They went their separate ways, but this left Alex unsettled because after this morning’s events, he did not want to leave Tulip’s side for even a moment.
A prickle ran up his spine when he walked into Ernfield’s quarters.
He could feel the evil around him.
But he quickly composed himself and reverted to his experienced investigator manner while scanning the small room with an impartial eye.
Much like Mrs.Granger, Ernfield kept his quarters tidy and sparse.But there was no mistaking the aura of malevolence in here.“Yes, you are the very devil.Aren’t you, Ernfield?”
Alex wasted no time in rummaging through the head butler’s bureau drawers, then under the bed, and under the mattress.He felt along the mattress to listen for crinkling sounds or feel something hard buried within the straw.
Nothing.
He carefully trod across the wood floor boards, hoping to hear a tell-tale squeak that would reveal a cavity in them.
It took him a while, but then he heard it and grunted in triumph.
“Got you,” he muttered, bending on one knee to carefully pry two boards apart with the tip of his knife.His heart began to pump furiously when he found a veritable treasure trove of evidence.The building plans to Thornwycke sat right atop.He dug his hand deeper into the small cavity and retrieved several vials of an unidentified substance.
At the very bottom, tucked in a small, velvet pouch, he found a gold locket in the shape of a heart.In the center of the heart was a diamond that appeared to be of the finest quality, although he was no expert.
However, even an amateur could tell the diamond was not something any working man could afford.
Was it a gift to Elspeth from his grandfather?
He removed the contents, finding a cufflink, two tie pins, and even his lost watch fob.“I wasn’t losing my mind,” he muttered.“You stole the bloody fob.”
He placed the floor boards back as he had found them, and gave a final inspection of the room to make certain he had left it in the same condition as it was upon his entering.
He tucked the vials, the velvet pouch, and other contents in his pocket, carefully rolled up the building plans, and hastened out of Ernfield’s room.
Perhaps he ought to have gone straight to Tulip, but he wanted to lock away those items in the wall safe in his study first.He also wanted to take a quick look at the building plans, especially the specifications for the duke’s bedchamber.
“I knew it,” he said, muttering again.
Within his own dressing area was a secret panel, no doubt locked or barricaded from the tunnel side, which explained why the panel had not budged when he’d run his hands along the walls or tugged on any protruding nobs.
In fact, he’d heard clicks when pulling down on one of those nobs but assumed that access might have been sealed off.
He had felt air and a coolness to the wall that was an inside wall and should not have been that cold unless there was a secret passageway behind it.
The building plans now spread out before him showed a tunnel behind the secret panel in his dressing room that led out into the garden.The escape access was hidden amid a grove of trees, its makeshift door hidden behind shrubbery, no doubt.
The tunnel also extended upward to the tower room.
“Of course.”In medieval times, the duke’s guards would have been posted up there as lookouts.The tunnel passage served as a means of escape for the duke and his soldiers back then.They could lock the tower door and gain more time escaping while the enemy pondered who was up there and what was aimed at them while they broke down the door.
In current day, that passage allowed any present duke to ‘visit’ whoever happened to be in that room, and remain unseen.
Alex growled softly.“I know what you did, you bloody bounder.”
It would have been simple enough for Ernfield to lure Elspeth up there with a note supposedly sent from his grandfather instructing her to meet him there.Then Ernfield could have slipped in through the tunnel, struck her over the head, and tossed her out the window with no one the wiser because he would have locked the tower room door from the inside to make it appear no one but Elspeth had been in the room.
Any ruptures to her skull would have been blamed on the fall, leading everyone to conclude she was alone and had jumped of her own volition.
Alex took another moment to make note of entrance points and run his finger along the hidden tunnel and its maze-like turns to map it all out in his head.He then rolled up the plans and placed them in the safe along with the vials, pouch containing the locket, and the other trinkets including his fob.
He then strode out of his study and went to find Tulip.
