But before I could withdraw and apologize, she threw her arms around me and squeezed tightly.
“You must come again, anytime,” she said, her blue eyes sparkling almost violet in the lamplight.
“I will. And I hope you will come to Grey House. In a few days,” I temporized, remembering the distasteful task Brisbane had set me about.
She nodded and I left her then, profoundly grateful to have spent such a lovely evening in such delightful company. But before I was halfway home my thoughts had turned to Brisbane. And for that I was not grateful at all.
THE TWENTY-THIRD CHAPTER
There’s small choice in rotten apples.
—William Shakespeare
The Taming of the Shrew
It occurred to me as I began my search of Grey House that size is entirely relative. I had always thought it a modest sort of town house. But when I began to pace it thoroughly, methodically, and above all surreptitiously, it seemed enormous.
The most difficult part was inventing plausible excuses to be in rooms I had scarcely even seen before. I murmured that I was thinking of changing the wallpaper when Aquinas found me in the butler’s pantry, and I very nearly insulted Cook by delivering the day’s menus to the kitchens in person. Cook did not like even Aquinas setting foot in her domain. I was strictly persona non grata belowstairs.
For a while I walked around with paper and pencil, ostensibly making an inventory of furnishings to be sold when I left Grey House. That ruse got me through Edward’s rooms, but by the time I finished, my hand was cramping and the inventory had grown to an unwieldy length. The search saddened me, more than I had anticipated. I had not ventured into Edward’s rooms since his death. The sight of his things, freshly dusted but undisturbed, brought quick, hot tears to my eyes. The rooms looked cold, unused, unfriendly even, like a set piece in a rather forbidding museum. I wandered about for the longest time, touching things, picking up little treasures and peering into photographs. I touched the beautiful candlesticks on the mantelpiece, Sèvres, with a design of roses and lilies, copied after a pair made for Madame du Barry. They had been his mother’s, the only really decent pieces she had ever bought. There were a few other bits with them, not quite so beautiful, but still pretty enough: a little clock with a shepherdess and a porcelain box decorated with a picture of Pandora opening the legendary box. There were only a few books, the histories he liked to read when he could not settle to sleep, a few volumes of poetry, that sort of thing. On the walls were a pair of rather good paintings with mythological subjects—one of Narcissus gazing into a brook and the other of Achilles mourning the death of Patroclus. I had never much cared for them, but they were very much to Edward’s taste—refined, fashionable, serenely coloured with his favorite blues and greys. I moved from item to item, opening boxes and drawers and peering into vases. I found nothing except a little dust and a few ghosts. It was a disturbing experience, and I realized then that I had no wish to search Grey House by myself. In the end, I convinced myself I had no choice. I told Aquinas.
“You wish to search Grey House, my lady,” he said, his voice carefully neutral. Like all good butlers, Aquinas would never dream of offering an overt criticism.
“That is correct.”
“For the purpose of discovering evidence of some wrongdoing.”
“Exactly.”
“Perhaps I might offer a suggestion or two that would be of assistance.”
“I rather hoped you might.”
“If your ladyship could possibly postpone the proposed search until tomorrow, I think it would be immeasurably easier to arrange.”
I blinked at him. “Why?”
“Tomorrow is the Sabbath, my lady,” he said, without a trace of impatience.
“Oh, very good. How many of them go to church?”
“All, my lady. And afterward they have the afternoon free to avail themselves of the pleasures of town, such as they are.” Aquinas had been in service in Paris and was always bitter about the solemnity of a British Sunday, even in London.
I stared at him. “Really, how very extraordinary. I never noticed. But I always have luncheon on Sunday, the fires are always tended to.”
“I do not attend services myself, my lady. It is my privilege to stay behind and make certain that you are taken care of.”
I did not know what to say. Aquinas had always shown such deft, quiet concern for me that I was not surprised that he should have given up his own Sunday so that I should not be inconvenienced. What surprised, and saddened me, was my own blindness to his devotion.
“Thank you, Aquinas. You are most diligent.”
He bowed from the neck. He never sat in my presence, with the result that our conversations were always slightly awkward, and I usually finished them with a crick in my neck. But I respected his insistence on decorum.
“Now, I have undertaken to solve a problem with the assistance of Mr. Nicholas Brisbane. Perhaps you will remember that he has called here?”
“I remember all callers, my lady.” A lesser servant would have noted my callers in a book. Aquinas, I was certain, simply filed them in his head.
“Yes, well, Mr. Brisbane has suggested that I search the premises for our culprit. I may tell you the wrongdoing in question was a peccadillo itself—one of the books in my study was vandalized and the snipped passages were fashioned into anonymous notes. Mr. Brisbane’s intention is to prove that one of the staff here at Grey House was responsible, but I intend to prove him wrong. Unfortunately, the only method for doing so is to search the house for any clue, however trivial, that might point to the guilty party.”
