Page 9 of The Trick of the Treasure
The youth bowed, his gaze lingering on Constance. He walked toward her as though drawn by an invisible thread. Solomon knew the feeling.
He turned back to Mrs. Lloyd. “We will do our very best to help get your treasure back. Finding it gone, as it were, must have been a great shock to you.”
“I was never more shocked in my life,” Mrs. Lloyd said. “Indeed, I could not think it was true—I thought Barnabas was playing some trick on us.”
Solomon raised one eyebrow. “Why should you think that?”
She blinked a little too rapidly. “Well, it was in thestrongroom. We have never been robbed before, and frankly, I do not see how it can possibly have happened.”
“It is quite a mystery, is it not? I understand the treasure spent some time in here before your husband and son took it to the strong room. Were you in the drawing room all of that time?”
“Yes, I was.”
He gestured discreetly to include the whole room. “And all your family were present then too?”
“Yes.”
“Was anyone else?” he asked. “Any visitors? Servants?”
“No visitors. No one would call without invitation on the evening of my husband’s return. I think only Garrick—our butler—entered the room with wine and left again. Oh, and he announced dinner, which was when Barnabas decided to lock the chest away. Harry—the footman—helped Sydney carry it up.”
The story was just the same as Lloyd’s, and yet to Solomon something was not quite right.
“Where are the keys to the strong room kept?” he asked, mainly to see if she would tell him.
“Locked in my husband’s bedside cabinet—when he is away. When he’s at home, he keeps them about his person.”
“Are you a light sleeper, Mrs. Lloyd?”
Her eyes widened. “I beg your pardon?”
“I mean, if someone was moving about the house during the night, would it normally waken you?”
Obviously, she saw the point of the question, because she answered easily enough, “It depends whether or not I take my drops to help me sleep.”
“Did you take them the night before last?”
“No,” she said, color staining the pale, perfect skin of her face. “My husband had come home after an absence of many months.”
Intrigued by her blush, Solomon wanted to ask if they had separate bedchambers, and if so, in which of them they had spent their reunion night. If in hers, then however lightly she slept, she needn’t have heard the keys being taken from their usual place. Though why would Lloyd not have told him? Because he imagined it was none of his business? Solomon had come across other rakes who were extremely prudish about their wives.
“Then you did not hear anything unusual during that night,” he said smoothly, making it more of a statement than a question.
“Nothing. Oh dear.”
The last was uttered involuntarily as another young man walked into the room.
Chapter Three
Constance saw atonce that the newcomer had caused a subtle stir. Beside her, Sydney Lloyd tensed. His mother, seated beside Solomon, looked positively dismayed for the tiniest instant before she smiled in welcome and went to greet him. Only the elder daughter Jemimah looked uncomplicatedly delighted as she bounced up and reached the visitor before her mother.
“Ben, how wonderful! You may greet Papa at last. Papa, you remember Sydney’s friend, Mr. Devine?”
Mr. Devine was a pleasant-looking young man with a shy smile but sharp eyes. He bowed to the room in general, and to Mrs. Lloyd in particular, before allowing himself to be hauled before his host, who smiled somewhat glacially and invited him to sit.
Jemimah brought him a cup of tea and offered plates of sandwiches and cakes to everyone.
“Yourfriend?” Constance murmured to Sydney with a hint of teasing.
