Tom looked up from his work, frowning. “Your father showed you what was in his safe?”
“Of course not! But I discovered where he kept the keys and I used to look. He kept Mama’s jewels in there, and a bag of money — linen money, all rolled up, and coins — various documents, I know not what, and a pile of gold bars. But then the gold vanished.”
“Perhaps he was holding it for someone else?” Tom suggested.
“No! It was all his, and now it is mine, if I can only find out where it is.”
“And what would you do with it — buy a castle to live in?” Tom said vaguely.
She chuckled. “No! I should marry you, silly, and then you would not need to make chair legs over and over again. You could do nothing and be a gentleman.”
He shifted uneasily. “I’d not like that, Miss Tess! I need to be working at something.”
“Well, you could make the most beautiful furniture in the world, using the finest woods… or train up apprentices, so that they can earn a living themselves. That would be worthwhile, would it not? I should like to do some good with my money, but first I have to find out where Papa has hidden it.”
“Why would he hide it?”
Tess made an impatient noise. “Why did Papa do anything? He was very secretive, but he had all manner of schemes going on. Even I cannot tell you all that he was doing, and I made it my business to find out, you may be sure.”
Tom shifted uncomfortably, shaking his head. “You shouldn’t meddle, Miss Tess.”
“Aye, that’s right enough,” called out Betty from the kitchen. “Allus snoopin’, she is.”
“I like to know what is going on,” Tess said with a careless lift of one shoulder. “Besides, Papa knew I was watching him. He caught me looking through the drawers of his desk one day, but he only laughed about it and told me I was a clever little puss, so he saw nothing wrong with it.”
“I don’t want to say nothing against your father,” Tom said, “especially now he’s dead, for he was a man of God, after all, but he shouldn’t have encouraged you in that.”
“Why does everyone become so mealy-mouthed about the dead?” Tess cried impatiently. “A wicked man does not become a saint as soon as he dies.”
“Miss Tess!” Betty protested. “Don’t you go suggestin’ that your father was anythin’ but a good man at heart. Human, like everyone, and likely to make the odd mistake, but a good man.”
“He was an evil and selfish man, who never cared for anyone but himself… and Mama, I suppose. He certainly never cared formeor he would never have left my inheritance so horridly tied up. That money ismine, but can I get my hands on it? No, only my trustees and then my husband. And where is the rest of it, that is what I really want to know? Where are all those gold bars?”
“Perhaps these people investigating the murder will find them,” Tom said, tossing a finished chair leg onto the pile and starting another. “They seem to be very thorough.”
Tess sighed. “That is a possibility. They are turning the castle upside down and shaking it thoroughly. If the gold bars are here, they will find them… surely.”
“And even if they don’t, they’ll find out who killed your father,” Tom said.
“Do you think so?”
Tom looked up in surprise. “Of course! A wild killing like that — someone breaking into the basement, finding an axe on the stairs and then going to your father’s room — whoever it was must have left some traces behind, and must be quite mad.”
“A wild killing? Nothing of the sort,” Tess said. “This was no madman.”
“What makes you say that?”
“This was planned. How could a passing madman break into a house and find his way unerringly to one specific bedroom?”
“But that’s just the point, Miss Tess. He broke in, and that wasn’t hard, given that the scullery window had a brokenlatch, then he wandered about here and there — he could have stumbled into any number of rooms. He could even have looked intoyourroom. But when he came to your father’s room… perhaps something disturbed him, or your father woke and saw him and he panicked, he slashed at him with the axe he’d picked up, then, realising the terrible thing he’d done, he ran away. Surely that’s how it happened?”
“But where did the axe come from? It belonged to Eustace, part of his collection, and he had arranged it as part of the display on the main stairs, butnobody saw it.It was there for more than a week, but even the maid who dusted the display never saw it there.”
“Maids never see nothin’,” Betty called out.
“Maybe it was there and no one noticed,” Tess said. “Or maybe it was not there at all.”
“What are you suggesting, Miss Tess?” Tom said.
