A Pretty Deceit Page 5

  A quick perusal of the lavish rose and gold decorated chamber showed that much of the chamber’s contents were still present. From the ornate walnut furnishings to the thick Aubusson carpet to the paintings and artwork gracing the walls, it appeared more or less as I remembered it. I crossed toward the writing desk to gaze up at the painting I had asked to see, while all the while my mind was sifting through everything she’d just told me. “You said the locks on the doors sometimes jam?” I turned my head to look at her where she stood next to an ormolu table, fiddling with the items resting on top. “Isn’t that . . . peculiar?”

  “Apparently not. I, of course, have no experience with such things, but Mr. Green says it happens more often than one would realize.”

  I assumed she was speaking of the estate’s man-of-all-work, and I couldn’t help but wonder at his credentials. Was he qualified to make assessments of such matters? I had no more experience than my aunt, but while I had witnessed wood in houses swelling and doors sticking, I failed to comprehend how that could cause a lock to engage on its own and jam. The scenario seemed all too improbable, if not impossible.

  I wondered if perhaps Sidney would have a better grasp of the mechanics of the matter than I did, and so I asked him later that evening when we had a moment to ourselves after dinner.

  He paused in loosening his tie to cast me an incredulous look. “I would say that’s worse than improbable. It sounds suspicious.”

  “I had the same misgiving,” I admitted as I removed the bracelets dangling from my wrists and stacked them in my jewelry case. “But I can’t comprehend the motive for impelling my aunt to leave her bedchamber. From what I could tell, nothing was missing except her more personal property, and she undoubtedly moved that to the bedroom she’s currently occupying.”

  He shrugged out of his black evening coat and tossed it over the back of the chaise lounge. “Still, I think it would behoove us to find out more about this Mr. Green.”

  “I’ll speak to Miles tomorrow,” I replied, pulling the bejeweled headband from my hair and raking my hands through my auburn castle-bobbed tresses to remove the indentation. “There are a few other things I’d also like to ask him.”

  He lifted his head as he bent over to remove his shoes, casting me a knowing look. “The forgeries?”

  “Among other things.” I sank down beside him on the chaise, removing my black T-strap pumps. “What did you and Reg discuss after Aunt Ernestine summoned me away?”

  “Nothing of interest,” he remarked before flicking open the top two buttons of his crisp white shirt and draping his arm over the rounded back of the chaise behind my shoulders.

  I arched my eyebrows, letting him know I was well aware that “nothing of interest” was man-code for “something of great interest,” but whatever it was, he wouldn’t share it. Whether that was because Reg had asked him not to, it was inappropriate for a lady’s ears, or more likely, that it had to do with the war and that curious realm of comradery shared only by fellow soldiers, I couldn’t tell. While I had witnessed more than most British citizens and endured my share of ghastly experiences during my time as an intelligence agent, I had not fought in the trenches. I had not slept in muddy dugouts knee-deep in water, or made tea in a bully beef tin, or singed lice hidden in the seams of my clothes with matches. I had not witnessed my friends being mowed down by a machine gun’s bullets, or torn apart by shrapnel, or choked by gas. I knew full well that there was a limit to what I could understand, and what any returning soldier would share beyond that. Even my husband. Especially him.

  “Then he didn’t confide in you his frustration at his mother for involving you in the complaints about the damages to the estate?” I asked.

  “No, but that much is obvious.” His voice was droll. “Otherwise, what reason would your aunt have had for deliberately excluding him from our conversations on the matter?”

  So he had noticed that as well. Whatever the truth about Reg’s health, or his good and bad days, as baronet, he still should have been consulted.

  I sank my head back against his arm. “One thing is certain. While the house is undoubtedly damaged, it is not crumbling down around them.” I rolled my head to the side. “Though I suppose one could argue that the roof over the master bedchambers is in danger of doing so. But I don’t think my aunt can lay the blame for that at the airmen’s feet. Not if the roof has been leaking for some time.”

  “And that’s supposing that the information this Mr. Green gave your aunt is correct. Did you see any evidence of this water damage?”

  “Well, no. But I didn’t precisely peer behind all the doors along the corridor looking for it.”

  Sidney reached over to idly run his finger over the black seed pearls decorating the skirt of my gown. “Whatever the case, all your aunt can do for now about the damages done during the war is submit a claim to the government. Reg and I can do our best to exert pressure on them to take care of the matter swiftly, but that doesn’t mean we’ll be successful. This is the government we’re talking about, and there’s already a long line of petitioners for war reparations.”

  “And even if they do pay for the damages, it doesn’t mean it will fix their dilemma. Not if they are as empty in the pockets as Father suggested. They’ll have to sell off part of the estate, if not the house. That is, if it’s not entailed.”

  Sidney’s brow furrowed. “Bloody feudal regulations. I hope they change the laws or one of the men in my family finds a way to break the entailment before I stand to inherit. Otherwise we shall be strapped with the Treborough monstrosity of an estate. One I have never been fond of, and that will bleed us dry if we try to fix it.”

  I was somewhat startled by this pronouncement. As the only surviving grandson of the fifth Marquess of Treborough, I knew Sidney eventually stood to inherit the title currently held by his oldest uncle, but I’d never visited Treborough Castle. “Is it truly as bad as all that?”

  “Worse,” he stated glumly. “My grandfather may have been rather progressive in distributing his unentailed wealth among his three sons evenly. But in doing so, he failed to anticipate the changes in Britain’s economy, and so saddled Uncle Oswald with an estate he couldn’t hope to maintain on the income it generated alone.”

  Sidney’s father, the youngest of the brothers, had compounded his inherited wealth through sound investments and by marrying an heiress, though not for purely mercenary reasons. They’d fallen in love, and from all indications were still as enamored with each other today as the day they’d wed, sometimes to the exclusion of everything else, including their own children. Given what I knew about his father’s wealth, and the more than generous annual stipend Sidney received, the notion of Treborough Castle and its estate being in such a state as to cause bankruptcy was shocking indeed.

  “Well, let’s not think on that now. Not when it will be many years before it is your father’s or our problem.” I curled my stockinged feet up on the chaise and nestled in closer to Sidney’s side. “We have more pressing matters to consider.”

  “Indeed.” He shifted his broad shoulders so he could gaze down at me more easily.

  “I know there’s nothing we can do about the damages, but I would like to take a closer look into these forgeries and thefts, as well as the matter of my aunt’s mysterious locking door. I think I should ask the staff about the missing maid as well, just to be sure there genuinely is no cause for concern.” I frowned. “For all my aunt’s professed eagerness for our assistance, she’s not being very forthcoming.”

  “Only when she thinks the information is relevant to her wishes,” he agreed, having noticed the same diversionary tactics I had.

  “Moreover, it seems rather rude to rush off less than twenty-four hours after my arrival. I’m sure my father expected more from me.” I turned to gaze up into his deep blue expectant eyes. “However, there’s no need for us both to stay.”

  “Are you suggesting we divide and conquer?”

  “I don’t expect th
ere’s much more to discover here, so there’s really no reason why you shouldn’t keep our appointment in Falmouth and then return to collect me on your way back to London.” I searched his face. “Unless you’d rather remain?”

  But I already knew his answer. I could sense his desire to be off. Part of it was an eagerness to be back behind the wheel of his new Pierce-Arrow, but part of it was something else. A restlessness that stemmed from the war, particularly when he was confronted with a situation that dredged up fraught memories. There were plenty of potential sources for that here at Littlemote.

  “No, I suspect you’re right. And such a tactic might work in our favor, for I’d wondered how comfortable the employees at Lord Rockham’s import-export business would feel speaking to a woman about the questions we intend to ask them.”

  I understood what he meant. For all my annoyance at men who considered women incapable of understanding business matters or were shocked that they should even take an interest, in my intelligence work I’d learned the importance of accepting reality and adapting to work within others’ limitations and prejudices if I hoped to achieve results. The men at the shipping yards in Falmouth would share far more with Sidney than me, just as the employees at a London milliner might be more forthcoming with me than they would be with my husband.

  “You should have said something to me sooner,” I told him, wondering if he would have if I hadn’t unwittingly introduced the subject myself. “We have to be smart about this. Lord Ardmore is almost certainly already aware of our gathering further information on him, as well as Rockham’s and Flossie’s murders. So we may only get one chance to ask our questions before he interferes.”

  We’d tangled with the calculating and elusive Lord Ardmore several weeks earlier while trying to solve two seemingly unrelated murders. And while we’d unmasked the perpetrators responsible for pulling the triggers, both literally and figuratively, we were also convinced Ardmore had been the ultimate architect of the killings, as well as a number of related deaths. However, Ardmore was far too clever to be connected easily to the crimes. His ongoing role with Naval Intelligence was shadowy, the details unavailable even to my former chief, C, at the foreign division of Military Intelligence—the Secret Service. But one thing was certain, C didn’t trust him, so neither did I.

  So we’d begun clandestinely collecting information about Ardmore, trying to piece together the components of the previous investigations we hadn’t possessed, hoping one of them would lead us to the proof we needed to convince Ardmore’s highly placed friends of his guilt. The trouble was, Ardmore was much too good at covering his tracks, or eliminating the people who could make those connections. Even the details we could confirm seemed to lead to a dead end, either by Ardmore’s design or because he’d destroyed the evidence.

  “You’re thinking of that girl at the orthopedic foot appliance store,” he deduced.

  “Of course, I am.” I crossed my arms over my chest, still struggling to control my temper days later. “She was perfectly friendly and talkative the first time I visited the shop, and happy to tell me all about her former coworker. How Flossie began stepping out with a customer she met there. A gentleman who claimed to be writing a book about some of the unresolved mysteries from the war. A man who claimed aloud he’d worked for the intelligence service and spoke about all the information he often uncovered from reading people’s mail.” I arched my eyebrows in emphasis. “How Flossie had seemed to devour his tales, even though the shop girl had maintained a healthy skepticism. Which might have simply been her effort to mask her jealousy that Flossie had snagged such a beau and not her, but either way, the connection seems obvious.”

  “You said the description she gave you of the man didn’t match Ardmore.”

  “No, but I imagine it matches one of his underlings. And I’m certain it was Ardmore who sent him to that store to scrape up an acquaintance with Flossie. To charm her, and somehow inveigle her into stealing her housemate Esther’s correspondence.” That Esther had then caught Flossie doing so, and Flossie had accidentally killed her trying to escape seemed pure chance, though one that had benefitted Ardmore. Until Sidney and I had stuck our noses into the matter.

  I scowled ferociously, wrinkling my nose. “I’m also certain it was Ardmore, or another of his henchmen, who convinced that shop girl to refuse to speak with me when I tried to follow up with her a few days later.”

  Sidney pulled me closer, tipping my chin upward so that he could look into my eyes. “Don’t let him vex you,” he reminded me. “You know that’s exactly what he wants. For you to stew in frustration.” His thumb brushed a wayward strand of hair away from my cheek. “It’s doubtful you would have gotten anything else useful from that shop girl anyway. And now at least you have a description of one of the men working for him.”

  I exhaled a long breath, conceding he was right. “But you understand this means Ardmore must be aware we haven’t stopped investigating. And that means he’s anticipated our making a trek west to Falmouth.” My gaze trailed over the bronzed skin of his square jaw and high cheekbones before staring intently into his eyes. “Be careful. Watch your back in Falmouth.” My lips quirked upward at one corner. “And perhaps lay off the accelerator just a bit.”

  He heaved a sigh of long suffering. “Because you asked, I will.”

  The glitter in his eyes told me he was only teasing, but I emphasized the point anyway. “I mean it, Sidney.”

  “I know, Ver,” he assured me, his face softening with sincerity, though the twinkle never left his eyes. “I’ll be back by Monday. I wouldn’t want to miss your birthday.” His voice lowered. “Not when I have a special present planned for you.”

  “Do you?” I murmured back playfully, draping my arms over his shoulders.

  He smiled secretively.

  “What is it? Can you give me a hint?”

  He tilted his head in consideration. “No.”

  I pouted my lips and his gaze fastened on them.

  “But I can offer you a preview of the other festivities,” he proposed as his mouth captured mine.

  What exactly he had planned for my twenty-third birthday in three days’ time, I didn’t know, but the preview assured me it would be more than spectacular.

  CHAPTER 4

  After seeing Sidney off the following morning, I went in search of my aunt’s butler and found him emerging from the breakfast parlor. “Miles, just the person I need.”

  “Yes, madam.” His wrinkled face was fixed in lines of mild inquiry. “I thought you might be wishing to speak to me.”

  I smiled. “My mother always said you were the perfect butler, aware of everything one needed before one even realized it oneself.”

  “Mrs. Townsend is an astute and discerning woman.”

  “Yes, she is.” When she wished to be.

  I stepped back. “Shall we step into the study?” Entering the room, I crossed toward my uncle’s massive oak desk, but remained standing as I knew Miles would never be convinced to sit in my presence. Though the window drapes had been drawn, what sunlight penetrated through the thick, old glass was soon swallowed up by the dark wooden paneling and bookshelves that dominated much of the chamber.

  I tilted my head, studying his stalwart visage and sparsely threaded gray hair. “You must be aware of the forgeries and thefts my aunt has told us about,” I began, leaning against the edge of the desk as I assessed his demeanor, having already deduced that his body language would tell me more than his words.

  His back remained rigid; his hands clasped behind his back. “I am.”

  “When the house was requisitioned for use by the military during the middle of the war, did you remain here or go to London with Sir James and Lady Popham?”

  “London.”

  I nodded, narrowing my eyes in thought. “Did any of the staff remain?”

  “Not from the house, madam. Those who were still employed here were sent off to various posts or acquired positions helping with the war ef
fort.”

  I’d suspected as much, the Royal Flying Corps and then the RAF after them wanting to hire their own staff, but it was always good to verify. Because much of the gardens had been turned over to vegetables and other crops, I wondered if they’d retained any of the groundskeeping servants. That is, those who hadn’t volunteered or been conscripted into the war. But my aunt’s old stablemaster would be the person to ask about that.

  “You supervised the storage of the more precious items and heirlooms in the attics?”

  “Yes, madam.”

  “And you supervised the restoration of them and the rest of the house—what could be salvaged, that is—upon the RAF vacating the estate?”

  His expression was pained. “Yes, madam. It was in a state I should not like to see ever again.”

  “Had it appeared like anything had been moved or shifted in the attics? Had the items seemed tampered with in any way?”

  Miles’s dark eyes were shrewd with intelligence. “No, nothing appeared altered from when I’d locked the doors three years prior.”

  “Then, it didn’t appear as if anything had been removed and later replaced?”

  “Allow me to clarify. There is every indication that the items we stored in that room in 1916 were exactly the same as the ones we removed from it in April of this year.”

  If that were true—and I had no reason not to believe it, for I could see no reason for Miles to lie—then that meant that the forgeries had been created before they were placed in storage.

  I studied the butler’s expectant expression. “Did Sir James ever send off any of his paintings or heirlooms to be . . . cleaned, or reframed, or refurbished? Appraised, even?”

  His eyes gleamed with satisfaction that I’d hit upon this question. “He did, indeed, madam. Quite often, in fact, during the years before the war.”

  I turned toward the window as I digested this bit of news. So my uncle was responsible for replacing his objets d’art with fakes, not the airmen. This wasn’t truly surprising. In fact, I’d suspected as much. For the estate to be in such a state now meant it must have been bleeding assets for some time. Nor was it surprising he’d not told my aunt. Their marriage had been molded in the old pattern, in which my aunt didn’t ask and my uncle didn’t tell.