The Dead of Winter by Jane A. Adams Page A

you watched that sort of thing, Rina.’ Joy was amused.
    â€˜The twins like them.’
    â€˜Stephen and Matthew?’
    â€˜No, dear, Bethany and Eliza. They like all that overblown muscularity. Some things don’t change even when you reach the age to know better. What’s he here for?’
    â€˜His agent got wind of what we were doing and arranged it,’ Viv said. ‘I think he’s playing an exorcist in his next film or something. Over there, the Asian man is Rav Pinner. His dad is English or Welsh, I forget. Anyway, he’s a physicist, he’s a member of one of those debunking groups, but the old man he’s talking to is Edwin Holmes—’
    â€˜Grand old man of psychic research,’ Robin said. ‘I’m quoting Toby there. He’s lovely, and he and Rav seem to be really good friends even if they do sit up all night arguing.’
    â€˜And playing poker,’ Viv added. ‘Rina, just in case you’re tempted, don’t. They are scary good, they really are.’
    â€˜And the girl standing next to the middle-aged man?’ The pair of them were standing in the corner of the room, observing. Occasionally, the man had spoken to the girl, but she seemed almost to be ignoring him.
    â€˜Oh, yes, them.’ Viv frowned. ‘Sorry, he gives me the creeps. If you had to describe a stereotyped shrink then he would be it. You get the feeling he’s judging you all the time. Anyway, that’s the famous professor David Franklin. Gail is the medium; she’s one of his research students. I think Toby mentioned that?’
    Rina nodded, recalling that he had said something about her. She didn’t look comfortable with her mentor, Rina thought. In fact, she looked as though she’d rather be just about anywhere else.
    Still full of misgiving for the weekend, Rina could not help but be intrigued by the company and speculate as to how events might unfold. It would, as she had said to Joy, be interesting if nothing else.
    Out in the hall the handbell rang and then Melissa appeared. ‘Dinner is ready,’ she said. ‘Sorry it’s a few minutes late, but the rest of the temporary staff don’t get here until morning, so I’m pretty much it.’
    They followed her through from the anteroom in which they had been chatting to the formal dining room.
    â€˜Do you happen to know who else is on my corridor?’ Rina asked Viv. She had knocked on the door of the room opposite hers before coming down, but had received no reply.
    â€˜You’re on the nursery floor, aren’t you? I don’t think there’s anyone else up there. Melissa said the renovations are only part complete on that floor.’ She glanced curiously at Rina. ‘Any particular reason?’
    â€˜No, not really. I just noticed that the door along from mine was open.’
    â€˜Probably Melissa,’ Robin speculated. ‘She’s still using a lot of the un-renovated rooms for storage.’
    â€˜Probably was, then,’ Rina agreed, but something, she felt, was wrong with that analysis. Melissa was a bustler: she scurried and hurried and made noise wherever she went. Some people moved quietly and calmly, some did not – and Melissa was definitely a did not. If Melissa had been in that room, Rina would have heard her.

FIVE
    Aikensthorpe, 1870:
    I t had been only a few weeks after their return from honeymoon that Elizabeth had been told about the Reverend Spinelli. Ellen Creedy had been so desperate and so distressed when she had come to see her new young mistress that Elizabeth had felt bound to do something.
    â€˜ Those that were with him said he told them,’ Ellen whispered. ‘Mr Creedy swore that he’d been shot at, that it wasn’t his weapon that went off. ’
    â€˜ Who on earth would shoot your husband?’ Elizabeth had, at first been reluctant to listen. Albert was doing all he could to help the family: he