rate. Surely, a detective could have a drink in the afternoon with a local. Still, as I turned to pour one, I caught his eyes skittering nervously around the room. What did he have to tell me that had put him this on edge?
“Do you remember Christmases here?” I asked him.
“Before my time,” he said. “But there’s always someone in the village telling stories about Thornham’s glory days.”
“You say that like they’re a thing of the past,” I pointed out, pouring Macallan into a tumbler.
He gave an apologetic smile when I brought it to him. “I didn’t mean to offend. It’s hard to get used to seeing people living here. It’s been vacant most of my life.”
“Why is that?” Purchasing the estate had been easier than anticipated. It had been a surprise to find out that it had sat vacant for so long before it went up for sale. Despite that, the house hadn’t been on the market for more than a few weeks when we purchased it.
“The remaining family didn’t want to sell,” he said with a shrug before taking a sip of his Scotch and sighing appreciatively. “You’ve got the good stuff.”
If you only knew. I prided myself on having the good stuff. The biggest house. The prettiest wife. The best Scotch. But having Longborn sitting here, reminded me that all those points of pride were an illusion. I had the biggest house, but I knew nothing about it. I didn’t know why it sat empty for all of those years. I had the prettiest wife, but there was something ugly inside her, hurting her and I couldn’t seem to root it out. In actuality, my Scotch seemed to be the only thing of value I could claim pride in.
“I assume this is about the bones.” The time for pleasantries had passed. Longborn was going to keep avoiding the real reason he was here until I forced him to talk.
“I know when we first spoke, I said that it wouldn’t be unusual to find something like this in a house of this age.” His thumb skimmed along the cut-crystal edge of his glass.
I nodded. I thought the same thing. A house that had been standing since the 16th century had to come with its own history—both good and bad.
“Unfortunately, the laboratory results have come back and the bones aren’t quite as old as we suspected.”
“How old are they?” I asked slowly, already certain I didn’t want to know the answer.
“A few decades,” he said in a quiet voice, triggering my memory of what Georgia had said this afternoon on the phone.
“Does this have something to do with the closed case file you wouldn’t release to my associate?” I asked coldly. I was losing patience with the village detective quickly. If he had come to deliver bad news, I was ready for him to have it out. I’d dealt with enough recently.
“We aren’t in the habit of handing out closed case files to whoever calls.” Longhorn’s chest puffed out importantly, but his darting eyes told me that his confidence was a front.
“I think you’ll find that Georgia Kincaid has the clearance to read any file she wants,” I said flatly, adding, “as do I.”
“Is that so?”
I didn’t often use my connections to the royal family to my own advantage. But I was at my wits end with Thornham Park, Detective Longborn, and small-minded superstitions.
“She works as the Queen’s private security,” I told him.
His eyebrows shot up in surprise. He paused before taking a large gulp of Scotch. “And how are you connected to her?”
“I knew her first,” I said. I didn’t need to explain the makeshift family tree that branched around the Royal family. It wasn’t a tree, so much as a tangle of vines. Invasive. Growing up and around as it pleased, strangling the lives out of some of its members, twisting around others, and caging the rest of us. An outsider simply wouldn’t understand.
“And you have the same clearance?” Longborn said when I didn’t continue.
“I do. I’m sure I can have someone call to prove it.” For a moment, I considered asking Alexander to do just that. I would never have another problem with Longborn or the local officers if the king called to vouch for me. It was the kind of thing that would impress average men leading ordinary lives. Alexander did owe me one. He owed me a few. But I couldn’t stomach the idea of using my connections to deal with this.
“I’ll find it,”