Page 63 of Murder in Moonlight
“Trying to make head or tail of the bank’s finances.”
“Ask Mr. Bolton.”
“Limited use, miss,” he said carefully.
“Because he is still a suspect, too? Even though you’ve arrested Richards?”
“We haven’t charged Richards yet.”
The boldness was back in her eyes. “Then you still suspect me, too?”
He could not prevent the flush rising to his face. He could think of nothing to say.
Her smile was not childlike at all. “How can you do this work?” she wondered. Her voice contained mostly puzzlement, but it was not free of distaste.
“Because someone has to,” he said, a shade more harshly than he meant to.
Without a word, she stood up and left the room.
*
Daylight somehow leakedin the boarded windows of the old wing, creating an odd, dappled effect on the walls and the floor. Between that and the two candles that Solomon lit with a match,Constance could see they were in a large, wood-paneled room, empty of all furniture except a bare old sideboard against one wall. A narrow staircase ran up the left-hand side. Flecks of dust danced in the sunshine.
Constance shivered. “I don’t like this part of the house either. It should have ghosts, only they’ve all been scared off. I’ll look around down here, if you want to see what’s upstairs.”
Grey moved away from her side, taking one of the candles, and she immediately wanted to grab his arm and drag him back.
Instead, she forced herself to walk across the room to the sideboard. The shelves were empty of everything except dust. She opened the drawers, felt inside them, then above and beneath them. There was nothing in the cupboard either, or on the floor underneath so far as she could see. She stood up again and wandered toward the fireplace. She wasn’t quite sure what she was looking for, except some reason for Richards to come here.
She felt along the high mantelshelf, then peered rather warily up the chimney. She was reluctant to put her hand up in case it dislodged a deluge of old soot and rubble.Last resort,she decided, and turned toward the stairs.
It struck her that Richards might have crept in to watch Walter making love to his mistress—some men liked that sort of thing—but then, why had he come this morning? To cover up some peephole he had made? She could not quite imagine the dignified butler in such a situation, but she had been surprised before. Nor could she really see him plunging a knife into his master’s back, even for his brother.
As she neared the top of the stairs, a shadow fell over her and she almost cried out. It was Grey, emerging from the door at the top of the stairs. Weak with relief, she looked beyond him and said, “You found the love nest, then? He didn’t dismantle it.I wonder if he would hide it to preserve Winsom’s reputation, even to spare Deborah some humiliation.”
“He does not appear to be so selfless. Nothing downstairs?”
“Not as much as a scrap of paper. Did you look in the dressing table?”
“There’s nothing there, apart from what’s on the top. Nothing in the bedding or under the mattress, either.”
At the end of the landing, another, even narrower stair led upward. Grey went first and she followed, her heart beating foolishly fast.
“The attic might be open to the main part of the house,” he murmured.
It wasn’t. They saw at once where the passage had been bricked off. Constance was secretly touched when he insisted on sticking his head into the first of the three rooms before standing aside for her to enter and then going to the second himself. She wasn’t used to anyone looking out for her, taking care of her… Though perhaps that was exaggeration, more wishful thinking than anything else.
Oddly, this room was full of old furniture. Constance wondered if this were where the love nest furnishings had come from. It meant there were many drawers, cupboards, and shelves to look in. But there was so much dust that she didn’t hold out much hope. Everything looked as if it hadn’t been disturbed for years.
As they entered the final room together, Constance said, “I wonder Walter wasn’t afraid of all this stuff falling through rotting floorboards on top him, especially in the throes of passion.”
If she had hoped to embarrass Solomon, she was disappointed. His glance was merely sardonic. “The rot looks to have been just in that one patch where the repair was done.Shutting it off completely seems an overreaction. I would have thought the Winsoms would enjoy having a larger house.”
“Perhaps they didn’t have the money to renovate as they wished to,” Constance mused, lifting the embroidered cover on a wooden cradle. “So they just concentrated on the more gracious part.”
“Perhaps.”
He brushed past her, large and lithe as a cat. She tried not to look. Not that she needed to—she was so aware of him that she could almost see him on the backs of her eyelids. He opened a wardrobe and reached up to the top shelf.
