The Edge of Desire (25 page)

Letitia hauled in a huge breath, let it out with, “In which endeavor Randall succeeded excellently well.”

She was a part of his success.

She looked up, met Christian’s, then Dalziel’s, eyes. “That fits. Very well. It explains a lot of his attitudes that I never understood.”

Dalziel nodded. “Very likely, but the most pertinent point for our investigation is that having succeeded so excellently well, Randall kept his success a secret. A very, indeed amazingly, closely kept secret. Who knew of his background? So far, we’ve found no one. No one even suspected. One might have thought that, having succeeded, he might crow—at least to close friends. But he didn’t have any—something that now makes sense. Yet nothing we’ve uncovered suggests even secret gloating. He might have inwardly preened, but he didn’t celebrate his success.”

“He wasn’t finished.” Letitia met Dalziel’s dark eyes, then looked at Christian. “He was set on taking Nunchance from Justin. And he wanted children.” Her lips curved cynically. “Unfortunately for him, he forgot to specify that as part of our agreement. I believe he thought it simply followed as a natural outcome of my duties in the marriage bed, and strangely—perhaps because he was in fact a farmer’s son—he never realized that I might have some way of preventing that.”

The depth of her aversion for Randall showed in her eyes, then she turned back to Dalziel.

Who had started to pace. “Even so, his secrecy might well have been the reason behind his murder. His continuing plans, which made maintaining that secrecy even more important, only add weight to the thesis.”

Letitia frowned. “I can understand him murdering someone else to preserve his secret, but how could such a secret have killed him?”

Dalziel halted. “I don’t know, but such secrets are always
dangerous.” He frowned, then glanced at the paneling, as if only then registering what they’d been doing when he’d entered. “What were you searching for?”

They told him.

He hesitated, clearly weighing what else he had on his plate against the challenge of finding a secret door. It took him all of five seconds to decide. “I’ve got some time—I’ll help.”

Which made four of them, which, as Letitia remarked, was just as well. The study was a cornucopia of carved wood. They divided the room into quarters and settled to their search.

Starting in one corner, she poked and prodded, mindlessly working her way along the paneling’s upper rail; inside, her mind was awash with a litany of exclamations, all escalating versions of “a farmer’s son?” It was, simply, unbelievable—unacceptable. For a lady of her rank and birth…it was more than shocking.

More than scandalous.

If it ever became known she’d stooped so low as to marry a farmer’s son…

Halting, raising her head, she sucked air into suddenly parched lungs.

Farther along the wall, Christian glanced up, caught her gaze.

She looked into his eyes, into the unwavering, unshakable gray, and felt her reeling world slow, steady.

Her catastrophic secret would only be a disaster if it became known.

He arched a brow at her, plainly asking if she was all right.

Drawing in another breath, she nodded, and returned to her examination of the rail.

Later. She would deal with the potential for catastrophe later. At the moment, it was all she could do to get her mind to accept Dalziel’s truth.

Ten minutes later she found a catch hidden in the mold
ings around one of the windows. Energized, she told the others. They came to look, then, while they all scanned the room, she depressed the catch.

A bookcase in the center of the opposite wall popped free of the stonework.

“My God!” Hermione breathed. “There really is a secret door.”

Christian and Dalziel had already crossed to the bookcase. They didn’t need to expend any huge effort to move it back—it swung open easily, and noiselessly, on well-oiled hinges.

Standing in the opening revealed, Christian, in a voice tinged with awe, said, “It’s not a secret door—it’s a secret
room
.”

Letitia and Hermione joined the two men, then followed them down the three steps that descended into what truly was an amazing find.

“Trust Randall to have a secret room”—Letitia slowly pivoted, taking in the space—“to store all his secrets in.”

That certainly appeared to be the room’s purpose. In contrast to the study, which was neat and tidy, with no papers on the desk and a pristine white blotter clearly for show rather than use, this room was full of papers—stacked on both sides of the massive but well-worn desk and bulging from pigeonholes behind it—and a blotter that was crossed, recrossed, and rather tattered.

All of the available wall space was covered with shelves housing ledgers, stacks of files, document boxes, and tomes that appeared to be accounts, their spines marked in Randall’s schoolboyish hand with dates and initials. The shelves stretched all the way to the high ceiling; a wooden ladder stood in one corner.

There was an old, serviceable lamp upon the desk—a large one of the sort clerks favored, that shed a wide pool of light when lit. The glass lamp-well was half full of oil, and the wick was charred, needing to be trimmed. There
was hardly any dust anywhere. The room appeared to be in frequent use.

The desk, with its well-padded revolving chair behind it, sat halfway into the room, its back to the shelves covering the wall the room shared with the main body of the house. Letitia glanced back; the wall with the hidden door in its center was likewise covered in shelves, outside the space of the door itself. The wall opposite, abutting some deeper part of the house, was also covered in shelves.

The fourth wall—the one facing the desk—was the one of most immediate interest to them all. Both sides housed more ledgers, but between were two narrow windows flanking a wooden door.

They’d all been standing silently, pirouetting as they took it all in. Their gazes came to rest on the closed door. Christian walked forward, grasped the knob and turned; the latch clicked.

“Well, well.” Opening the door wide, Christian walked through.

The rest of them followed, emerging into a small walled yard. Less than three yards wide, it ended at the lane wall. To the left, in line with the study-side wall of the secret room, a plain stone wall ran across, joining the lane wall. That wall was high—so high none of them could see over it, and no one in the area along the house’s front could see into the yard where they stood.

Opposite, another stone wall ran from the house to the lane wall; again, it was sufficiently high so no one below, in the yard beside the kitchen, could see in, and they couldn’t look over and down.

But they could hear voices floating up and over the wall; a few seconds of listening told them two maids were hanging out some washing.

The length of the yard from the front to the back matched the length of the secret room. Turning as one, they looked back at the house, at the way the roof line concealed the existence of the little room. Shaking her head
in amazement, Letitia nudged Hermione back toward the door.

Christian made to follow, but Dalziel hung back, then turned and walked in the opposite direction, to the wooden door set in the lane wall. From where Letitia paused by the door into the room, she could see the heavy lock on the lane door. But when Dalziel grasped the handle and turned it, the door swung open—as easily and noiselessly as the door to the study.

Leaning out, Dalziel looked up and down the lane. Letitia knew what he would see—a cobbled lane too narrow for carriages, with a procession of wooden garden doors opening onto it. Unless one counted and watched the roofs at the same time, the unexpected door wouldn’t appear out of place.

Drawing back, Dalziel closed the door. Turning, he waved them ahead of him back into the room. Once the room’s outer door was shut and there was no chance of the maids below hearing them, he looked at Letitia and Christian. “I believe we’ve solved the mystery of how Randall’s murderer came and went.”

They were all silent for a moment, imagining it.

“I doubt Randall would have left those doors unlocked.” Letitia wrapped her arms around herself. “He was always careful of windows being left open.”

“The doors—all of them—would have been locked, but his murderer was a friend, one he was expecting.” Christian reviewed the events of that night in his mind. “Randall wasn’t expecting Justin that evening—no reason he wouldn’t have made an appointment for a friend to call.” He looked around. “Not just any friend, but one he did business with.”

Dalziel nodded. “He unlocked the doors, and left them unlocked because he assumed his friend would shortly be leaving by the same route.”

“Which he did,” Christian said. “After he’d killed Randall.”

Nodding again, Dalziel turned to consider the shelves.

Hermione had already wandered over to them. Tilting her
head, she peered at some stacked papers. “No wonder he spent so many hours, so many nights, locked in his study.”

Dalziel glanced up the steps. “It might be best if we lock the study door.”

“I’ll do it.” Hermione headed back into the study.

Letitia exchanged a look with Christian, then they joined Dalziel in staring at the shelves.

She shook her head. “I can’t see any obvious place to start.”

Christian sighed, walked to a shelf, and pulled down a ledger.

Within ten minutes they’d confirmed they were looking at the records of the Orient Trading Company. Encouraged, they spent the next twenty minutes wading through files, documents, and accounts.

Dalziel looked up, glanced at the ledger Christian held. “I have income, you have expenses, but all the entries are in some sort of code.”

Frowning, Christian nodded. He and Dalziel had a more than passing familiarity with codes. “I don’t think it’s a keyed code.” Glancing at Letitia and Hermione, he explained, “A code where there’s a defined key—so once you have the key, you can read the code.”

He looked again at the entries in the ledger. “This looks more like initials of things.”

Dalziel grunted. “If so, then there’ll be a pattern somewhere, if we look long enough.” He looked up at the towering shelves of papers.

They all mentally groaned.

A clock chimed in the study. Letitia blinked, then reluctantly shut the ledger she’d been perusing. She looked at Christian. “If we want to catch Trowbridge this afternoon, we’ll have to go.”

Dalziel cocked an inquiring brow. Letitia explained, “I received an invitation to an afternoon exhibition of garden sculptures at Lady Hemming’s house in Chelsea. Trowbridge is one of the critics her ladyship has invited to grace
the event and proffer opinions on the works. I’d thought to approach him there, in a social setting, rather than call formally.”

“An excellent idea.” Dalziel looked at Christian. “I’ll continue here, but we should send for Trentham. He knows more about importing and shipping than I do—he might see something in these”—with a wave he indicated the walls of records—“I’ll miss.”

Christian nodded, closing the ledger he’d been examining. “I’ll send a message—and I’ll also see if Jack Hendon’s in town. If we need to know about importing and shipping, no reason not to go to the source.”

“Indeed.” Dalziel looked at the shelves again. “I’ve a feeling we’re going to need all the help we can get.”

They arranged for Hermione to wait in the study, from where she could look out and keep watch on the street. When Tristan arrived, she would allow him into the study, then show him the secret door.

“One last thing.” Dalziel set down the files he’d been perusing. “Let’s find out how to open the door from this side…assuming it does open from this side.”

Leaving Hermione in the study, they shut the secret door, then hunted. It was the work of a few minutes to locate the catch; the door did indeed open from both sides.

Letitia was about to leave the secret room when she recalled that both outer doors were unlocked. She mentioned it, along with, “So anyone who’s ever seen Randall open the secret door from this side—his murderer, for example—has free access to the rest of the house.”

Both she and Hermione wrapped their arms around themselves and shivered.

Dalziel exchanged a look with Christian.

Who looked at Letitia.

Just as she remembered. “I know where the keys are.”

Spinning around, she climbed the steps into the study. Going to the desk, she opened the middle drawer and pulled out a small ring with two keys. Returning to the secret room,
she headed for the outer door. “Barton found these when he searched the desk. Neither he nor I had any idea where they fitted—he tried them in all the locks in the house.”

One key operated the lock on the door to the small yard. Unlocking it again, she opened the door and silently crossed to the laneway door. The second key locked it.

Relieved, she returned to the secret room, locked the outer door, then tossed the keys to Dalziel, now sitting in the chair behind the desk. “Leave them with Hermione if you leave before we get back.”

He sent her a look—he didn’t take orders at all well—but then saluted her and gave his attention to another ledger.

She turned to Christian. “Now we can go.” She headed for the steps to the study. “Come on, or Trowbridge will have left before we get there.”

After exchanging a resigned look with Dalziel, Christian turned, nodded to Hermione, and followed Letitia back into the house.

Throughout the journey to Chelsea, Letitia was uncharacteristically quiet, her silence punctuated by an occasional muttered, “I still can’t believe it.”

Christian understood her difficulty, and her consternation. If it ever became common knowledge that she, Lady Letitia Vaux, an earl’s daughter, had married a farmer’s son, she, and the Vaux in general, would never live it down. Despite Randall having deceived the entire ton, she, even more than her family, would bear the opprobrium. As dangerous secrets went, that certainly qualified.

She, of course, realized that; as the carriage rattled into Chelsea she fixed him with a tense look. “Who else might know of Randall’s background? What about the alumni of Hexham Grammar School?” A hint of hysteria colored the words.