“No need for tea yet, Hutton,” Cordell called over the banister. “We’ll wait for Mrs. St. John.”
“Very good, sir.”
Constance walked past Cordell into the drawing room, which was a little more cluttered than she would have liked, but both tasteful and expensive, with its too-long velvet curtains, bright carpets, and the most elegant of modern furnishings.
Cordell left the door open and walked toward him. “That is the study door, directly opposite us.” He took a key from his pocket and passed it to Solomon.
“What of Anthony?” Constance asked.
“He never appears before midday.”
Although Cordell had passed the key to Solomon—perhaps to shrug off the guilt of prying—he accompanied them across the passage and into the study. There were no servants nearby.
“Leave the door open a crack,” Solomon advised in a low voice, “and listen. If anyone approaches, go out and close the door, and be seen in the drawing room by whoever passes. Pretend to be talking to us if you can.”
The study was lined with books and contained a comfortable sofa and a table with fine glass decanters. But its main focus was the large mahogany desk, well polished and clear of any documents or correspondence.
Solomon went to one of the matching cabinets that flanked it against the wall, and Constance opened the first drawer in the desk. It contained only a box of good-quality notepaper, headed by this address and that of a country house in Berkshire, three spare bottles of ink, a selection of pens, a penknife, and a book full of addresses.
Constance spared the time to flick through the address book. She looked underWfor Willow, and also underMfor the unmarried sister. On impulse she also checked theNnames, but was hardly surprised when neither Neville nor Nevvy appeared. Even if they were unlikely acquaintances, there was no point in recordingNo fixed abode.
She placed it back in the drawer and closed it. The middle drawer was locked. Excited, because this had to be the treasure trove, Constance extracted two hairpins and set to work. She could feel Cordell’s shocked eyes boring into the side of her face, but he did not try to stop her.
The locked clicked easily and she slid it open. On one side of the drawer was a collection of tradesmen’s accounts, all marked as paid. On the other, tied with narrow black ribbon, was personal correspondence St. John had chosen to keep.
“Sol,” she said, knowing this was what they had come for.
Solomon joined her, and they went systematically through the correspondence, allowing themselves only quick glances. To be fair, none of them were worth much more. There were no love letters from his wife, nor from anyone else. There were childish letters from his son Anthony, written from school, and a couple from Bella, written from her sickbed in the country to her father in town. They all seemed affectionate and comfortable. There didn’t seem to be any from friends, unless Solomon had all of those.
Keeping his children’s letters betrayed a sentimentality that made this odder. Surely such a man would have kept letters from Zenobia, particularly from the travels he had helped to finance.
Setting her pile of letters down, Constance examined the ribbon. She could see easily where it had just been folded to wrap around the letters. But when she looked more closely, fainter creasers, and the position of previous knots, showed that the ribbon had once confined something all of an inch larger.
“Someone got here first,” she said in frustration. “The letters have been purged.”
Solomon glanced at the ribbon and set down his own letters. “So Mrs. St. Johnhasbeen busy. Why? Let’s have a look at the accounts.”
Abandoning the letters, she took out the pile of paid accounts and passed half to Solomon. She flicked through them quickly, finding only what one might expect of a wealthy man with two households and a daughter about to be married. Madame Veronique was horrendously expensive, as were the wine merchants and caterers to whom he had paid a deposit.
All most disappointing. “What is in the cabinets?” she asked Solomon without much hope.
“Past years’ household accounts and copies of estate books. Records of investments, that kind of thing. Nothing untoward, at a glance, but then, if there were, the bank would have noticed, and Harris has been there.”
She gathered the accounts back together, with Veronique’s latest at the top, as she had found them. Again, the eye-watering amounts caught her attention. One hideously expensive evening gown in blue watered silk cost twice what Constance had paid for her most expensive garment ever, and sundries—presumably matching gloves and reticules—cost almost the same amount again.
Startled, she flicked to the next Veronique account and the next. On each, after the main garments purchased, sundries were listed for equally high amounts. On impulse, Constance extracted two of Veronique’s bills from lower down and put them in her own reticule.
Solomon watched her, his eyebrows arched, while he reached for the third and final drawer. Which was unlocked and contained only an engagement diary.
While Solomon examined that, Constance re-bundled the letters. As she picked up Solomon’s pile, which had been beneath her own, she saw that here, at last, were a few from friends. One fell from the middle of the pile and landed on the desk. Hastily, Constance retrieved it and was about to shove it back into themidst of the others when one word out of the scrawl leaped out at her.
Neville.
“Someone’s coming downstairs,” Cordell hissed. “I think it’s Anthony.”
There was no time to place the letters in the ribbon according to the previous creases. Having swiped the Neville letter into her reticule with Veronique’s accounts, she tied the quickest of bows, then shut the drawer. There was no time to manipulate the lock again before she darted out of the room, Solomon at her heels.
They only just made it back to the drawing room. Constance only hoped Cordell had had time to lock the study door before a young male voice hailed him.
