“Er, quite a bit,” Tom said, running his hands down the thighs of his jeans. “But I swear it wasn’t the alcohol. It was … real.”
She zeroed in on a bottle lying on its side, the last of its contents dripping into the sink, and picked it up. She wiped the dust off the label and started laughing. Tom and Amelia exchanged a puzzled glance. “You drank this?” She squinted into the bottle, then turned it upside-down. A few drops landed on the worktop. She touched one with her fingertip and tasted it. “Classic.”
“What is? We found that one right at the back of the cellar.” It was possibly Tom’s last lucid memory. Amelia had selected the most obscure bottle she could find, as a joke.
“This stuff is legendary, ’round here. A very rare old Slovenian brandy. Made with the toxic mucus of enraged salamanders. They secrete it when they’re threatened. It’s like toad-licking.”
Amelia looked like she might throw up. “Ugh, what?”
“People do it, don’t ask me. This salamander slime is supposed to be a powerful hallucinogenic, as well as a cracking aphrodisiac.”
Amelia gave a strange little grunt. Color rose up her neck and spread over her cheeks.
“So, naturally, some bright spark figured out if they dropped a few salamanders in a barrel of fermenting fruit, the poor buggers would secrete the mucus as they drowned. A batch wound its way to these parts, donkey’s years ago. We get a call like this every five or ten years—somebody pulling a bottle just like this out of a dark alcove and giving it a go. You two got lucky. The last bloke hallucinated that he’d turned into a bird. He leapt off a cliff and broke both legs. Back in the 1930s, an elderly lady convinced herself Pablo Picasso had seduced her and got her up the duff. Ended up in the loony bin, poor old duck.” The sergeantturned the bottle over in her hands. “Pity there’s none left. What did it taste like?”
“Aniseed?” Tom said. “I remember it was numbing on the tongue.”
“But not so much in other places?” The sergeant laughed at her own joke. “Have you had any blackouts since you drank it?”
“There are large parts of the night I don’t remember at all.”
“So. You were under the influence, it was a spooky night, and you saw something spooky. Or thought you did. Maybe the two of you sat down for a film in the wee hours? Something with a scene like that. Or you had a conversation that planted the thought? You’ve been under a lot of stress lately, young Tom…” She sniffed the bottle again. “Mind if I take this? The toxicology lab might fancy a look.” She made a ticking noise with her tongue. “You could have flogged this stuff off for millions.”
“Good to know,” Tom said gloomily. He gestured that it was all hers. Something clunked, out in the servants’ corridor. He cocked his head to listen.
“Might not have been legal though. Blimey, the bottle alone could fetch a bit.” She tucked it under her arm. “Your memories from last night will return over the next day or so, if the previous cases are anything to go by. Give me a bell when they do. Though if you did see a body, you lot will be the worst witnesses in the history of witnesses.”
Another noise just outside the doorway—shuffling footsteps. “Duncan?” Tom called, shooting out of his seat. By the time he skidded into the corridor there was nothing but shafts of dust lit by the weak sun. He could swear that some of them were swirling more than the drafts warranted, like someone had just left. He felt like a cat whose hair was being stroked the wrong way. As he watched, the dust formed into a lizard and scampered up the wall and through the ceiling. He blinked hard.
“What is it?” Amelia said, following him out.
“Did you hear something just now? Someone was out here, I swear it.”
“No, I didn’t. You look spooked.” Amelia took his hand, like it was second nature. And maybe last night it had become so. He remembered walking through the house, holding her hand like it was a habit. She would draw closer, her grip pulsing, whenever they entered a dark room. He’d got the hint to turn the lights on and off as they went. He knew the house so well he could walk from one wing to the other blindfolded without stubbing a toe, but he understood why people found it creepy. “I had a traumatic experience a year ago,” she’d explained. The words were coming to him as if she were saying them right now, though her mouth was still. “Some things spook me.”
That explained the wary expression on her face. There was history to that look, he just couldn’t remember exactly what it was. He had a feeling she’d told him…
“Are you holding up okay, Amelia?” he said tentatively.
“Why do you ask?” Her tone was a little defensive, as if she too was wondering what she might have said. Definitely a story there. But all he could remember was feeling outraged on her behalf, wishing he could take away her bad memories, and getting an urge to wrap his arms around her, to protect her. From what? “We’d better go back in. She already thinks we’re nuts.”
As Amelia led him into the kitchen, the sergeant’s gaze dropped to their joined hands. Amelia quickly disentangled them.
“I thought I heard something,” Tom said to the sergeant. “Someone, in the corridor. Did you?”
“I can hear a lot of things, love.” The sergeant picked up her tablet and slid the stylus into its sleeve. “It’s this bloody northwesterly. It’s like a poltergeist. Gets in through the cracks and moves things around.”
“I know the noises in this house. Someone was there.”
The sergeant raised a thin eyebrow. “Most likely the effects of the plonk. We’ll leave it at that, I think,” she declared, heading for the door. “How’s your brother doing?”
“No change. He’s happy enough, most of the time.”
“And your mum?”
“The usual.”
The sergeant murmured in sympathy.
