Page 44 of Ghost in the Garden
“So you are still here.”
“We have an agreement. We have established your ghost is human and female and travels by hackney—both horse and carriage caused far too much noise for spirits, I feel.”
“You are angry with me,” Angela observed.
“You have made us complicit in obstructing the law. Why should I not be angry with you? Where is the body?”
Angela sighed. “I should have known you would suspect me.”
“Whom was I supposed to suspect?”
Angela shrugged. “You already know my husband is not a good man, and he has many minions.”
“Minions who appear to have spent the evening at home.”
“They are far from his only minions. It doesn’t matter. I took the matter into my own hands. I could not have the police here, poking about, arresting Caleb.”
“Why? What else would they have found?” Constance asked swiftly.
“I don’t know.” It sounded like the truth. Certainly, Angela did not try to look away. “Is murder not enough?”
“Why did he kill Gregg?”
“Probably because Gregg was about to expose him.”
“As his partner in St. Giles?” Constance asked.
“Yes.”
“Then why did Gregg risk coming here?”
“I don’t know that either.” Angela paced away from the window, crossing to the door and back again, before flinging herself into one of the armchairs. “It seems so foolish that I suspect it might not have been Caleb at all who killed him. It could easily have been one of his professional enemies, or one of the angry tenants. Someone might have followed Gregg here.”
“And killed him in your cellar?” Constance asked with blatant disbelief.
“Do you know for certain that he died in the cellar? He could have been put there afterward.”
“There was blood. On the cellar floor. The axe was there too.”
“Not a huge amounts of blood,” Angela argued. “Not enough to prove the matter, either way. Content yourself with the fact Gregg met justice—considerably more than the law would have provided. Forget it. I hired you to find the ghost. You found out she’s human. Who is she?”
Angela’s swift change of subject was chilling. She had just dismissed a murder committed in her home, most probably by her husband, with the ease of moving down the agenda at a church meeting.
Not that Constance had ever attended one of those.
“I don’t know yet,” she said. “But if she entered the house when we first saw her, she had been here for more than three hours. Presuming you had no female visitors this evening—”
“We had no visitors at all.”
“Someone did. Do any of your male staff have sweethearts or mistresses?”
“None that they would dare entertain while at work.” Angela sounded impatient again. “She can’t be anything to do with the staff.” Almost angrily, she drummed her fingers on the chair arm, frowning at Constance. “Look, I wish ithadbeen a ghost. But I still think I’m right about motive. Whoever she is, she means harm to my husband. And I mean to stop her. She’s dangerous. Dangerous enough to have killed Gregg. Dangerous enough to draw you to his body and implicate Caleb.”
Oddly, those were things Constance had not thought of. She considered them now, doubtfully. The female who had fled up the lane and leapt into the hackney had been young and agile, but she had also given the impression of feminine frailty.
“You mean she killed Gregg with an axe, on your grounds? And then hid him in your cellar?”
“Caleb could have hidden him when he found the body. He can’t afford to have corpses around the house. Or she deliberately hid him here. After all,younearly brought the peelers down on us.”
