It would have to be good enough.
Elizabeth eased out of bed. Her hips were stiff, but mobile. Her back sore, but not spasming. Her legs and knees, as good as new. This might even end up being a seventy percent day.
“Don’t eat all the biscuits,” she yelled. “I’m coming.”
She cleaned up with the bowl of water at the side table, then slid on a fresh dress. Clothing sorted, she made a halfhearted pass with a hairbrush, then hurried to open her door.
Miss Oak wasright there, beaming at her.
And in her hands was a tray of piping hot biscuits.
Elizabeth picked up a biscuit, tossing it from hand to hand between bites so that it would not burn her fingers. “When I finish these, I shall solve the puzzle and collect your sister’s will. Maybe Densmore has already found it, and all I’ll have to do is retrieve it from him.”
Miss Oak brightened. “Do you want me to come with you? I’m rubbish at puzzles, but I’ve known my nephew all his life.”
“It’s better for you to stay here.” Elizabeth selected a second biscuit. “If Densmore won’t hand over the will or allow me in to search, I might have to do… diplomacy.”
Miss Oak nodded. “My nephew can be hardheaded. I hope he’ll listen to reason.”
“He’ll listen to”—a sharp sword—“my brand of persuasion, I am certain.”
Elizabeth took another biscuit. These were exceptionally fine biscuits. Almost as good as the ones Cook made at home.
Her heart gave a pang at the thought. She’d scarcely been gone two days, and she missed her family already. But there would be no going home until she resolved the problem.
“What kind of clues did your sister leave when she made puzzles for you as children?” Elizabeth asked.
Miss Oak made a face. “Impossible ones. Oh, they were always logical in retrospect, but my brain doesn’t work in double meanings. Which is partly how we came up with our institution. As a childless woman who has always longed for children to care for, an orphanage is the perfect vocation for me. Whereas my sister couldn’t wait to instruct an entire school full of eager-eyed pupils in the art of puzzles and wordplay, amongst other topics.”
Elizabeth shuddered. As a childless woman who prayed nightly for her unencumbered streak never to end, administering an orphanage sounded like hell on earth. She would rather do anything else. Such as tear a castle apart with her bare hands if that’s what it took to find the will and help her client’s dreams come true.
“You don’t remember what any of her old clues were like?”
“That was decades ago, my dear. I can tell you the absurd question Arminia wanted to ask the potential instructors we interviewed: ‘What we caught, we threw away. What we didn’t catch, we kept. What did we keep?’ Bizarre. I still don’t know the answer.”
“Lice,” Elizabeth answered without hesitation. “Or fleas, perhaps, but in this case the answer is definitely lice.”
Miss Oak blinked. “Lice? Who would guess that?”
“Anyone who’s ever tried and failed to rid themselves of the itchy little pests. Or who recalls an ancient legend about the Greek poet Homer and a pair of fishermen on the isle of Ios.”
“Naturally,” Miss Oak murmured with a wondrous shake of her head. “My sister would have loved you. If we knew any of the clues she’d meant to leave behind, you probablycouldfollow them to the hiding place.”
“Are you absolutely certain we don’t have any hint?”
“Arminia would have given the clues to her husband, not to me. And she died before she could do that much. Remember, they took ill at the same time.”
“But are you certain she took all her clues to the grave? One cannot predict one’s own death. An apoplexy, a carriage accident, an unfortunate batch of shellfish… There are any number of ways she might have died before her husband. Surely someone as clever as your sister would have accounted for such a circumstance.”
Miss Oak looked impressed. “You’re right. Arminia must have left the first clue long before she took ill. Something that wouldn’tlooklike a clue to the average person but would make sense to her husband. Of course, we don’t know what it was or where it might be, so I’m not sure how that helps.”
Elizabeth considered. “You know whatwouldhelp me search? A sense of the castle. Can you describe the layout of the rooms, as best you recall?”
Miss Oak brightened. “I can do better than that. Arminia and I refined countless sketches of how we planned to turn Castle Harbrook into an orphanage. I can give you maps of the castle’s interior as it stands now, and how it will look once it becomes a school.”
“Just a ‘before’ map, please. I’ll see the renovations in person, once you’ve opened your school.”
Elizabeth took one last biscuit as Miss Oak hurried to a portable escritoire and rifled through a large stack of papers.
