Reluctantly, he continued reading. After years of murder and betrayal, Mrs. Caswell fell in love with the fiancé of the only person who was suspicious of her, and she reformed. Ah! Jace thought. The power of love. Supposedly, overnight, Barbara Caswell went from being a cold-blooded killer to being content as a housewife—except that she was plotting to poison her husband to get rid of him so she could marry the man she loved.

  By the time Jace got to the end of the book, he could hardly keep his eyes open. He knew he was supposed to believe the story was wildly romantic, but he didn’t. When he read that Lady Grace went for one last raid and was shot by the man she loved, he was relieved.

  “A well-deserved death,” Jace said, tossing the book back into the box. He wanted to take a nap, but then he remembered Emma Carew and wondered what he was supposed to have read about her.

  He picked up a huge paperback, The History of Margate. Since the book weighed several pounds, he didn’t think he’d start from the beginning. He looked in the index, foun