0945820950924859

The Angel of
Hever Castle
A City of Mystery Novella
By Kim Wright

Chapter One
“This business of bringing trees inside of houses is, without question, the most bizarre holiday custom
I have ever encountered,” Trevor Welles said, as he watched the others resolutely wedging candles
into an enormous spruce. The tree was standing not in the sensible location of a forest or field, but
rather in the drawing room of his friend Geraldine Bainbridge’s London home. She persisted in
calling it a “Christmas tree,” a term Trevor could only assume was synonymous with “imminent
disaster.”
“Hush yourself,” Geraldine said, standing back to survey her handiwork. “It’s a German tradition that
the Queen has brought to Windsor, and that makes it quite good enough for me.”
“Yes, Trevor,” said Emma Kelly, calling down from a ladder which was being held by Geraldine’s
butler Gage. Judging by his glum expression, Gage was in full agreement with Trevor about the
advisability of this particular project. “Surely you don’t question the judgment of Victoria herself.”
“The Queen has squadrons of servants standing watch all night to make sure Windsor doesn’t go up in
flames,” Trevor muttered, but experience had taught him it was an utter waste of time to argue with
either Geraldine or Emma. Geraldine was elderly, rich, and quite accustomed to getting her way in
all matters both great and small and, although younger by decades and no stranger to grief or poverty,
her employed companion Emma shared many of the same personality traits as her mistress.
Stubbornness was the most prominent among them.
“The ladies are quite right, Welles,” said a muffled voice coming through the branches, for Trevor’s
fellow detective Rayley Abrams had taken on the task of affixing candles to the back of the tree and
was nearly trapped between the greenery and the wall. “If you allowed yourself to relax and get a bit
more into the holiday spirit, you’d see that it’s perfectly lovely.”
“Your participation in this lunacy is the strangest note of all, Abrams.”
“What’s your point?” Rayley asked, emerging from his green cocoon with a grin and knocking stray
spruce needles from his clothing. “That a Jew can’t enjoy a good bonfire?”
Trevor chuckled and settled back on the settee. They were a smaller-than-usual group on this
particular evening. The Thursday Night Murder Games Club, an informal amusement of the recentlyformed
forensics unit of Scotland Yard, met regularly in Geraldine’s elegant home – although perhaps
not so regularly as their title suggested. Trevor and Rayley, who were both full detectives within the
Yard, were the official members of the Club, along with Davy Mabrey, a bobby who had been
assigned to the unit on a permanent basis. Geraldine’s nephew Tom, a medical student serving as the
group’s coroner, and Emma, who filled the role of translator and linguist, were the unofficial
members, while Geraldine stepped in as the group’s hostess, guardian angel, and chief financier. It
was an arrangement that suited them all admirably well.
But in this week approaching Christmas, Davy was taking a few well-earned days of personal leave

and Tom had decamped to his family’s country estate, which meant only Trevor, Rayley, Emma, and
Geraldine would sit around the evening table. Although he was fond of the two younger men, Trevor
had to admit that it was a pleasant variation to have a party of four. The room was so quiet that he
could hear the sound of Emma humming something pleasant. A scrap of a holiday carol, no doubt.
“You see, gentlemen,” she said, having attached the final candle to the top of the tree and daintily
descending the ladder. “When the candles are lit, it is meant to bring to mind the image of stars
twinkling through the tree branches. That sight was the inspiration for the carol Silent Night.”
“I don’t know the tune,” Rayley admitted, sinking down beside Trevor on the settee and reaching for
his pipe. “Is that what you were humming?”
But before she could answer, there was a knock at the door. Not the leisurely knock of a social
visitor, but a rapping that was persistent, almost frantic, and Trevor instinctively tensed, his hand
gripping the base of his brandy glass. Gage abandoned the ladder and went to the door and a moment
later Geraldine’s friend Tess Arborton dashed into the room, clearly in agitation. She had not
relinquished her wrap to Gage, but rather stood dripping and trembling before them, peering out from
beneath the brim of her feathered hat.
“Tess, dear, what a pleasant surprise,” Geraldine said, with a quizzical frown. “Will you join us for
dinner? We were just about to go in.”
“I cannot have dinner,” Tess said, her eyes darting wildly around the room as if it were a
preposterous suggestion. As if, in fact, she might never eat again. “I am sorry to come upon you
without notice and in such a ridiculous state, but I didn’t know where else to turn. My daughter is
missing.”
“Missing?” Geraldine echoed, as Emma turned to pour their sudden guest a glass of sherry.
“Well, not missing entirely, for I know where she is,” Tess said, pulling off her hat and wiping drops
of water from her cheeks. It was unclear if they were the result of tears or melting snowflakes. “But
she shouldn’t be there, not at all, and if a young girl is somewhere she has no business being, isn’t that
the same as being missing entirely?”
It was a bewildering question, but fortunately Emma was quick with the sherry, so they all had a
moment to compose themselves while Tess gulped it.
“Are her children gone with her?” Trevor inquired, for he knew Tess’s daughter had given birth to
twins a year earlier. The event had played an accidental but pivotal role into the Yard’s investigation
of the infamous case of Jack the Ripper.
“Children?” Tess said in bewilderment, but she allowed Emma to take her wrap from her and
Geraldine to escort her gently but firmly to a seat by the fire. “Oh no,” she said finally, once she
realized what he was asking. “You are speaking of my elder daughter, my Marjorie. She’s exactly
where one would expect her to be, at home with her husband and her boys. It’s my younger girl,
Anne, who has fled. I shouldn’t have come,” she repeated, looking around the room as tears began
rising again, perhaps triggered by the mere act of saying Anne’s name aloud. “But Gerry, I knew you
had friends of the sort who might…”

“Of course,” said Geraldine. “Rayley and Trevor shall find your dear Anne.”
“Trevor and Rayley shall help look for your dear Anne,” Trevor amended, for Geraldine was prone
to be a bit rash in her promises. Her confidence in them was a fine thing, but he didn’t wish to offer
this clearly shaken woman false hope. “But you say you know where she is already? Perhaps if you
started again and told us the story in a more… logical fashion.”
Tess nodded and sighed, making a Herculean effort to control her nerves. She sipped her sherry,
gazed for a few moments at the half-decorated tree, and finally managed to present an admirably
linear recounting of recent events. Her youngest daughter Anne, just seventeen, was to have her debut
in the spring and in anticipation of the event Tess had commissioned an artist to paint the girl’s
portrait. The man, who went by the suspiciously affected name of LaRusse Frederick Chapman, came
with the highest recommendations and, in fact, his early sketches of Anne had shown great promise.
But he turned out to have what Tess described as “bohemian tendencies” and apparently at some point
in the process of painting her portrait, he had furthermore managed to seduce the girl. The two of
them had now disappeared south, into the countryside of Kent.
And here Tess paused to withdrawn a letter from her pocket, one scribbled by Anne before her
departure, telling her mother she was in love, that LaRusse had declared her to be his perfect muse,
and that the two of them were traveling to Hever Castle to join an artist colony there. There was a bit
of the obligatory girlish nonsense about how this LaRusse was “her preordained fate,” along with a
warning that she would not, under any circumstances, be persuaded from his side. At the bottom of
the note the girl had written in large block letters: DO NOT FOLLOW ME, MAMA. I MEAN IT.
“What do you make of this last bit?” Trevor asked quietly, before passing the letter to Rayley. But, to
his surprise, it was Tess who answered the question.
“I believe the last line is a subconscious admission that Anne wishes to be followed,” Tess said.
“That she may have been having doubts on some level even as she penned the note. She went out the
window,” she added, with an ironic twist of her mouth. “Climbed down the side of the chimney, at
least according to our neighbors, which is quite the grand gesture when you consider that she simply
could have walked out the front door. She was hardly kept a prisoner.”
“So you suspect this is more an act of youthful rebellion rather than a true determination to be with
this man,” Trevor said, privately pleased that Tess was seeing the situation so clearly.
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean she will gladly return – not with me and not with any emissary I might
send,” Tess said. “Anne is of a certain temperament. She says she intends to be her own person. She
says this quite often, whether anyone asks her or not.”
“Quite,” said Trevor, who felt an unexpected flicker of sympathy for the girl. Her mother was a
known bluestocking – well educated and, like the others in Geraldine’s social circle, an avowed
supporter of liberal causes, including votes for women. Her older sister was a paragon of a different
sort. Marjorie’s own spectacularly successful debut had resulted in the match of the season, a lavish
wedding which linked her to a rising young barrister from one of the best families in London. This
coup was followed a year later by the triumphant birth of not one, but two, sons - the perfect “heir and
spare” that dynasties demanded. It would be hard for a young girl to claim her turf in such a family,

and her long-deceased father was not there to support her. Perhaps become the muse of a bohemian
artist was the best way she could think of to distinguish herself.
“Hever Castle,” Rayley mused. “That was the family home of Anne Boleyn, was it not? One of
Henry VIII’s beheaded wives?”
“Yes,” said Emma, who read incessantly and was thus the natural scholar of the group. “But the
Boleyns lost the family estate when Anne fell from favor…and then the property reverted back to the
Crown. It is considered a minor castle, and the Crown has so many. I doubt anyone pays it much
mind.”
Tess nodded vigorously. “According to LaRusse, who talked as much as he painted, it is an
abandoned place which has been overtaken by artists of every sort. They are aiming to establish
some sort of utopian society there. You can imagine it, somewhat like one of those farms managed by
the transcendentalists in America where everyone shares everything and all is…free.” Her voice
faltered a bit on the last word, no doubt thinking that while communal property and social equality
were radical enough notions, what really made these colonies notorious was their reputation for “free
love.” The rumor was that they were sexual playgrounds, where the bohemians swapped partners as
casually as respectable people might change their clothes. Trevor was afraid that the idea might set
off a spasm of fresh weeping, but Tess regained her composure and looked directly at him, saying “So
will you please go there? At least ensure that Anne is safe and well? And if you could possibly find
a way to persuade her to come back…”
Trevor raised an eyebrow as Tess’s voice trailed off. “You said she would resist your interference,
including any emissary you might send.”
Emma broke in. “So it would seem that Anne must not know who you are. Not friends of
Geraldine’s, and thus there at her mother’s behest, and certainly not detectives from Scotland Yard.”
Geraldine clapped her hands. “Quite right.”
“You are suggesting that we travel incognito?” Rayley asked, a slight smile playing around his thin
lips.
“Posing as artists yourself, perhaps” Emma said. “Or writers or musicians or whatever you
please.”
“A marvelous idea,” Tess said, with another vigorous nod. “According to LaRusse, creative people
of all types come to Hever and simply take up there, staying for as long as they please and living off
the property. It is surrounded by farmlands and I take it that they simply…glean.” Her fingers ran
nervously over her empty sherry glass. “You are all probably thinking that I have been a proper fool
in this matter. And I did indeed hear rumors about LaRusse before I commissioned the portrait, but I
dismissed them as mere gossip. London society is so quick to condemn anyone who dares to be
unique.”
“That is true enough,” said Geraldine, rising herself to refill Tess’s glass for Emma was staring
pensively into the fire, almost as if she had gone into a trance, and Gage had disappeared into the
dining room, where he was clanging plates and cutlery with pointed vigor, reminding them all that the

dinner hour had approached and he hated to serve his food late. “But it is one thing for a man to have
radical notions, and quite another for him to steal a young girl from her home.”
“He is so much older than Anne,” Tess said hollowly. “I believe he might even be married, although
heaven knows where or who his wife might be. I simply never foresaw any of this.”
Ah, but I can easily imagine his whole pattern, Trevor thought. He has undoubtedly gone from girl
to girl for years, declaring each one to be his muse. Muse. That’s a proper load of rubbish.
They’re more likely meant for his amusement, I should think. He seduces and then abandons them
and the girls either disappear from society entirely or their parents go to great lengths to hide
their disgrace. Thus his victims collude to conceal his true nature, and that’s how the wretch has
continued to get commissions to paint the daughters of London’s better families.
When Trevor pulled away from his thoughts, Tess was looking hopefully at the settee where he and
Rayley were sitting. “You shall help me? It shouldn’t be more than two or three days of
inconvenience. Just long enough to ensure my daughter is well.”
“I like the idea,” Rayley said.
“I don’t,” Trevor said, with a snort. “You wish us to put on painter’s smocks and cavort around the
snowy countryside stealing food like a bunch of gypsies?”
“Don’t be silly, Trevor,” Geraldine said. “It hasn’t snowed all season.”
“And we must do something,” Emma said, her own tone as sharp as Geraldine’s was mild. “Men
who prey on women cannot be allowed…” Her voice trailed off and she jerked her small pale chin,
using both hands to push her hair from her face. Everyone in the room knew what Emma was thinking
about – her sister Mary, who had been the last victim of Jack the Ripper. While LaRusse was no
Ripper, Trevor silently conceded that Emma had a point. Threats to young women lurked everywhere
and, having failed to capture Jack, Trevor supposed that he and his team were doomed to chase his
shadow for the rest of their careers.
“Think of it as one of our experiments, Welles,” Rayley said. “You and I were bemoaning just last
week, were we not, that neither of us has ever had the slightest experience in working undercover or
assuming a false identity? This is our perfect chance.”
“What I recall about last week’s discussion of the matter,” Trevor said drily, “is that we mocked
those officers who were so eager to play charades. That we compared them to children at a
masquerade party.”
It was true. He and Rayley had laughed uproariously at a photograph of the celebrated Murder Squad
of Scotland Yard, all of whom had embraced the mania for investigative disguise with a passion. In
the photograph, the eight detectives had sat proudly posed in the costumes they had created for their
undercover work: Cat whiskers and eyepatches and uneven boots designed to give them a ludicrously
exaggerated limp. These so-called disguises, Rayley and Trevor had concluded, had the primary
effect of making sure everyone you passed in the street stopped and stared. Thus they were abject
failures when it came to the true goal of undercover work, which was to blend in, to do nothing to
draw the eye.

“I agree with you that costumes and props can quickly become foolish,” Rayley said, “but we are not
gluing on a set of whiskers, we are affecting an entire new identity. It strikes me as a marvelous
challenge, right up there with mastering the latest forensic techniques. And, just as Mrs. Arborton
says, the task shouldn’t be difficult. Who knows, the luster may have worn off the adventure already
for Anne, and we may easily be able to persuade her to return to London with us. We shall be back
by Christmas, I have no doubt of it.”
Tess smiled. “This is exactly what I hoped you would say.” Then she hesitated. “I have brought one
other thing,” she said. “It was left in Anne’s room and it shows, I believe, the ultimate use LaRusse
intends for her, as his muse…and as his…I left it by the door as I came in.”
“I shall get it,” Emma said, springing to her feet and thinking that if she was unable to travel to Hever,
which sounded quite glamorous, at least she could do research back in London. If LaRusse made a
habit of seducing his portrait models, there were probably any number of other ruined lives in his
wake, for it was Emma’s experience that men who enjoyed debasing women, rarely stopped with
debasing merely one. Who knows, she thought as she approached the cloakroom, there may be more
pieces of the story lurking here in London than out in the farmlands of Kent.
She quickly found the package Tess must have meant and returned to the drawing room with a tube in
her hand, a long thin affair of the sort an architect might use to transport his drawings. She handed it
to Tess, who withdrew a rolled paper from its depths and then suddenly looked around the circle and
said “Must I be here for this part?”
“Of course not, darling,” said Geraldine. “But I insist you stay for supper. Come, let us go tell Gage
to lay another plate and as we dine we shall conspire, all of us, to create the identities Rayley and
Trevor shall assume for their journey.”
“Poor Gage,” Tess murmured but she obediently got to her feet. “It seems he must do everything
around here.”
“We’ve tried a number of maids but no one suits him,” Geraldine said. “He is horribly shy, you
know. I think it’s the goiter. He thinks people are staring at him, which, of course, they are…”
The two older women disappeared from the room and Trevor, Rayley, and Emma waited for their
voices to fade. Once they were sure Tess was truly gone, they pulled the paper from its tube and
unrolled it on a table top then stood, shoulder to shoulder, gazing down at the image found there.
It was a half-done sketch, showing the skill of the artist, just as Tess had claimed. But this was no
ordinary portrait. A wide-eyed girl, evidently Anne Arborton, was seated on a rock gazing out at the
viewer. Her gown had slipped from one shoulder, exposing a young and perfectly round breast. Over
the other shoulder was the image of a faraway castle, perched on a hill. And printed at the top of the
drawing was the title: The Angel of Hever Castle.
“So he’s already had her,” Emma said, turning away from the table in disgust. “The girl’s future is
ruined.”
“Not necessarily,” Rayley said. “Painters must use live models for their nudes and those models must
come from somewhere. Say what you wish about LaRusse, even this rough sketch shows he has

talent. It is artistic in its composition, is it not?”
“Perhaps so, but this isn’t art,” Trevor said, with resignation, for he hated winter travel. “It is
someone’s daughter.”

Chapter Two
The countryside of Kent was largely composed of the last lingering remains of hops fields and apple
orchards, as well as being clotted with sheep. As they rode, Trevor reached over and pulled a
wayward apple from one of the trees and was surprised to find it still firm and relatively tasty,
although the sweetness of the harvest season had long passed. Geraldine was right; the autumn of
1889 had brought a strangely extended expanse of fair weather, and he was relieved to note that no
clouds were approaching from any direction.
The sights, sounds, and smells of the farmland felt like a homecoming to Trevor, although he noticed
with wry amusement that Rayley, who had been raised in the city, had crinkled his nose at the first
whiff of the dung piles and had resolutely adjusted his scarf to cover his nostrils and mouth. Trevor
had done precisely the same thing years ago, when he had first encountered the smokestacks of
London.
Within Scotland Yard, Trevor suspected that he and Rayley were often seen as twin halves of the
same person – outcasts from the ranks of their fellow detectives based largely on their shared belief
that forensics, not deduction, was the future of criminology . They were striving to be modern men in
an antiquated system, constantly running headlong into the blockades of traditionalists, and their
struggles had hastened the growth of their friendship. But it was times like this – one of them
crunching apples and reveling in the country air while the other stayed tight and bundled on his horse,
regarding every sheep with suspicion – that Trevor remembered how different they truly were.
The afternoon before the two men had taken the rail to Edenbridge, the closest village to Hever, and
had then spent an agreeable evening at the town’s only pub, which was located on the ground floor of
the town’s only inn. They had been joined in their dinner by the Edenbridge constable, a ruddy-faced
bloke named Billy Brown. Rural policemen often resented the interference of outsiders in local
matters, and were more apt to be dismissive than impressed when that interference came under the
auspices of Scotland Yard. But Brown had welcomed them literally with open arms, smacking each
man’s back heartily in greeting. He seemed relieved that someone, somewhere, had taken an interest
in the matter, and it was clear that what he called “those bloody shenanigans” at Hever Castle had
rankled him for some time.
“It’s not strictly under my jurisdiction, mind you,” he had said, and then he had blown decisively on
the foaming top of his pint. “Properties of the Crown stand apart from all that. But crimes are being
committed within those noble walls both left and right, make no mistake.”
“We’re not here to clean up the place,” Trevor had reminded him. “More to rescue one particular
girl, even though there is not the slightest evidence the child wants to be rescued. Presumably Anne
Arborton is not being held against her will by LaRusse Chapman but is instead following him
eagerly. That is why we cannot enter the gates as lawmen, but rather taking the form of fellow
bohemians, a task I suspect Detective Abrams will be able to manage more convincingly than
myself.”

Rayley had smiled at this insult-inside-a-compliment and had taken a swig of his own ale, then
winced. Country stuff, probably brewed no more than a stone’s throw away from the inn where they
now sat, far stronger and more bitter than what the pubs served in London. “I wonder if they will
accept us as freely as Mrs. Arborton predicted.”
“Bring food,” Brown had advised with a growl. “And then they will accept you freely enough. I
gather that they are all but starving out there.”
And so Rayley and Trevor now journeyed laden down with every sort of foodstuff the shops of
Edenbridge could offer. Bread, cheese, tea, ham, a jug of ale, and jars of jam, all rattling in their
sacks along with brushes, paints, and the sticks of am unassembled easel. The painting tools had been
borrowed from Geraldine, who was an enthusiastic but somewhat mercurial hobbyist. She had done
a bit of everything at one time or another, including landscapes, and it had been decided that Rayley
would pose as a painter. He had no particular abilities in that direction, but he did have the thin,
serious face which the profession seemed to require, and Geraldine has assured him that if he claimed
to paint “in the modern style” he could swipe colors on the canvas with abandon and no one was
likely to detect his utter lack of talent.
Trevor, in contrast, was masquerading as a poet, which meant that the only supplies he required was
his little leather notebook and pencil, two items which were rarely out of his grasp anyway. He was
convinced that his rapid rise at Scotland Yard was due to his insistence on taking copious notes at
every crime scene and interview, and he supposed that when a man is scribbling away in a notebook
it is impossible for an outsider to tell if he is creating a poem or constructing an accusation of
murder. Still, he felt oddly fretful as he tossed the apple core aside and shifted his weight on the
horse. Rayley noted his notable sigh and turned from his own horse.
“Steady on, Welles. It is only the twentieth of the month and I wager we will be back at Gerry’s table
before you know it, sampling her fine holiday lamb. Or is Gage serving goose this year?”
“It’s not that. I’m just unsure if I can truly pass as a poet.”
“Well, it’s not as if anyone actually knows what a poet looks like, is it?” Rayley asked amiably. “So
that much should work in your favor. Ah, look there, Welles, for it would seem we have found
ourselves already at Hever.”
They had just crested a small hill and now were poised looking down on a lush meadow, with
patches of green still evident here and there across the brown and grey. At the bottom of the hill lay
Hever Castle. Emma had described it as a small one – insignificant, had she said ? – but to Trevor’s
eye it was an impressive place of pleasing proportions, with two balanced turrets and a serene moat
encircling its base of gray stone. A suitable birthplace for a queen who had been heralded for her
grace more than for her morals.
“Easy to see how this first view would dazzle an impressionable girl like Anne Arborton,” Rayley
said. “She must have felt as if she was being carried away like a princess in a child’s fairy tale.”
“True enough,” Trevor said. “The disrepair everyone has claimed the castle suffers is hardly evident
from this vantage point. I suppose we shall see more signs of ruin as we approach.”

“Some women are like that,” Rayley said, prodding his horse back into motion. “They look better
from afar.”
Trevor gave his own steed a gentle kick to the flanks. The horses had come courtesy of Brown’s own
farm, since being a constable was no more than a part-time occupation in these small towns, and
Trevor supposed he and Rayley had much to thank the man for. Who knows, perhaps in the process of
retrieving Anne Arborton from her love nest, they might also find the sort of criminal evidence that
would help Brown approach the Crown with a formal complaint on behalf of the village.
As they neared the castle, Rayley saw two swans come into view, floating gently on the surface of the
moat and he slowed his horse again to consider them.
“Now that is quite lovely indeed,” Rayley said to Trevor, who had pulled up beside him. “They say
swans mate for life, you know. An odd symbol for Hever, considering Anne Boleyn’s reputation for
infidelity.”
“Surely you don’t believe that,” Trevor said, his tone as sharp as if Rayley had condemned a personal
friend. “The charges of adultery were trumped up so that Henry could be rid of her when she failed
to give him a son.”
“I meant no particular offense against the lady,” Rayley said. “After all, we are talking of a romance
which soured more than three hundred years ago. Who among us living today can say if Queen Anne
was unfairly accused?”
“Well,” Trevor said, “at least she was thoroughly English.” His mind drifted back to the previous
evening with Brown at the pub and how the man had insisted on calling the Boleyn family “the
Bullens,” using their plain Kentish name rather than their affected French one. But the point was that
Queen Anne’s family had been of farm stock, the salt of the earth, their roots as thoroughly British as
those of the apple trees all around Trevor now. And that was what mattered at the end of the day.
Rayley was surprised at Trevor’s reaction, for his friend was usually a bit of a prig. He would have
assumed Trevor would be in greater sympathy with Catherine of Aragon, Henry’s devout but
beleaguered first wife, who had been tossed aside for Boleyn. But of course, Trevor could also be a
bit of a nationalist, so perhaps in his mind it was better to have an English-born whore on the throne
than a foreign-born saint. The man could be morally confounding at times, very nearly selfcontradictory.
And it furthermore occurred to Rayley, as he and Trevor remained paused in silence
gazing down upon the walls of Hever, that the painter LaRusse Chapman was much like the monarch
Henry VIII – taking one woman after another for his use, callously abandoning each when she failed
to met his needs.
“Emma says it’s haunted,” Trevor said abruptly.
“By Anne Boleyn?”
“Precisely. Legend claims you can see her at night, on a bridge. That oak one there, I should
imagine, that crosses the moat. The young King Henry came here to pay suit to her, you know. It is
where he proposed marriage, and they say that after her beheading, her spirit returned here,
presumably to a place where she had once been happy.”

“Does her ghost still have its head?”
The question pulled Trevor up short and he laughed. “There isn’t a ghost at all, Abrams, that’s just
local superstition. You’re joking, of course.”
“Of course,” said Rayley and just then the pair of swans disappeared from his sight, in sweet unison,
beneath the heavy oaken bridge. And he could not have said why, but as he watched them a nervous
shudder ran through his slender frame.

Chapter Three
The porridge was wretched. Thin, cold, with bits of grey clotted against the side of the black iron
pot. Rayley scooped out a clump into a chipped bowl and selected a spoon from the cluster thrust
into a drinking glass before looking around for a place to sit.
Constable Brown had been right in his prediction that arriving at Hever with food would make them
popular. The colonists – some twenty or so people, mostly young men – had fallen on their offerings
without ceremony, ripping hunks of ham from the bone and dipping dirty fingers into the pots of jam.
Trevor and Rayley had exchanged a glance of amazement at the melee, both of them wondering the
same thing: How have these people managed to stay alive? And what sort of suffering will the
coming winter bring them?
It had not been difficult to pick LaRusse and Anne out of the crowd. He was apparently king of this
group of paint-splattered gypsies, which made Anne his queen consort – at least for the time being.
The others deferred to him, allowing LaRusse and Anne the head positions at the long table. It was
clear that LaRusse came to the colony frequently and that the monies he collected for his London
portraits were the main source of income for the place. It was also clear that his personal beliefs set
the philosophy for the entire group, for as he had chewed his bread and sipped his tea, he had airily
laid out the law of the land for the newcomers.
Food, LaRusse had informed the silent Rayley and Trevor, was a gift of nature and could only be
accepted if nature had willingly offered it up. That meant no meat, of course, and – since even plants
were conscious beings in the world of Hever Castle – fruits and vegetables could not be yanked
cruelly from their source. Fruit fallen to the ground, and thus freely released from the tree, was fine,
as were eggs dropped from hens or vegetables gone fallow, including any wheat and hops gleaned
from the recent harvests in nearby fields. It was hard to fathom how LaRusse managed to reconcile
this preposterous philosophy with the fact he was now devouring everything Trevor and Rayley had
brought – including ham rendered from a presumably unwilling pig. But evidently anything donated to
the colony by the toil of others was the philosophical equivalent of manna falling from heaven and
thus fair game.
Anne had sat beside him during this grand speech, picking at her own bread and cheese. She was
slender, silent, and pale, although not knowing the girl, Rayley had been unable to decide if such
delicacy was her natural state or if she was already showing signs of strain from life in the colony.
Yes, it was quite easy to see why she had come – the romantic promise of life within a castle, the
thrill of serving as muse to an admittedly talented man who commanded an army of creatives, the
chance to spit in the eye of London society, which could wrap a young girl in all sorts of restraints.
But it was harder to imagine what might cause her to stay, for the reality of this dream seemed far less
appealing than the fantasy. Pigs and chickens and sheep wandered among them as they ate, having
entered through the front doors which LaRusse commanded must always stand open in symbolic
greeting to the wayward traveler. The castle had been stripped bare of any ornamentation and most of

its furniture, and the result was a cold, dark, and foul-smelling kingdom which was apparently ruled
by a madman.
But at least they had been accepted; no one had questioned, or indeed showed the slightest interest in
their claims to be a wayfaring poet and a painter. They had debated the use of pseudonyms as they
had ridden and rejected the idea, afraid they might slip up and draw attention by using their true
names. But no one had asked for introductions either. Apparently people truly did come and go at
Hever on a daily basis, without fuss or ceremony. The newcomers were presented with the stub of a
candle and a single match and told to sleep anywhere they could find.
This morning Trevor had risen early, with the first crowing of a cock that apparently resided out in the
hall. He had gathered from the evening before that LaRusse liked to paint by the light of the sunrise
and that he and Anne were in the habit of going to the gatehouse high at the top of the meadow to
work. Trevor had dressed in the semi-darkness and departed with his little leather notebook under
his arm, determined to assume his role as an early morning poet.
Rayley, more reluctant to abandon the minimal comforts of his pallet, had risen and gone down to
breakfast a half-hour later. Now, nudging a hen from a rickety chair so that he might claim her seat, he
found himself beside a lovely young woman who was dressed in an oversized man’s shirt and
trousers. While the rest of the colonists may have looked sullen and anemic, this girl was bursting
with health and she looked at the bowl in Rayley’s hand and said, with some sympathy, “Our gruel is
worthy of Dickens, is it not?”
“There’s nothing else to eat?”
“Not unless you have the time and inclination to follow around one of our chickens in hopes of an
egg,” she said with a chuckle, then extended a palm. “I am Dorinda Spencer.”
Rayley gladly shared his own name as he shook her hand, noting that her gloves, while made of the
finest kid and obviously expensive, were splattered with paint and the fingertips had been cut off,
evidently to aid in her artwork. She glanced down at them, for the first time appearing a bit selfconscious.
“I am a painter,” she said.
“As am I.”
“Ah,” she said. “Then you must come with me and I will show you where the paints are mixed.
Where I mix them, perhaps I should say. Do you use white? Some within the colony are afraid of it.”
“White paint?” Rayley said, aware he sounded a bit stupid.
She nodded impatiently. “They say it is full of lead. Enough to addle the brain of anyone who uses it,
which is where the notion first arose among polite society that all artists are barking mad. You hadn’t
heard?”
“I’ve been in France,” Rayley said weakly.
“And they aren’t aware of the dangers of lead poisoning there? I suppose that explains why they paint
those bright and airy landscapes, while British art remains so dark and gloomy. And perhaps it
explains the general temperament of the French as well.” She chuckled, amused at her own small

joke. “But I take care to mix beside an open window, you know, and I haven’t lost my mind yet.” She
tossed the one thick dark braid which extended down her back and smiled, showing dimples so
enchanting that Rayley was momentarily distracted from his investigation. “My parents would no
doubt disagree with that last statement.”
“Have you been here long? At Hever, I mean.”
“Less than a month.”
“Which explains while you still seem…”
“Normal?”
He smiled, bringing his spoon to his lips. The porridge was a bit more palatable in her company.
“Yes,” Rayley said. “Show me where the paints are mixed. Show me anything you wish about the
place, for I feel quite up in the air here, as if I have entered into another world.”
“I’ll take you on a proper tour right after I clean up from breakfast,” she promised, pushing back her
chair which made a rude scrape against the bare stone floor.
“Everyone does not clean for himself?” Rayley asked, but as he glanced around the room, the answer
was obvious. Any number of abandoned bowls sat waiting for someone to gather them, the last dregs
of the porridge undoubtedly growing stickier and harder to clean with each passing minute. Rayley
could only assume that one of the bowls was Trevor’s.
“You must be joking,” Dorinda said, following his glance around the table with a quick, grim smile.
“For even in an egalitarian society, the housework falls to the women.”
****
Trevor ambled slowly over the rolling hills, the grass crunching beneath his feet. It was chilly in the
morning, but if today followed the pattern of yesterday, the afternoon would prove tolerable. He
wondered how many days were left before this gentle weather would give way to true winter.
There was no doubt that LaRusse and Anne were inside the small stone gatehouse – he had seen them
disappear there a few minutes earlier. The question was how close he dare venture before he risked
attracting their attention. He seated himself uncomfortably on one of the large boulders which had
pushed their way through the meadow ground, and, in case the spy was being spied upon himself,
made a great show of extracting his notebook and pencil from beneath his coat. Exactly how a poet
might look while working was an eternal mystery, but he stared out into the distance as if he were
waiting for some grand inspiration.
His eye fell on a rosebush by the side of the gatehouse. It still bore blossoms – at least four large
white ones, the edges tinged with pink, and he wondered if it might be the same plant Geraldine had
mentioned, a Christmas Rose. A flower capable of thriving under the least hospitable of conditions
and he had a sudden urge to pluck this remarkable blossom, to press it and take it back to Emma.
Dare he go so close to the gatehouse?
But why not? he thought. I am a poet, after all, a man who seizes inspiration wherever he finds it.

So he ventured closer to the bush and just as he was about to reach for the plump white rose, he was
startled by the sound of Anne Arborton’s voice, coming through the open window.
“You fancy her,” she was saying, her voice somehow managing to sound both scathing and desperate.
“I assure you that I do not,” came LaRusse’s reply.
“Then how do you explain….that?”
They seemed preoccupied, so Trevor took the chance of tilting his head, stretching his neck, and
looking through the window. Anne was pointing at a large canvas on an easel. From his odd angle,
Trevor could not see the whole thing, but it was clearly a more complete rendition of the sketch they
had viewed in Geraldine’s home two days earlier. A bare-breasted young woman with a cloth draped
across one shoulder and over her lap.
“I cannot explain it,” LaRusse said quietly, and something in his tone convinced Trevor that he spoke
the truth. “I am as mystified as you. Except I might say that an artist…an artist does not always know
what he is creating in the moment of its creation. He goes into a sort of trance born of the work and
when he looks on it later, at times he is like a stranger who does not –“
“That’s poppycock,” snapped the girl. “You pose me and yet you paint her.”
LaRusse was silent for a moment and then picked up one of his artist rags to wipe his brow. “The
subconscious mind –“ he began, but Anne was playing that womanly game all men know so well:
demanding explanations then refusing to listen to them.
“Precisely,” she said. “You desire her and part of your mind knows this, even if the other part does
not. That is why you can force me to sit here, hour after hour, in this cold and dirty hovel, in this…
this shameful condition, and the resultant portrait bears her face and not mine.”
“No one is forcing you,” LaRusse said, suddenly as snappish as she. “Go if you wish. Go back to
your mama.”
“That bridge is burned,” Anne said, turning away from him and back toward the window. Trevor
ducked down, hopefully out of her sight. “When I think of the promises you made…”
“Promises I shall keep,” LaRusse said, his mood shifting yet again. Now he was back to the smooth
lover, a man whose tone was as sweet as honey, as soft as velvet. “Your portrait shall hang in
galleries all over Europe before we are done.”
“What you mean is a portrait of my naked body with her face,” Anne said, and her voice held such
hopelessness, such emptiness, that Trevor, still crouched beneath the window, closed his eyes.
“I swear to you, my darling, it shall be corrected. Sit here, just now, and we shall begin again. And
you must believe me. The artist does not always know his own work.”
“Especially if he is drunk.”
And at this a slap cut the air, accompanied by a startled cry from the girl, and it took all the
willpower Trevor possessed not to reveal both his hiding place and his identity. He pressed his hand

against the stone wall and swallowed, trying to gain control over his beating heart and his palm
brushed against the rosebush, a thorn scratching the skin and bringing a sharp line of blood to the
surface. He raised his palm to his mouth and sucked it.
“Strike me if you will,” Anne said. “You can strike me morning and night if you wish, and yet it will
not change the truth. That you brought me here on a sea of false promises, that you are a man who
cannot hold his drink, who crashes about in a stupor and barks orders at people too afraid to
challenge him. And it will not change the fact that the woman in that portrait, your own Angel of
Hever, is not Anne Arborton. It is Dorinda Spencer.”

Chapter Four
After breakfast, such as it was, had been finished, and the dishes, such as they were, had been
washed, Rayley followed Dorinda up to the high garret, lodged in one of the castle turrets, where she
mixed her paints. In some ways, it was a logical location for the task, since the room had windows
on both sides and thus suitable ventilation. But in other ways it was wretchedly impractical, for each
morning the supplies had to be carried up the circular staircase that wound to the top of the turret, a
treacherous ascent involving any number of worn and crumbling steps. Since there was no handrail,
it would be impossibly dangerous to climb with one’s arms full, but Dorinda showed him, with
significant pride, a rope and pulley system she had devised to raise the buckets of water needed for
mixing.
“It is ingenious,” he admitted, even while noting that half the water sloshed from the bucket to the
stone floor below during the process.
“My father was an engineer,” Dorinda said a bit breathlessly, struggling with one of the ropes. “He
had no sons and taught me and my sister how to contrive any number of such machines.”
“It doesn’t look very steady,” Rayley said. He didn’t wish to criticize the girl’s invention, and in fact
he was filled with admiration for both her ingenuity and her pluck. It was hard to believe she had
managed to transport the water by herself for so many days. But he also felt the need to point out that
the pulley was screeching in protest as Dorinda pulled up the last bucket. It seemed a miracle the
whole apparatus hadn’t come crashing down upon some unsuspecting colonist walking through the
stairwell below.
“It bears weight well enough,” she said with a shrug, and then motioned that he should follow her into
the garret.
What was even more surprising than the pulley was the fact that once they had climbed the circular
staircase and entered the small room, Dorinda immediately set about mixing paints for LaRusse
Chapman. Her own and then an entire second set, which were placed rather reverently aside for him
to come and fetch later, at his leisure. When she noted Rayley’s disapproving frown, Dorinda merely
laughed.
“You find it odd that I would perform yet another task for LaRusse?”
Rayley shrugged, making a concerted effort to look nonchalant. It would be a useful skill as a
detective, this ability to appear relaxed when one was truly agitated, but he feared he had never fully
gotten the knack. “LaRusse,” he finally said cautiously, “seems to inspire a great deal of loyalty
among the members of the colony.” Particularly the women, he added in his own mind, but he
refrained from speaking this last bit aloud.
“But why shouldn’t this be the case?” Dorinda asked and her own nonchalance seemed utterly
unfeigned. “He is the king of our kingless kingdom, the god of our godless universe.” She paused to

place a jar of red-orange huge on the simple wooden shelf before adding “And he is my protector. A
girl needs one.”
“Even here?” Rayley said. “In utopia?”
“A liberal man is just as eager to fuck as a conservative one.”
Rayley was shocked. More than shocked. He was stunned, and for a moment he felt as if he’d had
the wind knocked out of him. He paused in his own task of stirring some nondescript shade of blue
and looked out the window at the fields far below. He had never heard that particular word spoken
by a woman, not even a prostitute – and here it had been uttered by a girl of substance, a person of
value, intelligent, and from a background which was financially comfortable enough to allow her to
not only purchase kid gloves, but to cut the tips off them in the practice of her art. He felt the urge to
throw both Dorinda and Anne across the back of Brown’s horses and carry them back to their homes,
far away from this place, which seemed more corrupt with each passing hour.
But Dorinda was clearly pleased with herself, and the two were silent as they put their paints on a
pair of trays and carried them, jars holding every color of the rainbow, down the treacherous steps
and to a room on the second level. This sunny space, which Dorinda informed him had been the
childhood bedroom of Anne Boleyn herself, had now been converted into a studio. It had the best
views of any room he had seen so far in the castle, that much was certain. An orchard on one side,
the moat on another, a particularly well-composed angle on the meadows from the third. Strange that
a daughter, especially a younger one, would have been given the best room in the house as her
private chamber, Rayley mused, momentarily distracted from his moral outrage by the pleasantness of
the setting. Was there something in Anne Boleyn that made her parents certain, even in girlhood,
that she was the special one? The child destined for a great and dangerous future? The one whose
rise would elevate the whole family?
Following Dorinda’s lead, he set up his easel, poised a canvas on it, and selected one of his paints.
From his peripheral vision he could see that she worked both quickly and well. Her horses looked
like horses, her people like people, and her trees like trees. His own attempts, to no surprise, were
an utter mess. He globbed a touch of blue in one corner, a dab of yellow in another, and then they
both began to run until the bottom of the canvas was soon smeared in a rather depressing sea of
green. He had mixed the paints too thin. But he found another, a color somewhere between pink and
red and notably thicker than the others, and he managed to affix a splotch of it into the dead center of
the canvas.
“Your technique is… interesting,” came a voice from the corner. Rayley turned to see that they had
been joined by a man he had met the evening before, a man who had introduced himself as John Paul,
and who was now staring at Rayley’s canvas with a palpable contempt.
“I studied in France,” Rayley said, silently thanking Geraldine for having the sense to predict such a
muddle and for offering a way out.
“France?” John Paul repeated.
“Yes, Paris,” Rayley said mildly. “I was there last year.”

From the spasm of envy which traveled across John Paul’s heavy face, it was obvious he had never
been to France, and Rayley, of course, knew that his own trip had been on police business, not
studying art under the tutelage of artistic masters. In fact, if he were to address the total humiliating
truth, he would have had to confess that he had spent part of his time in Paris in captivity, languishing
in a jail cell down by the river, but Dorinda and John Paul certainly didn’t need to know that. After
staring at Rayley’s canvas for a few more moments of awkward silence, John Paul’s skepticism
finally gave way to a sort of bewildered respect.
“Impressionism,” he said softly, his voice dropping almost to a whisper. “The French miracle of
light”
“The museums of Paris are where I first saw the technique,” Rayley said, and this much of the story
was true. After merely twenty-four hours of subterfuge, he was relieved to be able to say something
honest. It seemed as if he had been wading in a rushing river, and now for the first time since arriving
at Hever Castle, he felt the sense of a solid stone beneath his feet. He would stand on this small stone
of truth until he caught his bearings.
“I was going to get ale from the cellar,” John Paul said. “I thought you might wish to come with me,
Dorinda.”
It was an odd request. A man would hardly take a girl with him to haul ale, not when there were so
many other young blokes around better suited for the task. And then it occurred to Rayley that John
Paul was one of the predatory types Dorinda had described, and that his desire to get the girl into the
castle cellar had absolutely nothing to do with the transport of ale.
“I didn’t know there was a cellar,” Rayley said. “So I take it that supplies at Hever are not as sparse
as it appears?”
John Paul flinched. A quick antagonism had sprung up between the two men, an almost instantaneous
sense of competition, and Dorinda sensed it. She shook her head and turned back to her canvas.
“I’ve just started working,” she said.
“There is a cellar,” John Paul said, addressing Rayley although his eyes remained fixed on Dorinda,
“but the contents are not raided on a daily basis. Only for special occasions. I take it you have
forgotten what day this is?”
“December 21?”
“Not just that,” said John Paul. He was a burly fellow, and Rayley noted in a parenthetical way that
his hands were large, with square stubby fingers. It was hard to imagine such appendages producing
fine art…but then again his own fingers were long and thin, perfectly suited for delicate tasks, and all
he had managed to create was this monstrosity now dripping grey paint to the floor, which he had
furthermore blamed on the French. “It is the winter solstice,” John Paul went on. “The shortest day
of the year.”
“Which is,” Rayley said, “another way of saying it is the longest and darkest night.”
“We are lucky to expect a full moon,” Dorinda said softly, her eyes still turned to her canvas. She

had added a woman to her scene, a woman holding a child.
“We do not celebrate the Christian holidays here at Hever,” John Paul said to Rayley. “They are
oppressive, created by men, enforced by the restraints of the church. Instead we celebrate the true
cycles of nature, and we mark each full moon with a revel. Tonight is special, for we have a full
moon and the solstice in tandem so there will be a bonfire, singing, and dancing. And yes, some ale.
Are you sure you won’t accompany me, Dorinda?”
“Quite sure,” she said, using a slender paintbrush to give her half-realized child a blanket of blue.
“And does LaRusse decree costumes for this solstice celebration?” Rayley asked. The question was
meant ironically, but to his surprise Dorinda and John Paul both nodded, almost in unison.
“Some wear them,” Dorinda said. “Of course, the show is better when there are a troop of actors in
residence. They always manage so be gay and charming, no matter what challenges they face.” She
turned from her canvas and looked straight at Rayley. “Are you the theatrical type, Mr. Abrams?
Shall you dazzle me tonight by taking on an identity I would never expect?”
“Perhaps,” Rayley said, and even though he knew her flirtatious banter was intended more to
discourage John Paul than to encourage him, he still blushed. So the girl liked theatrical types, did
she? He supposed he could come to the solstice disguised as a detective from Scotland Yard.
****
“Good God, man, what is that?”
“You evidently do not recognize great art.”
“Evidently I do not,” said Trevor, glancing at Dorinda’s canvas as he claimed the room’s only chair.
“But I must say that one there in the corner seems a proper painting.”
“What have you been doing all morning?” Rayley asked.
“Picking roses,” Trevor said, indicating a white flower he had tucked into his lapel. “Christmas
roses, to be precise. I hate this place.”
“They may call them roses, but they really are a totally different flower,” Rayley said. “From an
entirely different plant family, which is why they can continue to thrive even after the weather has
turned too cold for real roses. Hellebore, I believe, or something very like it.”
Trevor raised an eyebrow. “And you mention this, because?”
“They’re highly toxic.”
Now Trevor’s other eyebrow shot up to join the first. “I say, Abrams, you do manage to come up
with the most unlikely pieces of information.”
“I’ve been studying some with Tom. He knows he will need a complete knowledge of poisons,
especially local ones, if he is ever to be taken on as an official Scotland Yard coroner, and he has
been kind enough to pass a bit of his knowledge on to me.”

“A fine thing,” Trevor said, aware that he felt an odd sting of…could it be jealousy? Rayley Abrams
was his equal and right-hand man, and he had always considered himself the undisputed mentor of
both Tom and Davy. The realization that Rayley and Tom had been working together was a surprise
and he wondered why neither of them had discussed the matter with him.
“I’ve also been eavesdropping,” Trevor added, changing the subject more for his own benefit than
Rayley’s. Taking out his notebook to verify the details, he related the story of everything he had
overheard in the gatehouse, including the mysterious portrait which Anne had claimed looked like
another woman. When he got to the name ‘Dorinda Spencer,’ Rayley pushed away from the window
and began to pace. And when Trevor finished by saying LaRusse had actually struck Anne, Rayley
turned sharply on his heel to face Trevor, his own cheeks as red as if he was the one who had been
slapped.
“The young women in this colony are being very badly used indeed,” he said. “My painting partner
for this morning, the girl whose work you admired, was Dorinda Spencer herself. I witnessed her
being boldly propositioned by a brute of a man named John Paul, who seemed to be under the
impression she was an imbecile and I was deaf.” Rayley grimaced. “But Dorinda also appears to be
somewhat in the thrall of LaRusse. She mixes his paints for him and refers to him as her ‘protector.’
It makes no sense, Welles, no sense at all. By her speech and her clothing, I am certain that Dorinda
comes from a good family, just like Anne Arborton. What would possess such girls to take up with a
pompous pretender like LaRusse?”
“I can’t say,” Trevor answered, “but perhaps there’s a blessing in it. The longer I’m here, the more
I’m convinced that Anne will be perfectly willing to go with us when the time comes for us to reveal
our true identities.” He paused, looking down at the flower in his lapel – so innocent looking, but
perhaps so treacherous. “I will ride into town tomorrow and send a telegram to Emma. See if she can
learn of any other girls who might have caught the eye of LaRusse and get a bit more background on
this Dorinda Spencer. She interests me. As she interests you too, I suspect.”
“She said ‘fuck.’”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Dorinda Spencer spoke the word that no lady speaks. This morning, while we were painting.”
“Your work is rather bad.”
“Don’t joke, Welles, for I found it quite distressing. To be precise, she said that a liberal man was an
eager to fuck as a conservative one.”
“Well, she’s right, I suspect, but you’re right as well. It was a strange thing for the girl to say.”
Trevor looked at his friend in sympathy. “She was likely just trying to shock you.”
“She succeeded.”
Trevor considered the picture before him on the easel. A bucolic farm scene, peopled by any number
of characters, each at their work. “Do you think she is truly destined to be LaRusse’s next…muse?”
“Possibly, although I find the idea repellent.”

“And do you think Anne was right about something else too, that LaRusse’s drink has affected his
judgment? It is indeed perplexing that a skilled artist might gaze upon the face of one person and yet
paint another. And his behavior is erratic in other ways too. The grand speeches he made last night,
the mood shifts I witnessed today, the fact he slapped the girl. It doesn’t add up to a stable
personality.”
“Dorinda claims that the lead content of white paint drives people mad,” Rayley said. “But of course
LaRusse doesn’t mix paint – she does it for him when she mixes her own. And she takes great care
with the stuff, for I watched her. We climbed to the top of the turret to make sure we had proper
ventilation during the process.”
“Strange,” Trevor said. “Poison in the paint and poison in the roses, alcohol – and a man whose
behavior is notably erratic. Emotional young girls, their distraught families, and, I’d venture to say,
more than one John Paul running about the place. You know, a younger man who resents LaRusse’s
control over the group and his way with the ladies, who might be eager to dethrone him. Even after
less than a day here at Hever, we’ve stumbled across any number of people who might want to
destroy LaRusse, and any number of ways they might do it.”
“Well, if he’s being poisoned, he isn’t likely getting it through the food,” Rayley said. “You saw the
way they fell upon our offerings last night, even that single jug of dreadful ale. ‘To share and share
alike’ is the motto of the colony and half the time they didn’t even use glasses or spoons. It would be
very hard to administer a toxin to one diner in that room without taking the lot of them down.”
“So if Anne is right, which she most likely is, LaRusse is drinking to excess,” said Trevor. “But I’ll
wager it isn’t the local brew. If you’ll recall, he made a great show of eschewing the jug last night,
passing it along to the fellow next to him with the upmost fastidiousness.” Trevor pushed to his feet.
“I’d say he has his own bottle stashed away somewhere. That his philosophy is only to be applied to
lesser mortals, and behind closed doors it’s to hell with ‘share and share alike.’ He has brought
something fine with him from London, perhaps a few bottles of brandy, nicked from a middle-class
home while he was likewise taking their daughter.”
“But where would he keep it?” Rayley asked. “If we have hypothesized that LaRusse is drinking, and
most likely in private, after less than a day in his company, there are doubtlessly others in the colony
who suspect as much as well. And they may have concluded this private drinking is their best route
to effectively poisoning the man. There’s a cellar, but that’s not the place.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because everyone in the colony knows about it and apparently wanders in and out at leisure. It’s the
trysting space where John Paul tried to lure Dorinda. Oh, and there’s to be a party tonight, by the
way. Bonfires and revelry, while we all dance about in costume worshipping the full moon or some
Druid goddess or somesuch.”
“In honor of the solstice?”
“Quite. Good thinking, Welles, for I had forgotten entirely. But back to LaRusse and his secret
bottle. The rooms in Hever Castle stand open all the time, affording no privacy at all, by his own

edict. And with so many windows looking out in all directions, he is unlikely to have a hiding place
outside, which leaves us with…”
Rayley and Trevor looked at each other and said in unison “The gatehouse.”

Chapter Five
LaRusse Franklin Chapman greeted his subjects wearing a crown of brown leafy brambles, evidently
garnered from one of the hops stacks in a nearby field. His frame - which Trevor was forced to admit
was an impressive blend of muscle, height, and posture - was draped in a tapestry, which had been
evidently pulled from one of the walls. It was perhaps an opening; a group of artists squatting within
an abandoned property was one thing. Stealing tapestry from a wall which belonged to the Crown
was something else. Whether or not such a theft was enough for Brown to prosecute Chapman and
evict the others, it was hard to say. And now that Trevor consider it more seriously, it was even
difficult to determine if eviction was a desired outcome. It was possible that the dissolution of the
colony would drive girls like Anne and Dorinda home to their families, but he supposed it was
equally possible they would simply follow LaRusse to his next location. And it was likely to be even
farther from London, and thus civilization, than Hever Castle.
He shivered, for they were outside and the evening was chilly. Darkness had begun falling at five,
and although he could no longer see his watch, he would imagine it to be no more than six now. And
yet the evening sky was utterly black. The promised bonfire was a sad affair, a small pile of sticks
emitting little warmth and the promised full moon went in and out of clouds. At times, the castle and
fields around it were beautiful, almost shimmering in a fairyland glow. But minutes later the moon
might retreat, taking its silvery magic with it, and turning the scene into the bleak and joyless affair
Trevor now beheld - twenty people huddled together for warmth around a smoky pit of embers.
Not everyone was dressed in costume, so he and Rayley need not have worried about the fact they
had none. Most of the group, in fact, wore the same ragtag clothes they worked in, including Dorinda
Spencer, who was still in her gentlemen’s trousers. Trevor watched her from the corner of his eye
has he held his tin cup of untouched ale. A recent visit to India had given him a new appreciation of
women in trousers, and it was easy to see why Rayley had taken such a quick interest in the girl.
While it would seem that men’s clothing would obscure the female form, the reality was that it often
revealed far more than a dress, or at least trousers had the effect of highlighting different parts of the
feminine anatomy. Dorinda turned toward him abruptly, as if she sensed she was being watched, and
Trevor quickly dropped his eyes to his cup. It would not help his cause if he appeared to be nothing
more than one more lascivious letch in a field full of letches.
The fact that not everyone was in costume seemed to highlight the significance of those who were.
Anne stood to LaRusse’s side, wearing a similar crown of brambles. John Paul and several of the
other young painters had gone so far as to rub colors directly into their skins, giving them a fiendish
glow, and Trevor noted that a few of them had used the potentially dangerous white paint. Perhaps
Dorinda overstated the dangers in order to impress Rayley, Trevor mused. For surely no painter,
who knew the dangers, would be foolish enough to rub a toxic mixture directly onto his skin. And
however shall they get the paint off when the party has come to its close? Turpentine, splashed
right to the face?

It was madness, and as the beer jug made one round after another through the circle, Trevor
furthermore noted that the young men seemed to be getting far drunker than he might have predicted.
Swallows of beer, spaced several minutes apart, should not bring about the swift inebriation that he
was witnessing before him now. Perhaps it was just that they were all underfed. With no food in the
belly to impede its progress, he supposed even a mouthful of homegrown spirits could reach the brain
within minutes. Anne did not participate in the passing of the jug, nor did Dorinda, although two of
the other female colonists were joining the men in their debauchery, their shrill giggles piercing the
night air. Rayley also drank, and freely, evidently as part of his efforts to fit in with the group and
preserve his disguise.
As the darkness grew, LaRusse banged on the bottom of a kettle to get everyone’s attention, and then
launched into a long and winding speech about the solstice, and druids, and priests of the forests and
how they would have none of that dreadful man-made Christianity here at Hever, none of that
nonsense with virgins and stars and mangers, no, by God, they would not. It was the pagan
celebrations for them, he said, which set up a ruffled roar of agreement among his drunken flock. And
then, to cap off his pledge, he shucked his tapestry wrap and ran bare-breasted around the fire,
quickly joined by a handful of the other men, and with this the mood of the celebrants became even
more fevered and bizarre. The fire was so diminished by neglect that Trevor had to strain to follow
the action, but he could have sworn at one point the he saw a man dancing with a sheep.
“They are all quite preoccupied,” said Rayley, who had come up beside him unnoticed. “It is a good
time to go.”
“Was there anything wrong with the beer?”
“What do you mean? You don’t imagine that I actually drank it, do you? I merely raised the jug to my
mouth in a gesture of solidarity,” Rayley said.
“They seem to have gotten drunk awfully fast.”
“All the better for us,” Rayley said. “To the gatehouse.”
****
As they walked, the moon reasserted itself from behind a bank of filmy clouds and the fields around
them became illuminated. Trevor did not think that anyone had taken note of their leaving, but he
nonetheless waited until they had walked some distance before lighting his pipe. After taking a deep,
soothing drag he considered his friend, whose face was startlingly visible in the moonlight.
“So what do you think of the setting, Abrams?”
“You’re asking what do I think about all these sheep? It’s hard to believe so many people are content
to gnaw away in hunger whilst surrounded by mutton.”
Trevor chuckled in agreement. “True, but it’s just like Emma’s song, is it not? At least when you get
away from the castle. All is calm, all is bright.”
“Bright, perhaps,” Rayley said. “But I believe the calm is deceptive. Granted, half the colony will be
snoring away in a drunken stupor within the hour, with the other half likely to follow. Yet I suspect

that Hever is full of secret activities which take place only under the cover of darkness.”
“You are doubtless right, but I find the scene before us now a full pleasure. It reminds me of my
boyhood, when I would often slip from my room while the rest of my family slept and walk the
meadows around our farm. My first ambition, believe it or not, was to be a shepherd.”
Rayley snorted.
“No,” Trevor said. “I assure you it was true, the fantasy largely fueled by evenings just like this one,
and the Biblical notion of keeping watch over one’s flock by night. You see, in the Christmas story –“
“I know the Christmas story well enough,” Rayley said. “Jew or not, one could scarcely have been
raised in London without full exposure to your romantic holiday tales. Do you think we shall witness
a virgin birth on this exalted evening?”
“Somehow I suspect virgins are running rather scarce in the district,” Trevor said. “But we are well
out of earshot and not being followed, so let us discuss the facts before us now. Shall I begin?”
“Fire away,” said Rayley. This was a stratagem they used back in London, when meeting with the
Thursday Night Murder Games Club. Each person would take turns simply stating the facts of the
case as he or she saw them, and it was curious how often this simple activity would shed new light on
an investigation. Often an innocuous seeming remark by one person would spark an insight in the
mind of another. Trevor liked to call these discussions “our shared mind,” and Rayley supposed that
tonight he must take the roles of Geraldine, Tom, Davy, and Emma as well as himself.
“We have a painter,” said Trevor. “A man possessed of considerable charisma, with enough talent to
talk his way into the homes of London families as a portrait artist and enough charm to then seduce the
daughters of those houses. Anne Arborton is certainly not the first girl he has dallied with, but do you
think she is the first who has followed him here to Hever?”
“I can’t say,” Rayley said. “Dorinda might know. As might John Paul.”
“Try and find out in the morning,” Trevor said. “His cast aside girls don’t simply dematerialize, as
much as they might wish to. They have to go somewhere. Who knows, some of them still may be
here, among the flock.”
“Do you think LaRusse is truly going mad?” Rayley asked, pausing to shake sheep dung from one
boot. “It might serve his purposes to appear to be a bit mad, you know. Charismatic types often rant
and rave and laugh and dance – the sheer display of emotion convinces their followers they are privy
to a deeper truth, that they see things which the rest of us can’t fathom.”
“Impossible to know at this juncture,” Trevor answered. “And if he is mad, it is equally difficult to
know if it is the paint or the drink or the Christmas Roses or even if his bizarre behavior is simply the
result of his natural disposition. We are at a disadvantage in that we don’t know the man’s past.
Perhaps Emma’s work back in London will shed some light on his history. Otherwise, we can’t
determine if he is going mad, which would imply some sort of shift in personality and possible foul
play, or if he has been mad all along.”
“And then we have Anne Arborton herself,” Rayley continued. “Based on what you overheard today,

she is already beginning to doubt that LaRusse is truly her shining knight on horseback. But do you
think she will –“
“That thought must wait, for here’s the gatehouse,” Trevor interrupted. “Did you bring matches?”
Rayley had, and they fashioned a pair of torches out of some obliging hops branches, the plant
seeming to lend itself to any number of impromptu uses. As they stepped across the threshold of the
small gate house, Rayley’s nostrils were hit with a strong smell. Chemical, almost medicinal, and he
froze in his tracks.
“Leave the door open, Welles,” he said. “I smell paint.”
“Of course you do,” Trevor muttered. “It’s an artist’s studio.” But he propped the door open,
nonetheless.
“No, it’s fresh paint, exactly the smell I encountered when I was in the garret watching Dorinda mix
them. The toxicity is much stronger in wet paint than dry, which is why artists go mad and art-lovers
do not.”
“Perhaps LaRusse left a jar open,” Trevor said, advancing cautiously with his torch. “He was
working right here, in this corner.” He picked his way through the room, one hand outstretched until
finally his fingertips found the canvas propped on the easel. They immediately met with a cold
stickiness, and Trevor jerked his hand back.
“See here, Abrams, you’re right. The canvas is wet.”
“How can that be? No one has been here for hours,” Rayley murmured, inching toward the sound of
Trevor’s voice. “I counted heads at the bonfire and everyone in the colony was present.”
“How long does it take paint to dry?”
“I can’t say. My canvas was still flowing like a river when I left it, but I’m sure I mixed the paint too
thin.”
“I suppose LaRusse could have come back in the afternoon to work alone,” Trevor said, “but for now
we should continue with the search. And let us be quick about it.” Even with the door open, the
fumes in the gatehouse were overpowering, and he was beginning to worry about the effect an open
flame might have on whatever chemical was in the room. Just as troubling, the hops brambles were
proving to burn quickly and already his torch was low. “If LaRusse truly has a stash of fine liquor
then he must –“
“Welles, look at this.”
Rayley was still standing at the easel with his torch raised so that he might see the painting there. “Is
this the portrait you saw today?” he asked urgently. “The one that caused the row between Anne and
LaRusse?”
“I didn’t see much of the picture,” Trevor said, hastily scanning the room’s few possible hiding
places before joining him. “I was cowered outside beneath the window, remember? I only heard
them discuss it.” He made his way to Rayley and peered at the canvas before them. A young and

half-naked girl, just as expected from the sketch they had seen at Geraldine’s house. A robe across
one shoulder, trailing across her stomach and finally curling in her lap. Hever Castle in the
background, looking like a child’s image of a castle. A look of sadness on the girl’s face and – here
was the surprise – she was holding something in her arms.
A baby.
“Madonna and child,” Trevor said quietly, and then he began to wobble a bit on his feet, and
wondered if, despite the open door, the paint fumes were beginning to affect his senses.
“Not just that,” Rayley said. “It would appear that Anne’s jealousy was well founded.” He lifted his
own fading torch a little higher and a dim light fell across the top part of the painting.
The Madonna’s face was certainly not that of Anne Arborton. But nor was it that of Dorinda Spencer,
at least not to Trevor’s mind. The woman in the portrait resembled Dorinda, so Trevor could see why
Anne had reacted so strongly, but there was something wrong in the image, something Trevor felt but
could not name. Portrait artists, he thought, are like detectives. They must train themselves to look
very closely at the human face, to note the small differences that distinguish one person from
another. And an artist of LaRusse’s skill would not make this sort of mistake.
“It’s Dorinda,” Rayley said.
“I don’t think so,” Trevor answered. “If you look here, here at the eyes –“
But just then a gust of wind slammed the door, extinguishing their torches and leaving them in total
darkness.
****
Later, back in London, they would take great care in how they described the next few moments. In
relating the story to their fellow members of the Murder Games Club, in how they recalled them to
each other, and even how each man remembered the events in his own mind. They would edit out the
fact they both screamed. The sharp panic, that moment of confusion, how they bumped squarely into
each other in the dark, Trevor very nearly knocking Rayley off his feet. How they finally managed to
find the door and stumble out into the moonlight, their smoldering torches still in their hands, for the
one thing they both had the presence of mind to do is to hang onto their burning sticks in this room full
of toxins. They would recall instead, that they calmly exited the gatehouse and that they were merely
startled, not terrified, by what happened next.
For Trevor and Rayley were barely out of the gatehouse and back in the sheep-strewn field when they
saw the figure. She was female, most certainly, for she moved with an airy grace, the folds of her
cloak swinging rhythmically as she ran. And she furthermore moved swiftly, gliding over one of the
rises and descending across the meadow, almost seeming to melt from their sight.
The two men remained frozen in shock, neither fleeing the image nor chasing it. Just keeping watch,
and finally Rayley drew a shaky hand across his brow. The night had done nothing but grow colder
and yet he was covered in sweat. “Please tell me that you saw that.”
“I saw it,” Trevor said. “And if you ever quote what I am about to say next, I shall roundly deny it

and claim you were drunk. But it would seem that we lowly shepherds here have indeed been visited
by an angel. Whether it was an angel of the Lord, I cannot say.”
“An angel?” Rayley said sharply. “I would call it a ghost. Queen Anne herself perhaps, or some
other woman who has known heartbreak. And if you ever report that I went out walking one night and
claimed to have seen a ghost, then I shall be the one who roundly denies it and swears that you were
drunk. We will keep our lady in white between us, will we not?”
“Agreed.”
“Do you think she is the one who closed the gatehouse door?”
“I cannot say. It may have been the wind.”
“There is no wind.”
They stood in absolute silence, save the soft bleating of the sheep. They coughed, sniffed, readjusted
their clothing, and Trevor fiddled for a match in his own pocket and relit his pipe. And then, without
further comment, they started back in the direction of Hever Castle.
They were almost back to the oaken bridge before either one spoke. “Welles,” Rayley finally said,
“the question is only in theory, of course, but what would you imagine to be the difference between an
angel and a ghost?”
Trevor did not hesitate before answering. “I should think it was intent.”

Chapter Six
Even before she got Trevor’s telegram, Emma had been checking into the history of LaRusse
Chapman and his possible romantic conquests. Tess offered a good starting place with her list of
families who had provided references for Chapman when she had first commissioned Anne’s
portrait. But these people had nothing but glowing things to say about the painter, which Emma
supposed was not surprising; LaRusse would hardly have offered jilted girls and outraged parents as
his references.
“Apparently he doesn’t seduce every woman he meets,” Emma said to Geraldine over breakfast on
the morning of December 22, “for quite a few people stand ready to proclaim the man’s virtues.
Perhaps he is one of those fellows who only find a certain kind of woman attractive? You know, the
sort of man who chooses some variation of the same woman over and over?”
“More likely he only bothers to make advances if he believes he has a good chance of succeeding,”
Geraldine replied. “He looks for girls who are vulnerable, insecure, eager for flattery.”
Emma was surprised. “And Anne Arborton fits that description?”
“I’m childless, and thus likely speaking out of turn,” Geraldine answered, folding her morning paper
and removing her glasses. “But it seems to me that the most confident mothers often produce the least
confident daughters. Leave the next step to me. I shall make a few calls and compose my own list -
debutants from the last three seasons, since that is apparently his preferred hunting ground. And then I
shall poke around and see if any of those girls have dropped from the social scene.”
“Time is of the essence,” Emma said.
“Darling, please,” Geraldine said, with an airy wave of her hand. “This is the business of a single
afternoon.”
Emma smiled – for someone who claimed to be a dotty old lady, Geraldine could be remarkably
focused when she chose to be – and turned her attention back to Trevor’s wire. “Trevor mentions a
specific name, although this girl isn’t missing. Apparently she’s an artist at the colony. Dorinda
Spencer. Have you ever heard of her?”
Geraldine shook her head, a pensive frown playing across her features. “I thought I knew every
family on the circuit, but I don’t know any Spencers. If she is standing there before his eyes, why has
this Dorinda piqued Trevor’s interest?”
“He doesn’t say.”
“All right then,” Geraldine said, rising to her feet with a flourish. She loved to have a task, most
especially a task connected to the Murder Games Club. “I am off to sniff out intrigue with LaRusse’s
other potential artistic muses and you are off as well, my darling.”
“And what is my mission?”

“Sending a telegram to John and Leanna out at Rosemoral,” Geraldine answered, meaning her grandniece
and her recently-acquired husband. “Ask John where upper class girls go when they find
themselves with child.”
“With child?” Emma asked in confusion. John was an obstetrician, and before his marriage to Leanna
and subsequent move to her family’s country estate, he had planned to start a maternity clinic for the
poorest women in London. He would surely know every confinement home within the city, but Emma
wasn’t sure where Geraldine was headed with this line of inquiry.
“Yes, darling, and don’t look so surprised,” Geraldine said, popping a final piece of cherry tart into
her mouth before leaving the table. “Poor girls are not the only ones who sometimes find themselves
in a spot of trouble. We may be running down a blind alley, but somehow I doubt it. If LaRusse has
seduced a series of girls, the odds are that at least one of them might have found herself carrying a
child she could not claim. These unfortunates must go somewhere for their confinement and John
will know where.”
“Geraldine, you never fail to surprise me.”
“Thank you, darling. That’s one of the nicest things you’ve ever said to me.”
****
Emma sent her telegram, then walked a few blocks further for her midday shopping, picking up all of
Gage’s needs for dinner. She had just arrived home and was unpacking her purchases in the kitchen
when the doorbell rang. To her surprise, it was a telegram delivery boy, already bearing Leanna’s
swift response to her inquiry.
Darling, the telegram began, in the effusive manner so common to women of the Bainbridge family.
It sounds as if you have gotten yourself ensnared in another of Trevor’s wonderful mysteries. And a
romantic one involving starving artists and illegitimate children and abandoned castles. Tom is
beside himself with envy, and it is all we can do to contain him from returning to London at once.
John says an upper class girl in the family way will likely find herself at the Kirkland School in
Chelsea. Good luck, and I expect to hear all the exciting details when everyone comes for New
Year’s. Ever yours, Leanna
Emma sighed. Only someone as wealthy as Leanna would compose such a wordy and breathless sort
of telegram, which made it sound as if the two girls were gossiping over tea rather than trying to
convey information in a businesslike fashion. The mention of New Year’s, when the entire party was
expected to journey to Rosemoral for a ball, only served to remind Emma how few days were left
before the holiday week arrived. Despite everyone’s predictions to the contrary, she knew there was
a good chance Trevor and Rayley would not be back for Christmas brunch, and the thought hit her
with a pang. Furthermore, if she and Geraldine didn’t scramble, there was even a chance that the men
would still be at Hever Castle over New Year’s and thus unable to join them on the planned journey
to Rosemoral.
That would never do. Emma glanced at the clock. Nearly three, and there was truly no telling when
Geraldine would return from her gossipy pilgrimage through the streets of Mayfair. Kirkland School,

the telegram had said. It sounded like a fine cover – a maternity home for the daughters of the wellto-do,
masquerading as a boarding school. No doubt the resultant babies would be adopted out to
wealthy families, who were happy to know that their young wards, while illegitimate, came from
blue-blooded mothers. And the girls, sadder but wiser, were then free to rejoin the ranks of the
respectable.
If I wait for Geraldine, it shall be tomorrow before we can venture to Chelsea, Emma thought. And
each day we burn increases the probability that Rayley and Trevor will not sit at our holiday
table. Crumpling Leanna’s telegram in one hand, she reached for her cloak with the other.
****
The Kirkland School for Young Ladies sat considerably back from the road, surrounded by a high
fence. Emma peered through the iron railings at the well-tended lawns. It did indeed have the
appearance of a respectable school, albeit one without any students, for the yard was empty and the
entire scene eerily quiet. She pushed against the gate and it opened with a heavy creak, the sound of a
hinge which was rarely moved, then picked her way through the crinkly leaves to the front porch.
Her ring of the doorbell was promptly answered by an older woman dressed entirely in gray, who
motioned Emma in without asking either her name or her business there. Emma felt a surge of
confidence. Trevor and the others were entirely too protective of her. They were reluctant to send
her on any missions that could become even remotely dangerous, and thus she was forced, over and
over, to prove her worth to the team. But there were some situations in which a woman could get
farther along the investigative path than a man, and this was clearly one of those situations.
Especially if the woman was young, alone, and wearing a tremulous smile.
“I’ve come about my sister,” Emma said softly, dropping her eyes to the plush Oriental carpet in the
hall. The word “sister” always stuck in her throat a bit and she supposed it always would. Her only
sister, Mary Kelly, had been the last victim of Jack the Ripper and there were times when it took all
the self-control Emma possessed to avoid sinking into despair at the memory. Mary had likely been
her last true relative in the world, since their parents had died of typhoid and their brother Adam had
disappeared into the wilds of America without a trace. Geraldine and the others were like an
adopted family, and she loved them all fiercely, but still – blood was blood, and in this sense Emma
Kelly stood orphaned in the world.
Tears sprang to her eyes, surprising her, although she supposed they also helped her ruse. The
Kirkland School appeared to be quite accustomed to the sudden arrival of weeping women, for the
woman in gray took her arm gently and guided her to a small parlor off of the entrance hall.
“Call me Mrs. Carter,” she said. “Would you like tea?”
Emma nodded, more to give herself time to think than for any real need of refreshment. It was odd,
the way the woman had said “Call me Mrs. Carter” rather than “I am Mrs. Carter.” Perhaps contrived
names were the norm of such a place. She looked around the room. It was somber in tone, but nicely
furnished, and the roaring fire was welcoming. The tea cup, when it arrived, was of a fine bone china
and the brew inside proved to be the same expensive brand that Geraldine served in her own parlor.
Emma supposed that if a young woman was forced to wait out an unwanted pregnancy and give up her

child, there were worse places to do so than within the Kirkland School for Girls.
“Now, tell me about you…your sister.” Mrs. Carter said, taking her seat across from Emma.
So she thinks I am the one who is pregnant and the sister is an affectation, Emma thought. Very
well, I suppose one lie works as well as another.
“You must promise me absolute discretion,” she said, suddenly aware that Mrs. Carter had not yet
asked her for her name. This could make matters tricky. In a house where women either went by
assumed names or offered up none at all, how would they be able to find if any of the Kirkland
“students” matched any of the names on LaRusse’s list of “muses”? The parlor door softly opened as
she spoke and a young woman entered, carrying a tray of biscuits. She looked to be a full nine months
into her pregnancy, far enough along that she waddled unsteadily on her feet and Emma was
flummoxed by her presence. They made the pregnant girls at Kirkland work? Carrying a tray of
biscuits was hardly the equivalent of plowing the fields, but it still seemed an odd task for the
daughter of a genteel family, no matter how far she might have fallen.
“Discretion is our hallmark,” Mrs. Carter was saying. “But as I am sure you can understand, this
discretion is required on both sides of any agreement. May I ask how you learned about our school?”
Emma was about to give John’s name, when something stopped her. It would have been an honest
answer and a logical one, and John’s name was one that Mrs. Carter would undoubtedly recognize
and respect. But citing John would bring her no closer to the truth she sought, so instead Emma
blurted out “Dorinda Spencer.”
The room fell silent. Mrs. Carter glanced to the side, to the door where the pregnant maid had
entered, but the girl had moved and was now behind her mistress, still holding the tray. Her own gaze
flitted up and Emma’s heart leapt. Was that a flicker of recognition at the name, and, if so, what did it
mean? Dorinda Spencer was hardly a student at Kirkland – she was an artist at Hever. But of course
she might have been a student in the past…might have had a child and given it up and then followed
LaRusse…
But Emma’s reverie, an entire story built solely on a maid’s slight shift in expression, came crashing
down when Mrs. Carter said calmly, “I am not familiar with that name.”
****
Ten minutes later Emma was back at the iron gate. Her interview with Mrs. Carter somehow had
managed to be both brief and exhaustive, both vague and enlightening. Emma had left telling the
woman she needed some time to consider the proposition in privacy before deciding if the Kirkland
School would be right for her mythical sister. Mrs. Carter had nodded and then quoted a tuition fee
that made Emma’s mouth literally drop open. Apparently discretion came at a very high cost, but at
least the secrets of the Kirkland School appeared to be well-kept. When Emma had timidly asked for
references from other satisfied students, Mrs. Carter had merely shaken her head and said “This is an
impossible request, my dear. As I suspect you already know.”
The woman had followed Emma to the door and watched as she descended the steps and made her
way down the long path to the street. But when Emma had reached the gate, the door of the school

had at last firmly closed, leaving her standing here with her hand on the iron railing, debating her next
best move. She had found out precious little that would help the case, but she couldn’t quite shake the
notion that the maid had recognized the name “Dorinda Spencer.” The afternoon was quickly fading
to dusk. Preparations for dinner were probably already underway and almost all homes of this size
had back entrances into the kitchen…Should she risk it?
****
The pregnant maid’s name was Melly MacGraw. She offered this up with such ease that Emma had
no doubt that it was true. Nor did the girl seem especially surprised to find Emma at her kitchen door
and she accepted Emma’s offer of help with alacrity.
“You needn’t worry that I’ll make a muddle of it,” Emma said. “I was a maid myself this time last
year.”
“Were you now?” said the girl, sliding a clump of carrots and a paring knife toward her. “They’ll put
you work fast enough if they hear that.”
“I am not pregnant.”
The girl glanced down at her protruding abdomen. “All right then, neither am I.”
“I have come as part of an investigation,” Emma said cautiously, for she didn’t wish to say anything
that might alarm Melly or cause her easy open manner to shift. “Into missing girls. When I mentioned
the name ‘Dorinda Spencer’ it seemed to me that you reacted. Did you know her?”
“Not exactly. There was a Rose Spencer here when I first come, four months ago. I waited on her, as
her personal maid. She had very fine hair, you know. And she liked the way I did it up. Said I was
as skilled as any lady’s maid in any fine house in England.”
“And what happened to her? Do you have any idea where she is now?”
Melly paused in the process of peeling her potatoes and frowned. “What happens to her is what
happens to them all, I figure. She had her baby and she left.”
“Where do the girls deliver their babies?”
“Upstairs mostly,” Melly said, glancing upward to the ceiling. “They don’t go to the hospital unless
there’s trouble.”
“But you didn’t see her after the child was born. Didn’t see her leave.”
Melly shook her head with some impatience, so Emma changed her tack.
“Do you mind me asking why one woman here would serve as another’s maid? Why, for example,
Rose Spencer might require an elaborate coiffure for dinner and you are here in the kitchen paring
potatoes?”
Melly seemed amused by the question. “You think there can’t be an upstairs and a downstairs, even
in a place like this? No, we may all be the same boat, us girls, but some of us are in posh cabins and
others in steerage.” She chuckled, and Emma marveled that a girl in her circumstances could manage

to show so much spirit. “I’m only here at all,” Melly went on, “’cause my baby was sired by a
gentleman.”
“Ah,” said Emma, realization dawning at last. Kirkland School might exist primarily for the
daughters of the wealthy, but it also served as a hiding place for servants who had been impregnated
by the sons – or perhaps even the fathers – of those same upstanding houses.
“Do you know who the father of Rose Spencer’s child was?” Emma asked, chopping carrots so
erratically that Melly was frowning at her work. “Did she ever let anything about him slip? You
know, girl to girl, as you were fixing her hair?”
Melly shook her head. “She weren’t that type.”
“Arrogant?”
“Heartbroken. Barely spoke at all except to thank me, to say I’d done a proper job.” The expression
on Melly’s face grew sad, even reflective. “Some of them are like that, you know. Walk around here
like ghosts, but not saying nothing to nobody, not sleeping, hardly eating. This is a sad house, Miss.
A place where women have too much time to think about what they’ve done lost.” But then she
paused, a memory suddenly surfacing. “Don’t think her man was her match in social class though,
‘cause once I was telling her that my beau was a gentleman and she said ‘That doesn’t matter,’ which
is a queer thing to say, when of course we all know it does. She wouldn’t have said something so
foolish lest her own beau wasn’t a gentleman, would she now?”
Emma found Melly’s honesty touching. She was observant and quick-witted as well, and she
wondered what would become of the girl once she delivered her child. It was unlikely the mistress
of her former house would want her back, fine hairdressing skills or not.
“There,” Emma said, stepping back from the work table. “Despite my promises, I’ve made a proper
mess of the carrots, so I suspect that you have helped me far more than I have helped you. If you don’t
mind me asking, Melly, where shall you go after your baby is born?”
“Back to my man, Miss. Me and the baby as well, of course.”
“The father of your child has made a provision for you?”
Uncertainty crept across the girl’s features and Emma realized she did not understand the word
“provision.” Melly handed Emma a large earthenware bowl and motioned to show she should scoop
all the vegetable peelings into it. “He’s coming for us, you see,” she said, “as soon as the baby is
born. And the money’s not a problem, for he’s proper up and down, my man is. Only the best will
suit him. He smokes Turkish cigarettes and drinks French brandy and drives a carriage…it’s the most
beautiful thing you’ve ever seen, Miss, with purple velvet on the seat cushions. I’ve ridden in it with
him, you know. He’s taken me out with him more than once.”
“No doubt he has.”
“Purple on the seats and the curtains and even the rugs. Like it was rigged out for a king.”
“That sounds lovely,” Emma said faintly.

Melly lifted her chin. “He says he loves me.”
“Yes,” said Emma, raking the scraps and peels into the bowl. Slop for a pig somewhere, she hoped,
and not the basis for the dinner for Melly and the other servants. For you could never tell. Some of
the most respectable looking houses could also be the cruelest to those helpless souls in their employ.
“Yes, I’m sure he says he does.”

Chapter Seven
“Emma has a theory,” Trevor said, putting the telegram in his vest pocket.
“I’m not surprised,” Rayley said. “The one thing our little troupe has never lacked for is theories.”
“Brace yourself, for this isn’t a bad one. A girl calling herself Rose Spencer was recently at a home
for unwed mothers. A rather upper class sort of place, I gather, at least as these things go, and it hides
behind the façade of a boarding school for young ladies. Then apparently she had her child and
disappeared, just as they all do.”
“And Emma thinks Rose is Dorinda’s sister?” Rayley frowned. “That is a bit of a stretch. Spencer is
hardly an uncommon last name.”
“Actually, Emma theorized that Rose and Dorinda might be the same person, but your idea has merit
as well.”
“She’s suggesting that Dorinda bore LaRusse’s child and gave it up, but then returned to Hever?”
Rayley asked, skepticism evident in his tone. “Why would a young woman do such a thing? Continue
to chase a man after he has abandoned her so cruelly? And, even if she might imagine she would still
be his paramour, why would he allow her into the walls of Hever when he has already taken up with
Anne Arborton? No, the woman I met is far too composed to have been through such an ordeal and
even the half-mad LaRusse would not…” He shook his head. “It stretches belief, Welles.”
“I suppose you are right.”
The two were walking in the fields, burrowed into their scarves and hats against the afternoon wind.
It had gotten colder each day since they had come to Hever Castle, and Trevor’s gaze fell on the bush
outside the gatehouse. A singular bloom remained, one final and especially hearty Christmas rose.
“A most unusual plant,” he said, gesturing toward it. “Beautiful, but dangerous. I should take a
cutting back to Geraldine for her garden.”
“I thought Emma tended the flower garden.”
“So she does.”
“Then you should bring Emma the rose. What are you waiting for, Welles? Even the most patient girl
must in time begin to wonder – “
But just then the door to the gatehouse opened and Anne stumbled out. It was obvious she had been
weeping and her clothing was disarranged, as if she had dressed in the darkness or in haste. Her hair
was likewise tousled and she fixed on them a wild and desperate stare that Trevor thought he had
seem somewhere before. Then he remembered: This was the exact same expression Anne’s mother
Tess had borne when she came to Geraldine’s just days ago, begging them for help.
“Are you looking for LaRusse?” the girl said, her voice hoarse from weeping. “May I assume that

you have come like all the others - to ask him for a favor, to make some suggestion for the betterment
of the colony, to fawn at his feet?” Without waiting for a response, she rushed on. “Well, you needn’t
have bothered. He is gone.”
“Gone?” said Trevor, genuinely startled, for this was the last thing he would have predicted. “Gone
where?”
“Do you think I know?” said the girl and she weaved on her feet, so unsteady that Rayley reached for
her arm.
“We all should go,” he said gently. “Let us leave this treacherous place and return to the safety of
London. Christmastime is approaching. It is only right to be home with one’s family, is it not?”
There was a beat of silence, just enough that both men hoped the girl would nod and say yes, that she
was prepared to leave at once. But then Anne drew herself up and said, “But he shall be back soon, I
know he shall. And you needn’t think I would leave the man I love on such foolish provocation. I
know who the two of you are, you know. I have known from the very first night.”
Now there was more than one beat of silence. There were several. Rayley was conscious he was
clenching his jaw and he dared not look at Trevor.
“You are not an artist,” Anne said haughtily, fixing her light grey eyes on Rayley’s face. “Your work
is dreadful, everyone says so, and you hide behind the term ‘impressionism’ in an attempt to delude us
that your ridiculous splashes of paint bear a sort of secret meaning. And you,” she added, turning to
Trevor, “are even less of a poet. Poets talk all the time. They love the sound of their own voices and
they drink at the fountain of words. They drink deeply, Sir, and their words flow out at every
opportunity, yet you lurk about the fields saying nothing to anyone. No, I know full well why the two
of you have traveled to Hever, so you need dissemble no more.”
Both men held their breath. The girl pushed back her hood of her cape and spat the next words.
“You are here for the sex.”
Trevor let go an explosion of pent up air, which could have been interpreted as either a laugh or a
cough.
“Men of your sad ilk come to the colony often,” Anne went on, surveying first one and then the other
with narrowed eyes. “Drawn by the tales of free love and the promise of unguarded women. You
pose as artists, but your true art is lovemaking and you imagine that we are all –“
“I saw him slap you.” Trevor’s voice cut into the girl’s mad torrent of words and she paused, looking
at him uncertainly. His abrupt change of topic was a calculated effort to grab the reins of this runaway
conversation, and, judging by the sliver of fear which came into Anne’s face, it had worked.
“Why would you remain loyal to such a man?” Trevor went on, seizing the advantage and determined
to remain unmoved by the tears in the girl’s eyes. “I have heard your shouts of rage, your anger at the
cruel position in which you have been cast. LaRusse poses you naked in the winter cold and yet
paints the face of another, is that not the crux of the matter?”

The scene was noiseless except for the soft moans of the wind. Almost involuntarily, Anne turned
toward the gatehouse.
“Take us,” Rayley said. “Show us these things he paints that hurt you so.”
As if in some sort of trance, Anne stumbled toward the gatehouse and Trevor and Rayley followed
her through the door and across the cold bare floor. The smell of paint had dissipated, but portrait
was there in the corner, still on its easel, and in the full light of day they could study the work in
greater detail.
“He paints Dorinda,” Anne said. “I find her face waiting here, each morning, as if she is mocking
me.” Her tone was defeated, the voice of a woman who has given all she can give and still has lost.
“Then what remains to hold you here?” Rayley asked urgently. “You are right in saying that we are not
who we claim to be, but I assure you, my dear Anne, that we come not to abuse young women but to
offer you a way out of this trap.“
“This child I hold in my arms, where does it come from?” Anne asked, flicking a fingertip toward the
picture. “I have never seen him paint a child, not once, but when I ask him why it is there and what it
means…he grows wild with anger. He accuses me of tormenting him. How can he say these things to
me when I am the one in torment?”
“That is not the face of Dorinda Spencer,” Trevor said flatly. “I tried to tell you so last night.”
“What?” said Rayley, turning back toward the picture. “Of course it is.”
“And the paint is always wet, every morning,” Anne said. “He claims not to understand it. He says
he must walk in his sleep. But I know he does not leave his bed.” She flushed in shame. “I should not
know whether or not a man leaves his bed in the dark of night. No decent girl knows these things, but
I do.”
“It matters not,” Rayley said. “Your family understands and forgives all. We shall catch the train
tomorrow morning and you shall be home by Christmas Eve.”
“It looks like Dorinda Spencer,” Trevor continued, talking softly to himself as if he could not hear
Rayley and Anne, as if he alone were immune to the emotion engulfing the room.
“Good God, man, what does all of that matter?” Rayley snapped. “Remember why we have come
here, and it isn’t for any damned painting.”
“I have gone too far to turn back,” Anne said.
“One can always turn back,” Rayley said fiercely. “We have journeyed here on the wishes of your
mother, with no other intention than to bring you home.”
“It is an understandable error,” Trevor murmured, his eyes never leaving the naked Madonna’s face.
“But first tell me,” Rayley persisted. “Do you own a white cloak? Does he?”
“A white cloak?” Anne echoed in confusion. “I have no such garment and LaRusse wears the same
clothing every day. Why do you ask? And what did my mother tell you? She does not understand me

and she never has.”
“I can see why you both fell into the same confusion,” Trevor continued, still looking down at the
painting. “For there is an undeniable similarity in the faces, something very like in the mouth and the
chin. And yet the woman in this portrait is not Dorinda Spencer.”
“Meaning what?” said Rayley, throwing up his hands in exasperation.
“Meaning that your casual comment was closer to the mark than Emma’s theory,” Trevor said.
Rayley had heard this tone in Trevor’s voice before and knew what it meant. Pieces were dropping
into place for his friend, and the larger picture was beginning to become clear. “LaRusse’s madness
is born from guilt as well as poison. It is not Dorinda whose face he paints alone, by the dark of
night. It is her sister Rose, the woman who bore his illegitimate child and then disappeared.”

Chapter Eight
It is the paint that does it, or so they say. It makes you sick, brings on the visions of darkness and
death.
And she knows that he is almost there. That he has almost crossed that thin pale border which
separates sanity from madness. He does not sleep. He does not eat. He drinks and paces and rails
against his latest girl – that pale and ineffectual Anne.
It is the white paint that will take him the rest of the way. It is not an easy thing to obtain in London,
where they are wise enough to fear it, so she was forced to journey to Calais and learn the technique
in a French school. It involved soaking lead plates in Mercury – dreadful stuff – and then flaking off
bits to brew the white pigment. It makes you drunk, forgetful, and foolish. It brings on “the artist’s
disease.” They claim it is what drove Van Gogh insane, prompted him to cut off his ear and present it
to a whore.
And so shall it work its white magic on LaRusse.
She mixes the paint at two parts white and one part blue, far more than what is prudent. Far more
than the ratio which is recommended at the art school where she learned. It might even be enough to
kill him if she tried, but she doesn’t want him dead. At least not now. Not quite yet. She wants him
to suffer. To remember.
Night after night, she rises from her bed. Puts on her white cloak and runs across the meadow to the
gatehouse with a lantern in one hand and her paints in another. And night after night she finds the
portrait, his Angel of Hever Castle, waiting on the easel. Anne’s arms and shoulders, Anne’s breasts
and hands. And yes, even Anne’s face, at least at first. But she has always been quick with a brush
and within minutes, the angel of Hever is transformed. She is no longer Anne. She is Rose.
How many more mornings until he loses his tenuous grip on reality? No man can exist forever on
rum and fear and poisonous fumes. No man can pose one woman obediently naked before him and
paint her in perfect detail – and yet return to his easel every morning to find another waiting for him.
Her eyes wide and accusing. His baby on her lap.
But she is prepared to stay here, no matter how many nights it takes until her vengeance is complete.
LaRusse will never be allowed to forget what he did to Rose, no matter how many other women may
have been in his bed or on his canvases. He must remember her face even if he forgets all the others.
She must haunt him unto death.

Chapter Nine
“So let us suppose that Spencer is not the real last name of the girls,” Geraldine mused. She glanced
down at Trevor’s latest telegram, which was resting on the table. “Perhaps Rose adopted a
pseudonym when she entered the Kirkland School, which is apparently standard practice for the
young women who go there. And Dorinda took the same name before she went to Hever.”
“But I don’t understand,” Tess, said, fitfully twisting one of her gloves. “Knowing what LaRusse did
to her sister, why would Dorinda follow him to Hever?”
“Revenge, Mama. It is all that explains it.” Marjorie, Tess’s older daughter, looked at her mother
with sympathy as she spoke. The last two days had taken their toll on Tess; she had slipped from
being a woman who was merely agitated and worried to someone who was having trouble thinking
clearly at all.
“It is one of humankind’s greatest motivations,” Emma said.
“But if Anne is still at Hever,” Tess said, “I can’t see what any of the rest has to do with it.”
“Patience, my dearest,” said Geraldine, reaching over to pat her arm. “Not one of us has forgotten
that your precious Anne is the focus of all our efforts. But if my labors in the arena of crime solving
have taught me anything, it is that sometimes the most unlikely strands of a story find a way to twine
themselves together. Answering one question often leads to a greater understanding of another. And
thus throwing light on LaRusse’s past may be the swiftest way to extract Anne from his grasp.”
“It occurs to me,” Marjorie said thoughtfully, “that when people concoct a false surname, they rarely
pull it from midair. Perhaps Spencer is some other sort of family name – their mother’s maiden name,
perhaps?”
“A reasonable notion,” Emma said, considering Marjorie with new respect. When she had first
arrived on Geraldine’s doorstep with her mother, Emma had been prepared to dislike her. This young
woman, scarcely two years older than Emma herself, seemed to have been uniquely blessed with
good fortune. Striking beauty, a doting family, an advantageous marriage, two perfect children. It
seemed almost too much to fathom that Marjorie would also be possessed of a kind heart and common
sense. But in the brief time she had spent in her company, Emma had found that she was beginning to
like Marjorie very much.
“Spencer as the mother’s maiden name?” Geraldine said. “Quite right. Tess, help me think. Do we
know any woman in her forties who was a Spencer before marriage?”
“There’s ElizaAnne Spencer Mill,” Marjorie said swiftly, answering in her mother’s stead. “It’s
what gave me the idea. I met her last year at the fundraising gala for the Barrow Street orphanage. A
kindly woman, and about the right age, with two growing daughters. But she and her husband have
recently left London.”

“And that in itself is suspicious,” Geraldine said. “Who in their right mind would leave London? It
is the very pearl of civilization.”
“Two daughters,” Emma said thoughtfully. “Did she mention them by name?”
But as Marjorie regretfully shook her head, the doorbell rang.
“Answer it, please, Emma,” Geraldine said. “Gage is in the kitchen.”
“You really must get him some help,” Tess said distractedly. “Your social life is a whirlwind, Gerry,
and it’s inhumane to expect that one poor man to handle it all. And whoever can that be at the door? I
thought our party was complete.”
“Not quite,” said Geraldine. “I invited Madame Renata.” As three questioning faces turned toward
her, she hastened to explain. “Oh, I know she can be quite odd and that some have found her séances
to be more… more theatrical than the occasion requires. But I believe she is a gifted medium, as
skilled at her profession as Trevor is at his. And Emma dear, you needn’t tell him I said that.”
“How much of the situation did you explain to Madame Renata?” Emma asked. “She will likely use
any information you told her in order to concoct exactly the sort of answers she knows we crave.
These people make their living by feeding on the false hopes of the desperate.”
“I told her nothing, except that we sought guidance in the matter of a young girl,” Geraldine said
briskly, “and please dear, wipe that outraged expression off your face and go open the door. We can’t
leave the poor woman standing in the frost all night.”
****
“We call upon the voices of all women,” Madame Renata intoned. “The women who were wronged,
betrayed, used for another’s selfish pleasures and then abandoned. The women who trusted unworthy
men and paid the price. We summon them all here, to make a protective circle around our table.”
“The room is likely to get rather crowded,” Emma whispered to Marjorie, who giggled. Geraldine
shot her a warning look across the table, before obediently bowing her head as if she were in church.
“Let us join hands, my sisters,” Madame Renata intoned. Her head was swathed in a bright colored
cloth that reminded Emma of the Caribbean women she sometimes saw in the marketplace and her
hands were encrusted with jewels of every hue. The rings were most likely fakes, just like their
owner, and the overall effect was more than a bit ridiculous. But she supposed at this point, they had
little to lose.
The five women sitting around the small oak table joined hands. The room was dark, save for a
single candle, and silent, save for the fact that Tess was already sobbing softly. Marjorie squeezed
her mother’s hand and closed her eyes.
“The women are with us,” Madame Renata said. “They have heard the cries of our hearts. They
come in their crowns, in their robes, in their scarlet capes…”
A sudden chill ran over Emma. Scarlet capes?
“They stand with us,” Madame Renata continued in her sing-song voice. “Mary, Anne…”

At the name “Mary,” Emma’s head jerked up and her eyes flew open. But she was not the only one at
the table to react.
“Anne, did you say?” Tess blurted. “Anne is with us?”
“Queen Anne comes to our table,” Madame Renata said. “Graces us with her royal presence. Your
Anne is not here. She eats stew.”
“Stew?” Tess said wildly. “What do you mean, she eats stew?”
“Hush, Tess darling,” Geraldine said softly. “Let the woman do her work.”
“Queen Anne is with us,” Madame Renata continued. “Daughter of Thomas, wife of Henry, mother to
Elizabeth. She says she knows what it means to love, but to remain unloved in return.”
Emma felt the first stirrings of anxiety. Geraldine claimed she said nothing to Madame Renata about
the purpose of the evening beyond the fact they sought a young girl. It was highly unlikely that she had
mentioned Hever Castle at all, so Madame Renata’s contention that the spirit of Queen Anne had
manifested… Well, what was one to make of it? That Madame Renata’s use of her name was sheer
coincidence or could it be proof that from somewhere in the netherworld, Anne Boleyn was incensed
over the abuses taking place in her childhood home? And then the bit about Mary…
“Mary, Queen of Heaven,” Madame Renata said, as if she was reading Emma’s mind. “You honor us
with your presence.”
So the “Anne” was Anne Boleyn and the “Mary” was the Virgin Mary. Well, Emma thought, cynicism
once again trumping fear, we certainly seem to have drawn an illustrious group. She looked around
the table, hoping to catch the eye of Marjorie, who would likely also be skeptical, but the young
woman’s head was still bowed and her eyes still closed. She was chewing her lip nervously, perhaps
trying to come to terms with the surprising news that while they were surrounded by saints and
royalty, her little sister was off somewhere eating a bowl of stew.
“Another Mary steps into our circle as well,” Madame Renata said, her voice dropping to a murmur.
“She is the one in red and she bears a message…”
Emma clinched her jaw, belief and unbelief waging war within her pounding heart. The last time
Emma had seen her sister alive, Mary had been wrapped in a ruffled red cape. The garish dress of a
girl who makes her living on the streets. They may have been sisters by birth, but their lives had
diverged so totally by that point…one of them scrapping for a living on the mean streets of
Whitechapel, the other installed in one of the mansions of Mayfair. On that windy afternoon, they had
simply observed each other from afar, silently acknowledging the width of the divide between them,
and then each had turned away. The image had tortured Emma for the totally of the last year. Should
she have charged across the street and grabbed her sister’s red-cloaked arm? Somehow thought of
the right words to persuade the girl away from her inconceivable determination to live as she did?
With a little more effort, might she have changed Mary’s fate and thus saved her life?
“The spirits say we must focus not on the past, but on the present,” said Madame Renata, once again
as if in answer to Emma’s unspoken questions. “They assure us that they shall help our cause from the

eyond, but also warn that we cannot rest in their help. For while they have the power to turn men’s
hearts, only living women have the power to turn their hands. They say that we see what we must do.
Those who need our help stand right in front of us.”
Melly, Emma thought. She is speaking of Melly MacGraw. No, I cannot change what happened to
Mary, but perhaps I can save Melly MacGraw from a similarly cruel fate.
“Excuse me,” Tess said timidly. “Might I ask a question?”
“The spirits will answer if they can,” said Madame Renata.
And what a group we have to answer, Emma thought. A headless queen, a murdered prostitute, and
the mother of Jesus Christ himself. Between the three of them, they should know quite a bit about
life.
“Well, it’s just one thing,” Tess whispered uncertainly. “But what did you mean when you said that
Anne was eating stew? Is that some sort of symbol?”
****
Trevor and Rayley watched as Anne Arborton not only finished the last of her stew, but used a crust
of bread to mop up the gravy. They had brought the girl to the inn at Edenbridge where they had
stayed the first night of the trip, and there had purchased her a farmer’s dinner, most likely her first
solid meal in a week. She had eaten so rapidly that conversation had been limited, but now she sat
back, contentedly full, and looked at the two detectives sitting across from her, smiling like a pair of
proud papas.
“There is something else I must confess,” she said. “It was a matter of foolish pride that I did not tell
you at once.”
“And what is that?” asked Trevor, settling back in his chair as he waved to the barmaid for another
ale.
“I told you that LaRusse was missing this morning,” Anne said, looking hopefully at a berry pie
cooling on a side table. “But what I didn’t tell you is that no one has seen Dorinda Spencer either.”
****
“Are you quite sure this is a good idea?” Rayley said to Trevor a half hour later. They were saddled
on Constable Brown’s horses and back on the trail to Hever. The moon, while not quite as full as the
night of the solstice, still gave off a glorious silvery light and their travel so far had been swift and
effortless. “Our task was merely to retrieve Anne, and this we have done. But I don’t feel entirely
comfortable leaving her unattended at the inn. She seems willing to come back to London now, but
we know the girl has an impulsive nature. What if she changes her mind yet again or, even worse,
what if LaRusse somehow gets wind of her whereabouts? He might show up at the inn and carry her
off.”
“Really, Abrams,” said Trevor. “Anne has come to her senses. She is undoubtedly in her bed at the
inn this very minute, cozy and warm, and quite thrilled to be on her way home. And we can hardly
leave a case, even an unofficial one, at such loose ends, especially not when another young woman is

in danger. A woman you showed interest in merely days ago, as memory recalls.”
“Agreed. But what makes you so sure we will find either Dorinda or LaRusse at Hever? Anne
claims they are missing.”
“The fact that Anne doesn’t know where they might be is hardly proof they’ve left the property,”
Trevor said, pulling his horse to a halt as the walls of Hever came into view.
Rayley pulled up as well. “No matter now, for it lies before us. The lost castle of a lost romance.
But something seems changed.”
“What?”
“I can’t say.” Rayley frowned, studying the contours of the castle in the moonlight. “It is just an
impression.”
“So what do you expect we shall find here, Abrams?” Trevor said softly. “Do you think that LaRusse
has fallen to Dorinda or that Dorinda has succumbed to LaRusse? For we are standing witness to a
great battle, it seems. A sort of battle between the sexes, and we both know that type of fight yields
no victors.”
“I have no idea what waits for us below,” Rayley said, prodding his horse into motion. “But it
frightens me.”
****
“We are looking for a certain girl,” Tess said to Madame Renata. “You said you see Anne at a table,
eating stew. But do you see another young woman, someone who goes by the name Dorinda
Spencer?”
The mystic paused for a moment then shook her head. “There is only darkness.”
“Or her sister?” Emma said, aware of the breathless anxiety in her voice. “A girl named Rose?”
Another silence, longer and more agonizing than the first. Emma was clutching Geraldine’s hand on
one side and Marjorie’s on another. It seemed that every woman in the circle, save for Madame
Renata, was holding her breath.
“A Rose has stepped forward.” the mystic finally said.
“Where is she?” Marjorie asked. “What is she doing?”
Silence. An ocean of silence, a mountain, an eternity. The entire world seemed to have frozen.
Madame Renata shook her head. A short, definitive gesture, followed by the opening of her eyes.
“The spirits have withdrawn,” she said, in her normal voice. “Shall we have tea?”
“Tea?” Marjorie muttered as the three older women left the table and moved into the drawing room.
Tess and Geraldine were still clearly shaken, but Madame Renata was as unperturbed as a woman
waking from a pleasant nap. “It’s always tea. Do you think there is truth to anything the woman
said? I find the high pedigree of her spiritual guides rather questionable.”

Emma started to confide about Mary and the red cape, but then thought the better of it. She had
Marjorie seemed to be on the edge of a friendship, but it was hard to predict how a society matron
might reaction to the news that Emma’s sister had been not merely a prostitute, but a victim of Jack the
Ripper.
“Do you remember what she said, there at the end?” she asked. “When she saw a girl named Rose?”
Marjorie frowned. “She said nothing at all did she? Simply that a girl named Rose stepped
forward.”
“Stepped forward, yes. Which means, does it not, that Rose is with the spirits?”
Marjorie’s frown deepened. “Of course. If this woman knows her business, then the girl called
Rose, whoever she might be, is dead.”

Chapter Ten
Despite Rayley’s trepidation, the scene which greeted them at Hever Castle was tranquil. The same
scraggly crew they might have expected was gathered around the long dining table, sharing a dinner of
oats and potatoes. The food, while hardly aromatic or appetizing, was more plentiful than when the
tyrant LaRusse was in attendance, so Trevor could only assume that the rules about gleaning were
relaxed during his frequent absences. Apparently some of the artists had made a raid on a nearby
farm, and the figure now presiding at the head of the table was the painter John Paul. He greeted
Rayley and Trevor with an uninterested wave of the hand, his attention barely flickering from the
buxom young creature at his side, and Trevor realized that no one in Hever had noticed that he,
Rayley, and Anne had abandoned the castle for the Edenbridge Inn.
This is a topsy-turvy world indeed, Trevor thought. LaRusse departs and John Paul steps into his
place. The king is dead, long live the king. People gather for breakfast, but if they do not return
for dinner, no one goes looking for them or expresses the slightest curiosity as to their
whereabouts. No, not even if they are young girls like Dorinda Spencer or Anne Arborton. How
quickly absolute freedom can become absolute indifference.
But at least the fact that everyone appeared to be dining as a group meant that he and Rayley could
explore the castle uninterrupted. He doubted they would find LaRusse or Dorinda – or even any clue
as to where they might have gone – within the occupied sections of the castle. Most likely they would
have to move on to the cellar and the gatehouse if they wanted any real answers, but just as Trevor
was starting toward the kitchen to begin his search, Rayley signaled to him.
“What is it?” Trevor said, as he joined Rayley at the bottom of the stairs.
“It’s just occurred to me what was different about the castle as we approached,” Rayley said. “You
know the windows in the east turret? The ones Dorinda decreed should always stand open because
of the paint fumes? They were closed.”
****
The candles they had grabbed from downstairs were small and ineffectual against the dark and
winding stairs. Rayley muttered a terse warning that there was no handrail and that the steps
themselves were crumbling and sloped, indented by centuries of feet. Trevor, always more cautious
than proud in these instances, dropped to his hands and knees for the climb, at one point clinching the
candle stub between his teeth like a cigar.
And it was in this bizarre and unmanly position that he saw the first one.
The first picture, that is.
It was the face of a woman, very like the face in the portrait they had found in the gatehouse. Roundeyed,
lovely, beseeching. The Angel of Hever Castle.

Trevor tried to make a sound to halt Rayley, who was above him on the winding staircase, but the
candle in his mouth prevented him from making an audible sound. Besides, by that time, Rayley’s
candle had found an image of its own. Another portrait, another pose, but the same woman. “He’s
painted her over and over, Welles,” Rayley called back down into the darkness. His breath was
ragged, both from the climb and from a growing sense of dread. “Rose, you said her name was? He
has gone mad with guilt.”
Trevor muttered something indistinct in reply, but it hardly mattered. For as the two men continued to
climb they encountered portrait after portrait of Rose. Rose naked. Rose in the robes of a Queen.
Rose standing. Rose reclined. Rose both indoors and out. Rose with a child in her arms. Rose
laughing, then stricken with grief.
“Dear God,” said Trevor, who paused to straighten and take the candle stub in his hand. “Be careful
when you reach the door, Abrams, and we must extinguish our candles before we open it. How is the
situation at the top of the stairs? Do you remember?”
“The steps lead straight to the door,” Rayley called back. “Which will give us trouble if we have to
force it, since there’s no way to get a running start. And you must take care to stay to the left, Welles,
don’t stand erect like that. If you lean too far to the right, you could topple into the stairwell.”
“But how shall we…” And here Trevor hesitated, for with each step, he was growing increasingly
certain that they were climbing toward a corpse, but he did not bother articulating this fear, since he
was reasonably sure Rayley had come to the same conclusion. Trevor swiped his hand toward one of
the pictures – this one of a pensive Rose, contemplating one of the flowers that was her namesake –
and was not totally surprised that his knuckles came back smeared with wet paint. LaRusse had
apparently gone into some sort of artistic frenzy – hiding in the garret and producing one hasty portrait
after another, propping each on a separate step before climbing back up to begin the next.
“How shall we what?” Rayley asked, but as he at last reached the final step, there was a sudden
flurry of motion, like a bird taking flight from a high roost. He raised his candle but it was
extinguished at once, with a single whoosh of air - and then it was upon him, a great rushing shape,
seemingly airborne. He let out a cry as he instinctively dove to the left, toward the wall, knocking his
head against the stones as he slid to his feet. Dazed, nearly blind, he watched in disbelief as the ghost
took flight and a high metallic scream filled the stairwell.
Trevor, who preferred to think of the creature as an angel, was no less stunned at its rapid
appearance. He pulled back his own candle, saving the small flame from extinction, and beheld the
figure in white sailing through the darkness, cutting over the stairwell in a definitive swoop, before
finally sinking from sight into the dark pit below. Only the gentle thud of its landing, impossibly far
beneath them, indicated that this was a human form and not a supernatural one.
“Abrams, are you there?” Trevor shouted into the void above him. “What in the name of God was
that? It flew right past me. ”
“I’m fine, Welles,” said Rayley, hoping it was true. The whack to the head had made him dizzy and
he hesitated to push to his feet. Not here, so high up in the darkness, with the yawning stairwell to the
side. “I think it was Dorinda, and she wasn’t flying. She was clinging to a rope…a pulley she

devised to lift water….I recognized that screeching sound.”
“What do you mean lift water?” Trevor shouted back in complete disorientation. “Where the devil
did she go?”
But before Rayley could answer, the door at the top of the stairs wrenched open.
The garret was full of candles, as many as a shrine or chapel, and thus, when the door was pulled
back, the stairs beneath it were suddenly flooded with light. Enough so that Rayley blinked, and
turned toward Trevor below him. But Trevor was standing in open-mouthed wonder as LaRusse
Chapman stumbled from the turret.
He was wild, incoherent, nearly foaming. He had been trapped there for hours, it would seem, held
hostage by not only the lead toxins within the white paint but also by ceaseless images of the woman
he had destroyed. For now that his eyes were adapting to the light, Rayley could see that the multiple
images of Rose on the stairwell were only the beginning. A dozen other canvasses bearing her face
were grouped around the small turret room, her eyes staring down at the men from every direction.
LaRusse staggered. He weaved. Rayley struggled to stand, still shaky from his blow to the head, and
Trevor scrambled up the remaining steps. But they were both too late. LaRusse paused at the top
stair, teetering on the edge of the abyss, and then, with a single step, he was gone. But this was no
angelic flutter, no swirling ghost. It was the straight sharp fall of a mortal man and the slap at the
bottom, below them in the darkness, was the sound of death.
Rayley and Trevor stumbled down the steps as best they could. The light at the top of the stairs was
fading as they made their way to the bottom, but just as they reached the last step, a door opened from
the dining room. John Paul coming in to investigate the sound of the crash, a torch in one hand and his
beer mug in another, and his minions behind him.
Trevor left Rayley to confirm the inevitable – that LaRusse Chapman had instantaneously died upon
hitting the stone floor – while he sprinted past the confused cluster of colonists and out the front door.
She was still in sight, just as expected, running in the moonlight away from the castle and toward the
open fields. Trevor was portly, a man too fond of his food and drink. But in times like this he had a
low and efficient sort of run, and so, despite his arduous climb and rapid descent of the stairwell, he
was able to close the distance between them within minutes. She was barely across the moat when
his reaching hand found her trailing robe and he seized it, yanking her roughly.
The girl all but tumbled out of the white cape. She hit the ground inelegantly, knocked down with
more force than Trevor had intended and instinctively he reached a hand to assist her. A gentleman
to the end, he thought. Even when confronted with ghosts and angels and murderesses, what do I
do? Apologize for my roughness, offer the assisting hand. They are right to tease me, for I am a
fool. The ladies will be the ones who kill me in the end and I will go willingly, I suspect, with a
gentleman’s obliging smile on my face.
His hand grasped hers. And when he felt the paint on her palms and fingertips, still wet, he at last
understood it all. She offered one last spasm of resistance, made one final attempt to twist in his
arms, but he held her firm.

“There is no need to struggle, Dorinda,” he said gently, looking up at the still night sky. “It is over. It
is done.”

Chapter Eleven
“Let me make sure I understand,” said Emma. “Dorinda was the one who was painting Rose’s face
each night on LaRusse’s paintings, changing them as he slept? She sought to drive him mad by making
sure he was constantly confronted with her dead sister’s face and when that did not destroy him as
quickly as she hoped, she blocked him in the turret room with an open bucket of lead paint and a
whole host of paintings of Rose?”
“Precisely,” Rayley said, settling back on Geraldine’s couch. “The confusion was due to the fact that
Dorinda and Rose had a strong sisterly resemblance. Or at least enough of one that when Anne saw
Rose’s face, she thought that LaRusse was drawing Dorinda and the notion sent her into a jealous
fury. I made the same mistake too, at first. Only Trevor saw the difference.”
“Anne is lucky to have such devoted family and friends. She might easily have followed in Rose’s
footsteps.”
The two of them turned their heads to consider Anne Arborton, sitting across the parlor at her
mother’s side. She had arrived for Geraldine’s annual Christmas luncheon in a loose smocked dress
of the sort a child might wear, with her golden hair pulled back in a ribbon. Rayley marveled in the
transformation the girl had gone through in merely hours, for there was little similarity between the
young woman they had delivered on Tess’s doorstep yesterday morning and the one who sat before
them now. Anne seemed to have lost five years in age overnight and judging by the sweet, docile way
she greeted everyone at the party, she was more than happy to have her wild adventures behind her.
She is all contrition and submissiveness, Rayley thought. And she shall be the model daughter, at
least for a while. But by spring I have no doubt that our little Anne shall have thought of an
entirely new way to torment her mother.
“When I think on the matter long enough, I almost begin to feel sorry for LaRusse,” Rayley said aloud
to Emma. “No matter how he would try to expunge the face of the girl who died bearing his child, she
still greeted him anew every morning.”
Emma sniffed. “I would say he got no more than what he deserved.”
“Oh, undoubtedly,” Rayley said, “but it has always struck me that insanity is an especially cruel fate,
far more terrifying than death.” He paused and gave a rueful chuckle. “Dorinda very nearly took
Trevor and I down the road to madness along with them. If you could have seen her running about the
countryside in the moonlight, wearing her sister’s white cape…Quite effective, I assure you, and that
final night, when she descended from the turret using that same rope pulley she told me she had
created for the water…my knees all but buckled in terror. She was a true actress, that one, capable of
creating any effect she chose, and if the girl frightened two Scotland Yard detectives out of their wits,
it was no trouble at all to dupe a man whose mind was already corrupted by lead and alcohol.
Sometimes it is easy to imagine the presence of the supernatural, even though it seems a silly thing to
confess in the light of day.”

“Indeed,” said Emma, gazing across the crowded room at Madame Renata, who was sedately seated
on a divan. In honor of it being Christmas morning, she had left behind her turbans and jewels in lieu
of more traditional dress and, in fact, blended in perfectly with the other ladies at Geraldine’s holiday
brunch. She turned smilingly to accept a plate of tidbits from Fleanders, Geraldine’s crusty old beau,
and then resumed her conversation with Michael Weaver, a rising young politician they had all
befriended on a recent case in Bombay. Geraldine’s parties always seemed to bring together bizarre
collections of people, for she moved among every stratum of London society with ease, and courted
friends with varying political and religious views. Emma smiled, wondering what would happen if
the famously conservative Weaver managed to engage the famously eccentric Madame Renata in
genuine conversation. Or if the blustery Fleanders knew the true history of Michael’s sister Adelaide,
who had now joined him on the window seat and was laughing heartily at one of his jokes. With one
wrong word placed here or there, the peace of this Christmas morning might shatter as easily as the
icicles dropping from the eaves outside.
“What will happen to Dorinda?” Emma said, turning back to Rayley, for her contemplation of
Madame Renata reminded her that the mystic had been unable to muster an image of Dorinda’s fate.
All darkness, is that what she had said?
Rayley shrugged, although in truth his feelings on the subject were not as casual as the gesture
implied. “The problem, of course, is that when you attempt to drive someone mad, you often go with
them.”
“Shutting someone in a room with paint and a group of portraits is not the same thing as actively
trying to kill them,” Emma pointed out. “It wasn’t as if she attacked LaRusse with a gun or knife.
With good legal representation –“
Rayley nodded. “She won’t hang, if that is what you are asking. Her parents are wealthy enough to
make sure she has that proper council and besides, the Edenbridge constable was open to the
suggestion that LaRusse Chapman’s death might be called a suicide. Which I suppose it could be,
although there on that stairwell, I must tell you that the lines between murder, accident, and suicide
seemed rather blurred to me. But the local man, Brown by name, is primarily concerned with
gathering enough evidence to bar the door to Hever Castle and claim the place is under investigation
as a crime scene. If my read of the fellow is correct, he will make sure that this investigation moves
as slowly as possible, concluding only in the spring, or whenever he is certain the colonists have
abandoned the property and moved on.”
“So Dorinda will more likely be confined to an asylum than a jail.”
“More likely.”
A pall had fallen upon them both with this last conversational shift, so Rayley looked around the room
for a subject to lighten the mood. There were plenty of possibilities, but he settled on Gage, who was
circulating with a tray of champagne. He was in full livery for once, evidently in acknowledgement
of the holiday season.
“You are the total lady of leisure this morning,” Rayley said. “I take it you no longer help Gage at
Geraldine’s parties?”

“It would appear my leisure is to be extended,” Emma said. “For Gerry has at last taken the advice
of Tess and her other friends and hired a maid.”
At that moment, as if on cue, Melly MacGraw entered the room with an empty tray, presumably to
take away the plates and cups that had been set aside by the partygoers. The black dress and ruffled
apron, which had sagged limply on Emma’s small frame, were entirely too tight for her, the apron
straining over her bulging stomach.
“Heavens,” Rayley said. “Where did Geraldine find such a girl? She hardly seems a good candidate
for long term engagement. What will happen when her child is born?”
“There are two theories on that score,” Emma said drily. “Melly’s is that the father of the baby,
evidently the son of a moneyed household, will arrive in his velvet-trimmed carriage and whisk them
both away. My theory is that she will stay on here, with all of us, and that Geraldine’s household
will then have the one thing it needs to make our chaos complete – a newborn child.”
“Is the girl even trained for service?” Rayley said, with an indulgent chuckle, for Emma’s predictions
were undoubtedly accurate. Geraldine’s huge heart would expand just a little more, broad enough to
engulf this girl and her baby. They are a lucky pair, indeed, he mused. For they have stumbled their
way into a circle of people who, while admittedly unconventional, are all well intended. The child
will be born into a household full of love.
“Look there,” he added. “Gage will have his hands full training that one, for I don’t believe she’s ever
even handled a tray. See, she has dropped a cup or something, there is a visible splash of water at
her feet…”
“Oh dear,” Emma said, pushing to her feet. “I must tell Gage that our luncheon will be delayed after
all. “
****
“So you hired the girl yesterday and she has gone into labor today?” Fleanders roared. “I say,
Geraldine, are we ever to have peace and order in this household?”
“Probably not,” Geraldine said sweetly, patting his wrinkled cheek. “Now, Melly is in bed and
seems to be faring well, but someone must go for a doctor.”
“Richard,” Marjorie said, and her husband sprang to his feet with the ease of a man accustomed to
following feminine orders. “You remember where the physician on Baker Street lives…” And the
young man had his coat and hat on in a flash, pulling them from the hands of Gage who bore a
saintlike expression of forbearance.
“Oh Gage, yes,” Geraldine said vaguely, as Richard sprinted out on his errand. “Perhaps we should
just serve it all up as sort of picnic on a table?” She looked around the room. Tess, and Madame
Renata were already upstairs with Melly, who had been shown to Geraldine’s own fine bed.
Marjorie was making her way up the steps to join them. Michael and Fleanders had begun pacing
with an almost comical intensity, while Adelaide and Anne were seated on the rug before the fire,
playing with Marjorie’s twins.

“Where is Trevor?” Geraldine said, turning to Rayley. “And Emma?”
“They have stepped out into the garden,” Rayley said, giving her a conspiratorial wink as he took her
arm.
“The garden?” Geraldine said in surprise, glancing out the window at the sleet which had been
clicking relentlessly against the windows all morning. “Whatever for?”
“I believe he may have brought her a holiday gift back from Hever.”
“Wonderful,” she said, attempting to wink herself, although Geraldine had never been particularly
skilled at winking and the effort gave her the rollicking look of a drunken sailor. Just then a shriek
from upstairs caused everyone in the room to startle.
“Geraldine,” said Fleanders, wiping his brow with a shaky hand, “are we to be subject to such noises
all morning?”
“Most likely through the afternoon and evening as well, dear,” she answered. “It is my understanding
that first babies rarely come quickly.”
“Good God,” sputtered Fleanders. “All the day and into the night, you say? We may as well open the
brandy now.”
“An excellent suggestion,” said Geraldine, and she snatched the heavy glass bottle from the bar
before heading back up the stairs. “And darlings,” she said over her shoulder as she paused on the
landing, “the minute that Richard is back with the doctor, send him up straightaway. Can you believe
we are to have a Christmas baby? Such an arrival means good fortune, I can feel it in my bones.” She
bounded up the remaining stairs with impressive vigor for a woman of her age and size, leaving the
little group below in contemplation.
“I hate to cause more trouble,” Anne said timidly, pointing a finger toward the corner of the room.
“But is that tree smoking?”
****
Rayley peeked out the breakfast room window into the small garden and saw Trevor standing alone,
under an umbrella. While seizing one of his own from the stand in the corner, he overheard the sounds
of Emma and Gage in the kitchen, conferring on how to best turn a formal luncheon into an indoor
picnic. When Emma offered the practical notion of pulling the lamb from the bone for sandwiches,
Gage agreed, but by his tone it was clear he found the idea abhorrent. Poor man, thought Rayley, he
had a maid to help him for what…two hours? And he has labored on a formal meal for days, most
likely, only to see all his efforts go to ruin.
Holding the umbrella against the icy shards of sleet, Rayley picked his cautious way toward Trevor in
the garden. He found him staring down at the cuttings of the Christmas rose he had brought from the
fields of Hever.
“How did it go?” Rayley asked, shouting a bit to compensate for the wind.
Trevor, who hadn’t heard his friend approaching, looked up in wry surprise. “Well, I botched it, of

course I did. Was there ever any doubt? Tried to say that the rose reminded me of her because it
looks delicate, but is actually able to withstand harsh forces, and I suspect it sounded as if I was
comparing her to a soldier. Why didn’t I work out a proper speech on the train and make you listen as
I practiced? And then of course, I felt compelled to further add that the plant was toxic, which made
the comparison go even more wrong, and all the while Emma just stood there, patiently nodding,
while I babbled on like an idiot. When Gage opened the door and called for her to help in the kitchen,
it was a relief to us both, I should think.”
“I doubt it was as bad as all that.”
“It was worse. How goes the delivery?”
“Slowly, most likely. There was a scream from upstairs and Geraldine took the brandy for the
women and then the tree caught on fire and had to be extinguished with a shaken bottle of champagne.
I fear that luncheon shall be no more than sandwiches and punch.”
Trevor sighed. “It was the wrong thing to give her. A snarl of brambles and thorns, wrapped in
brown burlap.”
“Only for now. It will be something else entirely in the spring.”
“Do you think she knows that?”
“I suspect she understands that there is… potential.”
Trevor sighed again and the two turned toward the house. “Sandwiches for luncheon, you say?
Pacing and waiting and cigars too, I should imagine, and if you’ll recall, I tried to warn everyone
about that ridiculous tree. At the risk of sounding like Fleanders, do you think that we shall ever
manage to have a normal day in this household?”
Rayley laughed and stomped his boots free of ice before stepping into the house. “Merry Christmas,
Trevor.”