Page 78 of Evidence of Evil
Since John hadlocked the window to Frances’s bedroom, they had decided Constance should pick the lock on the kitchen door, a feat she wasn’t quite sure she could accomplish, though locked doors on the inside should give her less trouble.
Most of the house was already in darkness, but a light still came from the servants’ hall, so Constance and Solomon waited with what patience they could muster behind the herb garden wall. The kitchen door looked bright and jaunty to Constance, a lantern of a particularly fat, bulbous shape unlit beside it. She recalled seeing several that shape during her previous visits.
Despite her doubts about being able to pick the lock of the kitchen door—and the fact that even if she could, the large old bolts she remembered could be shot too—Constance felt good about the evening’s chances. She didn’t know why, but a sense of lighthearted excitement had seeped through her during their walk from The Willows. Although she didn’t like the Grange, there was nowhere she would rather be than here in the silent company of Solomon Grey.
She liked his silence. She liked it more when his eyes spoke, and for a while tonight, they had. He had come from his talk with Elizabeth looking slightly dazed, almost bewildered, and yet he had focused on her with a glow in his eyes that made her heart beat and caused everything to seem worthwhile. Like the morning he had kissed her goodbye in Norfolk and she had known she would see him again. Tonight seemed to holdsome equal significance, and the knowledge made her recklessly happy.
Crouching close to her, not quite touching, Solomon remained still and watchful. Sometimes, she was sure he was watching her, and then that he was merely listening for movement. She wanted to lean against him and make him fall over, just to laugh. Just for the excuse to put her arms around him…
The opening of the kitchen door took her by surprise. Peering over the wall, she saw Worcester step outside and gaze up at the sky. He was quite alone. After a few moments, he strolled up the path that led through the herb garden, parallel to the wall and several yards away from it. He seemed to need only the light spilling from the kitchen through the open door, for he left the unlit lantern where it was.
Constance caught her breath. This was their chance. Rising, she pulled herself up and over the wall. She thought Solomon might have grabbed at her skirt, but he was too late. She ran swiftly and silently to the kitchen door and bolted inside, narrowly avoiding kicking the lantern on her way.
The rest of the kitchen, and the servants’ hall beyond, seemed to be deserted. Fortunately so, for when Solomon skidded inside and hid behind the door, he crashed into her and she let out a breathless giggle.
He glared at her. She patted his arm. He didn’t move away, but she supposed he couldn’t for fear Worcester would come back in and see them. His lips twitched and she smiled at him.
An instant later, Worcester stepped back inside and pulled the covering door away from them. Constance forgot to breathe while the butler closed and locked the door—hedidbolt it, too—and walked away without seeing them. He didn’t look back.
He lit a candle from the branch on the kitchen table, then blew the others out and carried his solitary light up toward the baize door.
Constance could not believe their luck. Neither, she suspected, could Solomon, who gazed at her with a sardonic twist of his lips. They waited in silence. Constance didn’t mind. She was quite warm now, and Solomon’s arm was pressed to her shoulder, his leg against hers. They had no need to stand so close anymore, but for a long time, neither of them moved.
At last, when she could discern no movement in the house, Solomon stepped away from her. Well, it was why they had come.
With her old drawings and Elizabeth’s description of the house still in her head, Constance led the way. But they could not blunder silently about a strange house with no light whatsoever. Solomon lit a candle and followed her, shading the light with his hand.
As they crept along the main hallway, she saw the lantern by the side door, and another by the front door. She felt sure Frances had placed them there, inside and out, to ease her clandestine departures and arrivals. Or to make people think that was what they were for, when in reality she was in some secret room in the house.
The main public rooms would have been too difficult to use. Likewise the bedrooms on the second floor, which her family could have entered at any time, however she ordered the servants.
Creeping up the stairs, Constance heard what sounded like an animal snarling, and almost grasped Solomon’s hand in terror. Then she realized it was snoring and had to swallow down another surge of laughter. The room it came from was the first they passed, probably Colonel Niall’s.
No light shone under the door of the room she knew to be Frances’s. Nor the one next to it, which must have been John’s, for it had been open when he showed them out. At least he did not appear to be up and about tonight. He could be asleep, or out at the inn, perhaps, if the innkeeper had not thrown him out at this time of night.
There was another door opposite. She tried to peer through the keyhole, and when Solomon lowered the candle, she saw that it was a linen cupboard with no space for trysts. Moving forward to the last door, she realized it was slightly ajar. Solomon pushed it open, and she tensed in case the hinges squeaked.
They didn’t. It was a guest bedchamber, which had possibilities, for the bed was fully made up. They crept inside, closing the door again. Constance sniffed. She could smell the faintest scent of lavender, but it was slightly musty, as though it had been there a long time, as if the room had not been aired out for months.
Would Frances tolerate that? Or the very real risk of discovery that had seemed to so excite Darby? It would have been very different for her in her own home. Why would she do it? It wasn’t even love.
Without exchanging so much as a whisper, she and Solomon moved around the room, opening drawers and cupboards as silently as they could. All were empty, apart from one or two old lace lavender sachets. Constance felt beneath the pillows on the bed, ran her hands over the sheet. Clean.
She looked up and met Solomon’s gaze. She shook her head, and they moved toward the door. While Solomon closed it, placing it in exactly the same position as before, Constance ignored the way to the back stairs used by the servants—they would have little or no cause to be in their attic rooms during the day, but several of Frances’s apparent assignations had been at night, when the servants might well have heard her in theirterritory. She was looking for a part of the attic more accessible to the family, like a storage area.
Her heart was beating fast. This was surely the likeliest of areas for a love nest. They were about to discover something of massive importance, something that would solve the mystery, clear Elizabeth’s name, and identify the true culprit…
It was certainly a storage area. Moonlight gleamed through two skylights, bathing the large, crowded room in an eerie silver glow. Furniture smothered in Holland covers, piles of ancient boxes, dust dancing before her eyes. Her blood chilled and she realized she had unconsciously moved closer to Solomon.
He walked away at once, quite rightly, for there was no point in them both searching the same area. But Constance, sensitive to atmosphere, liked this place even less than the rest of the house. Generations of Nialls had abandoned their possessions here. It felt as if some part of those long-dead people clung to their things, to this place. The kind and the angry and the malicious… Even Frances herself.
She shivered as she crept reluctantly to the far side of the attic. Her lightheartedness had long since vanished into discomfort, a nameless dread of thepresence…
Some movement caught the corner of her eye, and she swung toward it, gasping. Her heart lurched and froze at sight of the ghostly figure before her—an insubstantial being, tall and thin yet gauzy and transparent like a spider’s web, only moving, fluttering toward her.
She could not move, though some strange, inarticulate sound spilled from her lips.
“What is it?” Solomon closed his fingers around her wrist before she dropped the candle.
