Free Bartholomew 02 - How to Marry a Ghost by Hope McIntyre Page A

across an expanse of lawn, was an English manor house.
    As I drew closer I saw that in fact the house was a mishmash of several different types of architecture. The two wings of the house looked to be Jacobean, flanking a more solid, almost forti-fied central building with a tower. There were additional out-buildings—stables, a coach house with a weathervane on the roof, and a bell tower on one side and a glass-roofed conservatory on the other. I saw that the dirt track continued on beyond the house toward the two barn buildings Rufus had mentioned off to the right.
    But what really gave the house its English look was the mass of ivy covering virtually all the walls, climbing high to the attic windows below the eaves. Beneath it, here and there, I glimpsed a beautiful dusky pink stone on the frontal facade. Despite its assorted periods in style, this was, I decided, an unbelievably romantic house.
    My immediate problem when I approached the main entrance was how to make anyone aware of my arrival.There was no bell, no door knocker, just a solid block of medieval paneling that looked as if it would take a battering ram to break down. But then when I touched it, it gave a little and when I gave it a push, it swung open, not with the groaning wrench of a horror movie but with inviting well-oiled ease, and a shaft of sunlight gave me a path to follow on the flagstone floors inside.
    I found myself standing in a great hall with a magnificent Jacobean staircase rising up out of it to a gallery running around the upper level. A stag’s head above a doorway to the left had a host of baseball caps hanging from its antlers. In the gloom I peered at

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    several oil paintings that lined the walls and saw that they appeared to be ancestral portraits of men who bore a strange resemblance to Shotgun. Maybe they had been purchased specially for this reason.
    I cleared my throat. “Hello?” It came out as little more than a squeak and I tried again. “HELLO?”
    A door opened above me and a figure emerged through one of the doors leading from the gallery.
    “Can I help you?” the man called down to me but he was standing too far back for me to see his face clearly.Was this Shotgun? The accent was American so probably not.
    “I have an appointment with Sho—with Mr. Marriott.”
    “And you are?”
    “Nathalie Bartholomew.”
    “What’s your business with Shotgun Marriott?”
    I sensed hostility in his tone.
    “I’m here to meet with him about a book he wants to do. It was set up by my agent.”
    “Hold on a second.”
    The man disappeared and I heard mutterings. Then he reappeared and leaned over the banister and now I had a clear view of him.
    “I’m Detective Evan Morrison and I’m in the middle of interviewing Mr. Marriott but he asks if you will wait downstairs till we’re done. Go straight ahead”—he pointed to a door directly below him across the hall—“make yourself at home in that room, there. Okay?”
    I nodded, too stunned to speak. Not because I’d walked in on an interview that was obviously connected with the murder but because Detective Evan Morrison was the man I’d seen shoplift-ing in the Old Stone Market.

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    IF HE RECOGNIZED ME, HE DIDN’T LET ON.
    I didn’t like him and not just because he’d stolen from Franny. And what was that all about? A detective who shoplifted?
    Whatever it meant, and it couldn’t be good, I didn’t like his fleshy face with its mean eyes—too narrow and no eyebrows to speak of so they appeared like hard little raisins in a mass of dough. I didn’t like his huge nose, his thin strip of a mouth below it, and most of all I didn’t like the supercilious expression on his face. This was the second time I’d seen it and I knew it was part and parcel of him.
    So what would I make of Shotgun Marriott? Only time would tell but maybe I could get a head start by checking out his home.
    The room Evan Morrison had told me to