“I am not giving you permission to do that!” Wendy said immediately.

  “I don’t need your permission,” I said. “I’m not the police. But let’s move on....At breakfast this morning, you couldn’t wait to begin your search for Lord Ravensbrook so you could find where his body is hidden. Which leads me to think you expect to find something with his body. Some proof that would back up what you think you know about the true nature of his disappearance. Since Lucas’ evidence vanished with him, you could take this other proof and use it to make your own big announcement. And take all the credit for yourself.”

  “That’s not how it is!” said Wendy.

  “Then tell me,” I said. “How is it, really?”

  Wendy took a deep breath. Her back remained straight, and her voice was entirely steady.

  “All right, yes; I helped Lucas research his paper. I’d found some very interesting references to an old document that would shed a whole new light on what really happened to Lord Ravensbrook. I told Lucas, and he was able to track down the document itself. He was going to show it to the Society, when he made his big announcement. I believe Lucas was murdered here, to stop him revealing the truth. I need to find Lord Ravensbrook’s body, and what should be with it, so I can make Lucas’ announcement for him. So he won’t have died for nothing.”

  Catherine looked at her, horrified. “Have you been using me as a distraction, because Arthur didn’t work out? To keep everyone from noticing what you were really after?”

  Wendy turned quickly to look at her. “No, Cath! I wouldn’t do that.”

  “Then why didn’t you tell me any of this?”

  Wendy reached out and took Catherine’s hands in hers. Catherine didn’t pull away, but she didn’t look convinced either.

  “You’re the only one in this house I do trust, Cath,” Wendy said steadily. “I couldn’t tell you, because in this house you can never be sure who’s listening.”

  And then Wendy stopped, and looked round suddenly. We all did, and there was Arthur, standing in the doorway. He blinked at us uncertainly.

  “I heard raised voices. Everyone seems to be in such a bad mood this morning....What’s going on?”

  “Didn’t you hear?” said Wendy.

  “I only just got here,” said Arthur.

  I wasn’t too sure about that. I hadn’t heard him approach, and I should have. But then, I had been concentrating on what Wendy was saying. Penny smiled brightly at Arthur.

  “We’ve been arguing about whose portrait that is, over the fireplace. Do you know who it’s supposed to be?”

  “Of course,” said Arthur. “That’s my ancestor, Alexander Glenbury.”

  Catherine looked triumphantly at Wendy, who sighed and let go of her hands. She turned back to me.

  “Look, Ishmael...Just leave me alone to get on with my work, and I will get to the bottom of what’s really going on here. You’ll never find out on your own.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” I said. “Continue your search. But keep me posted.”

  Catherine cleared her throat politely. “Can I ask you something, Ishmael?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Are you any nearer to working out how Mr. Carr could have vanished so completely?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “But we’re getting there.”

  And then I led Penny out of the room, before Wendy could challenge us to fight our corner.

  ChaPter Seven

  Daylight Horrors

  Penny and I went for a pleasant stroll through the ground floor. It was all splashed with early morning sunshine, though the odd shadow lurked in the background to remind us this was still Glenbury Hall. Doors stood invitingly open to every side, freely offering their rooms for inspection, as though to prove the house had nothing to hide. If anything, that made me even more suspicious.

  “You’re frowning again,” said Penny.

  “I’m just wondering why this case seems so determined to frustrate me at every turn,” I said. “I can’t even get a grip on what kind of a case this is. Are we investigating a disappearance, a kidnapping, or a murder? Are we surrounded by suspects, or a house full of ghosts? I’m starting to wonder whether we’ve been looking in the wrong direction all along, and Lucas just did a runner for reasons of his own, and vanished over the nearest horizon.”

  “That would explain why we haven’t been able to find him,” said Penny. “And why we haven’t been able to establish a motive for any of the suspects.”

  “We certainly didn’t learn anything useful from our little talks,” I said. “If anything, they seemed as baffled as we are as to what’s going on.”

  “But why would Lucas want to run away?” said Penny. “He wasn’t here long enough for the Hall’s resident spooks to throw a scare into him.”

  “He might have worked up the nerve to get this far,” I said, “only to discover that faced with the prospect of having to make a big speech to so many people, his courage failed him. And all he could think of was to get the hell out of here.”

  “Okay,” said Penny. “I can see him sneaking out of the Hall, somehow, but why didn’t he just call a taxi and go home? Why hasn’t he contacted anyone, to let them know he’s okay?”

  “I don’t think he has anyone to contact,” I said.

  “He must have known people at the Organisation.”

  “Maybe he was too embarrassed,” I said. “And he might not have had a mobile phone. Not everyone does, even in this day and age. Perhaps he tried to walk back into town across the fields, and got lost. I’d hate to think he was still out there in the countryside.”

  “Someone would have found him by now,” said Penny.

  “You’re right,” I said. “Cancel the running away idea. It just shows how desperate I’m feeling, that I was even prepared to consider it.”

  “Arthur and Marion backed each other up,” said Penny. “And so did Catherine and Wendy.”

  “First question, when it comes to alibis,” I said. “Who benefits? The person being vouched for? Or the person doing the vouching?”

  Penny frowned. “It’s hard enough to find a motive for one person, let alone two people working together.”

  “If everyone was telling the truth, Carr’s disappearance would be impossible,” I said. “So someone has to be lying.”

  “But no one has any reason to lie!”

  “Breathe,” I said kindly. “Don’t let it get to you. All we need is a moment’s insight, and everything will drop neatly into place.”

  “Either that, or a really lucky break.”

  “Yes,” I said. “One of those would help. Now; where were we?”

  “The word impossible had just been used,” said Penny. “And not in a good way.”

  “Like any conjuring trick, it only seems impossible as long as we don’t know how it was done,” I said.

  “The only other suspect is Ellen,” said Penny. “She did lie about seeing things on her laptop...but she doesn’t have any obvious motive to lie about anything else.”

  “So where does that leave us?” I said.

  “There’s always the Hall,” said Penny. “This house feels like it holds a grudge against anyone who dares stay in it.”

  “But then why did it only make Lucas disappear?” I said. “He was a stranger, on his first visit. Everyone else has spent far more time here, and none of them have disappeared.”

  Penny sighed. “I always hope that if you ask enough people enough questions, then the guilty party will be bound to incriminate themself. You know: Yes, I did it! I killed him and I’m glad, do you hear, glad! Because he deserved it! And then they go on to spell it all out in detail, just to prove how clever they’ve been. But somehow, that never happens.”

  “The more people I talk to,” I said, “the more I think this house holds all the answers.”

  “I assume you’re not suggesting we interrogate the ghosties and ghoulies,” Penny said carefully. “So...you’re back to thinking about concealed doors in the panelling, hidden passageways, and secret rooms?”

  “It has to be something like that,” I said. “Lucas could be imprisoned in a hidden room somewhere. Or his body could have been dumped in one. I’m thinking there must be a maze of secret passageways hidden away behind these walls, to allow someone to move around the house unseen and only emerge when no one’s looking. It’s the only answer that makes sense.”

  “Even though Arthur said flat out that there isn’t anything like that, anywhere in the Hall?” said Penny. “I mean, he should know, given he spent most of his childhood trying to find them.”

  “So he says.” I looked thoughtfully at Penny. “Have you noticed how Arthur always seems to have an answer for every question we put to him?”

  “And you think that makes him look guilty?”

  “It’s usually the way to bet.”

  “It’s far more likely that he and Marion got together and worked out what their answers were going to be, before we got here,” said Penny. “She strikes me as the kind of woman who wouldn’t want to leave anything to chance.”

  I shrugged. “You could say the same about everyone here. They all seem to have things they don’t want to talk about.”

  “Which is situation entirely normal, for most of our cases,” said Penny.

  “I’ve been wondering if there might be some unknown extra person in the house,” I said. “Hiding away in a secret room, and only emerging briefly to put the wind up people.”

  Penny looked at me sharply. “Could this unknown person be Lucas? Just messing with everyone, for his own reasons?”

  I looked at her. “Why would Lucas want to do something like that?”

  Penny smiled. “Beats the hell out of me.”

  “And how would Lucas even know where the secret rooms are?”

  “Because he’s an expert on the history of the Hall.”

  “Okay...” I said. “Put that one of the back burner, for now. I’ll think about it.” I gave the nearest wall my best suspicious look. “I can’t believe I haven’t been able to spot a single concealed door or sliding panel anywhere.”

  “You just want them to be here, because that would give you a simple answer as to what’s going on,” said Penny.

  “Yes!” I said. “Exactly!”

  “We don’t get the kind of cases with simple answers,” said Penny. “You must have noticed.”

  I nodded. “With a little encouragement, I think I could become seriously depressed.”

  “Nonsense,” Penny said briskly. “You’ve got me.”

  “That does help,” I said.

  “And you know how you love it when an explanation finally comes together, and you get to lecture me on all the things I’ve missed.”

  I smiled. “Yes. I do enjoy that.”

  “One of these days, I’ll get there before you.”

  “It’s good to have dreams,” I said.

  We continued on our leisurely way through the ground floor, keeping an eye out for anything interesting. The further we progressed, the grimmer and more dilapidated everything seemed in the unforgiving glare of daylight. Every piece of furniture was old enough to be an antique, but covered with enough scrapes and scratches to explain why it hadn’t been sold off. The wood-panelled walls were increasingly dull and dusty, and the few remaining historical items wouldn’t have troubled any collector’s dreams. It was like walking through a museum that no one gave a damn about anymore. Portraits on the walls stared disapprovingly as we passed by, as though appalled at the state their ancestral home had been allowed to fall into. I half expected them to make sardonic comments, or start gossiping behind our backs.

  “This place is a mess,” Penny said finally. “I can’t believe Arthur and Marion really thought they were ready to open up their Hall to paying guests. Most of it looks like no one’s been round with a feather duster for centuries.”

  I shrugged. “The first guests they let in were historians, who might have preferred to see the Hall this way. Untamed and untouched, preserved from the improvements of the modern world. There’s no snob like your specialist scholar.”

  “Ishmael,” said Penny. “Much as I am enjoying our little excursion, I have to ask: are we looking for anything in particular?”

  “I think that comes under the heading of: we’ll know it when we see it,” I said. “Or possibly, when we don’t see it.”

  Penny gave me a stern look. “There are times when I think you talk that way just to annoy me.”

  “Sometimes, it’s the things that aren’t where they should be, or the people who don’t say or do the things you’d normally expect, that help to give the game away,” I said patiently. “Remember what was wrong with the dog in the night? He didn’t bark, because he recognised the intruder.”

  “So we have progressed from searching for clues, to looking for the absence of clues,” said Penny. “Wonderful. Ishmael...We have no body, and no actual evidence of a crime, just someone who isn’t where they’re supposed to be. How can we solve a case, when we can’t even be sure what the case is?”

  “Look on the bright side,” I said.

  “What bright side?” said Penny, just a bit dangerously.

  “It could be raining.”

  Penny smiled in spite of herself, and slipped her arm through mine. We moved deeper into the ground floor, accompanied only by the soft sounds of our footsteps and the occasional creak from the woodwork, disturbed by the vibrations of our passing. Like walking through a tomb that had been untroubled by the living for far too many years.

  “Does this part of the house seem suspiciously quiet, to you?” said Penny, after a while.

  “It’s so quiet I can almost hear the death-watch beetle gnawing on the woodwork.”

  Penny looked at me. “Really?”

  “I said almost.”

  Penny stared distractedly about her. “I don’t like this house, even in broad daylight. There isn’t a single part of it that feels friendly, or welcoming. And now...I am getting a very definite feeling that we are being watched.”

  I stopped, and Penny stopped with me. I looked up and down the corridor, listened carefully, and then shook my head.

  “There’s no one else in this part of the house. If there was, I’d know.”

  “I’m not talking about human eyes,” said Penny.

  I kept my voice carefully calm. “Are we back to talking about spooks and spirits and the walking not entirely deceased?”

  “Whoever’s watching us doesn’t feel like people,” Penny said stubbornly. “If you say we’re alone here, I trust your weird alien senses. But something is watching us with bad intent. I can feel it, in my bones and in my water. I don’t know, Ishmael...Maybe it’s all these portraits! So many unfriendly gazes in one place.”

  She looked at me unhappily, knowing she wasn’t making sense but trying to make me understand what she was feeling. To keep the peace, and because I trust Penny’s instincts the same way she trusts my senses, I took a good look at the aristocratic mug shots staring sternly at us from out of the past. They all had the same expression: grim and dour, as though all human weaknesses had been scoured out of them by living in the Hall. Or by being Glenburys. I picked one at random, and strode over to stare it in the eye.

  Some forgotten dignitary glowered back at me, in his best clothes and a truly ugly chain of office. The image was so dark and faded it might have been painted at midnight after someone blew out the candle. The eyes were just dark smudges, with no life or menace in them. I leaned in close, until my nose was practically touching the canvas and I could make out the individual brush-strokes. I turned back to Penny, and shrugged.

  “It’s just a painting. Like all the others. Whatever sins these people might have been responsible for in the past, they don’t have any interest in us now.”

  Penny scowled around her. “But something is definitely here with us! It’s like...when you can feel unfriendly eyes boring a hole into your back, in the middle of a crowded room.”

  I nodded. I knew that feeling.

  Penny scowled up and down the passageway, banging one fist quietly against her hip.

  “We have come up against some truly weird things in our time, Ishmael,” she said slowly. “But nothing like this house...It feels like some kind of predator, just waiting for us to lower our guard...”

  I chose my next words carefully. I could hear a real disquiet in Penny’s voice. And she wasn’t someone who disturbed easily.

  “I am taking your suspicions seriously, Penny. But I can’t do anything, until I see some evidence of a threat. Do you think the Hall is planning to abduct us next?”

  “How could we hope to stop it, if it tried?” said Penny.

  I decided it was time to play the frivolous card, and hopefully lighten the atmosphere.

  “I suppose it would depend on how the house disposes of people,” I said. “Are we talking concealed trapdoors in the floor, that suddenly drop open to deliver us into the house’s stomach? Or perhaps there are disguised dimensional doors, that lead into some nightmarish other reality? Or perhaps there are things like giant trapdoor spiders, lying in wait?”

  Penny didn’t look particularly amused. “Am I to understand those are all real possible threats?”

  “They are all things I’ve encountered on past cases,” I admitted. “The important thing to remember is that I am still here and they, for the most part, are not.”

  “You have lived a seriously strange life, Ishmael. And yet you still refuse to believe in ghosts...”

  I shrugged helplessly. “I’m sorry, Penny, but as far as I can tell Glenbury Hall is just a house. And as far as Lucas Carr is concerned, I am putting my money on a human culprit, with a very human grudge.”

  “So what do you think happened to him?” said Penny.

  “Beats the hell out of me,” I said.

  And then we both looked round, as some way down the corridor a door swung slowly open on its own. The hinges creaked loudly, as though trying to attract our attention. Penny and I stood very still, watching the door carefully as it swung slowly back, leaving nothing but the gloom of an open doorway. The corridor was suddenly very still, and very quiet.