A Christmas Homecoming by Anne Perry Page A

darkness, and the form came into focus. It was a man lying crumpled on his side, his legs half-folded under him. Was it a drunken footman? What on earth was the stupid man doing here?
    She bent to shake him, and only then did she see the long handle of the broom slanting upward. Except it was only half of the handle. The brush was missing, and the shaft ended abruptly in the man’s back. She felt the shadows blur and swim as if she were going to faint. She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again. It was not a footman, it was Ballin. His eyes were open and his mouth was open, as if he had screamed when the makeshift spear had struck him. She had no doubt whatsoever that he was dead.
    Should she yell for help? It seemed ridiculous to scream now, deliberately. Added to that, her mouth was as dry as if she had been eating cotton. She should stand up, control herself, make her legs walk back up the stairs to Joshua. Please heaven no one come along this corridor in the meantime.
    Her legs were wobbling. It was all she could do not to fall again. What had happened? Was there any imaginable way it could have been an accident?
    Don’t be absurd, she told herself, crossing the hall as silently as she had the first time, a world and an age ago. Nobody takes the head off a broom and spears themselves with the handle by accident. In fact, it must have been sharpened into a purposeful weapon, or it wouldn’t have even penetrated the skin anyway.
    She reached the stairs and clung to the newel post, climbing up hand over hand, pulling and balancing. She had seen murder before. One of her sons-in-law was a policeman.
    She was at the top of the stairs. She reached her own bedroom door and opened it. She saw the light on Joshua’s brown hair, the fair streaks in it shining.
    “Joshua …”
    He turned around slowly, smiling, the pen still in his hand. Then he saw her face.
    “What is it?” he asked huskily, starting up from the desk. “Caroline!”
    “Someone has killed Mr. Ballin.” She gulped, struggling now not to sob, not to let her knees buckle. He was beside her, arms holding her.
    “I tripped over his body in a dark stretch of the corridor to the theater,” she went on. “Before you ask, yes, I am sure he was killed … murdered. He has been stabbed through the chest with the broken-off handle of a broom. You could say …” She gulped again and the room swam and blurred in the corners. “You could say down through the heart with a stake.” She wanted to laugh but it ended in a sob.
    He was guiding her to the bed, still holding her.
    “Have you told anyone else?” he asked, his voice unsteady.
    “No. I … I thought of screaming, but it seemed so stupid. We must tell Mr. Netheridge. Do you know which is their bedroom?”
    “No. I shall call one of the servants to wake him.” He glanced at the window, then back at Caroline. She was sitting on the bed now, and he still held both her hands. “We will have to deal with it ourselves … without the police.”
    “Joshua, it’s murder!” she protested. “We can’t just … just deal with it, as if it were some kind of domestic accident!”
    “Caroline. Who’s going to walk through that snow to fetch the police?” he asked very gently.
    “Oh … oh.” She took a deep breath. “Yes … I see. How stupid of me. We’ll have to … Oh, heaven!” Now she leaned against him as her body began to shake. “That means one of us must have done it.”
    He touched her hair gently, pushing the long strands away from her face.
    “I’m afraid it does. There won’t be any more strangers out in the night coming here, or anywhere else.” He let out a long, shaky breath. “I’ll go and get one of the servants. Butler, I suppose. He’ll call Mr. Netheridge. At least we must provide a little decency for the body, for the time being.” He took a step.
    “Joshua!”
    He turned. “You stay here,” he told her. “Perhaps you had better not let