“Uh. I don’t remember.”
“Anything?”
“Just that there was one. Male voices! Or maybe female. Or maybe a mixture.”
“I see,” the sergeant deadpanned.
“The rug!” Amelia stood again, so fast she knocked over a bottle of wine—empty, fortunately. Tom caught it before it rolled off the table, the sudden movement giving him a whoosh of vertigo. “The rug they were carrying. It was a hand-knotted Axminster with a trellis border of lotus flowers. And a starburst.”She mimed an explosion with her fingers. “And a dragon! A red and yellow dragon.” She looked up at the ceiling and did a figure-eight movement with her hands. “Loop-de-loop,” she said to herself, before turning back to them. “Early nineteenth century, clearly part of the lost saloon carpet from the Royal Pavilion at Brighton.”
Tom stared at her, open-mouthed.
“You know the carpet I mean, right?” she said, looking from Tom to Sergeant Kamdar, who appeared equally gobsmacked. “It’s one of the most famous in Britain. They reconstructed it a few years back.”
“You can’t remember what time it happened,” the sergeant said, speaking extra slowly, “or what the people lugging it looked like, or anything at all about this argument, but you remember the foliage on the rug?”
“Well, of course!”
“Amelia is a textiles conservator,” Tom explained.
“And this rug…” Amelia continued. “Well, not a rug, not originally. A carpet. Queen Victoria had the original removed from the Royal Pavilion and cut up into rugs for Buckingham Palace, and eventually they all disappeared except for one small fragment. And now this one… Omigod, I need to sit down.” She did, abruptly.
The sergeant sniffed. “But if this… body, or whatever it was, was rolled up in the rug, wouldn’t you have just seen the backing? You wouldn’t roll a rug so the fancy bit was on the outside.”
Amelia thought about it. “The edge of it had flipped over. That’s why only the border was visible, and a little bit of the main design. Here, I’ll sketch it for you.” She held out her hand for the sergeant’s stylus.
The sergeant pushed over the tablet. Amelia snatched the stylus and sketched an intricate, kaleidoscopic pattern—quickly,as if she were worried the memory would disappear. Tom raised his eyebrows—she was a decent artist—and immediately lowered them, because the movement hurt.
“Does that look familiar to you?” Amelia asked Tom, as she added a geometric flourish and held it up.
“No? Maybe? We have a lot of rugs, but they all look pretty much the same.”
Amelia looked as shocked as she had at their realization that they’d seen a body.
“Now, why would you even be carting a body in a rug?” the sergeant said. “Those old things can weigh a ton.”
“Good point,” Amelia said.
“To get rid of evidence?” Tom offered.
“Hmm. And why didn’t you call the police last night, when it happened?”
Tom and Amelia looked at each other, blankly. He didn’t want to saybecause we were off our faces.
“Did you go out to investigate?”
“I don’t think so,” Amelia said.
“You don’t think so,” the sergeant echoed.
Tom cleared his throat. “We had a look at the ground this morning, while we were waiting for you, but it’s a pebble path. There’s not much to disturb. Hold on, I heard something jangling last night. I just remembered! It was faint, but…”
“Jangling,” the sergeant repeated slyly. “Like … a ghost jangling chains?”
“No, not like that. Or maybe like that. Definitely metallic, but… I don’t know anymore.” He slumped in his seat. “I don’t know anything anymore.”
The sergeant scanned the room again, thinking. She pushed up from the table and walked to a worktop, where several empty or half-empty bottles were clustered.
“Exactly how much did you drink last night?”
