Inside the snowman was the body of James Belcourt. My Colonel. Dead, for some time. He’d been left sitting cross-legged on the ground, and then covered with snow, shaped to look like a snowman. So no one would suspect. I stood back, not even breathing hard, brushing snow from my gloves. Looking at what someone had done to my Colonel. And right then my heart was colder than anything in that winter garden.
‘Not a bad idea,’ I said. ‘The body wouldn’t have reappeared until the snow melted, and by then the killer expected to be long gone. But the storm set in, sealing off the Manor from the rest of the world. And the killer was trapped here.’
‘You mean … you think one of the people staying at the Manor is the killer?’ said Penny. Her voice was steady enough, but here eyes were still very wide.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s what I think. Don’t you?’
She didn’t know what to say. I knelt down before the body, to stare into the Colonel’s unblinking eyes.
‘All the time I was looking for you, here you were, waiting for me to find you. Came really close to missing you, Colonel. Sorry. This probably would have worked, if I hadn’t smelled the blood.’ And then I stopped and looked the body over carefully. ‘No obvious wounds. No damage to the body, apart from what looks like a ring of dried blood round the throat. Strangled? Garrotted? And no blood underneath you … So you weren’t killed here, Colonel. You were killed somewhere else and dumped here.’
‘I’m really very sorry, Ishmael,’ said Penny, tentatively. ‘You came all this way, just to find him dead. What will you do now?’
‘Avenge him,’ I said.
I took the Colonel’s body in my arms and hugged him tightly. The body was hard and unyielding in my arms. I never once held him when he was alive. But he had been closer to me than anyone, in his own way.
After a while Penny knelt down beside me and put a hand on my shoulder, saying something, trying to comfort me, but I didn’t hear what she said. I wasn’t listening. The Colonel had been taken away from me, and I was alone again. I’d never felt so cold.
Someone would pay for this. Pay in blood and horror.
I took a firm grip on the body and started to lift it up. It came free from the frozen ground with a lurch, and the Colonel’s head fell off. Penny made a brief sound and fell back a few paces. I put the body back down and looked at the head. Someone had taken the head clean off, leaving a ragged wound at the neck stump. And then, they had replaced the head, quite neatly. I studied the pale pink and grey neck wound carefully. It was a savage, ragged tear. Far worse than you’d expect from a sword, or an axe. This looked more as though the head had been sawed off. I reached down and picked up the Colonel’s head. The face seemed to stare reproachfully up at me.
You got here too late, Ishmael.
Five
Snow began falling again. Great fat white flakes, coming down so hard that even I had trouble seeing the way ahead. The storm was coming, and it was going to be a monster. The temperature was already plummeting to the kind of cold that kills. I could cope with that, for a while, but Penny couldn’t. I had to get her back to the manor house, as quickly as possible.
I picked up the Colonel’s body and slung it over one shoulder. He was still frozen solid in his cross-legged stance, but I managed. I held his head under my other arm. A bit undignified, but the Colonel wouldn’t have minded. He was always a very practical man.
I headed back to the manor house, with Penny trudging along beside me. She looked straight ahead, so she wouldn’t have to look at the body. I pressed on, driving my feet deep into the snow, to give me enough traction to keep me moving forward. It wasn’t long before I realized Penny was falling behind, unable to keep up. She didn’t have my strength, and the bitter cold was leeching the energy right out of her. I moved to walk directly in front of her, so she could use my body as a windbreak. That helped her make better time.
Finding our way back was easy enough; all I had to do was follow our footsteps. And by the time enough snow had fallen to cover them, the great house was already looming out of the mists, right ahead of us. Penny made a harsh sound of relief and plunged past me, forcing her way through the snow with all the strength that adrenalin and desperation could provide. She scrambled up to the front door, tried the handle, and the door wouldn’t open.
Penny looked back at me. ‘It’s locked! Someone’s locked the door!’
She tried the heavy iron knocker, but it was frozen to the door, and she couldn’t budge it. She beat on the door with her fist, but the thick glove soaked up most of the sound. Penny ripped her gloves off, and then cried out despite herself as the bitter cold seared her bare skin. She hammered on the door with both fists, calling out as loudly as she could. No one answered.
‘Get out of the way, Penny,’ I said. ‘I’ll kick the door in.’
‘Don’t be stupid!’ she snapped, not looking round. ‘Look at the size and weight of the door! You couldn’t budge it! Nothing human could.’
I was pretty sure I could kick the door right off its hinges if I got annoyed enough, but even as Penny was speaking the door swung suddenly open, and Jeeves looked out. He saw the body in my arms and fell back. Penny plunged past him, and I followed close behind.
Jeeves slammed the door shut the moment Penny and I were inside. The sudden warmth of the hallway was a blessing, and the heavy wooden door shut off the howl of the rising storm. The manor house had been built to keep the world and all its problems outside. Penny leaned against the wall, her eyes closed. Her face was dangerously pale, and she was shuddering violently. I wasn’t. I put the Colonel down, set his head in his lap, and then stretched slowly.
Penny’s eyes snapped open, and she glared at Jeeves. ‘Who locked the bloody door?’
‘I’m sure I don’t know, miss,’ said Jeeves. ‘But you really shouldn’t have gone outside without telling anyone. If I hadn’t happened to be in the hall …’
‘We would have frozen to death,’ I said. ‘And no one would have noticed till it was far too late. Whoever locked that door knew what they were doing.’
Jeeves looked at the headless body, sitting cross-legged and quietly melting into the thick carpeting. He didn’t seem particularly upset, or affected. ‘Mister James … Dead, all this time, and we never knew it.’
‘Someone knew,’ I said.
And then people came running down the hall to join us, to see what was happening, attracted by our raised voices. Walter and Melanie emerged from a side door, while Roger and Khan came out of the drawing room. Diana and Sylvia came hurrying down the stairs. They all ended up standing together in the hall, packed tight into a small crowd of anxious faces, staring at the Colonel. The severed head in his lap drew most of their attention. I looked from face to face, but everyone appeared equally shocked and horrified. Except for Jeeves, who seemed to be taking everything in his stride and was studying everyone else as closely as I was.
Walter stepped forward, leaning heavily on his walking stick, jerking his arm free from Melanie’s grasp. He reached out a shaking hand to touch James’ face, and then his hand dropped away. Walter seemed to collapse in on himself, suddenly so much older and frailer. Melanie was quickly there to take hold of him and give him her strength to lean on. She gave all her attention to Walter, didn’t look at the Colonel at all.
Walter looked at me, his eyes full of tears. ‘It can’t be James,’ he said. ‘I can’t have lost my son. Not like this. Not so soon after getting him back …’