Page 69 of Ghost in the Garden
“It’s not a social call,” Constance said. “Where is Mrs. Lambert?”
Everyone was seated around the table, gawping at them.
“In the dining room, of course,” Goldie said. “She’s had her first course, but she’s waiting for his nibs before she wants the second. Gawd knows where he is.”
“And it’s none of your business,” Duggin growled.
Duggin, the only person apart from Lambert himself to have a key to the wine cellar and that padded room…
With difficulty, Constance prevented herself from grabbing Solomon’s hand as she hurried across the kitchen to the stairs. She was shaking, and every hair on the back of her neck stood up. But no one stopped them going.
“None of them look worried,” Solomon muttered when the baize door swung shut behind them. “They don’t know he’s dead.”
“Which leaves Angela, who doesn’t have a key.”
“Could she have followed him in? Like we did to Iris? Could anyone else?”
Constance didn’t answer. She knocked and walked into the dining room, where Angela sat alone at the table, somehow bereft in her splendid evening gown and pearls. There was not a mark on her, though her face was rigid, her lips compressed—whether with annoyance at her husband or with Constance and Solomon was not clear.
“Mrs. Lambert, we have terrible news,” Constance said in a rush. “Mr. Lambert is dead.”
“Nonsense. He’s fetching a bottle of wine that Duggin couldn’t find. And for want of it, the whole dinner is spoiling.”
“Oh, he’s in the cellar,” Solomon said. “In a room at the top of the stairs there, and he is quite, quite dead.”
Angela stared at him, the blood draining out of her face. Abruptly, she rose and reached behind her to pull the bell. She tugged it sharply three times.
“You saw him?” she flung at Solomon. “How did you get in?”
“Behind your ghost, who has a key to the outside cellar door.”
Angela blinked rapidly, perhaps to adjust from the huge fact of her husband’s death to the trivia of the ghost. “She’s here?”
The door opened and Duggin strode in, panting as though he had run all the way, and glaring at Solomon. “Wanting rid of anyone, ma’am?”
“No. Let me into the cellar.”
He blinked. “Ma’am, I really don’t advise—”
“Now,” she snapped.
Duggin inhaled sharply, turned on his heel, and stalked out. Angela followed, Constance and Solomon at her heels.
Pat and Robin stood either side of the baize door.
“Shift,” Duggin barked, and they did. Constance would not have been surprised if he’d simply marched back down to the kitchen, but he didn’t. He took the keys from his pocket, inserted one into the cellar door, and went in.
The padded room was open and visible from the stair light.
“Don’t come in!” Duggin shouted at Angela, but he was too late. She was in, and she saw. She fell to her knees with an inhuman cry, not entirely unlike Iris’s.
Duggin shut the door in their faces.
Constance’s heart ached. Not for Lambert, though he was beyond saving now, but for Angela, whose world, whose entire reason for living, was crumbling to nothing. She turned back to the baize door and walked out into the hall, Solomon silent beside her.
Pat and Robin were scowling at her. “What the hell’s going on?” Robin demanded.
Constance drew in her breath. “I’m afraid Mr. Lambert is dead.”
