“Writing on thewalls?” Jessamine said. “Inside the house?”
“In the corridor!”
“That seems extremely unlikely,” Bram remarked. “Have you been drinking?”
“It’s there!” Hawley snarled. “And I won’t have it! Who did this?”
Everyone exchanged glances. “I’ll go and look,” Jessaminesaid.
“No!” Hawley snapped. “That is, it is not fit for your eyes, Jessamine. You are above such spite and vulgarity.”
“ThenIshall look,” Colonel Dash said, with a touch of annoyance. “Lead the way.”
“I’ll come with you,” Zeb offered, since it was a fast exit from the table and Bram and Gideon.
Hawley was lodged on the opposite side of the house to Zeb. With so few staff in evidence, he really would have thought they would put all the guests together. He followed his cousins upstairs and along several corridors until Hawley stopped dead.
They were in a corridor very like Zeb’s but without any paintings. That, unfortunately, meant they had an uninterrupted view of the extremely ugly wallpaper with its aggressively repeated pattern. Zeb had read a surprising number of stories featuring haunted patterns (well, two, but that seemed a lot) and was of the opinion that Lackaday House’s walls could inspire another.
There was nothing else at all to see.
“Hawley?” Dash asked.
“But—it was here. What the—” Hawley took a few intemperate strides forward and ran his hands over the wallpaper. “There was writing here! Damn great letters, painted on the wall!”
“There’s nothing there now,” Zeb observed.
“I can see that, you bloody fool!”
Zeb put his own hand to the wallpaper. It was dry and a little dusty. “What did this writing say?”
“Offensive nonsense. A slanderous allegation.”
“Personal?” Dash asked.
“Of course personal. It could hardly be slanderous otherwise.”
“So, you had a vision—”
“It was not a vision!”
“You ‘saw’ abusive words written on the wall,” Dash said, the quotation marks around the verb very clear. “But there is nothing there. Do you often see things that aren’t there?”
Hawley indicated his opinion of that question in an explosive manner, added a few reflections on the intelligence of his companions, and stamped off into what was presumably his bedroom, letting a reek of stale-scented smoke and a distinct whiff of spirits into the corridor. Zeb and Dash turned as one and headed back to the main hall.
Once they were at a safe distance, Dash remarked, “Well, they do say that absinthe stuff gives a chap visions.”
“But it makes the heart grow fonder.”
Dash gave a moustache-ruffling snort. “What do you make of all that? Is he off his rocker?”
“He’s playing the fool in some way. No idea what.”
Dash frowned slightly. “You sound sure of that.”
“Last night someone dressed up as the family ghost in an attempt to scare me,” Zeb said. “You were playing billiards with Bram and Mr. Grey at the time, and I’d heard Wynn and the women talking downstairs. That leaves Hawley.”
“Well,” Dash said. “Is that so? Well, well. Someone dressed as a monk, was that?”
