Tristan knew that were he stretched out on his blue counterpane right now instead of in a livery stables, the thud would sound like something the house couldn’t quite digest.
Bloody hell. He wondered if the Gardner “sisters” recognized the sound.
Tristan looked up from the tunnel. The faces of his men looked down at him. Eyes tense and alert. They knew better than to shout down at this point. They’d all begun to draw the same conclusions, and who knew how voices would reverberate in the tunnel.
He fished into his pocket and gestured up at them with his lock picks.
So Tristan set to it. Within a few minutes, he got the handle of the door to turn.
He exulted as it rotated in his hand.
But the door didn’t open.
He gently leaned his shoulder against it, holding the knob so that the door wouldn’t spring back abruptly and thud again.
Damn. It was clearly barred or blocked from behind.
Tristan stood motionless for a moment in that dark pit. If they attempted to break this door down, it would most certainly be heard in the boardinghouse.
He knew what to do next.
“This is what I think happened,” he told his men and Mr. Cox when he surfaced. “Derring was either blackmailed into or volunteered to smuggle cigars from Sussex—the contraband was probably stuffed into the bases of the statues. I suspect he volunteered, since he was in debt and he knew he could make a tidy profit. Stone, not marble, statues ordered straight from Sussex for an earl? Innocent as can be. Sounds like just the daft thing he’d buy, anyway, since he was a spendthrift. He may have financed the whole endeavor—paying for the cigars to be brought over and letting the smugglers do the dirty work—or he may have just played a role, seeing it as his way to solvency. I’m willing to wager that someone here at these stables, Mr. Cox, knew about the tunnels—someone who knew precisely where they led—and that’s how Derring managed to meet Mr. Garr and his foxy-faced friend.”
All the color had fled Cox’s face. “Wasn’t me, guv, swear on my life.”
“We shall see,” Tristan said evenly. “I think Derring had the statues brought to The Grand Palace on the Thames, where he could in privacy unload cigars into the tunnels through the entrance in a particular room on a low floor. He then departed again with the statues for his townhouse. The Gardner sisters, if you will, then entered the tunnels through the stables, fetched the cigars, and drove out with them, looking innocent and pretty as you please, or as innocent as those two could ever look. Just a couple of men with a horse and cart filled with hay or some such to hide the boxes, no doubt. They were able to deliver the cigars to merchants who had paid for them and were expecting them. Then the merchants sold them at an exorbitant profit.”
“But then Derring died,” Massey contributed. “Leaving the Gardner sisters in the lurch, because they couldn’t get into the boardinghouse or the tunnels.”
“Yes. Leaving the tunnel door barred and locked and cigars still in the tunnel. And they couldn’t get into the place during all the renovations, since the place was filled with activity. Perhaps not wanting to call attention to their operation, and perhaps not being particularly murderous by nature, they concocted a plan to get into the place—they spread it around that it was a terrible place to go, and they devised a plan to get the cigars and get out... not reckoning that they wouldn’t be able to get into that room. At all. And not reckoning that I would be there.”
“That’s almost funny, sir. Your being there.”
“Massey.”
“Sorry, sir. They’re probably desperate by now,” Massey said.
“Yes,” Tristan said tersely.
He rifled through scenarios, but they couldn’t just go and rip the Gardner sisters from their beds without proof of a crime.
“None of what I’ve just said has any merit at all unless we catch them in the tunnel. So we need to catch them in the tunnel. And we need to act now.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Lady Derring Lady Derring Lady Derring...”
“Wha...Dot?”
Delilah had been dreaming. And Dot was whispering. Two inches from her face.
“Shhhh. Captain Hardy is downstairs and he needs to speak to you at once. He told me to fetch you and Mrs. Breedlove, and to be very, very quiet about it.”
Delilah absurdly put her hand out and patted Dot’s face to ascertain that she was real and that this wasn’t part of the dream she’d been having.
Dot’s nose was cold, like a little pet’s, and it squashed a little.
She glanced at the clock on her mantel. It was half past twelve.
