An Inquiry Into Love and Death by Simone St. James Page B

they’d gotten away with it, and I had turned my back.
    Toby should be laid to rest by family
.
    “Jillian?” said the inspector.
    “Hush,” I said. “I’m doing the right thing, and I have to say it’s horribly difficult.”
    He gave me only a few seconds. “Why were you going to leave?”
    I dropped my hands and managed a weak smile. “You told me to research Walking John, the ghost my uncle was likely here to see,” I said. “Well, prepare yourself. I’ve done more than that—I’ve encountered him. Walking John is real.”

Ten
    D rew Merriken sat quiet, his tea cooling, as I told my story. He did not interrupt. I could not help but think this to his credit, for the more I spoke, the more insane and outlandish I sounded. Still, there was no help for it, as all of it was true.
    When I finished, he stood and paced, his arms crossed. “I’d like to come to Barrow House,” he said in the blunt way I was beginning to recognize. “There may be some evidence there to tell me what happened.”
    “I just told you what happened,” I said quietly.
    “Jillian.” He looked at me. “You did not encounter a ghost last night.”
    “I very much disagree.”
    “It may have been nothing. You may have imagined it.” He ignored my flush of anger and continued. “But what concerns me is that someone may have been trying to scare you.”
    I was incredulous. “Someone trying to
scare
me?”
    “There’s already a legend of a ghost in Rothewell. What if someone was trying to frighten you off?”
    “I can’t believe you’re saying this. Are you suggesting that one of my neighbors came to my house last night and pretended to be a ghost, so I would run away?”
    “It nearly worked, did it not?”
    “Inspector, the gate
flew open
. There was nothing there. I
saw
it.”
    “It was the middle of a windstorm.”
    “A storm that opens latches?”
    “It may not have been closed correctly in the first place. Did you open that gate at any point during the day?”
    I was silent, thinking of my visit from Mrs. Kates and her daughter, my walk with William Moorcock.
    “Admit it, Jillian,” he said. “Everything you encountered has a logical explanation.”
    I stood and picked up my hat and gloves with a jerky motion. I was strangely, deeply hurt and suddenly felt very alone. “I thought . . . I don’t know what I thought. I suppose Sultana is my only witness.”
    “Who is Sultana?”
    “The cat.”
    “Well, as I can’t interview a cat, I’ll settle for looking around Barrow House. Let me get my things.”
    We left a few moments later, passing the disapproving Mrs. Ebury in the front foyer. We drove in our separate motorcars back to Rothewell. The look in the inspector’s eyes as I’d spoken of the ghost, one of wariness and a sort of pity, had struck me, and I thought that Toby must have seen that look from other people a great many times in his life.
    I entered Barrow House through the front door, but he didn’t follow. When I opened the kitchen door, I found he’d already gone ’round the house to the garden. “Stand where you are, if you would,” he said through the doorway. “I need to see any footprints back here.”
    The back garden was now lit with the thinning autumn sun, but the evidence of last night was everywhere. The gate was opened, the flowerpot spilled and overturned, the shutters over the library crookedly fastened. I stood in the kitchen and felt the eeriness wash over me again.
    Drew called a question to me, and I managed to reply. We went over everything in my story, step by step, the two of us shouting back and forth: the crash, my steps out the door to the shutter, the cut on my thumb, the steps back.
    At the doorway again he bent to examine the stoop, and I stepped outside to peer over his shoulder.
    “I told you to stay still,” he said without looking at me.
    I didn’t bother to answer. For a moment I was distracted by the sight of him, his wrists braced casually over his bent