“Ms. Martin,” Sloan pressed.
Jane had noticed the maid’s nametag too, identifying her as Phoebe Martin. At last, the woman blinked, focused, and turned to Sloan, nodding sadly, like a child admitting an obvious but unhappy fact.
“Is anyone else here?” Sloan asked her. “I mean, besides you, me, Logan, Kelsey, and Jane?” He pointed around to all of them, using their first names. That was a way to make her feel comfortable, as if she were one with them. In situations like this, people spoke way more easily to authorities when they felt as if they were conversing with friends.
The maid, an attractive young blonde woman of about twenty-seven or so, shook her head. “Right here, no. I didn’t see anybody. I was coming from the kitchen and saw him lying here. But, yes, yes, of course, others are around. They’re always around. The castle is never left empty. The caretaker, Mr. Green, is somewhere about.”
“Anyone else?” Jane prodded gently.
Ms. Martin nodded solemnly. “Mrs. Avery is in her office along with Scully Adair, her assistant. And the chef came in about an hour or so ago. So did two of the cooks. Lila and Sonia are here. They’re with housekeeping.”
Jane knew that Mrs. Denise Avery managed the castle. She’d dealt with the woman to rent the rooms they’d taken for the weekend, including the chapel and ballroom. The castle was actually owned by a descendant of Emil Roth, the eccentric millionaire who, in the late 1850s, had the building disassembled in Wales and brought to the coastline of New England. The owner, another Emil Roth, had been born with more money than he’d been able to waste. The Roth family had made their fortune in steel, then banking. The current Roth was gone, Jane had been told, to Africa on a big game photography hunt. Mrs. Avery was a distant relative herself. And while the current Emil Roth spent money, Mrs. Avery tried to make it.
“Miss Martin, perhaps you could gather them all here, in the foyer,” Sloan suggested.
“Gather them,” she repeated.
“Yes, please, would you?” Jane prodded.
“The police and the coroner will arrive any minute and everyone should be here when they do,” Sloan said.
Phoebe Martin looked at them at last. “Police?”
“A man is dead,” he said. “Yes, the police.”
“But… he… fell,” she said.
“Possibly,” Logan said.
“Probably,” Jane said firmly.
Phoebe’s eyes widened still further. “Pushed!”
“No. All we know is that he’s dead,” Jane said. “The local police need to come and the death investigated. The medical examiner or the coroner must come, too.”
“Pushed!” Phoebe said again.
“There is that possibility,” Kelsey said. She glanced at Jane and grimaced sorrowfully. “But, he probably just fell. No one was there, right? We were all in our rooms, you just came to the landing and found him, and the others are in their offices or on the grounds working. Poor man! He fell, and no one was here. But we still have to have the police.”
“The ghost did it!” Phoebe declared.
“Ghosts are seldom vicious,” Kelsey said.
Phoebe’s gaze latched onto Kelsey. “How would you know? Ghosts can be horribly malicious. Ripping off sheets. Throwing coffee pods all around. Oh, you don’t know! It was her, I’m telling you. She did it!”
Phoebe was pointing. It seemed she was pointing straight at Jane.
“What?” Jane demanded, her voice a squeak rather than the dignified question she’d intended.
But then she saw that they were all looking behind her at the painting on the wall.
She’d noted it before, of course. Just about a month earlier while driving through the area after a situation in the Northeast, she’d seen the castle. It was open three days a week for tours, and she’d been there for the Saturday afternoon event. Mrs. Avery had led the tour and introduced them to Elizabeth Roth via the painting, a young woman who’d lost her fiancé on the eve of their wedding. Elizabeth, the daughter of the house, had been found dead of an overdose of laudanum on the day her wedding should have taken place. It was said that she was often seen in the halls of the castle, wringing her hands as she paced, praying for the return of her lover.
She was beautiful. Rich waves of auburn hair billowed around her face, with soft tendrils curling about her forehead. Her features were fine and delicate and even ethereal. The painting appeared to be that of a ghost, and yet, Mrs. Avery had assured, it had been done from life by the artist Robichaux who’d been a friend of the family. Perhaps he’d sensed the doom that was to be her future. John McCawley, her groom, had been killed the night before the intended nuptials, hunting in the nearby woods.
“Miss Martin, you’re suggesting that Elizabeth Roth did this?” Sloan asked quietly.