The Witches Three Cozy Mysteries 4-6

Chapter 16

Chapter 16

I don't know how I knew it was Thomas, having only glimpsed a figure dressed like almost every man in attendance at the party. He fell past the window in the blink of an eye, but I was absolutely certain it was him.

And, to judge by the sudden sobbing scream, so was Mary.

I ran to the window and unlocked it. It opened out like a French door, although too tall to step through. I had to sit on the pane and swing my legs over before I could drop down into the snow and run to the crumpled form a few feet away.

Yeah, the dress was totally ruined now.

He had fallen into a bank where the snow that had been shoveled off the patio had piled up. At first, I wasn't even certain if he'd been hurt. He had only been on the second floor, after all, and the snow was deep.

But he wasn't moving, and when I came close enough to kneel beside him, it was clear he wasn't breathing.

He had landed in the deep snow, but head first. I was certain his neck had snapped at once. It would have been quick.

I hoped.

I looked up and could just make out the outlines of a balcony above. He hadn't fallen from a window then; the master bedroom had its own little veranda overlooking the garden. The light that so dimly illuminated the room Edward was in on the third floor did little more for the second floor. I saw nothing.

But I kept looking up anyway. Was someone there? Someone who knew the poor light so much closer to me than to them was preventing me from seeing them?

"Amanda?" Brianna called from the window. "Is it Thomas? Is he all right?"

I didn't look her way or down at Thomas. I just waited.

And sure enough, a shadow moved. Someone had been there, looking down at me.

They were getting away.

"Amanda!" Brianna called as I raced towards the house. I saw her out of the corner of my eye crawling out the window, but I didn't wait. I found a trellis covered with dried vines and a dusting of snow and saw that it ended just under a window on the second floor. I flung off my shoes, useless for climbing with their slick bottoms, and pulled myself up the surprisingly sturdy wood.

"Thomas!" Mary was crying, her voice now also outside in the garden. I focused on the window that was my goal. It too opened out like French windows, but fortunately had been left unlocked. It still took a bit of work to get it to open from the outside.

Good thing I'm not the type to be vain about my nails. They were a bloody mess by the time I had the window open wide enough to climb inside the house.

The master bedroom was almost ridiculously spacious, with two enormous beds as well as two separate sitting areas and a variety of doors. They must have separate closets and bathrooms and even separate access to the corridor beyond to account for all those doors.

The light was better than up in the room Edward was in, but it was still more gloom and shadow than visible objects. Something at the foot of one of the beds was catching the light. Something metallic. More manacles, I guessed.

At least they were treating Edward and Thomas the same in that much. But Thomas had gotten the much nicer room.

I didn't see anything moving in the shadows, and once I had my own breathing under control, I heard no one else in that room with me. Whoever I had seen looking down at me seemed to be quite gone now.

A cold breeze was moving through the room, stirring the curtains and the bedclothes. I crossed from the window to the open French doors that led out onto the balcony.

There was a cast iron table and a pair of chairs in one corner of the balcony, nicely situated for someone to enjoy a cup of coffee, perhaps even breakfast, while watching the sun rise over the river valley. But no one came out here in the winter, to judge by the depth of the unshoveled snow.

Unshoveled, but not unmoved. I wouldn't describe what I was looking at as footprints, exactly. More like someone had been dragged, and he had struggled a lot. I could see the patch of the balcony where he had gone over, now clear of snow.

I heard the sound of someone unlocking the door behind me, but I was too far away to make it back out the window. I could possibly duck behind one of the chairs or under one of the beds, but that would only buy me a little time.

I turned to face the door as the knob started to turn. I was tempted to draw my wand in case it was the murderer returning to the scene of the crime, but that wasn't likely to do me any good if it was and would be downright embarrassing if it was anyone else coming into the room.

The door swung open, filling the room with a dazzling amount of light. I could hear several voices, male voices, but the talking died away as the first ones in stopped moving and everyone behind piled into them.

"What's she doing in here?" someone asked.

"Where's Thomas?" someone else asked.

"Did she let him go?"

"How? I have the only key." I was pretty sure I recognized that voice as belonging to Stuart. I shaded my eyes from the brightest of the light and squinted into the crowd of shadows advancing on me.

"What are you doing here?" This one stepped close enough to block out the light behind him, and I recognized McConnell's face with its generous dusting of freckles.

"I thought I saw someone in here, but it was empty when I came in," I said.

"No one was supposed to go in here. Thomas was being held here," Stuart said, bending to pick up a manacle.

"Don't you know?" I looked at the men milling around the room, checking behind chairs and under beds and inside closets. They didn't seem to know. "Thomas is dead. He fell onto the patio and broke his neck."

"What?" Stuart cried, and before I could stop him, he raced out onto the veranda, trampling through all the marked snow.

Oh well. It's not like it had told me anything I hadn't already known.

"How is he?" Stuart called down.

"Dead!" Sophie yelled back up to him.

He turned away from the railing and came back into the room. "How did this happen?"

"It looked like there'd been a struggle," I said.

"How do you figure that?" he asked.

"The snow you just walked back and forth over," I said. He looked back at the snow and blanched. "It looked like he was dragged to the railing and then tossed over, head first. He might have lived if he hadn't landed on the back of his neck."

Stuart stopped looking at the snow and came to stand intimidatingly close to me, squeezing my arm tightly as he glared into my eyes. "Who did this?"

"I didn't see who," I said, forcing myself to remain calm. But people grabbing me tended to make me angry.

"Stuart, let her go," McConnell said softly. Stuart ignored him.

"You saw something," he said, squeezing me harder.

"I saw someone's head," I said. "Why don't you go downstairs and have one of these other fellows look down at you, just for a moment. Then you can come back and tell me how many identifying features you can be certain you saw."

"You're telling me you've got nothing? You don't know if he was tall or short, thick or thin, old or young? Nothing?"

"I couldn't even be sure he was a he," I said. He let me go with a little flinging gesture that might have knocked back a less sturdy woman.

"I can tell you one thing," I said. "It wasn't Edward."

"How do you figure that?"

"Because Edward is still upstairs, under lock and key," I said.

"She has a point there," McConnell said.

"Someone, go check," Stuart said, and one of the men closer to the door ran out into the corridor. I could just hear the sound of his footsteps on the stairs.

Then I remembered that as much as the door was locked and there were two guards still on duty, I had taken off Edward's manacles. If anyone noticed that detail and chose to focus on it, I might have just made everything a lot more difficult for team Exonerate Edward.

If I hadn't let Stuart make me so mad, I might have figured out a way to get upstairs and lock him back up before anyone thought to check. Although I don't know how I would have pulled that off. But just thinking about it had me touching my bag again, groping the outline of my wand.

And only my wand.

That wasn't right. I glanced around, but none of the other police were looking at me. McConnell had them in a huddle, sending them off singly and in pairs to handle other tasks. I reached my hand inside the bag. I felt the warmth of the wood of my wand, but that was it.

The key was gone.

I distinctly remembered having it when I left Edward's room. I had touched the bag to be sure it was still in there and that I hadn't left it behind. So when had I lost it?

Then I remembered. Someone had bumped into me in the ballroom. That was a classic pickpocket distraction. Was one of the gangsters a pickpocket before he moved up to bigger crime?

I wracked my brain, but I just couldn't picture who had bumped into me. It had been crowded. I hadn't gotten a good look or even a bad one.

"I'm afraid you'll have to come with me," McConnell said. I flinched when he moved to take my arm, and he stepped back. "Sorry."

"Where are you taking me?" I asked.

"To the library to see the chief."

"I'll walk with you," I said. "I'm not going to run away. In fact, there's nothing I want more right now than to talk to your chief."

He gave me a little nod and then we walked out into the hall and down the corridor towards the bright light of the chandelier in the main hall. McConnell turned towards me to say something but was distracted by staring at my arm.

"I'm terribly sorry," he said, and I glanced down to see dark purple bruises blooming where Stuart's fingers had been.

"It's nothing," I said. "I bruise easy." Years of hockey had taught me that.

"It's not acceptable," McConnell said. "I'll see he's reprimanded."

"I'm not worried about that," I said. "I'm worried about Edward. Please tell me no one is going to leave him alone with my friend."

"No, of course not," McConnell said, but he looked suddenly nervous.

"Please send someone up," I said. "Stuart was angry with me. I don't want to think how he'll be with Edward."

"I'll go up myself as soon as you're in the library," McConnell said. "Edward will be safe. You have my word."

"As an officer of the law?" I asked.

"Yes."

"The law as it's enforced here in St. Paul? Justly and equally to all of its citizens? Me or, say, that fellow over there?" I asked.

I was pointing to Otto leaning against the wall just outside the library doors. He had taken off his tie to staunch a nosebleed.

McConnell stopped dead in his tracks to turn to face me there on the staircase. "I know a lot of my fellow officers are corrupt. I know that corruption runs deep. I know there is nothing in the world that can convince you that I'm not one of those. Even so, I give you my word; I will do everything I can to see that justice is done and that injustice is punished."

A lot of sarcastic responses came to mind, but what good would that do? Instead, I just nodded.

"Thank you, officer. I accept your word and am satisfied."

"Good," he said, blinking in surprise. "Now, let's get you inside the library so I can start running up those stairs."

He crossed the hall to the library doors and knocked loudly. I waited at his elbow, but my eyes were on Otto.

Otto looked a mess. I could see no other visible damage, but from the stiff way he was moving, I knew they had done far more than just broken his nose.

Then Otto saw me standing there, and his eyes widened with panic. I put a finger to my lips, then patted my beaded bag.

He settled back against the wall, calmer now. He nodded at my bag, then pointed at the floor at his feet.

So he trusted me to face the library alone, but he was going to wait right there until I came out again.

"Here we go," McConnell said, as someone inside the library swung open just one of the doors. McConnell stepped back to let me enter. "Tell them everything," he whispered to me.

Then he was gone, running up the stairs. And I alone stepped inside the library.