Corland Castle slumbered under the August sun. Ian looked up at its imposing façade with distaste. It had symmetry, and there was a majestic sense of its own power, harking back as it did to the days of the medieval kings, but it was not a graceful or elegant building. It felt out of step with the modernity of the nineteenth century.
Izzy was happy to be at her old home, however, and that pleased him. She was never a good traveller when she was increasing, and even though it was still very early days, she had found the journey from Keswick trying. She greeted the emerging servants with effusive delight, and they smiled benevolently at her, expressing their pleasure volubly.
Ian had sent a rider ahead, so their rooms were ready for them, the same corner suite Ian had slept in on his last visit, that had still held traces of Izzy’s perfume. Now he had no need of the silk scarf to remind him of her, for there she was in front of him, smiling and laughing, chatting away to the housekeeperand butler, a thread of her scent wafting through the room with every gesture of her slender hands, wreathing Ian in joy.
“I’m afraid his lordship is out with the guns today,” Simpson said. “Mr Kent is with him, but Miss Olivia is with Lady Alice in the drawing room.”
“Excellent!” Izzy said. “I shall get all the news from them. How is my grandmother?”
“As well as can be expected,” Simpson said diplomatically. “There is one piece of news you will not have heard yet, my lady… my lord. Mr Nicholson’s murderer has been found.”
Izzy gasped. “At last! Who was it, Simpson?”
“Tom Shapman, the woodworker from the village, my lady,” the butler said, although his expression seemed puzzled. “A dreadful shock for everyone, since he was not at all a violent man, one would have thought.”
“But why would he do such a thing?” Ian said.
“You must remember the fuss last year,” Izzy said. “He wanted to marry Tess, and Uncle Arthur forbade it. There was a great to-do about it. Still, it seems excessive to hack the man to death in his bed on that account.”
“That’s what I’d have said, too, my lady,” Simpson said, “but he did it, right enough. The poor man’s conscience smote him and he confessed to it all. He’s gone off to York gaol to await the Assizes.”
“Goodness! How dramatic,” Izzy said. “I shall go to Aunt Alice at once. She must be so pleased to know the truth. Now she can put that whole business behind her.”
She whisked out of the room with a swirl of her skirts, blowing a kiss to Ian as she went. He wrote a couple of quick letters, then left Wycliffe to unpack, and set off to join the ladies in the drawing room. The difficulty with a completely symmetrical building, however, was knowing precisely where one was. He had thought he knew which way to turn on leavinghis room to reach the stairs, but he must have absentmindedly gone wrong, for he passed only the small service stairs.
At the next corner room, the door was open and inside a fashionably dressed man sat writing at a large table, a man Ian recognised.
“Mr Willerton-Forbes?”
The man turned, beamed with delight and jumped to his feet. He was not as tall as Ian, nor as broad in the chest, but the empty plate on the table and a few crumbs on his waistcoat suggested a reason for a broadening elsewhere.
“Lord Farramont! I believe congratulations are in order. You have my felicitations, sir.”
Ian laughed, laying his cane on the table and pulling up a chair. “It is strange to be a newly espoused husband all over again. But what are you doing here? Your case is solved, is it not?”
A wary expression crossed the lawyer’s face as he resumed his seat. “Tom Shapman has confessed, yes. The rest of my associates have gone, but I am helping Lord Rennington to settle a few matters. More specifically, the whereabouts of this fortune that Mr Nicholson bequeathed to Miss Nicholson in his will.”
“It always seemed implausible that a chaplain would manage to accumulate a fortune,” Ian said.
“True, but…” The lawyer hesitated, laying down his pen carefully and steepling his hands. “We have reason to believe that there are — or were, perhaps — larger sums in Mr Nicholson’s possession than appear in his bank account. Those sums do not appear to have been spent, for the gentleman was frugal in his habits, yet no such sums can be found anywhere.”
“He did not buy property, say? Art? Race horses?” Ian said. “All of those would absorb large amounts of money without visible signs.”
“No evidence of such can be found. He inherited a house in Pickering from the late earl, and he also had businesses there, but nothing that would account for the sort of sums we suspect.”
Ian’s eyebrows rose. “Very large amounts, then? Thousands, perhaps?”
“Possibly tens of thousands.”
The eyebrows rose even further.
The lawyer chuckled. “Astonishing, is it not? What do you suppose he might have done with such an amount, to keep it so successfully hidden?”
“Gems,” Ian said. “Small, valuable, easily hidden.” He pulled his cane towards him and unscrewed the head. “I keep a roll of soft hidden in here for safety when I travel, but it could easily be a bag of diamonds.”
“And a sword in the body of the cane, no doubt,” Mr Willerton-Forbes said. “How very prudent. But no, we do not think Mr Nicholson collected gems. When gems came into his possession, he sold them.”
“Then bullion. Gold or silver bars, although for tens of thousands of pounds, that would be a great deal of gold.”
