Author's Note: the poem/song used in this chapter is The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes.

Flintwinch: There are secrets in all families, I suppose.
Rigaud: Yes. Yes, there are. There are the devil's own secrets in some families.
-- Little Dorrit (2008 TV series)

Jane felt like a detective in a mystery play as she looked around at the gathered tourists. "The first thing to do is check everyone's alibi and find out who last saw Debra alive."

"That would probably have been me," Violet said hesitantly, glancing at everyone as if she expected to be immediately called the murderer. "I saw her... I don't know how long ago. Half an hour, maybe. She was in our room and she left just as I came in."

"Did she look frightened? Did she hint that she knew she was in danger?"

Violet shook her head emphatically, then stopped and thought for a moment. "...Maybe? She looked sort of... guilty. As if she'd been caught reading someone else's exam paper."

"You mean she looked frightened," Mrs. Larkins corrected her. "She looked frightened and you mistook it for guilt."

Violet shrugged helplessly. "I suppose she might have. I didn't really notice. It wasn't important... then."

Jane tried to get the discussion back on track. "Were you in our room when she was killed?"

"I suppose I must have been. But I never heard anything!"

"Can anyone confirm that's where you were?"

"No... Wait! Christopher can. He was in the bathroom next door and he knocked something over. I heard the crash, so I shouted through the wall. 'Are you okay?' I said, and he said 'Yes'."

There was a brief pause as everyone looked around for Christopher and realised he wasn't there. 

"He was still in the bathroom when I heard you screaming," Violet said. "He can't have heard."

"Hmm," Jane said, briefly debating whether he could have left the bathroom, committed the murder, then gone back before Violet noticed he was gone. In addition to an alibi it would give him an opportunity to wash off the blood. "Well, what about everyone else? Where were you?"

Within minutes it became clear this wouldn't be an easily solved case. Eleven guests weren't in the house. They'd gone either for a walk or to visit the local farms. All had left before the body was discovered and none had come back yet. Of the other eighteen, one was Jane herself. Violet and Christopher were each other's alibis. Ed Grey and four other men had been outside washing the bus's windows and had been clearly visible from the house. Mrs. Larkins had been in the library trying to get the phone to work so she could talk to her husband. Everyone had been able to hear her shouting into the receiver. The other nine had been in the kitchen playing a noisy card game. Everyone insisted they hadn't heard a single thing.

"Looks like it was one of the walkers," Ed said. "Quite clever of them. They leave, come back for the murder, then leave again. Gives them a perfect alibi."

Jane looked out the window. The bus was clearly visible, parked just outside the front door. "Except that you were out in the driveway the whole time. No one could get past you without you seeing them."

Fred White shook his head. "It doesn't make any sense. Look what the killer did to her! You think she'd have just stood there and let him saw her open without screaming?"

"She must have been already dead when he started cutting," Alex Butler said. "I've read about it in crime novels. The murderer sneaks up behind the victim, clubs them on the head, kills them when they're dazed, then..." He trailed off when he saw everyone looking at him suspiciously. "I'm not the murderer! I'm just saying how it could have happened! Haven't any of you ever read any Agatha Christie? Margery Allingham? Any of the Queens of Crime?"

The front door opened. Everyone started. Mrs. Larkins reached for the poker beside the fireplace.

A very muddy George Lucke peered at them through the living room's open door. "What are you all doing in there?"

Mrs. Larkins set the poker down again. Everyone exchanged uncomfortable looks. How were they to say "There's been a murder and you're one of the suspects"?

"Where have you been?" Jane demanded, deciding this was as good a time as any to start questioning him.

"Out for a walk further up the road, and across the field beyond where the road ends. Be careful if you want to go in that field. The ground looks even, but it's a mass of dips and hollows. Muddy dips and hollows. I think half the field is stuck to my clothes." George looked down at his trousers mournfully. "Since you're all here, I assume the shower's free?"

"Christopher might still be in the bathroom," Jane said. "He's bound to have finished his shower by now, so send him down if you see him."

After George went upstairs the other tourists gave Jane accusing looks. "You didn't say a thing about poor Debra!"

"I didn't know how to say it," Jane objected. "Besides, isn't it odd? He was right under the body and he never saw a thing."

The less squeamish people looked out of the door. "What the hell? The body's gone!"

~~~~

After a frantic search they rediscovered the body. Someone had carried Debra out to the garage and put her in a coffin.

Mrs. Larkins shuddered. "This is getting worse and worse. No one could have moved the body without us seeing them! The door was open the whole time and you two had a clear view of what was happening!"

The tourists who'd been closest to the door shrugged helplessly.

"I didn't see anything, but I wasn't really looking," the first one said.

The second one nodded. "I had my back to the hall. I couldn't bear to look out and see... and see the... the..."

"It's easy to see how the killers got her down -- yes, killers, there's no way one person alone could do all this. They waited until we were distracted then took their chance. It was a tremendous risk, though." Fred frowned as he realised just how difficult it would have been for someone to lower the fan, untie the body, and carry it out without being seen. "Hmm. What really bothers me, though, is the coffin. Someone had to buy one and bring it up here. That means the murder was planned."

Jane closed and locked the garage door. "I'm going to phone the police. None of us can be guilty, and I find it hard to believe Mr. Lucke or Christopher could be, so that leaves ten possible murderers. Until the police get here, no one is to go anywhere alone."

~~~~

The phone wouldn't work. Jane tapped the receiver against the table. She hammered on the speaker-mute button until the dialling tone finally played. When she dialled 999 all she got was constant beeping.

"Hello!" she shouted, just in case someone could hear. "This is urgent! I have to report a murder!"

Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep. On and on that damned noise went. It wormed its way into her head until she felt like throwing the phone at the wall to make it stop.

She hung up.  After a minute she tried again. This time she heard a voice -- distorted and crackly, but it sounded like the words "This is... emergency number."

"Hello, I need the police. I have to report a murder." No reply. Jane continued desperately, "This is 18 Birches Lane, BT78..." She stopped, suddenly realising that she was giving her grandmother's address instead of her own. "I mean, this is Gracemeadow Manor. It's... it's very hard to find. We're about eighteen miles from Newtownstewart and the roads are blocked by landslides. We need help immediately. A girl has been murdered and we suspect there are at least two murderers."

The line was dead. Jane had no idea if her message had gotten through.

~~~~

By the time evening fell there were two other guests missing. Dr. Holland and Celia Jenkins hadn't returned from their trip down to the farm.

"That settles it," Mrs. Larkins exclaimed with what everyone felt was misplaced delight. "They're the murderers and they've run away. We're safe now."

~~~~

That night Jane had a strange dream. She dreamt she got up in the middle of the night and walked downstairs. The front door was gone and replaced with a huge mirror. In it she saw herself wearing a pale blue ballgown. The shabby brown carpet on the stairs was gone, replaced with a bright red one. The floor at the foot of the stairs was bare marble.

She walked up to the mirror and stared at her reflection. Behind her she saw a blurry figure approach. She turned her head. No one was there. In the mirror the figure stopped beside her. It raised its arms. A heavy golden necklace snaked around her neck and was fastened at the back. She felt the faintest touch of a cold hand on her shoulder.

"Why?" she heard herself ask, and couldn't have said what she meant.

Silence. Then a voice so quiet she wasn't sure it wasn't just her imagination. "The house loves you too much to let you go."

~~~~

Jane opened her eyes to the cold pre-morning light. Violet snored faintly on the other bed. A weight lay around Jane's neck. She reached up, half-expecting to find a necklace, and found it was only her quilt bunched under her chin.

~~~~

All day they waited for the police to come. They stayed clustered in the living room and kitchen with all the doors open.

No one came.

"Maybe the police can't get through?" Violet suggested nervously.

"Maybe they never got the message," Christopher said.

At some point they discovered that none of the laptops or mobiles were working.

"If the police haven't come by noon tomorrow, I'll walk down to the nearest farm and try to phone from there," Mrs. Larkins said. "At least three others should come with me."

"I'll go mad if I have to stay indoors a minute longer," George Lucke said. "How about we try to drive to the nearest village? Five miles, isn't it? Or a bit more on these roads. Maybe we'll be able to get through. At any rate we'll see how much of the road is clear."

Ed shrugged. "We might as well. Sitting out in the rain and wind isn't doing my bus any good, and no way in hell am I going near the garage."

The garage had been locked and barricaded since the discovery of the coffin. Debra's body was presumably still there, waiting for the police to come and examine it. No one dared go near it.

"Are you sure it's safe to go?" Jane asked warily.

Ed shrugged again. "The doctor and that other woman were the murderers. It's the only theory that makes sense. And they sure as hell wouldn't stick around waiting for us to call the police. They'll be miles away by now."

"If you're going to drive, I might as well come with you," Mrs. Larkins said. "No point in traipsing through mud if I don't have to."

"I'm staying here," Fred said. "I'm not going to risk wandering around when a killer might be waiting outside."

~~~~

While Ed and George directed getting the bus dug out of mud, Mrs. Larkins began to prepare sandwiches for everyone who was going. That was when they all made a discovery.

Debra was dead. Dr. Holland and Celia were missing. That should leave twenty-seven guests. But when Jane counted everyone in the house and included the five men outside, all she could find were twenty.

"It's ridiculous," Christopher protested. "Seven people can't have gone missing. We'd have noticed! Who are they, anyway?"

With a jolt everyone realised they had no idea. No one could remember one missing person's name or face.

Violet coughed to get everyone's attention. "Probably they couldn't bear it and they ran away in the night. I suppose you'll find them in one of the farmhouses."

"But why can't we remember any of them?" someone asked.

"Stress, I suppose," was the best Mrs. Larkins could come up with.

Christopher said, "Maybe the man on the swing was one of them." Silence fell as everyone turned to look at him. He drew back under the force of fifteen incredulous stares. "What? Did I say something wrong?"

Jane said flatly, "There is no swing in the garden."

"Not in the garden, out near that puddle... lake... water thing beyond the house."

"The ground around it's a morass. It wouldn't bear the weight of a swing."

Christopher snapped, "Well, I saw it. And I saw a man on it. I remember specifically because I thought it seemed childish. Especially now."

Jane gave up. "All right, maybe you saw one of the missing guys. Maybe he went mad and drowned himself out there! I'm not going to go and look. Who's going on the bus anyway?" Four hands went up: Mrs. Larkins', Christopher's, and two others whose names Jane still couldn't remember. "The rest of us are staying. I'm going to lock the door as soon as you leave."

"I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm going to lock myself into my room," Violet said. "Alone! I don't feel safe anywhere around here."

"There are only going to be eleven of us left -- unless someone else disappears -- so everyone can lock themselves into a room alone," Fred said.

~~~~

It turned out this wasn't exactly true. After all the bedrooms and bathrooms were taken -- except the main bathroom, which was useless for bathing or defence because its door wouldn't close -- the only room left over for Jane was either the kitchen or the living room. Neither had a lock.

"I'll move one of the chairs in front of the living room door," she said. "Then I'll watch TV until the bus gets back. Don't worry!" she added, when Mrs. Larkins began to protest. "I'll be fine. In fact I'll be a lot less bored than everyone else."

~~~~

The bus drove away slowly. It beeped as it turned the corner. The people in the house waved from their windows. Then they drew back into their rooms and waited. Violet recited important facts to herself and made up questions she was likely to be asked in the exam. Other guests read books, played solitaire, or tried to sleep.

Fred's room was on the third storey with a fine view of the house's grounds, the field behind it, and the mountain that rose beyond. It was an ideal place to spot anyone approach. It also frightened him for reasons he couldn't understand.

He'd never minded the mountain before, but now it seemed to frown down on him. The body of water beyond the house looked jet black like an open grave. Christopher's weird story of seeing someone on a swing returned to Fred. Was that a person standing in the field, staring up at the house? No, of course not. It was just the light playing tricks with the grass moving in the wind.

A thud downstairs. Was that someone opening a door?

Was the murderer still in the house, one of the tourists who'd pretended to be so afraid?

Barricading himself in had seemed like a good idea. But where would he run if a murderer broke down the door?

He listened intently. Silence all through the house. That silence set his teeth on edge. It was too much like the expectant silence just before a play began.

Nothing happened. Fred lay down on the bed and tried to sleep.

~~~~

Jane turned on the TV. For a while she watched Laurel and Hardy's misadventures at Oxford. The noise from the TV was the only sound anywhere in the house. Gradually her eyes began to close. She fell asleep as Laurel and Hardy got in trouble with the Dean.

~~~~

The bus trundled slowly down the road. Its passengers clung to their seats for dear life, because every time it hit a bump they found themselves unexpectedly airborne.

It took them almost fifteen minutes to reach the end of the road.

"Really, it would have been so much faster to walk," Mrs. Larkins grumbled.

George Lucke was at the very back of the bus. Two seats in front of him was another man, Mrs. Larkins and Christopher were on opposite sides of the bus in the middle, and the other three men were in the first three rows behind Ed. The extremely bumpy ride made it impossible for anyone to sit together. They'd accidentally elbow each other in the ribs or slap each other across the face.

A short distance down the main road it became only too obvious that something was wrong. The bumps were getting worse. Now everyone was thrown to the floor when they struck. And the left side of the bus was noticeably lower than the right.

"Looks like both the left wheels are flat," one of the men said.

"Impossible!" George protested. "I checked them all myself."

Ed pulled over to the side and put his hazard lights on. He got off, then quickly got back on. "They're flat, all right. Don't see any houses around here, but look. There's a farm on the other side of the valley. I'm going to find a way across."

"There's a river at the bottom of the valley," Christopher warned.

"I know, but there must be a bridge somewhere. Farmers own land on both sides of it."

"I'll come with you," said George.

"So will I," said one of the men.

"We'll have sandwiches and wait here," Mrs. Larkins said.

~~~~

Jane's dress swished as she walked down the stairs. The front door was gone, replaced with a huge mirror, and a red carpet ran down the stairs and into the living room. Except it wasn't a living room now, and it was right in front of the stairs instead of to the left. People talked and laughed. Someone was playing the piano and singing.

"The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon the cloudy seas."

She stepped into the ballroom. People greeted her, some she recognised -- Debra was there and other tourists, including Dr. Holland and Celia -- and some she didn't. A man she knew she should have recognised was playing the piano, and another she did recognise was singing.

"He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair."

The man playing the piano was abnormally tall, with long arms and legs that reminded her of a spider's. He was dressed from head to toe in black with a top hat pulled down over his face. His hands were bone white. In fact she wasn't entirely sure they weren't just bone. What little she could see of his face was also pale. He was either grinning or baring his teeth. Did he have lips at all? Did he have skin at all?

"Then look for me by moonlight,
Watch for me by moonlight,
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way."

For as long as Jane could remember there'd been an old photograph on the wall of the master bedroom. Her parents had thought it was only right to have some sort of tribute to the unfortunate man who'd been murdered there. It showed a young man, no more than twenty-five. In the photo it had been impossible to tell what colour his hair or eyes were, but Jane had always imagined he had black hair and brown eyes. She realised now she was wrong. Arthur did have black hair, but his eyes were deep blue.

"There was death at every window;
And hell at one dark window;
For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that he would ride."

Jane stared at Arthur. Vaguely she knew it was rude, that she shouldn't stare at a complete stranger, but she couldn't tear her eyes away. From the faded old photo she'd known he was attractive, more pretty than handsome, but in front of her he was beautiful.

"...the hours crawled by like years
Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,
Cold, on the stroke of midnight,
The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!"

Behind her the ballroom was empty. The man playing the piano was still there but he faded into the background. Hardly aware of what she was doing, she reached out to touch Arthur's arm. She expected many things: for him to disappear, for her hand to go right through him, or for him to be cold and lifeless like a corpse. Instead the material of his sleeve felt as solid as she was, and his skin was warm beneath it.

He smiled at her and reached up to clasp her hand in his. His hand was also warm. His chest rose and fell as he breathed. Part of Jane believed he was as alive as she was, but another part tried to say otherwise. That part faded further and further into the background. The song continued in the background even though Arthur wasn't singing any more.

"She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive again;
For the road lay bare in the moonlight;
Blank and bare in the moonlight..."

Jane stared at Arthur. He stared back. Neither said a word yet they had a whole conversation. Jane knew everything now. She wasn't afraid or resentful. She was resigned, except it wasn't resignation when she didn't want to be anywhere else.

A heavy necklace lay around her neck.

"The house loves you too much to let you go."