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Burton hurtled along the hallway with the others trailingbehind, threw open the door, and ran into the drawing room.
Tichborne's terrified eyes fixed on him.
“Burton! Please! Please!”
Lady Mabella levelled her black eyes at the king's agent, and heheard in his mind an accented female voice command: “Do notinterfere!”
He stumbled and clutched his head, feeling as if a spear hadjabbed into his brain. The pain passed in an instant. When helooked up again, the ghost and Tichborne had vanished through thedoor leading to the main parlour.
“Are you all right?” Swinburne asked, catching up with him.
“Yes! Come on!”
They burst into the parlour, paced across it, and tumbled intothe manor's entrance hall.
The two wraiths, led by Lady Mabella, were pulling Sir Alfred upthe main staircase. He screamed and pleaded hysterically.
A gun boomed and plaster exploded from the wall beside him.Burton looked around and saw Lushington with a pistol in his raisedhand.
“Don't shoot, you fool!” he shouted. “You'll hit thebaronet!”
He started up the stairs.
Sir Alfred was dragged around a corner, his cries echoingthrough the house.
Burton, Swinburne, and the others followed the fast-movingwraiths down the hallway leading to the rear of the mansion,through the morning room, into a small sitting room, then to adressing room, and into the large bedchamber beyond.
Burton stumbled into it just as Lady Mabella gripped Tichbornearound the waist and disappeared with him through the closedwindow. His body passed through the glass without shattering it. Ashort scream of terror from outside ended abruptly.
The two wraiths hovered before the glass. One of them turned,reached up, and raised its phantom top hat. The figuresdissipated.
Stepping to the window, Burton slid it up and looked out. Aboutthree feet below, swells of impenetrable white mist rose and felllike liquid.
“Jankyn!” he bellowed, spi
The physician, who'd been lagging behind the others and had onlyjust entered the room, found himself being tugged along, back downthe stairs, and through the house to its rear. The rest of themfollowed.
“What's happening?” Lushington demanded. “Where's SirAlfred?”
“Come!” Burton called.
They entered the hunting room and the king's agent pulled openthe door to the patio. Dense mist enveloped the men as they steppedoutside.
“I can't see a thing!” said Jankyn.
“Over here.”
Burton knelt beside Sir Alfred Tichborne, who lay broken uponthe pavement, blood pooling from the back of his head.
Jankyn joined them.
“He was thrown from the window,” Burton explained.
Tichborne looked up at them, blinked, coughed, and whispered:“It hurts, Doctor Jankyn.”
“Lie still,” the physician ordered.
Sir Alfred's eyes held Burton's. “There's something-” He wincedand groaned. “There's something I want-I want you to-do.”
“What is it, Sir Alfred?”
A tear slid from the baronet's eye. “No matter who claimsthis-this estate tomorrow, my brother-my real brother-he and I werethe last Tichbornes. Don't allow anyone else to-to take thename.”
He closed his eyes and emitted a deep sigh.
Jankyn leaned over him. He looked back at Burton.
“Sir Alfred has joined his mother.”
Even though it was near enough midnight, Burton took a horse andtrap and galloped to Alresford, where he hammered on the door ofthe post office until the inhabitants opened a window and demandedto know what in blue blazes he thought he was bally well doing.Displaying the credentials granted to him by the prime minister, hequickly gained access to the aviary and gave one of the parakeets amessage for the attention of Scotland Yard.
Early the next morning, an irregular ribbon of steam appearedhigh over the eastern horizon and arced down toward the estate. Itwas generated by a rotorchair, which landed with a thump and abounce and skidded over the gravel on the carriageway in front ofTichborne House.
A burly figure clambered out of it, pulled leather-bound gogglesfrom his eyes, and was mounting the steps to the portico when thefront door opened and Burton emerged.
“Hello, Trounce. Glad to see you!”
They shook hands.
“Captain, please tell me the parakeet was joking!”
“Joking?”
“It told me murder had been done-by ghosts!”
“As bizarre as it sounds, I'm afraid it's true; I saw it with myown eyes.”
Trounce sighed and ran his fingers through his short, bristlyhair.
“Ye gods, how the devil am I supposed to report that toCommissioner Mayne?”
“Come through to the parlour, I'll give you a full account.”
Some little time later, Detective Inspector Trounce had beenintroduced to Colonel Lushington, Henry Hawkins, and Doctor Jankyn,and had taken a statement from each of them. He then examined SirAlfred's body, which lay in a small bedroom, awaiting the arrivalof the county coroner.
Trounce settled in the smoking room with Burton andSwinburne.
“It's plain enough that he was killed by the fall,” he muttered.“But how am I to begin the investigation? Ghosts, by Jove! It'sabsurd! First Brundleweed and now Tichborne!”
“That's a very interesting point,” Burton said. “We can at leastestablish that the two crimes are linked-beyond the presence of aghost, I mean.”
“How so?”
“We dismissed Brundleweed's spook as either imagination or agas-induced hallucination. However, last night I witnessed ghostspulling poor Sir Alfred straight through solid matter. It strikesme that if they can do that with a man, then they can certainly doit with diamonds.”
“You mean to suggest that, some little time before Brunel'sclockwork raiding party arrived, Brundleweed's ghost reached intohis safe and pulled the Francois Garnier gems right out, replacingthem with onyx stones, all without even opening the door?”
“Yes. Exactly that.”
“And was it the Tichborne ghost, Captain? This LadyMabella?”
“It would be fair to assume so. The motive appears to be thesame; she has an interest in black diamonds. There's rumoured to beone, of the same variety as the Choir Stones, concealed somewhereon this estate. Lady Mabella has spent night after night knockingon the walls around the house. What does that suggest to you?”
“That she's been searching for a secret hiding place?”
“Precisely-although it's strange that she should knock on wallswhen she has the ability to walk right through them. That aside, weappear to have a diamond-hungry spook on our hands. I propose thatour priority should be to discover the stone before she does;perhaps then we can find out why it's so important to her.”
Trounce rubbed his hands over his face, his expression a pictureof exasperation. “Fine! Fine! But it beats me why a diamond shouldbe of any blessed use to a ghost!”
“As I say, my friend, that is the crux of the matter.”
“And why murder Sir Alfred?”
“Perhaps to make way for the Claimant?”
Algernon Swinburne clapped his hands together. “Dastardly!” hecried. “The witch and the imposter are hand-in-glove!”
Trounce groaned. “I was the laughing stock of the Yard fordecades because I believed in Spring Heeled Jack. Lord knows whatmockery I'm letting myself in for now, but I suppose we'd betterget on with it. Where do we start?”
“In the kitchen.”
“The kitchen? Why the kitchen?”
“Of course!” Swinburne enthused, as realisation dawned. “Mrs.Picklethorpe's snoring!”
Trounce looked from the king's agent to the diminutive poet andback again.
“You know, I could easily grow to dislike you two. What in thedevil's name are you jabbering about?”
“We have Herbert Spencer the vagrant philosopher with us,”Burton explained. “He's staying down in the servants’ quarters. Hecomplained that the cook snores, and that the sound reverberatesthrough the walls. Perhaps it's because the walls are hollow.”