Angela’s eyes narrowed when she spotted Ellie and Maggie. “What are you two doing here?” she barked. Without waiting for an answer, she pressed on, “Where’s Emma Blackwood?”
“She’s upstairs getting her dressing reapplied,” Ellie replied, gesturing towards the staircase. “For her ‘badly broken’ nose, that to my eye, is a scratch, possibly from one of the rings Amber wears.”
Angela’s gaze lingered on Ellie, uninterested before she asked, “Since you’re obviously here for the same reasons we are, what have you found about the invisible ink?”
“James here sculpted a UV statue,” Maggie declared, pointing to the twisted lump of clay nearby. “It might be related, but he’s not being forthcoming, are you… James?”
Maggie spun around, and Ellie joined her in looking, but James had slipped away at some point too. The police’s timing couldn’t have been a coincidence.
“UV as in glow-in-the-dark?” Angela asked, staring up at the statue, looking more unimpressed than usual. “Doesn’t look glow-in-the-dark to me.”
“No, Ma’am, you need a special light,” Finn chirped up, rocking back on his heels. “I went to a glow paint rave once on holiday in Kavos.” Angela shot him a look of disgust before he added, “Just the once, Ma’am.”
Ellie spotted the black light James had used earlier poking out of the cardboard box he’d left behind and picked it up. She swept it around the room, but nothing reacted. Then she directed it towards the statue. As the last remnants of daylight faded outside, the sculpture came to life under the UV light.
The once-formless lump now appeared as a hunched figure, twisted in what seemed to be agony. Layers upon layers of glow-in-the-dark paint of neon greens and pink, blue, white, yellow, and all the combinations they could make revealed intricate details that were invisible in normal light. Ellie found herself captivated by the strangeness of it, reminiscent of a Renaissance painting that revealed more depth the longer it was observed.
“It’s awful,” Angela declared, breaking the spell. “Heinous, in fact.”
“It’s probably got some deep message I don’t get,” Finn said, scratching the side of his head with a curious finger. “It’ll come to me.”
“Something about ego and fame, or something like that,” Maggie said, wafting her hand. “It didn’t make much sense, but he swears it’s his masterpiece.”
“It’s cool,” Finn said, “I think?”
As they were all staring at the statue, Emma plodded down the stairs as Anne guided her like she was a patient. She planted her in a chair in the middle of the sitting room before excusing herself to attend to the rug upstairs. Emma seemed to freeze pressing down on her fresh dressing when she noticed the police presence, but she remained seated, her posture stiff and defiant.
DS Angela Cookson fixed Emma with a stern gaze. “Stay exactly where you are.” Emma didn’t move, her lips pressed into a thin line, but Angela wasted no time in launching her interrogation. “We need to discuss the emails you sent attempting to sell a book. Care to explain?”
Emma’s
chin jutted out. “I’m saying nothing until I’ve got a lawyer,” she declared, a hint of pride in her voice. “My father taught me that, at least.”
Ellie noticed a flicker of something—was it pain?—cross Emma’s face at the mention of her father, but it was gone in an instant. Maybe the grief would come later, in the aftermath of whatever this period would look like when she looked back one day.
“And I’m not going to the station, either,” Emma added, her tone growing more belligerent. “I’m on painkillers, and more importantly, I want to know what’s going on with Amber. She’s the one who—”
Ellie’s eyes darted upward at the sound of a splintering crack, her heart leaping into her throat at the horror unfolding before her eyes. The twisted lump of a sculpture, once a centrepiece of their discussion, tilted forwards, and what little resistance the wooden bannister had left cracked, sending the sculpture plummeting through the splintered bannister. Time seemed to slow as PC Finn lunged forward, pushing Emma out of the way. But it wasn’t enough.
The sculpture struck Emma with a sickening thud, half-landing on her as she tumbled from the chair she’d sat in moments ago. Ellie winced, but she looked up, searching the darkness above for any sign of movement, any clue as to what had happened. Scanning. Searching. What shouldn’t be there? The shadows seemed to shift and dance, playing tricks on her eyes as shocked tears stung their way to the surface.
DS Angela Cookson’s voice cut through the chaos, sharp and authoritative as she paced the room, barking codes and orders into her radio. But Ellie’s attention was drawn back to Emma, lying unconscious beneath the fallen statue. Despite their earlier confrontation, Ellie wouldn’t have wished this on her.
Scrubbing away the eyes with the back of her hand, she tried to absorb the moment and feel out for anything that was strange, and one thing came to her immediately. Or rather three people, whose glaring absence in the face of tragedy couldn’t be ignored. Anne, James, and Charles had all vanished just before the incident.
Still locked in a daze, vision blurred from the tears, Ellie felt hands grasping her arms. She turned to find her gran, Maggie, guiding her away from the scene and back into the hallway, where the front door was still wide open, and now, more police officers were sprinting through it, though to Ellie, they seemed to move in slow motion.
“Any one of them could have pushed that sculpture,” Ellie managed to say. “It didn’t fall on its own.”
“No, it didn’t, and you’re right,” Maggie said as she placed Ellie in a chair. “Any one of them could have pushed it over. This room was boiling over without the need for that grand finale. Sit down and stay here. I’m going to see if I can find you anything for the shock.”
As Ellie sank into a chair with her back against the wall, she hated that her mind immediately drew the comparison between the sculpture falling on Emma and the gravestone falling on her. Only Ellie had been able to walk away.
Chapter 22Resourceful
Maggie returned from the kitchen, a glass of cloudy liquid in her hand. “I was resourceful and made some sugar water,” she said, offering it to Ellie. “Does what it says on the tin. It’ll be good for the shock.”
Ellie took a sip and grimaced. It was sweet, but not in a pleasant way. “Thanks,” she said, placing the glass on a nearby side table. “I’ve been thinking, and ‘resourceful’ is a good word to describe a pattern I’ve noticed.”
Maggie’s eyebrows rose. “What are your thoughts?”
“This is just like what happened to me a few nights ago in the graveyard,” Ellie replied, her mind racing with the connection.
“The graveyard?” Maggie’s tone was a mix of surprise and concern. “It seems I’m not the only one keeping secrets.”
“This was in support of uncovering the truth. I went and came back before you woke up during the movie, but that’s not important.” She leaned forward, her voice lowering as forensic officers in suits like white ghosts floated into the house. “After Angela told us that riddle, I couldn’t wait until morning to search the church. And I found the riddle that sent Thomas to the bookshop, and there was something else. Musical notes, and they led to Willow’s shop, but I didn’t know that then. I was trying to take a picture, and one of the old graves fell on me.”
“Fell?”
“Pushed,” Ellie corrected. “And now I’m sure of it. I haven’t been factually sure, but I am now. There’s a clear pattern... a resourcefulness at work. A pen found on hand used to kill, a leaning grave to stop a search, a tumbling statue to silence a… witness, perhaps?” She let her words settle as she tried to find the point of it all. “This person is using brute force and whatever they have to hand in the face of anyone getting in their way. They’re clever. A quick thinker, fast on their toes, and resourceful.”
“Very good,” Maggie said. “Some reasoned deductions, and adding that to what we know, we’re looking for someone not very tall, smart, fast, and handy, and that could be just about anyone in this house.”
Ellie opened her mouth to suggest there was more they knew but she waited as more police officers rushed into the house. DS Angela Cookson emerged from the sitting room, crying, “You two should wait outside. And don’t go too far. I want to talk to you both.”
They left Blackwood House without argument, and Ellie was grateful for the respite from the cool evening breeze after the tense atmosphere inside. As she looked up at the panel of red stained glass, her imagination played its old tricks on her. Only this time, she was sure there was someone up there looking down on them. A chill ran down her spine. Glancing at her grandmother, she was surprised to see just how scared she looked by the latest shocking turn—as if she knew they were in way over their heads.
Across the green, they settled against the cool stone of the war memorial. The Old Bell buzzed with evening diners, but heads were starting to turn towards the growing cluster of service cars gathering outside Blackwood. Doors creaked open around the green, and curtains twitched.
