The Lady By His Side(45)

Sebastian glanced at the desk, then at her. “Why don’t you take that half of the room”—he waved at the area around the fireplace, opposite the desk—“and I’ll search this half.” The half containing the desk behind which Ennis had died. The window and door were in the middle of their respective walls, so dividing the room into two was easy.

Antonia drew in a breath, hauled her gaze from the desk, and nodded. “All right.” She looked around. Apart from the window, the door, and the space taken up by the fireplace, all the walls were covered in densely packed shelves. They contained not just books and ledgers but also stacks of loose papers weighed down with, apparently, whatever had come to Ennis’s hand. She considered how best to tackle her assigned half, then started with the shelves beside the window.

Ten minutes later, she reached the fireplace. She was about to move past it when a thought struck. She studied the large portrait of Cecilia Ennis as a young lady that hung above the mantelpiece, then reached out, raised one corner of the heavy frame, and peered behind it. A safe was recessed into the wall.

She let the frame hang straight again and turned to Sebastian, who was pulling out and replacing books on one of the high shelves behind the desk. “Has the inspector looked in the safe?”

Sebastian glanced at her, then raised his gaze to the portrait. “He didn’t say. I’ll ask.” He went to the door, opened it, and left.

Antonia progressed to searching the shelves on the other side of the fireplace.

Several minutes later, Sebastian returned. He closed the door. “There’s nothing in there but Cecilia’s better jewelry and two hundred pounds in cash.”

“Exactly what one might expect and nothing more.” Antonia continued to search through the ledgers, but more to be thorough than in any real hope of finding any plans.

Sebastian returned to the shelves behind the desk.

Eventually, she asked, “How long do you think there’s been a house on this spot?”

She felt Sebastian’s sharp green gaze, but didn’t bother meeting it.

“Why do you ask?”

“Because at Chillingworth—and I’m sure at Somersham, too—because the house is so old, the plans are kept—”

“In the library.”

“Precisely. The plans of the house are bound in one large volume, and the landscaping plans are kept in a separate folio, because they keep being updated.”

“So we’re looking in the wrong place.”

“Perhaps.” She glanced at him, a wryly questioning look in her eyes. “But we wanted to search here anyway, didn’t we?”

Fleetingly, he grinned. “Indeed.” He turned to a shelf by the door. “And I’m almost finished on this side, and I haven’t found anything.”

She replaced the last stack of loose papers on their shelf, then stepped back and visually checked. “I’ve finished here.” She turned to survey her side of the room one last time. Her gaze swung over the grate, and she froze.

Then she went forward and, crouching, carefully teased a paper—the left half of an envelope—free of the ashes that had almost obscured it.

She rose with the remnant in her hand. Frowning, she angled it so the light from the window fell on the words scrawled across the envelope’s face.

“What is it?” Sebastian came to see.

“It’s part of an envelope. The writing on it says ‘Three hundred pounds for’—and the rest has burned away.”

He halted by her side, close, and leaned closer still to examine the black scrawl.

She fought to keep her hand—and her breathing—steady.

“Damn!” he murmured.

“Indeed.” She glanced sideways at his face. Firmly quashing her unhelpful reaction, she managed, “The fire was burning when you came in to see Ennis, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. Just crackling away, nothing out of the ordinary.” He straightened, and she could breathe a touch easier. He added, “I didn’t notice that in the grate, but then I didn’t really look.”

“And the staff haven’t been allowed in this room since, so whatever’s in this grate—”

“Had to have been there when I found Ennis dead.”

Tilting her head, she studied the envelope. “Did he put it in the flames, or did someone else—like the murderer?”

“Hard—if not impossible—to say. But as to that, Ennis was with us—his guests—throughout yesterday. In the afternoon, he came in with the rest of the men with only time enough to change for dinner, and I saw him come upstairs. So he didn’t come in here during the day, not for more than a minute at most. So the fire in here, which would have been laid earlier in the day, almost certainly wouldn’t have been lit until dinnertime.”