For some reason, I thought of Lisa. I could picture her being up to something nefarious like poking around secret passages. I chastised myself for such ungenerous thoughts almost immediately, however, telling my inner bitchy self that just because I didn’t like her, that didn’t mean she would do something underhanded. “Anyway,in the end, Alden decided to put some stuff in the window seat—heavy books and some iron doorstops, et cetera, that he found in one of the attics—so that the lid wouldn’t lift up when you pressed down on the latch. That should, at least, keep anyone from entering his room that way.”
“What about the other rooms?” she asked, pushing away her half-eaten toast. “I have some pepper spray, but if I need a hand weapon—”
“Your room is safe,” I said quickly. “We went all along the upper-floor passages to see where they went, and it just went to the lord of the manor’s chamber—Alden’s room—and to a staircase that led down to a small room that Alden thinks used to be the butler’s pantry. He’s going to map the passages over a layout of the house today, in order to figure out just where they are, so he can check those rooms for any secret entrances that we couldn’t find.”
“At least I won’t have to move in with Patrick,” she said. “But I’d still sleep better knowing there wasn’t someone hiding in the walls.”
“Well,” I said, making a show of looking around before I leaned in and spoke quietly. “As a matter of fact, Alden and I came up with a plan last night. In one of the forensic detection classes I took, we did a project using this stain that fluoresces under black light. The police use it to find residual traces of human-based fluids, like blood and semen. Anyway, while I was taking a shower this morning, Alden got online and found a place in town that stocked the dye in powder form. He’s off getting it now.”
“What good is that going to do?”
“He’s going to dust it on the light switches, so thatwhoever touches them will stain their hands. Only they won’t know it because you can’t see the dye unless you have one of those black light wand thingies, which Alden’s also picking up.”
“But how will you know whose hands to look at?” she asked, picking off a crust of her toast.
“We’ll check everyone out. Naturally, you and Patrick don’t have to worry, but to be fair to everyone, we’ll just do a hand check every morning. I bet you that we’ll get whoever is hanging out inside the walls in the next twenty-four hours.”
“I wish I had your confidence,” she said with a glance at the clock. “Lord, it can’t be that late already. People will be here in ten minutes—we’d better make a move.”
“I’ll be there in a couple,” I said, hastily stirring some lemon juice into my tea. “I have to have a cuppa or else I’m totally worthless.”
“Right. Remember that today you’ve got that group from the Women’s Institute to handle.”
“Dress-up and archery, in that order,” I repeated from our discussion the night before.
She grimaced and, grabbing her toast, headed for the door. She paused to say, “If I were Alden, I’d call the local police.”
“We thought of that, too,” I said, blowing on my tea and taking a tentative sip. “But as Alden pointed out, there’s not a lot the cops could do unless we found someone in the passages or, at the very least, something that gave us an idea of who was doing it.”
“I’d still let them know,” she pronounced, and then hurried off to greet the people who were due to arrive that morning. I sipped my tea, and thought of checking on Alden, whom I’d left going through all the documentsrelated to the purchase of the house in search of a floor plan, but the sight of a long van pulling up with a bunch of excited women had me bolting for the garden.
By the time my lunch break rolled around, I was hot and sweaty, and my ears rang from the constant chatter, laughter, and, at some points, song from the group of women from a nearby town. The ladies had brought liquid refreshments with them (“So we don’t get heatstroke,” one of them said, raising a not-so-frozen daiquiri at me), and were well on their way to feeling no pain by the time the catering lady arrived with the selection of sandwiches. The day’s choices of beef tongue or cheese sandwich, even if I hadn’t established a policy of eating lunch with Alden, would have driven me up to the house for food.
I found Alden in the library, which was bare of all except the table where I occasionally went through Lady Sybilla’s old ledgers, journals, and file folders filled with everything from fifty-year-old society column newspaper clippings to receipts for hunting dogs, horses, and even a sloop named theLady S. Next to him, in the chair, sat Lady Sybilla herself, both of them bent over a large sheet of paper.
“—thought that it must be the space between the great hall and those three rooms along the south side, but that doesn’t work out. I measured the width of the rooms, compared it to the width of the house from the door to the hall to the outer edge of the wall, and there’s no lost space.”
“I told you that there would be little call for your passageway to run along the ground floor,” Lady Sybilla said with slow, perfectly enunciated measure. “If it runs to the smugglers’ lair, as you assure me it does, then it must be the passage that my late husband mentioned his father using to store valuables during the Great War.James mentioned once that his father had access to a hidden location accessible only to him, where he placed all the family portraits because he was certain that the kaiser would be landing on our shores.”
“I don’t understand how that translates to the passage not having any branches on the ground floor,” Alden said, nodding to me when I stopped next to him. “It seems a folly not to have done so.”
“Ah, but you are not thinking like a baronet who enjoys his French wine despite the war.”
“Which war?” I asked, confused. “World War One, or the Napoleonic Wars?”
“The latter, naturally,” Lady Sybilla said with an arched eyebrow at me. “I thought you were going to put my papers in order?”
“I am, I am, but I do have a job to do, too.”
“I shall have my secretary attend to it if you are unable to handle the task as you indicated you would,” Lady Sybilla said loftily.
“Did I hear my name being mentioned?” Lisa oiled her way into the room, and leered at Alden. “What’s that you need me to do, Lady Sybilla? You know it’s my pleasure to give help whenever it’s needed.”
She might have been addressing Lady Sybilla, but her eyes were on Alden. I decided that I was a big enough person to ignore her continued attempts to entice him away from me.
“Mercy here has undertaken to sort my personal papers, and those of my husband, but she seems unable to find the time to do so.”
“I told you that I intend to work on them in the evenings. It’s just that... well...” I looked at Alden, who was not in the least bit flustered, as I had expected he’dbe with the arrival of Lisa. In fact, he didn’t even look like he was paying attention to her (or me) at all. He was frowning at the crude floor plan of the house that he’d drawn, complete with notes on dimensions of rooms, and in red ink what I assumed was his guess of the route the passageway from his room had taken. “I’ve been busy,” I finished lamely.
