Murder Most Cornish

Book 0: A Molly Higgins mystery

by Kate Johnson

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Cozy Mystery

Synopsis

'An excellent cosy mystery.' NetGalley Reviewer At Penkellis Hall, murder is just for entertainment... Kitty Cardew has been enjoying life in Port Trevan and her reoccurring role on a popular TV show, all is looking rosy, except for the very small issue of being broke. So when Kitty is asked to help out at a murder mystery weekend in a Gothic mansion on the coast, she jumps at the chance. Throwing her into the path of Ned Crowe, who might be good-looking, but definitely one of the most irritating men she's ever met! Just as the sparks start to fly, a body is discovered and this time the death is not part of the plan. Desperately in need of help to figure out which of their guests is the real killer, Kitty and Ned turn to Molly Higgins. She might be catering the weekend, but she is the only one who can help track down the murderer, before they strike again... The second book in the gripping new Molly Higgins Cozy Mystery series: Book 1 - Death Comes to Cornwall Book 2 - Murder Most Cornish Book 3 - Death on the Aisle

Release date: May 18, 2020

Publisher: Orion Dash

Print pages: 305

Sample

He lay in a pool of congealing blood, the knife in his back drenched in the stuff.

‘Is he dead?’ asked Kitty, a woman Ned had previously considered to be of reasonable intelligence.

‘He looks pretty dead.’

‘He might not be.’

They both regarded the corpse, which remained still. The man’s back was to them. He didn’t move. He didn’t breathe.

‘We should check,’ said Kitty.

‘We should,’ Ned agreed.

Neither of them moved.

‘It’s your house,’ Kitty said, and Ned wasn’t sure why that meant he had to be the one to creep around the bed – the bed he’d bought and paid for, the nice mattress and the good-quality sheets, dammit – and nearly choke at the sight of the corpse’s slack jaw and open eyes.

‘Oh yes,’ he said faintly. ‘I think he’s definitely dead.’

He was back at Kitty’s side as soon as he could make it, and he knew those glassy eyes and waxy skin would be there in his memory forever.

‘We should tell Molly,’ said Kitty after a long, loudly silent moment.

‘Molly?’

‘In the kitchen.’

Ned knew who Molly was. He had no idea why they should tell her. ‘Because she won’t have to make the dairy-free meal?’ he said.

‘Because she solved the last murder we had,’ Kitty said.

‘Oh,’ said Ned, and all the way down the stairs, holding onto the wall as if he was drunk, a little voice kept whispering: Last murder?

The other guests sprawled around the breakfast table in the Great Hall. They perked up as soon as Ned pushed the door from the stairs open.

‘Is he dead?’ one asked excitedly.

‘I’m afraid so,’ Ned managed.

‘Capital!’

They all leaned forward, excited now, and started discussing the murder, quite as if this was all pretend.

Only one person sat back from the table, and it was the gorgeous redhead who'd been trouble from the start. Her face was white, her eyes as glassy as the corpse upstairs.

‘Come on,’ Kitty whispered, and she took Ned’s hand to lead him through the green-baize door to the back corridor.

Molly was in the kitchen, her apron off, her keys in her hand. She looked normal, sensible, a rational person from the modern world. There was a knife block on the counter, with an empty space in it.

She glanced up, and Ned felt like a boy reporting a misdemeanour to Matron.

‘There’s a dead body upstairs,’ he said.

‘Oh,’ said Molly. ‘That’s a bit early.’

The sun sailed high over the sea, bathing Port Trevan in golden light. It was beautiful, like a scene from a picture postcard or a Sunday-night TV drama. Molly knew, because she sold picture postcards in her café themed after the Sunday-night TV drama filmed in Port Trevan.

Molly turned over the sign on the door and opened it to the customers already drifting over. She watched with pleasure as they took in the candyfloss colours, the retro chrome styling, the signed cast photos on the wall. She made them teas and coffees and served them themed cupcakes.

And she didn’t look up at the photo closest to the counter, where Conor Blackstone smouldered down at the patrons and staff alike.

The door tinkled, and the café went a bit quiet. Molly knew what that meant without having to look up, and it wasn’t going to be her mum coming to do lunchtime covers.

But her hopeful heart still had her looking up, and then smiling politely when it wasn’t him.

‘Morning,’ said Kitty, pushing a pair of oversized sunglasses on top of her beautifully coiffed head and smiling a perfectly lipsticked smile. She wove between the tables, hips swaying.

Someone dropped a teaspoon.

‘Morning, Kitty. Coffee?’

Kitty nodded and yawned. ‘Please. Black. Strong. I’ve been in Make-up since seven and I might fall asleep out of sheer boredom. Still, at least the weather’s playing ball.’

‘It is now,’ said Molly. ‘It’ll rain tomorrow.’

‘The forecast said—’

‘Pfft,’ said Molly. ‘Forecast. I asked Derek Temple.’ He’d been fishing in Port Trevan since before Molly was born, and he was more accurate than the Met Office.

‘He can’t know that,’ said Kitty, but she said it uncertainly.

Molly glanced at her as she took the Hello Kitty reusable cup. Kitty looked beautiful, but then she always did. It was her job. Blonde hair done up like Brigitte Bardot, heavy on the eyeliner, eyelashes so long and thick Molly feared she might start a tidal wave if she blinked too hard.

Molly could almost hear the eyeballs swivelling between Kitty and the signed photo of Kitty in character as Valerie Pearson beaming down from the wall.

Any minute now …

Her costume today was a pair of skintight capri pants and a top that clung over a bullet bra. Molly could barely take her eyes off Kitty’s front-thrust boobs, and she was pretty sure she was as heterosexual as possible.

‘Well, Make-up did a good job,’ she said. ‘You look like you just walked out of a Beatles album.’

‘I’d make a pun about a hard day’s night but I’m honestly knackered,’ Kitty said, smothering another yawn and collapsing beautifully onto an ice cream-pink high stool. Kitty did everything beautifully.

Molly shoved back her unruly red hair and moved away from the heat of the coffee machine that made her face red, hoping she didn’t have sweat patches under her arms. Still, it wasn’t her job to be beautiful.

She pushed the button for a good strong espresso, pushed it again, then topped it up with hot water. Kitty didn’t take her coffee with sugar or syrup or foam or even milk. Kitty didn’t have the calorie allowance for milk. ‘I’ve been up half the night trying out low-carb breakfasts for Penkellis Hall.’

When Ned Crowe, the owner of the Gothic pile a few miles from Port Trevan, had first asked if she knew a caterer, Molly had half-jokingly said she could rustle up a dinner party at mate’s rates. And then that dinner party had turned out to be for paying guests who were trying to solve a fake murder, and it had turned into a monthly event, and now he was planning a whole weekend of paying guests.

Molly, who had made a bet with herself when first she met Ned a year ago that he’d go running back to London the first time the Wi-Fi failed, had been a bit ashamed of her lack of faith in him. She owed it to her friend to cater his mystery weekends properly.

‘Can’t you send up some of these?’ Kitty jerked her beautiful blonde head at the pastry case containing a selection of Molly’s gluten-free successes.

‘No, because they also contain dairy and sugar,’ Molly said, and Kitty blinked owlishly at her.

‘Ned wants dairy- and sugar-free breakfasts?’

‘Ned eats whatever I give him,’ Molly said. ‘His guests only put in the food request yesterday.’ She yawned. Ned did indeed eat whatever food Molly put in front of him, but she strongly suspected this was because it was the only food put in front of him. Given his general demeanour of a crow who’d fallen down a flight of stairs, Molly had low hopes of his managing to take care of a houseful of paying guests at the weekend. Especially since …

‘Have you heard from Hayley?’ she asked. Kitty had recommended her as one of the bit-part actors on Miss Lawrence Investigates to take on the role of Lady Vanessa in Ned’s murder mystery weekends.

Kitty drained her coffee and hopped off her stool to help herself to more. ‘Six weeks off her feet,’ she said. ‘At least.’

‘Oh God, poor Ned.’ Molly received a strange look for that. ‘I mean, poor Hayley too, obviously,’ she added. ‘But he did tell everyone not to use the back steps. He said they weren’t safe.’

‘I know, I know. And now none of us will. The lesson has been thoroughly learned.’

Molly nodded and turned to serve someone who’d come to the counter, and it was only after they’d gone back to their table that what Kitty had said filtered in. ‘I’m sorry, what did you say?’

‘I said I won’t use the back stairs. Pre-approved pedestrian routes only.’ Kitty saluted smartly and retook her seat at the counter. ‘I mean, that place is so stupidly big I’m going to need a trail of breadcrumbs, or maybe some signs. I’d use my phone but there’s no damn signal up there …’

‘Why will you be up there?’ Molly asked, although she figured she already knew the answer.

Kitty looked kind of shifty. ‘Well, it’s just for a few weeks,’ she began, and then the door chimed and she looked over her shoulder. While she didn’t say, ‘Hey, look over there!’ she might as well have.

The average Port Trevan day-tripper tended to lean heavily towards sensible shoes and cagoules, and they tended to like pots of tea and a nice bit of bun and a sit down. The couple who’d just walked in were not the average Port Trevan day-trippers.

Molly dealt Kitty a look that said she knew she was angling for a distraction, and said to the newcomers, ‘What can I get you?’

‘Oh, how about a little piece of 1993,’ said the woman, who had perfectly tonged waves in her hair and the sort of casual outfit that cost more than Molly’s entire wardrobe. She even wore a gilet, for heaven’s sake.

Molly smiled, or at least showed her teeth. ‘1963, actually,’ she said, and gestured around the retro campness of her café. ‘The year the current series of Miss Lawrence Investigates is set in? We film some of it here,’ she added, which usually got a small ripple of enthusiasm.

The glossy couple looked at her as if she’d just started speaking Japanese. Right, they were probably far too cool and modern to watch Sunday-night nostalgic TV dramas. Probably it was all subtitled black-and-white streaming or something round their way.

‘I’ll have a …’ the woman stared at the menu on the wall as if it, too, was written in a foreign language. ‘Well, I suppose an Americano, or a “filter coffee”, if you like.’

Molly had spent some time working out what kind of drinks to offer in her café. She’d spent even longer thinking about how to present them. Knowing she was not aiming at a hipster youth clientele, she’d tested out the suggestions on her mother’s friends and had come to the conclusion that the vast majority of her target market preferred drinks that were described in simple, obvious terms. No one could remember what an Americano was. Everyone knew what filter coffee meant.

‘And do you have decaf?’ asked the glossy woman.

‘Yes,’ said Molly, because this was modern-day Cornwall, not the 1970s. ‘One decaf Americano. Would you like milk with that?’

‘Milk? Good heavens, no,’ said the woman, tossing her honey-blonde waves in disgust, as if Molly had offered her cow dung.

‘We don’t eat dairy,’ said her companion. He wore a shirt cut so close to his body it had to have been tailored for him. It had pink facings on the inside of the collar.

‘We’re vegan,’ explained the woman.

‘We have soy, almond or coconut milk,’ Molly offered.

‘We only drink hemp milk,’ said the man, patronisingly.

Molly was pretty sure that if she listed every dairy alternative in the world, they’d still want something she didn’t have.

‘Black coffee’s much better anyway,’ said Kitty encouragingly, from her stool. She gave them a professionally warm smile.

The glossy woman looked Kitty over. Kitty, in full costume and make-up, was quite something to behold, and Molly assumed she’d be recognisable from Miss Lawrence Investigates. Or from the signed cast photo on the wall. Or from the character cupcakes named after her in the display case.

‘Yes,’ said the glossy woman, looking baffled at why anyone would wear cat-flick eyeliner at ten in the morning. Apparently at a loss as to how to proceed, she turned to her partner. ‘Darling?’

Darling was fit and slim and almost more perfectly groomed than his female partner. Molly didn’t think she’d ever seen a man with such precision-plucked eyebrows before.

‘I suppose I’ll also have an Americano,’ he said. ‘Half caff.’

‘Anything to eat?’ Molly asked, although she was pretty sure she knew the answer.

They looked at the pastry case as if it was full of weevils. Molly had gluten-free cakes, low-sugar cakes and dairy-free cakes, but somehow she got the feeling none of these were going to meet with this couple’s approval.

‘No,’ said the woman, and Molly rang up their drinks.

‘Oh God, that’s so cheap,’ said the man, handing over a fifty-pound note. Now he was just doing that to annoy her. Molly was pretty sure there wasn’t a coffee in the world that cost twenty-five quid.

Well, although that last time she’d been to London with Conor …

She made a show of checking the fifty for forgeries, gave them their change and left them to sit down at one of the retro chrome and Formica tables, sneering at the décor.

Kitty caught Molly’s eye and compressed her lips. Even the TV people weren’t that ridiculous. In fact, certain hipsterish tendencies aside, they weren’t ridiculous at all. Not one of them had ever made fun of the menu in Molly’s café, or at the pub down the road. Although they did seem to be slightly obsessed with overpriced gin and gluten-free bread.

Which reminded her. ‘Penkellis Murders,’ she said to Kitty. ‘Ned said he’d got someone from the set to take over Hayley’s role.’

‘He did,’ said Kitty.

Molly waited. Kitty sipped her coffee innocently.

‘He got you, didn’t he?’ Molly said eventually, and Kitty sighed.

‘Well, look, he was desperate, and I’m not needed this weekend, so I gave him a ring and it all seemed fairly straightforward,’ she said. Her smile was bright, but there was something in her eyes that said ‘straightforward’ wasn’t the full story. ‘I’m popping up there tomorrow to see him. You know him, he must be all right, yes?’

‘Ned? Oh yes, he’s …’ Molly brought a picture of Ned to mind. Ruffled dark hair, soulful eyes, probably quite handsome under all the bruises and cobwebs. Ned was odd, and quiet, and melancholic, but Molly liked him. She liked him enough to gamble her catering business on him. ‘He’s nice,’ she said, aware that wasn’t a very demonstrative word. ‘He won’t mess you about.’

‘Good to know,’ said Kitty. ‘And look, if we hate each other, it’s just one weekend. Barely twenty-four hours when you put it all together.’

Molly fussed with the cups on the counter, and didn’t say what she was thinking. Kitty had a recurring role on Miss Lawrence Investigates, and last year she’d filmed a part in a massive blockbuster franchise, and she’d invested her money in this very café they were currently sitting in. Kitty wasn’t short of a few quid, in essence, so clearly she wasn’t taking this job for the money.

‘And next month?’ she said.

‘Oh, we ought to have finished reshoots by then,’ Kitty said breezily, and, before Molly could say that wasn’t quite what she’d meant, added, ‘When’s Conor coming back down?’

Molly didn’t look at his photo on the wall. ‘When he’s finished his audiobook. Or his wildlife documentary narration. Or his celebrity parties,’ she said, and Kitty said, ‘Ah,’ and this time it was Molly who changed the subject.

‘And you actually live in Port Trevan,’ marvelled the third person that evening, as if it was literally a film set, made of plywood and lighting rigs.

‘Yes,’ said Conor, smiling. He was good at smiling at people who bored him silly. All those years at LAMDA had paid off.

‘Isn’t it funny, I didn’t think it was real somehow,’ she said.

‘Well, it’s certainly real when I pay my council tax,’ said Conor.

‘How hilarious,’ she said, not smiling much. Given the immaculate nature of her lipstick, perhaps she wasn’t able to. She extended an elegantly pale hand. ‘Serena Morgan, debt securities.’

‘Conor Blackstone, actor.’ Her hand hadn’t been extended at an angle it was possible to shake, and Conor wondered if he was supposed to kiss it. He shook it limply anyway.

‘Yes, I know. The star turn. I believe you’re supposed to convince me to part with some of my hard-earned cash,’ said Serena Morgan.

Serena Morgan was rather like the room they stood in. Immaculate, expensive, and beautiful in a cold, impersonal kind of way. She had red hair, and alabaster skin, and eyes like a cat. Attractive, he supposed. But her red hair wasn’t curly, and her pale skin wasn’t freckled, and she wasn’t warm and round and lush and – well, she wasn’t Molly.

‘And how can I?’ he asked, putting thoughts of his girlfriend reluctantly to the back of his mind. ‘Convince you?’

Charming, Blackstone, be charming. She was a financier of some kind – Conor had no idea what debt securities actually were – so he chose the Appealing to Their Wallets script.

He smiled at Serena Morgan’s lizard-cold eyes, and said, ‘It’s a fact that the arts aren’t just important for our cultural heritage, they’re a world-class export. Britain is famous all over the world for our theatre and film, and it’s an industry that brings in millions to the economy.’

She looked bored.

‘Added to which, an arts education is an incredibly valuable thing, no matter which career you pursue. For instance, I imagine, in your line of work, it’s not uncommon for you to have to make speeches, or give presentations?’

Serena Morgan gazed at him blandly and said, ‘Do you even know what my line of work is?’

Conor grinned. ‘Ah, busted. But I’m pretty sure you have to talk to people a lot, right? And that maybe you don’t want to –’ like now – ‘maybe you don’t like them. Maybe you don’t care about the product or service you’re selling them. But you need to act like it. You need the confidence to stand up there and sell yourself.’

‘Myself?’

‘As a commodity. A person to hire, to trust, to work with. And that confidence can come from an arts background. A teenager standing there on a stage in a silly headdress pretending to be Juliet on her balcony, or Sandy from Grease, or a rapping Alexander Hamilton, can use that experience of pretending to be someone else to pretend to be a confident businessman. Or woman.’

Conor smiled winningly at her. He’d faced audition panels who were more forthcoming than this.

Serena Morgan shrugged one slender shoulder. ‘It’s a tax write-off, isn’t it?’

‘Well, yes, certainly your donation would be—’

‘Shall we say fifty grand?’ She flashed him a smile as brief as it was insincere, and immediately turned her attention away, to a man who was as immaculate and impersonal as everyone else here, with the exception of his hair, which he wore in a man-bun. Conor supposed this was like having a tattoo or nose ring: an attempt to stand out, whilst ultimately conforming in every other way.

‘Ah, Hugo. You’ll never guess. Colin here lives on that film set in Cornwall.’

‘Conor,’ said Conor. ‘Conor Blackstone.’ He smiled his actor’s smile again and held out his hand to Hugo, who gave it one of the bone-crushing handshakes Conor had been getting all evening. ‘And it’s a real village, actually, although we do film most of Miss Lawrence Investigates there.’

‘Never heard of it,’ said Hugo, down his nose. This was quite a fascinating manoeuvre, since Conor was several inches taller than him. Conor catalogued the movement for the next time he was cast as an arrogant twat. ‘Didn’t your Ned move down that way, darling?’

There was something horribly cold in the way he said ‘darling’. Conor had heard it used as an endearment and as a kind of general greeting and almost as punctuation in a lot of media circles, but this Hugo seemed to use it almost as an insult.

‘He’s not my Ned,’ Serena fired back, her words like bullets. ‘Thank God. Who’d want to live in that dreadful draughty old castle?’

‘Not all castles are draughty,’ Conor said. ‘A friend of ours has been doing one up. Well, it’s not a castle, as such, but it’s rather Gothic. He’s spent most of his money putting in central heating.’ He smiled and sipped his champagne and added without really thinking, ‘Come to think of it, his name is Ned.’

‘Ned Crowe?’ said Serena, her interest sharpening. ‘You know Ned Crowe?’

Conor blinked at her. ‘Ned Crowe who owns Penkellis Hall? Yes. I do. That’s … you know Ned?’

He tried to put the man he knew – broke, melancholic, usually covered in bruises from some DIY disaster – into a context that matched these obscenely wealthy people in this grand, ornate room.

‘Well, of course, darling. Everyone in the room knows Ned.’ Hugo looked ever so slightly amused. ‘The man who lost everything.’ He touched Serena’s arm, and she flinched ever so slightly.

‘He worked in finance?’

‘For a while he seemed to be in finance,’ said Hugo. ‘The man with the golden touch. Then, bam, nervous breakdown, loses half a yard in a single day, disappears off the face of the planet.’

‘Half a yard?’ said Conor.

‘Half a billion,’ clarified Serena.

While Conor tried to get his head around that kind of figure – in a day – Hugo went on, ‘I heard he’d run off to Cornwall with his tail between his legs. What’s he doing down there, working in a provincial bank?’

‘He, uh, runs murder mystery parties,’ said Conor.

‘He does what?’

‘Well,’ Conor checked his watch, which told the time and didn’t cost more than a small car, unlike every other timepiece in the room, ‘he’s been running dinners for a while, but next week will be his first weekend. My girlfriend caters them,’ he added proudly, and got two disinterested stares in response.

‘How hilarious,’ said Serena, with the same blank expression as before. ‘Darling, are you going to donate?’ she said to Hugo.

‘Oh. Yes. Hundred?’ said Hugo casually.

‘A hundred thousand?’ Conor clarified, and got a look in response that said any other figure would be a joke. ‘Very generous of you, thank you.’

He got their details, and waved them off, and wondered what the hell had happened to Ned Crowe to have gone from this glittering, ruthless goldfish bowl to the Gothic dampness of Penkellis Hall.

The Hall was visible from the road only as a hulking shape looming over the cliffs, and if it hadn’t been for the lights showing in a few windows, Kitty would have been convinced it was a giant waiting to eat lost travellers.

The wind whistled in the trees and whipped Kitty’s hair around her face. She stumbled over a tree root, which felt and looked almost exactly like a skeletal hand reaching out to grab her from below the earth.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said told herself loudly. ‘It’s just a perfectly normal path up a perfectly normal cliff to a perfectly normal house.’

The lights that feebly illuminated the house suddenly went out.

‘On a dark and stormy night. In the middle of nowhere.’

Kitty got her phone out of her pocket again and tried to call Penkellis Hall, but there was still no signal. Of course there was no signal; she’d probably stumbled through a portal and travelled back in time to the medieval era, and there would be a headless horseman out to get her at any moment.

Kitty cursed her overactive imagination and struggled on up the hill. There was no phone signal because she was in the middle of nowhere on the north coast of Cornwall. She was used to this part of the world, where the twenty-first century could abruptly vanish when you walked around a corner. She’d spent two years filming down here, in fact – frequently up on the very headland she was now approaching.

When she was filming, however, she was usually surrounded by people, and her phone usually worked, and the weather was usually completely fake. Derek Temple might have told Molly it would rain, but the BBC weather forecast had said it wouldn’t. Kitty had brought an umbrella, but she hadn’t otherwise dressed for rain, so the BBC had better be right. Her shoes were not designed for rain—

Or, apparently, even for walking on this terrible excuse for a drive. As her foot shot out from under her, Kitty yelped and flung out her hands to catch herself.

For a moment she knelt on all fours in the mud, taking stock. A tear in her tights and a graze on her palm. She was fine.

‘At least it isn’t raining,’ she said determinedly, getting up and marching onwards. Kitty was made of tough enough stuff to cope with this. She was 90 per cent sure she was made of tough enough stuff to cope with this.

It began to rain.

‘Oh, really?’ she said, because that about finished it. Her shoes would be ruined, and her dress was really far too flimsy to cope with rain. Her hair, which she’d left in one of the glamorous sixties styles the make-up team had given her, would go flat in seconds.

She put up her umbrella, and the wind snatched at it so hard she thought her arm would be wrenched from its socket.

‘Just an easy weekend’s work, Kitty,’ she mocked herself as she wrestled the sodding thing down again. ‘Do it in your sleep, Kitty. It’s the perfect place to hide out, Kitty, you absolute moron of a coward.’

She sped up, clambering up the steep, winding drive until the house came into view.

On the website, it had looked quite handsome, if not exactly welcoming. A large house of grey stone and Cornish slate, all mixed architecture and interesting rooflines. In the dark, in the rain, with the wind beginning to howl and some unidentified creature screaming off in the woods, it looked like a horror-movie set.

‘It’s a gull, or a fox, and the house is perfectly normal,’ Kitty told herself, marching across the only flat bit of ground she’d found so far, a miserable carriage circle with the remains of a fountain in the centre of it. A depressed nymph poured ivy and spiders from a cracked vase into a large stone basin full of lichen.

Kitty hurried past it and took respite under the front portico.

There were gargoyles on it.

‘Honestly,’ she muttered, for her own benefit as much as anyone else’s. She looked for a doorbell, but there was only a weathered brass pull-handle to one side. Gingerly, she tugged it, and it came off in her hand. Thunder suddenly cracked across the sky.

‘What the bloody hell –’ snapped a voice, and Kitty yelped, because she hadn’t even noticed the door opening.

Looming over her from the darkness was a giant, a werewolf with a wild mane of hair, a Gothic monster bathed in an eldritch glow, brandishing an instrument of torture.

Kitty hit it with the brass bell pull.

Ned came to with a bright light being shone in his eyes, and wondered for a second if he was dead.

No, if he was dead, he probably wouldn’t have a throbbing headache and be freezing cold, and there would be no one muttering, ‘Oh God, please don’t be dead’ in his ear.

He pushed away the light, and the voice said, ‘Oh, thank God.’

Ned blinked, but the light had blinded him and all he could see were dancing spots. Great, he was getting a migraine.

‘Can you hear me? How many fingers am I holding up?’

The light was back. ‘I can hear you,’ he said. ‘But you’re blinding me with that light.’

‘Oh. Sorry.’ It moved away a few inches. ‘Where’s the light switch?’

Ned pressed a hand to his eyes, and the dancing lights continued to flash behind his lids. He appeared to be lying on something. Possibly the crowbar he’d grabbed to jemmy open the door to the woodshed that housed the generator.

‘The switch is by the door, but the power’s gone off.’

‘Oh. Oh, yes, I saw it go dark from the – I’m sorry, it got me a bit, um flustered. Do you want me to call an ambulance?’

‘No,’ said Ned grumpily. ‘It’s just a migraine. I’ve had them before.’ Although they didn’t usually make him pass out on the floor in front of strangers.

He sat up, which hurt, and pushed the damn crowbar away. What was he doing on the floor in front of a stranger? The last thing he remembered was working on character notes, and then the lights had gone out – he wasn’t scared of the dark, it was just a spooky old house – and then the doorbell had rung. Ned hadn’t even known he had a doorbell. He’d tripped over the rug in the darkness, dropped his phone under the sideboard, and now he was probably covered in cobwebs from scrabbling about for it.

‘Well, can I help you up?’

He couldn’t see her for that blasted light. Ned’s head was full of Lady Vanessa and blackmail, and the dark shadows that filled the Great Hall. He allowed the mystery woman to help him to his feet and take his hand and lead him into his own house.

The light from her phone cast wild shadows all over the Great Hall, but it illuminated the big table and the chairs around it. Ned let go of her hand and collapsed onto one, pressing his hands to his head. Ow. His head felt like someone had taken a knife to it, which was new.

‘Can I do anything?’ said the woman.

You can go away. Serena had always said he was like a bear with a sore head when he had a migraine, which wasn’t really far from the truth. He just needed to lie down in the dark for a long while, until the flashing lights stopped and the pulsing pain faded and he could sleep it off.

‘It’s just a migraine,’ he repeated. The flashing lights were already fading, which might mean nothing. Sometimes he didn’t get them at all.

‘Um,’ she said.

‘. . .