Page 42 of Death at Inishmore Castle

Someone in this castle had seen something. Maybe they didn’t even understand what they’d seen at the time, but we would figure it out. I had a plan for tomorrow. One that involved a few of my closest friends.

I only hoped they didn’t mind being a part of my Scooby-Doo gang once again.

A hand shook my shoulder, and I sat straight up in bed gasping.

“It’s me,” Lizzie whispered.

She was lucky she’d spoken, as I’d already been reaching out to twist her wrist painfully in a Krav Maga move I’d learned years ago.

“You scared me,” I said.

“I heard a noise,” she said, still speaking under her breath. “Well, Mr. Poe did, and woke me up. But then I heard it.”

I blinked in the darkness and then reached for the lamp. “What time is it?”

“Three a.m.,” she said. She waved a hand at me. “Listen.”

There was nothing for more than a minute and then there was a strange thudding sound in the wall behind our headboards.

“That,” she whispered.

Mr. Poe growled.

I hadn’t minded her waking me up. I’d been dreaming a killer was chasing me through the halls of the castle. When I was working on one of my mysteries, that was the kind of dream, or rather nightmare, that was commonplace.

“The place is hundreds of years old, and there is no telling when the plumbing was last replaced. That’s all it is.”

She shook her head. “No. There’s a difference. Plumbing doesn’t sound like footsteps. And we definitely heard that.”

I was about to ask if she was certain she hadn’t been dreaming, when there was a shuffling sound in the wall.

She was quiet, and we sat there for another few minutes. There were more footsteps and it sounded like they were just on the other side of the headboard. I jumped out of bed and unlocked the bedroom door. The hallway was lit with sconces but there was no one out there. Besides, it was the interior wall where we’d heard the footsteps.

Were there secret passages in the castle? It wouldn’t have been the first time a family had done that. Throughout history, nobles had to have escape routes built in for when times went south. At least, that was what I’d read. They’d have secret rooms, and access to places where the enemy couldn’t find them.

We sat there for another half-hour but didn’t hear anything else.

I moved around the room, knocking on walls, trying to find a secret doorway, but to no avail.

Tiredness swept through me, and I yawned. “We’ll look again in the daylight,” I said. “And if the O’Sullivans aren’t around for us to ask questions, we’ll see what we can find on the history of the architecture of the place.”

Lizzie frowned.

“What is it?”

“Isn’t that what the priest was researching before he died? The books on the desk were all on architecture.”

Darn. I’d forgotten about that.

“Right, we’ll keep this between us. We’ll do a bit of exploring tomorrow. And I’ll ask Kieran’s permission to look at the books on the desk where the priest was killed.”

She shivered again. “I really want to figure out who’s doing this and go home.”

I didn’t blame her. This case just kept getting creepier.

ELEVEN

Around eight the next morning, someone woke me by knocking on the door. I sat up, confused about where I was for a few seconds. I’d gone to sleep listening for more footsteps within the walls.

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